What is the right size of government?

In response to a newsletter from a thinker I respect, I was moved to reply and it turned into a mini-essay that I felt had some valuable insights. 

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One of your comments struck me as almost accurate and I thought it worthy of a response.

o Also, note that government doesn’t produce anything but simply redistributes capital from producers of capital to consumers of capital.

o   And while government has an important role to play in a thriving economy, it is one of facilitating the production of wealth, not creating it.

o  Therefore, the larger the government, the greater a drag it is on the productive capacity of the economy.

One of the obvious differentiators between Objectivism (which is a full philosophical system) and the economics-focused Libertarianism we commonly see is the role of government in a proper society. 

Libertarians fall into a range of camps that include Anarchy, Anarcho-capitalism, Minarchy, and related ideas. According to Rand, these are all anti-concepts that attempt to fuse a negative into a positive, thus destroying people’s ability to properly conceive and consider the positive. Anarchy is the absence of a central government. Anarcho-capitalism is the worst because it names the positive and then destroys it. Minarchy generally means the smallest government necessary and might be the closest to a proper formulation, but unnecessarily clouds the issue by creating a new term for what is simply capitalism. 

The positive is capitalism, the political and economic system where all property is privately owned and government is created to protect the rights of every individual citizen to life, liberty, and property. So long as the individual does not violate the rights of others, the government has no role, no policy, and takes no action. 

In a free society, government is an unalloyed good, an absolute necessity. Such a government is generally very small, but it may expand sometimes if needed to protect the country from external threats. Such a government is not good because it is small – size is not the standard of value – but because of what is does: protect rights from internal and external threats.

The first bullet could be improved by stating that through economic policy and the resultant use of force against innocent citizens, the government seizes the capital of producers and gives it to those people and groups favored by government policymakers. Some of those receiving the favours are also producers.

Your second bullet is almost perfect but can be improved by reformulating it as “A free society requires Government to play an essential role in the economy by protecting the rights of producers and consumers, creating the optimal conditions for production and trade.”

The third bullet is the weakest because it implies a negative correlation between government size and economic productivity. This is contradicted by Objectivism. A better formulation would be that since government is essential, there is a Kuznets curve something like this:

 At the origin point, there is essentially no economic production due to the condition of anarchy. This was the state of humanity for most of its history, with almost no production other than that needed for subsistence, and even then, subsistence was miserable. This is the fixed-pie view of wealth where anything can be stolen or destroyed with relative impunity.

The introduction of a government that starts to protect rights enables a sharp increase in production such as seen in the transition from the Enlightenment re-discovery of the power of reason and the consequent introduction of rights through the Industrial Revolution. In the U.S. and other relatively capitalist countries this persisted into the late 19th century and economic growth was 6% or even higher for long periods. 

Once the government started to adopt and enforce policies that did not protect rights, but violate them, the rate of economic growth started to decline. Controls, regulation, tariffs, taxes and other types of non-objective law are all forms of rights violations. The decline side of the curve is much more gradual than the increase side because it still contains significant rights protection, and these are usually gradually eroded. Because all the infrastructure created during a period of rights protection is difficult to destroy, both physically and intellectually, it is possible for a fascist government to commandeer production yet not rapidly destroy it. I think a good case in point is Argentina, in the news these days due to the election of a relatively free-market figure, which was once among the wealthiest of nations but then suffered a slow decline as collectivism became entrenched. 

A proper formulation of the third bullet point would thus be: “Once a proper, rights-protecting government has been instituted, any further growth of government will of necessity be rights-violating and thus lead to lower economic production.”

All this started with just the idea that the third bullet point was weak, but I am very happy with the thoughts that emerged, particularly the shape of the graphic, the form of which I have not seen before. 

Should there be a tax credit for financial planning?

 FP Canada has launched an effort to get a Federal tax credit for financial planning. 

I disagree with this initiative of FP Canada for several reasons, even though I am a financial advisor and a big proponent of financial literacy and the value of my life's work - financial advice. Here is a short version of my first reactions to this idea.

1. It injects even more government interference into the economy.

2. Government, via regulations, has driven up the cost of advice and reduced its access. This distorted the economy. The solution to one distortion cannot be further distortion.

3, It introduces yet another aspect of private life that ends up being reported to our taxation authority.

4. This is like the children's sports activity and arts activity credits, which thankfully were axed.

5. All these reporting requirements add costs for providers, add non-productive work for taxpayers, add compliance costs to the taxman.

