I made a comment on the unpredictability of a transplant patient and I get another lesson of an Utopian theory which has never had any empirical data to support it.

You’re correct, and under a free market if someone needed a liver they’d be able to buy one, the donor would be able to sell one, and their behavior after they got it wouldn’t matter. Under the socialized stupidity that is the current organ donation system, however, the state controls the distribution of organs and determines the worthiness of who lives or who dies based on the idea that the state always operates for the “common good”. Clearly, giving a new liver to a degenerate alcoholic and obvious idiot who continues to drink herself to death doesn’t serve the “common good”. Under a free market system, the organs may still go to degenerate alcoholics (who can pay) but at least it would be more likely that they were productive people (being as they had money), and at least they wouldn’t be getting a free ride on the taxpayers’ backs.

If I had been denied a kidney because I smoked 43 years, assuming that put me a risk for losing it; would they have known that I smoked my last cigarette the day of my transplant. (4 years ago)

I guess what I am trying to say, you would not ever be certain what a person’s behavior would be after a transplant.

The author of the post wasn’t saying in the article that the welfare state caused her binge drinking. He was saying that the welfare state shielded her from the consequences of her actions and because the article he linked ignored that fact. He was bothered by the lack of personal responsibility.

If you’re trying to make another point, I’m just not getting what it is. I’m not trying to be snide, I’m seriously not getting what you’re trying to say here.

The welfare state wasn’t around in the 1700s, yet binge drinking was still a blight on English society and nearly ripped London apart. So, the thesis has poor explanatory power.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised to hear such apparently collectivist arguments from a self-professed anarchist.

There’s no collectivist argument here you goof. I’m telling you that the “welfare did it!” argument is lousy. Truth first, then ideology.

I did address the theme of your post, by pointing out that the welfare state causes the problem by allowing stupid, irresponsible to be insulated from the consequences of their actions. Under socialized medicine, Ms. Bates abuses drugs and alcohol, her liver gives out, she gets a new one at the taxpayers’ expense. Under a free market, she abuses drugs and alcohol, her liver gives out, she pays for the surgery to get a new one…each time she screws up. Or she doesn’t get a new liver (because she can’t afford it, or because the doctors choose not to waste one on her) she dies, in which case we no longer have to worry about her. The welfare state of Britain, however, which runs the socialized medicine has passed along the message to her that whenever she does things that are self-destructive there will always be somebody to bail her out and it won’t cost her anything because other taxpayers owe her a living. The lesson I get from this is that while she may not be better off if the welfare state lets her die, the rest of the taxpayers certainly would be.

As for the binge drinking, you’re right, the gin doesn’t drink itself. Nor does it force you to drink it. If you doubt me, just place a bottle of gin on your table and see whose throat it forces itself down first. And perhaps the problem in the 1700s was that people didn’t realize just how destructive alcohol was. Bottles of gin were certainly no more sentient then than they are now. In any case, they paid the costs for it, judging by the shorter life expectancies, and there wasn’t socialized medicine to bail them out and force us to pay for their stupidity.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised to hear such apparently collectivist arguments from a self-professed anarchist.

I was speaking metaphorically, which should be obvious from the second paragraph, where I said that binge drinking was a problem. The gin doesn’t drink itself, obviously.

Also, you didn’t even bother to answer the theme of my post – that the welfare state isn’t the root cause of the problem.

“Gin” didn’t rip apart London. “Alcohol” doesn’t cause problems. People who drink alcohol to a degree that they no longer control their actions (a conscious choice) are the ones who cause problems, and blaming alcohol is simply a rationalization for those people to avoid responsibility for their actions. And the NHS’s actions in this case (providing her a new free liver, at the expense of someone else) allowed Ms. Bates to get away with it, thereby insuring that her irresponsible behavior will continue by shielding her from the consequences of her actions (death). That was the point of Chris’ article.

No one would suggest England had a social safety net in 1700, yet the country was still wracked by binge drinking. I don’t think the welfare state is the root problem here.