I struggle a lot with “pure” concepts.  Not only do I not really know what pure fascism and pure communism and pure democracy look like, but I don’t know what their economic equivalents do either.  What the heck is a “free market” anyway?  Is there even such a thing as an “arms-length transaction” in the real world, really?  Does a “meeting of the minds” ever really occur?  In my mind, these are all just fantasies.

Most of the time, the market is not free.  You must pay informational and reputational costs to enter, no matter where and when this market is.  Most of the time, there are significant power disparities between the parties, especially these days.  Economies of scale have produced great big corporations, and you as an individual are just so small, how could it be otherwise?  When you need a couple thousand dollar prescription drug, that your medical insurance only covers 50% of, how could you possibly think that that market was free?  You had informational and monetary and power disparities so huge, it seems they could only be overcome by single-payer healthcare.

Derrick Jensen talks about blind hope.  Would you rather resist and be killed, or go along with the hierarchy, every step of the way into the gas chambers?  Then he points out that the people in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had a greater survival rate than the people who did not resist.  This goes along well with Nassim Taleb’s concept of risk of ruin.  What is the risk, at any one decision point, that you will die if you do this action versus this action?  You also have to take into account the risk that you will die at the end of the primrose path, not just at a single decision point.  However, things at the end of the primrose path are not always clear.  You can see the close up probabilities more clearly than the ones in the future, in general.

Thus, I can make a decision like this one: If I suspect that I have stress-fractured a bone doing something like too much running for too much time, I don’t actually have to go see a doctor about it.  If I do, I know that I will be out of pocket roughly $1000 due to the high-deductible health insurance plan plus multiple visits and tests.  The chances of me dying are really quite low, and it is a low-risk of nonunion location.  If I so desired, I could order a fracture boot on amazon or other online medical supply provider for far less than a doctor’s office would sell it to me.  Crutches are $20 at the local drugstore, should I decide that I need them to get around.

I then have to ask the question: does the internet change the information disparity in healthcare?  Or only certain types of healthcare?  There are certain things that cost more to do without a doctor’s order than with the high deductible full-price office visit associated with obtaining that order, like specialist blood testing.  These things also have a higher risk of dying if you get the interpretation of the thing wrong.  This means one does not always avoid the medical system as a matter of policy, but wisely chooses cafeteria style when it is useful and when it can be avoided.

Translating this decision heuristic over to politics works as well.  One does not always choose the anarchy option as a matter of policy.  Sometimes, it is useful to choose the hierarchy, when the risk of ruin is lower.  Sometimes it is useful to choose democracy, or fascism, or even vulture capitalism.  Keep in mind that these decisions are not forever, and should the circumstances change, going back to mere anarchy is always on the table.  If you choose to seek all of the government services possible in order to bankrupt it, that’s fine, and so is avoiding government services for the sake of privacy, stillness, and solitude.  We are all still deeply connected, even if it doesn’t feel like it at all.  I am connected to the psychopath just as much as I am connected to the all-loving and nurturing mother.  Giving up hope in any one self-identity as being the salvation of my sense of righteousness has borne fruit.  There is no salvation, there never was.  I will never be righteous or good.  Therefore, I am free to decide, even badly.