rationalskepticism.org

Keep It Real wrote:

Thommo wrote:No, not literally all of them. Just far, far more than you can afford to do so.

You know this because...what...doctors are well known to usually be primarily motivated by financial greed?

Greed implies it's excessive. It isn't. Yes, lots of people travel to work in countries where they get paid more. In fact, without these people the NHS would not have enough doctors, as large numbers of recruits already come for exactly this reason.

Huge numbers of people move for work every year, including to other countries. Just look at British immigration and emigration figures - it's hundreds of thousands a year.

Keep It Real wrote:

Thommo wrote:At present, in reality, Britain isn't producing enough doctors even with the current incentive structure.

Cuba doesn't have that problem.

It does.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/08/cub ... eager-pay/

And that ignores the restrictions on freedom of movement that have historically existed as well.

Keep It Real wrote:

Thommo wrote:I think the speed with which you resort to threats of punishment is probably symptomatic of exactly why this idea of enforced equality of outcome fails in practice.

Most people seem to be in favour of a more equal society incentive/disincentive/punishment - 3 sides of the same coin, it's wrong to shy away from the word punishment completely although it is an emotive word. Hasn't been tried yet so how can it have failed?

Apart from communist countries which existed for large parts of the 20th century, where it was tried.

But you mistake "more equal" for "equal outcomes". You can have greater equality of opportunity without having equality of pay. You can have "more equal" pay without having "equal pay". You could have doctors being paid 4 times a binman's salary instead of 5 times, without getting anywhere near what you're suggesting. Whether that would actually work is a tangential question to what "most people seem to be in favour of", which is what gets called an appeal to popularity. Essentially those people (if indeed they do generally agree with you, which I suspect would not be the case) could be wrong.

And withdrawing people's citizenship for not agreeing with your economic model absolutely is a punishment, quite a serious one.

Keep It Real wrote:

Thommo wrote:For the record, a typical doctor is not paid a six figure salary in the UK.

Yeh, I know, and if they were paid 1.5 times as much as a bin man they'd be on 47kpa.

I don't think binmen make that much actually.

Keep It Real wrote:

Thommo wrote:There's also the secondary problem of what happens to economies that do not even strive to allocate resources efficiently, in accordance with the value they present to society.

They wouldn't be full of chuggers, PPI and doubleglazing cold callers etc ad infinitum. Newsflash - many desires are not rational or advisable. Market failures 101.

Be that as it may, central planning has failed far worse, far more often, wherever it has been applied.