6. I think it is discriminatory, taking money from one class of taxpayers and favoring those who have had lobbyists work on their behalf. Essentially, political pressure is used to extract money from the group being punished to reward the favoured group, a regressive tax - one among many. This is a violation of individual rights, never mind being inequitable.

7. Most fundamentally, it is not a proper function of government to redistribute wealth according to anyone's preferences. Government is created to protect rights and not to violate them. Government representatives might choose to speak favorably about the value of financial advice but should never take my money to help others pay for the advice they seek.

8. Only plans covering advice “across multiple areas” would be eligible. This begs for jerry-rigged gaming of the credit: who is to judge when enough areas have been covered? What if multiple areas are not wanted or needed by the client? What if plans are "gamed" so as to qualify under whatever arbitrary rules are set?

9. Almost zero Canadians pay for the type of financial planning fee that would be rewarded by this credit. The overwhelming preference of Canadians, as clearly expressed in their market choices, is to pay for advice bundled with their investment and insurance products and management. The article itself says only 4% use the type of advice this credit would promote. If you want to promote this type of advisor compensation, go into the marketplace and make your case - don't use the coercive power of government to do it against the wishes of Canadians. In summary, there is so much wrong with this idea that it should be stopped in its tracks or rejected outright by politicians.

The cancer stories you never hear

This story makes me think of the heroes among us who work, mostly quietly, to overcome the bureaucracies of government and the endlessly tangled health care outcomes created by the thousands of controls imposed by government and their regulators, and then by the companies and professionals subject to those regulations. It seems that no matter where you live these days, the remnants of individual rights and freedoms are being eroded and the barriers between patient and medical professionals are growing.

Who among us has not witnessed a family member or friend do battle with health care bureaucracies to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it? Time is money. Time is life. Precious individual lifetimes and lives are being sacrificed to the idea that collectivist/altruist fantasies of health care are better than a system where the people with the power are the patient and the medical professional. A system that protects individual rights and never violates them. A system known as freedom and which has been branded as capitalism.

https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-cancer-stories-you-never-hear

Climate of injustice

 A response to a letter in The Low Down, Sept 14-20, 2022 titled "Together for climate justice"

I am responding to the seemingly endless demands by the La Peche Coalition for a Green New Deal to forcefully implement policies to combat the gas of life - carbon dioxide. It is sad to read so many letters based on ignorance of science, economics and most of all a proper ethical framework.

For over 20 years I have closely followed the evolution of scientific knowledge about our climate by reading many books written by eminent scientists and subject-matter experts and keeping an eye on many of the thousands of studies connected to the Earth's climate. Long ago I could tell from a broad review of the literature that climate alarmism was based on distortions, bad statistical and scientific methodology, and most of all bad ideology. The premise that the Earth is a delicate nurturer best left untouched by man's activities is contrary to the nature of human life, which is to apply reason to the challenges of survival in a naturally dangerous and deficient environment. Humans thrive only by reshaping and improving our world. I have come across thousands of studies and many basic facts of reality that directly contradict the idea that there is any kind of climate crisis and anyone who does a broad reading of the literature would easily find the same. I encourage readers to see for themselves, perhaps starting with the recent book "Fossil Future" that provides an irrefutable case and moving on from there for those who want more technical information.

Economically, fossil fuel energy presently makes up more than 80% of the world energy supply and is always the best and preferred way for poor countries to solve their problems of starvation, disease and suffering. Three billion people have less energy than a typical refrigerator and have a massive need for more energy. Alarmists almost always ignore the massive benefits of fossil fuel energy and focus only on the manageable side-effects, like focusing only on vaccine side-effects and ignoring the benefits. Wind and solar may have a small role to play in generating electricity but due to their intermittent, dilute and unreliable nature they are spectacularly unsuited for economical grid-scale power, plus require massive mining projects mostly in third world countries and dictatorships, leading to horrible pollution problems. A call to end fossil fuel energy is a call for the continuation of uman suffering for the billions of people who do not yet enjoy our level of energy capability and te mass murder of those who would lose the life-giving energy from fossil fuels we now enjoy. 

Politically, a call for a green new deal is a call for fascism, as few populations will voluntarily choose societal suicide for very long. Witness the dramatic policy reversal in the UK when it became clear that mass suffering would quickly result from the loss of reliable, cheap energy. If all state coercion and subsidies was removed from the energy market and humans were free to produce and trade, I know there would be almost no wind and solar infrastructure built and human progress would leap forward.

