Trabant Health Care

In a 2007 comparison of socialism and capitalism we enjoy a luxury not available in the earliest days as the contest between these two systems began. We have the perspective of history, and the evidence is in. The icons and detritus of 70-plus years of European experimentation tell the tragi-comic story of centralized economic control, over against the legacy of capitalism and competition.

Despite all its excesses and unfulfilled promises, economic freedom always tends toward greater political freedom and a better quality of life—and better quality stuff—for all. Sadly, the evidence of history is opaque to many on the Hillary Rodham/Obama left. They seem determined and doomed to repeat the worst of it.

Here's a snapshot of the difference. Forget macro-economic theory for a moment and picture instead two iconic German automobiles, side by side, one representing the socialist East and one the democratic West, both created and built by Germans, shown here in their c. 1990 end-of-cold-war editions. The Mercedes, of course, is legendary for quality, performance, luxury and engineering innovation all the world over. Stats are readily available, say no more.

Consider the less widely known East German Trabant.
• under-powered 2 cylinder, 2 cycle engine
• noisy, smelly, polluting
• 0-60 in 21 seconds
• notoriously unreliable brakes
• essentially unchanged over 30 years of production
• in demand, but about all that was available to East Germans outside the Party elite
• acquired by application to be put on a waiting list
• engineered and produced by state-owned monopoly (single-payer manufacturing?)
• competitor of the Yugo

Question: What could possibly cause one group of Germans (as a nation among the most brilliant engineers and industrialists in modern history) to produce something so pathetic while their Western brethren gave us Mercedes, VW, BMW and Audi?

You know the answer. Then think about what'll happen when government monopolizes health care; when the clattering, sputtering, smoke-spewing specially modified Trabant ambulance pulls up to your door...a week late.