States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018

Cheaper still to educate them before they become prisoners.

It's big business, keeping the brother down. Cheaper to keep prisoners in hotels than in the pen...Somethings is just a little askew with the system.

It's big business, keeping the brother down. Cheaper to keep prisoners in hotels than in the pen...Somethings is just a little askew with the system.

Well, that is precisely where you are wrong.  

This kind of fuzzy thinking has consequences.  Example, 50,000 dead Americans during the Vietnam War or Obama's hugely expensive socialized health care albatross.  Or the billions upon billions that socialist (sic) Americans gladly throw at the agricultural sector so it can destroy watersheds, create air pollution and contribute to a galloping obesity epidemic and reduced life expectancies.    

Even the nuclear weapons backed affirmative action ethnic cleansing project in the Holy Lands receives support because of this kind of fuzzy thinking.  I mention the Israeli nation building project because it brought you the Sept. 11th attacks and paints a target on the backs of Americans.  Though I do realize that many Americans saw the Sept. 11th attacks as a huge positive and welcome more of the same. 

Killing innocent civilians — something both Israel and the USA excel at — and ethnic cleansing enjoy long noble histories that predate modern capitalism by hundreds of thousands of years. 

The Scandinavian social democracies all have better socio-economic outcomes than the USA but it strikes me that  the vast majority of Americans have no clue as to how that happened.  Both those that identify as 'left' and the 'right' — now outdated concepts from the early 20th century.

think of capitalism as a tool

it can be great when used properly

when in corrupt hands not so much

I'm thinking of capitalism in the sense of: "Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."
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You've built up what you may think is a rather robust logical argument, but I think there are some holes in it.

Regarding the bolded text above, Ordinary peoples' ability to judge the professional competence of experts (doctors, bridge designers, etc. etc.)  is dubious at best. How many centuries before scientific reasoning came along did we put up with things like bloodletting, burning witches for disease and crop failure, etc?

Scientific method and knowledge gives us (in theory) the ability to judge if someone is competent at their job, but few consumers possess it in the requisite degree to make an informed judgement.

Look at how many people willingly give their money to quacks like Andrew Wakefield, or "Alternative" medicine practicioners of homeopathy, etc.

Even when it comes to traditional practitioners, how is one to judge reliably whether the failure of a therapy, or some other unwanted outcome is attributable to the competence of the practitioner? If a doctor sets your broken nose improperly, and you go to complain, they could tell you you did not follow their post treatment instructions carefully, or insist that the radiologist screwed up, or some other clever excuse. Most people assume that a certain aura surrounds people with "MD" appended to their name, and would not be likely to pursue this. Online review sites can potentially help somewhat in making it easier to detect patterns of complaints, but these comments and reviews are unvetted, so we don't know how reliable they may be.

There are ways that incompetent practitioners can continue to practice. If the state medical board (a regulating agency which presumably you as a libertarian/nonaggression principle supporter are not in favor of) suspends a practitioners' license to practice in one state, they can simply move to another. Even if they get decertified in every state, they can do what Wakefield has done, i.e. become an "unfrocked" doctor, i.e. a "service provider" or "consultant". Your options 1, 2, and 3 may be the only ones in your idyllic utopia based on non-aggression, but in the real world there is at least one other.

Agree with most of what you write Steely_D but you are wrong on one point.  It ain't necessarily 'capitalism'.  It is self interest.  

Canadian doctors get paid a fee for service and there is plenty of incentive to over-order.   Would you call Canadian socialized medicine 'capitalism'?

How about we agree to call it professional self-interest?   

Well, that very much depends on the setup.

In antiquated, obsolete Fee For Service medicine, where a doctor gets paid for everything they do to the patient, it's in the doctor's financial interest to over-order and - in truth - not cure the patient. They make more money that way. That's capitalism.
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Well, that very much depends on the setup.

In antiquated, obsolete Fee For Service medicine, where a doctor gets paid for everything they do to the patient, it's in the doctor's financial interest to over-order and - in truth - not cure the patient. They make more money that way. That's capitalism.

The movement in programs like Kaiser Permanente and others is prepayment. This means that, with a fixed amount of money coming in, it's in the financial interests of the company that they physicians 1) keep the members healthy 2) don't waste premiums dollars which means 2a) don't screw up and create lawsuits. Weirdly, this means that the financial goal of the patient (don't pay a lot) matches up with the company (don't let the member get sick, because that drains the coffers). Declining the necessary service is a bad thing for the member: it generates more illness, more visits to try to get the service, and more lawsuits that a legitimate necessary service wasn't provided.

Note that this is separate from giving people what they think they want because they saw it on TV. It requires a good knowledge of what people really need, what tests are useful, what likely results are - and to be good communicators so the patient doesn't think they're being cheated. 

Like health care insurance and some other venues, there is an inherent conflict of interest when it is in the financial best interest of a service provider, to lessen, cheapen or decline the service provided.