Ethically, the right framework is one of respect for human rights: your right to peacefully pursue your own values and to keep the product of your work. It is unethical to lie about the state of scientific knowledge in an effort to achieve power over the lives of others, unethical to call for the destruction of a safe, cheap and reliable energy system that sustains the lives of billions of people with no viable replacement in hand, unethical to cry for the use of political force against billions of innocent people trying to live in peace. The right ethical path is one towards an objective assessment of reality, the recognition of the ability of individuals to think for themselves and to produce values to trade with others and a government whose function is to protect our rights and never violate them. We have a long way to go but a move in the right direction would be a good start. It begins with every individual thinking.

Regulators must not act now to forestall climate disaster

 The March 2022 edition of Canada's Investment Executive trade newspaper published an Editorial that was so badly done I had to comment. I sent them a letter to the editor but don't expect it will be published. Here is what I sent.

It is a disservice to the readership served by the Investment Executive that the editor promotes political IPCC climate alarmism rather than proven science on this subject. 

There are many sources if you want to learn about the state of scientific knowledge related to our climate, including the reports of the Non-Governmental International Panel On Climate Change (NIPCC), the annual “the State of the Climate” report, dozens of carefully researched books such as those by Bjorn Lomborg, Alex Epstein, Patrick Moore, Steve Koonin and of course thousands of articles from the peer-reviewed scientific literature demonstrating that the hypothesis for dangerous man-made global warming is false and the proposed political actions are destructive. The IPCC Summary For Policymakers is as far as many journalists go, and this document is not scientific but political. 

When it comes to climate-related risks, by far the greatest is that of government and regulatory interference. A perfect example of this is playing out these days with huge increases in energy prices caused by years of governments attacking the most abundant, cheap, dense, flexible and scalable energy known to man: fossil fuels. Now that the folly of relying on the Russian dictator for oil and gas is apparent and the insanity of relying on dictators in China for the minerals required for intermittent and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar is becoming apparent, economically and scientifically illiterate politicians who have threatened to “end fossil fuels,” promoted net-zero and pushed ESG are blaming high energy prices on the very businesses they have been trying to destroy. 

Human beings, left free to innovate and produce (especially in the energy field that powers all other industries) has easily and can continue to adapt even better to the historically modest changes recently seen in our climate. When coercion is used against producers and one-size-fits-all political rules are made, then risks become systemic instead of diversified. The editors of a newspaper giving voice to the investment sector should do proper due diligence instead of promoting ideas that are demonstrably false and causing great damage to human flourishing.

A pre-election proposal to cover hearing aids under government health plans

Here is another of the online discussions hosted by the Liberal Party of Ontario leading up to the 2018 election. This was rated fourth overall by participants. Again, many participants are unable to see how a political system freedom works and keep insisting that the use of force against some citizens for the supposed benefit of others is justifiable.

Cover cost of hearing aids

Hearing Aid cost are in the thousands of dollars and its considered a disability. I am only 34 years old and have genetic hearing loss. I am the manager of a long term care facility and I'm well educated but i cant afford new hearing aids and i know hundreds just like me. Soon it will prevent me from working and instead of being a contributing citizen that i can be, ill be living on disability money which i dont want. I didnt cause this hearing loss. I dont want it but i cant fix it and the one thing that can make it a little better managed cost thousands of dollars. It should be covered becuse its a health issue and it minimizes the ability to contribute to society, causes depression and enormous other cost that will be much more than the cost of the aids. Please consider. Thank you.

1. Comment

   Kiara (@kiarasexton) 1 year ago

   I have a family member who needs special advanced hearing aids that cost a few thousand dollars. This is prohibitively expensive and she loses a great deal of sleep over this cost. It breaks my heart how much stress it causes her, because without them, she is without access to community services, interaction with family and friends, and entertainment. Life shuts down quickly without these things. I believe hearing aids should be funded by the health care system. For those who need them, they are critical.

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2. Comment

   Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

   Actually the problem is how the current program is administered.
   The Ontario Government currently pay $500.00 for each hearing aid.
   The problem is that this is paid to the hearing aid provider company.They then can charge whatever they want on top of that as they are already assured that much profit .When you go in for a test they have you sign a " waiver " that directs the government money to them.Saw a report that it cost $ 65.00 to make a hearing aid.
   At Costco the money goes to the patient and you should check their prices and no I do not work for them.

