Incentives in our Society

I was talking to a woman and she was telling me about her back problems. Allegedly a disc pops out of alignment, and the chiropractor puts it back into alignment. But she has to go once a week for a visit to the chiropractor, or else her back starts getting sore again.

So I asked her, why does the chiropractor not push it in so it stays in alignment? Then I felt stupid because the answer to that question is obvious. If the practitioner actually cured the problem he would not be able to make a career out of it. Right now he only needs about 100 or so regular customers to have a thriving little business, that puts food on the table for his whole family and pays all his costs for a lifetime.

In my utopia this man would cure people for good. But he would not be able to make a career out of it. So there would be no professional expert to go to if you needed help. He would be stacking shelves at Tescos. Even if he somehow knew the knowledge finding out about him would be near impossible, as there would not be enough money to market it. Now back issues might not be the end of the world, but realize the same is true across all human health areas, and indeed all areas of society.


You might think well this is a problem with capitalism. Which is true. But it is also a problem with socialism. The NHS and its contractors now employ 10% of the population of Britain. With that growing every year. They rarely cure anything, only treating symptoms, that is if you keep buying drugs, getting tests, going for operations and visits on an ongoing basis. Look at all our bureaucracies they never cure anyting. If they ever did they would be out of a job.


Another of the countless examples if the housing administration in Britain, to help people afford housing. Yet everything they do is to make housing unaffordable.. which keeps them employed.