Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[--Pete]

Hi,

The cost to supply a service is the same, independent of who pays for it.

I don't think this is true. There are very real differences in cost and quality between what the government can provide, and what private companies can. That's at the core of the pragmatic debate over government spending, ideology left aside.

I agree with you. However, you took that sentence out of context. I was not speaking of private versus government. I was speaking of collective paying versus individual paying. The example that I gave, of insurance and catastrophic health care costs, should have made that clear. I was refuting the claim that a system would go bankrupt if people paid for their individual usage rather than spreading the cost over many. If people indeed could afford to pay for their use of a service, it would work just fine. Indeed, most people do pay for their own food, clothing, shelter, transportation, utilities, etc. And when the government has tried to control and supply too many of these things, the result has usually been failure of the system.

Finding a sensible division of labour between government and private industry is very much a matter of finding out which creates fewer costs, all things considered.

I don't think so. That is a criterion, of course. But it is not the only one, and maybe not even the most important. Universality of access may trump cost, as might consistent quality across geographic and demographic borders. For some of those goals, government is the only institution with the structure capable of achieving them.

--Pete