Hoppe in Spanish Article on the "Cause of Sickness"
In Who Causes Sickness, Jorge Valín, writing in The Spain Herald, notes:
Economist and philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe made similar comments about the Social Security system. For Hoppe, subsidies for sickness or disability lead to more sickness and pain, discourage work, individual effort and solidarity and foster a hedonistic society whose members’ main goal is to live off of everyone else.
Comments (2)
John Hepp
Technically, those sick and disabled parties are responding to market incentives. No one is forcing those individuals to accept disability payments. Establishing and enforcing reasonable eligibility requirements could decrease costs without the adverse effects on the truly disabled who cannot otherwise survive. Isn't the objective of economics to minimize costs subject to constraint and not to eliminate the constraints?
Published: April 28, 2006 2:46 PM
Paul Edwards
John,
"Technically, those sick and disabled parties are responding to market incentives."
Not really. They are responding to coercive state regulations and redistribution schemes which encourage "sickness".
What we are looking at here is the result of market hampering state regulations which prevent people from interacting in a purely voluntary way. When the state confiscates money from the productive, to subsidize the sick time of the non-productive, it discourages hard work and thrift, and encourages slothfulness.
It's not the market's doing, it's the state's.
Published: April 28, 2006 4:58 PM