Monopoly provision, public or private, damages welfare indirectly by discouaging us from learning how to choose; as well as directly. It should be minimised. That is very much for the wider social good, as Social Liberals should recognise.

I could not agree with this more. So why don’t social liberals recognise this? Why is a state monopoly in healthcare any better than a private monopoly in groceries? I just don’t get it.

Monopolies have an ineradicable and inevitable tendency to trap in their own hands monies which a competitive market would distribute more widely and more equitably and more efficiently. That means they reduce both economic output and economic welfare. No way is that to the wider social good.

There is a very strong correlation between how much formal education you recieve and how long and how healthily you are likely to live. In the absense of other evidence, helping people stay in education is probably the second best thing you can do to improve people’s health; after getting them to not smoke tobacco. So far as I have seen data, differences in ‘quality’ of health care make much less difference.

That said, Liberals always ought to be in favour of giving the customer, parent or patient the choice. Informed people will always make better choices; but when you have the choice you begin to realise it is worth becoming more informed. Monopoly provision, public or private, damages welfare indirectly by discouaging us from learning how to choose; as well as directly. It should be minimised. That is very much for the wider social good, as Social Liberals should recognise.

This article says is that the job of government should be done as locally as possible with as much respect for the wants and needs of the individual as possible, and much less “nannying” of this group and that. It does not describe where we want to finish, but isn’t it moving strongly in the direction you want?

If a single supermarket chain buys up all the retail outlets in a town – for example in Inverness, where Tesco operates three stores and has sought planning permission for a fourth, giving the town the dubious honour of being the UK’s Tesco Capital – it is unlikely to be for the wider social good.

Three points:

1) What is “social good”?

2) Are Tesco raising their prices in Inverness? If not, why is having four Tesco’s, as opposed to three Tesco’s and a Sainsburys’ a bad thing?

3) Why are you arguing against a monopoly on food, but for a monopoly on health?

‘If this happens in health care we could see potentially a widening of health and health inequalities between those with formal education qualifications and those without.’

Isn’t the answer to this to help those people to get formal qualifications rather than to force those with qualifications into an early grave in the name of equality and “the greater good”?

Yet again, this article comes down to the basic premise of “Trust us, we’ll nanny you exactly the same as the other guys, but better.”

Inspir-bloody-ational.