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      Community Member (Idea Submitter)1 year ago

      @lloyd.le.blanc You are right! THis $1000 towards two hearing aids do not even help. I had 2 hearing aids made in alberta for a certain amount. Here, very similar ones are about $1800 more for 2 so whats the use of the $1000 covered? Its just added on the top of the cost and the consumer pays the same amount no matter what. poorly planned. Just makes the companies rich and patients poor.

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3. Comment

   John Delbert Hamilton (@johndelberthamilton) 1 year ago

   Yes cost of hearing aids need to be covered under OHIP 100% , all models.

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      Community Member (Idea Submitter)1 year ago

      @johndelberthamilton Absolutely!!

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4. Comment

   You 1 year ago

   Not a good idea. When people claim their need constitutes a command over other people's lives a society of dog eat dog is created and the best lobbyists divide the loot. Competiting for control over other people's money by claiming greater need is called socialism, and it has destroyed societies to the degree it has been implemented. It sets neighbor against neighbor and fuels envy and hatred. 
   
   Hearing aids exist because innovators were free to create, sell, profit, reinvest and improve their products, all competing for the preference of consumers. If you want to kill a product and stop innovation in it's tracks, get government to control it. Today's hearing aids are a hundred times better than those of a few decades ago and get better and cost less and less per functionality delivered. 
   
   Price differences between provinces must be because government has interfered in the market, else competition would drive prices to a similar level very quickly. When a product can be made profitably it attracts capital and competition, which then drives prices down and quality up until the rate of profit normalizes. Only the power of the state can block this process. For the sake of ll who want better hearing aids, we must insist that government not interfere in our marketplace.

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5. Comment

   Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

   Helping each other is not socialism.This should come naturally to all and not ,as by example the so called " American dream which in my opinion is dog eat dog in an attempt to acquire as much "stuff" as possible by stepping on whoever you have to.This attitude seems to have seeped into Canadian society and that is not what I and many others want.
   
   This discussion is not about market economy.It's about the flawed support payment system at the Ontario government level and it is an easy fix.Give the money to the individual needing and buying the hearing aid after which they can go shopping for the best price.Today's hearing aids are now all digital and the basic difference in them is minimal.Just bells & whistles.I spent 30 years in the commercial radio business and a hearing aid has the same technology.

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      James Dekker (@dprime) 1 year ago

      @lloyd.le.blanc but people are being forced to help others. That's socialism. When people donate money, that's giving of free will. There is a huge difference. Removing the overhead of all the administration costs is a much better solution. So much money is wasted on bureaucracy and administration. Ask Haiti how many houses the Red Cross built for them. Most of the money went to administration fees, which doesn't help anyone. A better solution would be to find people in need and support them personally rather then the wasted money from taxes.
      I believe that David McGruer's point was that government is not necessarily the best solution to the problem. But that the government has caused an inflated cost to medical health.
      Maybe a better solution would be a tax deduction. Which is already incorporated into our taxes.

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6. Comment

   James Dekker (@dprime) 1 year ago (Last edited by James Dekker 1 year ago)

   I agree those with disabilities need financial help. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't ODSP pay for dental and medical on top of the monthly support? There is also the Trillium Health for lower income families. http://health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/drugs/funded_drug/fund_trillium.aspx Maybe the problem is the lack of information provided to people? And maybe some updates to dollar amounts for the Trillium Health needs to change with the minimum wage inflation.

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      Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

      @dprime Wrong link as this Trillium health is an american group based in Rochester NY ????

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      James Dekker (@dprime) 1 year ago

      @lloyd.le.blanc fixed thanks 

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7. Comment

   Al (@fishinlad) 1 year ago

   I disagree with the notion that competition will drive prices to a more affordable level. There are significant barriers to entry into this industry. There is insufficient competition. I'm certainly not suggesting that there is any price fixing going on, but current prices are outrageous. I am currently pricing hearing aids for both my wife and myself. Our total cost will be in the low five figures. We can afford the outlay, but I am well aware that many others cannot. Loss of hearing can be a dangerous situation and I support this suggestion.

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      You 1 year ago

      @fishinlad Competition in every field drives prices lower. Just look at how vastly superior today's hearing aids are compared to just ten or twenty years ago. Dollar for dollar, you get so much more today than ever before. Central controls make things expensive. Freedom makes them cheap.

