All You Need to Know About Libertarians

BradRocket:

Megan McArdle, a.k.a. Jane Galt, is up to her usual tricks:

An exchange with a blogger who is apparently a philosophy student at the University of Virginia leads me to believe that many people are still misunderstanding my point about the morality of single payer healthcare. Many people responded to my first post by saying, “But we have a duty to care for the sick!” Trying to make myself very clear, I wrote 2,000 words explaining that even assuming, arguendo, that we have a duty to make sure people don’t die from lack of health care, this is not a good moral argument for single payer. At which point I got more posts, including from said philosophy student, saying “But we have a duty to care for the sick!” Length having failed, let me try brevity:

1) Single payer transfers money from anyone who is young and healthy to anyone who is old and sick, regardless of their need for the money.

Basically, yes.

And as someone who is young and healthy (Really! I go on three-mile runs thrice a week and lift weights twice a week!), I have no problem with this. The reason? Well, because I have no problem paying taxes to help old sick people now, because I’m going to be old and sick in the future. That’s the basic principle involved here. But for peeps like Meghan, whose only thought is “MEEEEEEEEEEE-me-me-me-me-MEEEEEEEEEE!”, this line of thought is deeply immoral.

If McArdle was in, or knew someone in, a similar situation, how do you think she would act? Lack of empathy = psycho.