“Between 1970 and 2010, the number of administrators in health care grew more than 3000%, while the number of physicians grew about 200%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that same 40 years, U.S. health-care spending rose 2300%. Doctors’ fees account for only 8 cents of the health care dollar. Where do you think the other 92 cents are going?” (Marni Jameson Carey, Focus on Health Coverage Misses the Point, Forbes.com, Oct 24, 2017)
A few years ago I was arguing that profit was overrated.
It seems that Forbes, a magazine which cannot be accused of any socialist tendencies, has reached a somewhat similar conclusion.
Even more interesting is the solution proposed by Forbes to the health care problem.
A return to the free market!
Free from what? Who says the American health care market is not free?
Well, click on the quote above and see what Forbes has to say about this…
But what happened? How did we get here?
Well, the free market described by Adam Smith was an environment where people used to fulfill their needs by selling their wares.
The butcher sold meat and bought everything else he needed, the brewer sold beer and bought everything else he needed, the baker… and so on!
OK, there was a certain kind of competition which kept the things in check. The butchers competed against other butchers, the brewers…
And because of this competition, all traders – those who wanted to survive, anyway – streamlined their operations and became more and more efficient. Hence profitable.
I mentioned the link between the survival of a commercial enterprise and its ability to generate profit.
Apparently, it doesn’t make much sense to elaborate on this. Bear with me, please.
The whole point of the free market is the division of labor. Besides its freedom, of course.
Each of us does what he knows better and then we trade our respective wares. This way all of us fare better than if each of us would have had to produce everything each of us needs to survive.
In this scenario, competition – between ‘bakers’, for example – is actually a tool which makes it so that the market, as a whole, doesn’t waste resources. When the less efficient bakers are ‘encouraged’ to find something else to do, the entire market is better off. And so on.
In this sense, profit is only one indicator – and a very good one – of how able to survive is a certain commercial venture. But not the only goal of the entrepreneur who started/runs the enterprise. What he wants is to make an as good as possible living by doing what he knows best, in close collaboration with the other participants to the free market.
Adam Smith had written his books some two and a half centuries ago.
And the free market had served us well, for a while.
Just look at what we’ve accomplished in these two and a half centuries.
But, just as Forbes points out, things are no longer going in the right direction.
Why?
Simply because the market is no longer free!
Not only because some of the participants have become ‘heavy’ enough to crush all competition. This is only the lesser part of the problem.
The really big one, and so well hidden that it’s almost invisible, is that too many of us have become obsessed with the same thing. Money!
Profit has become THE absolute goal of everything we do. Too many of those who participate in the free market no longer want to collaborate with the others but simply want to get rich. By any (legal) means.
Some say this is a good thing.
They invoke Adam Smith’s words as a justification for their beliefs.
I beg to differ.
The simple existence of our current obsession has profoundly altered the very nature of the market. Which is no longer free.
Because WE are no longer free. When too many of us are obsessively concentrated on the same thing, they will necessarily disregard all other options. And the rest have no other option but to follow.
This is not freedom!
Mesmerized people can not be described, by outside observers, as being free.
Regardless of how they consider themselves.