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      Lloyd Le Blanc (@lloyd.le.blanc) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer The issue is not a discussion on the free market or competition.The issue is to make over priced hearing aids price competitive.Hearing aids have always been over priced.I worked in the radio communication industry and a hearing aid is a very basic transceiver.With the advent of computer chips that improved every aspect of hearing aids and making them very efficient and small.You would think that this would have reduced costs.No instead they have gone up.One of the reasons for this is the lack of competition at the retail or dispensing point.In Ontario the Government gives $ 500.00 per hearing aid to anyone who gets a hearing aid.However when you go to a clinic and they have you sign a form, that few read, you are authorizing them to collect the $ 500.00 per aid for themselves.Th pricing has nothing to do with the cost of the technology as the estimated cost of making a hearing aid is $ 65.00 and they charge thousands.So whatever they charge the patient add $ 500.00 per hearing aid to the clinic's profit.Check the prices at Costco, that are comparatively low and the patient ( customer) gets the Government money.

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      Al (@fishinlad) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer I don't disagree that complete freedom tends to lower prices to the point that a "normal" rate of return is earned by all firms in the industry. In the hearing aid industry there are six major producers. This is an oligopolistic marketplace with significant barriers to entry. So freedom in the marketplace is not complete and in cases like this prices tend to be higher than they would be if the market was truly competitive and the six major players earn "extraordinary" profits as a result. I am not suggesting that there is any price collusion between the firms but, simply put, they are under insufficient competitive pressure to drive prices lower and government intervention (as distasteful as this may sound to some) is one way to regulate profits for the benefit of the society. Many simply cannot afford these high costs and the sense of hearing is fundamental to survival--hearing loss is dangerous. In monopoly and oligopoly situations firms have pricing power and they use it--I would too!

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      You 1 year ago

      @fishinlad The proper response when profit margins are high is to enter into competition with the existing producers and undercut them. This is the market process that normalizes profits back to the average. Using the force of the state to attack businesses is not a moral response as it entrenches the oligopoly you reference, discourages competition and innovation and punishes the most successful producers. If government subsidies distort the market - as the must do - the correct response is to get subsidies withdrawn. If Costco is a better place to buy the devices then people may choose to go there, which will then force others to lower their prices and innovate to compete. There is not a single thing special or unique to the hearing aid business that mandates the intervention of government force, since no one's rights are being violated if the market is free.

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      Al (@fishinlad) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer Good morning David: When profits in an industry are extraordinary, that attracts new competition. When there are significant barriers to entry (capital costs, legal, patents, technical knowledge, dominant existing firms, etc.) as may exist in the hearing aid industry, insurance, banking and others competition will not reach levels of competition that will drive prices to optimum levels (ie. levels that would allow a "normal" rate of return. There is insurance fraud out there--some from policyholders and some from insurance companies. Oligopolistic behaviour distorts competitive forces that would be generated by the "animal spirits" in a competitive environment. The market is not free--oligopoly firms see to that. The proper response, indeed the moral response is effective government intervention as is done with regulated monopolies and with regulated oligopolies. Monopsony vs monopoly--a single seller has pricing power and a single buyer can deal with it. Government is not all bad and the free market is not all good. We have to be thoughtful about situations like human hearing and the affordability of it. Anyway David, I enjoy your views, I am a free enterpriser too, scratch out my living that way, but I also see a need for intervention in critical areas when dominant firms make life difficult for people who cannot afford critical needs.

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      You 1 year ago

      @fishinlad You bring up many issues, thank you for providing some thoughtful ones worthy of more discussion. Far too many of the ideas and comments here are relatively superficial and involve an arbitrary taking of money from some people to give to others. I'll try to address a few key points. 
      
      Barriers to entry are a natural part of an advancing society. Before all the wonderful technologies we have, there were virtually no markets and thus few barriers. Legal barriers should only exist to protect objective rights such as intellectual property. Patents exist to protect intellectual property and without patents there would be far less innovation and human progress - they are an objectively vital part of modern human civilization. Technical knowledge is not a barrier since essentially all the knowledge of humanity is available at our beck and call, thanks to patents, intellectual property law and more specifically laws that protect individual rights including property of all sorts. A dominant existing firm is not a barrier because if a firm is dominant then it has proven to provide the greatest value to consumers - created the greatest value in society - else it would not be dominant.
      
