Sneering at "free stuff" is a vicious Repuke attack on the very idea of public goods. [View all]

[eridani]

There should not be such a thing as public education. If you grow up in a house with a library and your parents can afford tutors, then you get an education. Otherwise not. If you want retired people with no kids at home to pay for school bonds, you are just shilling for "free stuff" College tuition used to be free. If you want it to be so again, you are just a parasite shilling for "free stuff"

I like my Marxist fire department quite a bit. It is paid for by the government stealing a lot of money from people who have never had fires. The more your property is worth, the more property taxes you have to pay. That would be "From each according to his abilities." But they don't send a truck out unless you have a fire. That would be "to each according to his need."

Every single industrialized country in the world treats health care as a public good, with lots of different ways of paying the bills. Here it's like an iPod. If you have money or good insurance you get it. Otherwise you can fuck off and die, which is nothing but what parasites deserve.

And then there's all that physical infrastructure--roads, airports, dams. Be grateful for our interstate highway system. Ike paid for it with a 90% top marginal tax rate, so if we ever had to replace it, we couldn't. If you don't have a car, why should you pay?

It is the nature of public goods that
1. Everyone pays, regardless of usage.
2. They are usually free at the point of service.