The Lesson of Alfie Evans

Alfie Evans, though he is probably doomed to die because of his physical ailment, deserves a better end than the one that government of Britain has decreed for him. This tone of this post is relatively calm compared to the black rage that I feel on behalf of Alfie and his parents.

When the state becomes your health-care provider, the state can kill you without benefit of a trial. It would be known as involuntary euthanasia were it not for the fact that the act of murder is passive rather than active.

When the state controls the output of a product or service, that product or service must be rationed. The state has no other way to respond to consumer demand. It is not a business competing for customers; drawing on available resources to respond to demand; or taking risks that may yield a profit (the reward for success) or a loss (the penalty for failure). It is just a machine dictating the rate at which the products and services under its control will be provided, and — with the help of algorithms and favoritism — determining for whom they will be provided. The state certainly doesn’t create supply in response to demand. In fact, it stifles supply with its often-ridiculously low reimbursement rates and onerous regulations. The state has no business being in business. It certainly has no business being in the health-care business.

But when, like Alfie’s parents, you challenge the state’s authority is such matters, you can’t expect compassion or flexibility. The rules are the rules, and a relaxation of the rules would call into question the authority upon which the state relies to maintain its monopoly power. If Alfie Evans were allowed treatment in another country, what would that say about the state of health care in Britain? Well, what it would say is what observant people around the world have known for decades: Britain’s National Health Service is a crime, wrapped in a bureaucracy, inside a pseudo-egalitarian facade.

Socialized medicine is of a piece with other examples of magical thinking, which abounds on the left; for example:

There can be a single-payer system of health care without “death panels”. (The case at hand.)
Women can do everything that men can do, but it doesn’t work the other way … just because.
Mothers can work outside the home without damage to their children.
Race is a “social construct”; there is no such thing as intelligence; women and men are mentally and physically equal in all respects; and the under-representation of women and blacks in certain fields is therefore due to rank discrimination (but it’s all right if blacks dominate certain sports and women now far outnumber men on college campuses).
A minimum wage can be imposed without an increase in unemployment.
Taxes can be raised without discouraging investment and therefore reducing the rate of economic growth.
Peace can be had without preparedness for war. (A reality that most British leaders ignored in the 1930s, despite Churchill’s warnings.)
Regulation doesn’t reduce the rate of economic growth and foster “crony capitalism”. There can “free lunches” all around.
Health insurance premiums will go down while the number of mandates is increased.
The economy can be stimulated through the action of the Keynesian multiplier, which is nothing but phony math.
“Green” programs create jobs (but only because they are inefficient).
Every “right” under the sun can be granted without cost (e.g., ~~affirmative action~~ racial-hiring quotas, which penalize blameless whites; the Social Security Ponzi scheme, which burdens today’s workers and cuts into growth-inducing saving).

Why do such fallacies persist, and so often dictate state action? To round out the psychological profile of leftism, one must add to magical thinking the closely related nirvana fallacy (hypothetical perfect is always better than feasible reality); large doses of neurotic hysteria (e.g., the overpopulation fears of Paul Ehrlich, the AGW hoax of Al Gore et al.); and adolescent rebellion (e.g., the post-election tantrum-riots of 2016).

The rhetoric of leftism — when it is not downright hateful toward non-leftists — has wide appeal because to adopt it for one’s own and to echo it is to make oneself feel kind, caring, generous — and powerful — at a stroke. It matters not whether the policies that flow from leftist rhetoric actually make others better off. The important things, to a leftist, are how he feels about himself and how others perceive him.

It is easy for a leftist to seem kinder, more caring, and more generous than his conservative and libertarian brethren because a leftist focuses on intentions rather than consequences. No matter that the consequences of leftist dogma could match their stated intentions only if Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy ruled the world.

In the leftist’s imagination, of course, government is Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Government, despite the fact that it consists of venal and fallible humans, somehow (in the leftist’s imagination) wields powers that enable it to make “good” things happen with the stroke of a pen and at no cost. Or only at the expense of the despised “rich”, even though most of them, it seems, are elite leftists.

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