      It is important to realize that the existing firms are under constant pressure from all sides, both within existing product lines and from without. For example, Apple could decide to enter the market at any time and might quickly dominate, so other firms must be on their toes not only to existing competitors but all possible competitors. Just to maintain a strong market share requires constant thinking and innovation.Just imagine you are an existing hearing aid company and you decide to close your research and development department to make more money by reducing costs. How long would it take before you not only lost market share but drained all your capital and were out of business? Perhaps a few years? If you tried, you could come up with a dozen mechanisms of the free market that make such a decision extremely unlikely and cause instead the company to constantly strive for improved products and services. 
      
      Government is not all bad, I never said that. Government is essential for a free society, to define and protect the rights of its citizens. When it strays beyond that it has begun to infringe or even violate the rights of its citizens, and this is where is becomes a bad force in society. A monopoly by force can never be a good in society, and this is what is meant by regulated monopolies. In fact, there is no such thing as a real monopoly except by government force. Yes, there may be a dominant player, even up to 95% market share, but as I have shown there is the constant threat of new competitors fro all sides, including substitution for existing solutions, just as streaming services have totally overturned the long established oligopoly in television and prompted massive innovation just to survive as a going business concern. Imagine if government had regulated the internet as a public utility from its birth - we would still be hearing the beeping and buzzing noises of a modem as tiny little bits of data crawled slowly through copper lines.
      
      In contrast, freedom is an unalloyed good - not that all outcomes will be perfect or even optimal for all people, but rather that freedom provides the proper moral framework for human beings and the very best possibility of social, cultural and technological advancements. If a freely acting person violates the rights of another, we absolutely need government to adjudicate and punish as justice requires.

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8. Comment

   Gordon Crann (@gordon) 1 year ago

   The major producers of hearing aids have huge profit margins due mainly to insufficient competition. The high initial capital cost to purchase a high-quality hearing aid is made worse through the high ongoing cost of hearing aid batteries. There are affordable, high-quality hearing aids with solar-rechargeable batteries being designed and produced by deaf people themselves through the internationally-award winning social enterprise Solar Ear, for further information see its website: http://solarear.com.br/
   
   The Ontario Government should be encouraging the development of a Solar Ear, social enterprise affiliate providing jobs to deaf people in Ontario - not further subsidizing the huge profit margins of the producers of overpriced hearing aids. A Solar Ear, social enterprise affiliate located in Ontario would be able to serve the deaf market not only in Ontario, but in all of Central and Eastern Canada plus the Eastern USA, thereby providing affordable, high quality hearing aids to our deaf community, as well as jobs for our deaf people, and an increase in economic development and trade for Ontario.

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      You 1 year ago

      @gordon I'm happy to hear of all initiatives to develop improved technology in hearing aids. I applaud the collaboration of deaf people to create a new business model that may end up with a strong market share. That is competition. Anyone and everyone should be free to put their best effort into the competition for consumer choices. For those who complain of a lack of competition we must ask "who is preventing the competition?" In all cases, it will come back to regulation and government. Sure, there are obstacles to competing with a large, successful company, but these are natural, healthy, organic and constantly under challenge from all sides. In a free market no company is safe from competitive forces as even a small company with great innovation can capture a large product market share for a while, until more competition makes then irrelevant too. Since we do not have a free market it can be hard to conceive, but it is the right direction to move towards in Ontario.

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9. Comment

   Don Bunsen (@doctorb) 1 year ago

   I fail to understand why hearing aids are so expensive in the first place - there must be a way of bringing the cost down and having this brought under the public sector instead of private clinics selling them.

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      You 1 year ago

      @doctorb Doing what you suggest and socializing hearing aid production would cause them to stagnate and tend to make their production more expensive, not less. Who says they are expensive A hearing aid today that you can buy for a thousand bucks would have cost a million or in truth would not have been available for any price on Earth just twenty years ago. It is thanks to the innovation made possible by reinvesting profits that steady improvement is made possible in any product, including hearing aids. There is nothing about hearing aids that makes them exempt from the laws of economics.

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      Don Bunsen (@doctorb) 1 year ago

      @davemcgruer - most hearing aids are marketed to all of north america if not to a world wide market - but we see with drug prices and drug companies that governments can essentially buy in bulk and a lot of the cost is not in manufacturing but in the marketing and distribution and the middle men - i mean, just look at the technology in cell phones and how little it actually costs to manufacture them.