Libertarian Thread #2: We Shall Never Die!

King Crimson776 wrote: Even with competition between hospitals, a lot of people would still end up being denied this service, which I think should clearly be considered a right, if we are to have an iota of empathy.

Why would people be denied service? If you are dying and need medical attention it's required by law to care for you and stabilize your condition regardless of how much money you have. If you have some kind of long-term condition, we should simply allow people to set up payment plans. I'm not sure why you think you need the government to have a more emphatic system.   

King Crimson776 wrote: I think there is probably a better chance of finding the initial cause of the Great Depression than trying to figure what got us out of it. Apparently, before the depression, there was this "loss of confidence" in our currency leading to a lowered demand etc... but what caused this (unless you dispute this happening)? Either it was a natural result of the market, or there are specific government meddlings that one can point to as having messed up what would have been a smooth sailing market. This seems to be hugely disputed so any views on this would be interesting.

World War II got us out of the depression; that's not really disputed at all. A global war that lead to new massive production and spending obviously would take anybody out of a depression. The Great Depression was basically a natural downturn in the economy made much worse by the Federal Reserve and the Government's fiscal policy. Since the United States had moved away from hard money and towards fiat money, the dramatic increase in consumer spending also lead to a dramatic increase in inflation. The inflation made the economy seem better than it really was because people typically looked at only nominal numbers instead of adjusting the dollar values for inflation to see the true growth. So this naturally leads to bad investment and bigger bubbles. So the the stock market crashes and the government then felt the need to get involved. This led to massive increases in government spending (which only increase inflation) in an attempt to get consumers to spend. FDR's administration went pretty far by setting price controls and refusing to allow wages to fall where they needed to. And as history tells us, they completely failed. The depression lasted until 1941 which is when the US decided to enter WWII which allowed us to finally produce and spend things that allowed us to get out of the depression.   

manofmystery wrote: WWII did not actually end the depression.  Consumption just shrank do to rationing.  The return of our combat soldiers into the market, after the war, was what ended the depression.

The mobilized economy grew rapidly effectively giving everyone jobs and producing huge economic growth. I guess you can say that doesn't technically count since most economies usually aren't mobilized and it was far too outside the norm, but I'd rather keep things simple.