Dentistry! What a job, sticking fingers into opened mouths. Probing. Drilling. Filling. Ugh.
And it must not be easy managing patients, or clients, or whatever they call the people who pay their bills.
It’s bad enough here in America; It is obviously much harder in Britain, where dentists were just told to go on vacation. By the government. Why? They had filled their work quotas. Even while millions — yes, millions — of English people can’t get in to see any dentist!
Dentistry is socialized in Britain. The government hires the dentists. Tax money — not patients directly — pay for the dental work.
So no wonder there aren’t enough dentists in Britain, and why British teeth, in general, are getting worse, even though the service is “free of charge.â€
Just try to provide a free service using tax monies — you still can’t void the laws of scarcity and value by edict. If you want something, you still have to pay for it. You still have to invest. Scarce resources must go from some use and be put to another.
The trouble, as economists starting with the Austrian Ludwig von Mises have shown, is that when you try to run things by bureaucracy, forfeiting private means of production and capitalist investment and competitive markets, you give up some amazingly effective tools to organize scarce resources. And you are left with guesswork. And politics.
And, under socialized medicine, bad teeth.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.