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The evidence from all OECD countries shows that the private sector is far more bureaucratic and much less efficient than the public sector when it comes to providing health care.
Ten Health Care Myths
Gentlemen from Hooker - and many other places - are quite literally pouring these and many other poisons into your coffee and your kids' juice. They just do it in a more indirect, anonymous, and apparently socially acceptable way.
150 Years of Dirty Water
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The myth of a free market
in publishing and high-tech
By Ulli Diemer
Letter to the Editor, Computing Canada:
The two readers who wrote to complain about your sensible editorial
on Bill C-55 would have done well to familiarize themselves with
the facts before sending off such spectacularly ill-informed letters.
Contrary to what Ryan Jamieson imagines, Bill C-55 has nothing in
it to "impose huge cross-border penalties on U.S. magazines
entering Canada." The legislation has no provisions whatever
affecting the sale of foreign publications, U.S. or otherwise: they
would continue to be available on Canadian newsstands exactly as
they are now.
Bill C-55 deals with advertising services: ads placed in American
split-run magazines by Canadian advertisers would draw tax penalties.
This is standard anti-dumping legislation, variants of which are
used by many countries, notably the U.S., to prevent unfair competition.
Split-runs are a classic example of dumping in that they can be
produced without having to hire staff to produce the content, because
the content is picked up free of charge from the U.S. edition. This
means they can sell ad space far below normal market rates and wipe
out Canadian magazines by eliminating their source of revenue.
Mr. Jamieson further betrays his lack of knowledge with his absurd
claim that the IT industry flourished "because of a free-market
environment". He could not possibly be more wrong. The high-tech
industries, in the U.S. in particular, owe their very existence
to massive levels of government subsidies and intervention. The
Internet, for example, was created and developed by the U.S. military
in co-operation with government-funded universities. It was turned
over to the "free market" only after more than 25 years
of publicly-funded work had made it commercially viable. The electronics,
semi-conductor, and computer industries, the communications industry,
the aviation industry, the biotechnology sector -- all the important
high-tech sectors in the U.S. -- have been developed through huge,
and continuing, public subsidies backed by extremely aggressive
protectionist legislation.
If Canadians are going to compete in the global market, we owe it
to ourselves to understand how that marketplace really works. And
that's a good argument for taking steps to protect our industries,
including publishing, from unfair competition.
Ulli Diemer
30 March, 1999
