The mother of all fallacies

Well, not really. Nothing is ever the mother of all anything. But, whenever politics and/or economics is being discussed, there is one fallacy that seems to be much more common than all the others: it's the Nirvana fallacy, i.e. belief that if some policy solution isn't perfect, it's useless. Or, to put it another way, comparing a policy proposal not to its best viable alternative, but to a perfect state of affairs.

Healthcare debate provides an example. Most of its participants, regardless of what they're arguing for, seem convinced that it's possible to build a system in which everyone is taken care of; they just disagree on what that system should look like. But, alas, it's not possible; at least not now, not with the income levels our economies generate as of today. In any system we can have right now, there will be people dying due to lack of adequate healthcare. In a purely market system, this will happen because providing healthcare is very expensive, and some people will not be able to afford the market rates (we see this happening right now in the U.S.). In a purely government-run system, this will happen because when the government controls prices of medical services, those prices will be set either below or above market clearing rates (most likely way below)--and both those situations generate shortages of supply and decrease of quality (we see this happening right now in Poland).

Scarcity is a fact of life. There are three ways of dealing with that fact. First, we can keep increasing our income and wealth, thereby decreasing scarcity in some areas of life by making things cheaper and cheaper to buy. Second, we can complain to whoever it is we think invented the world. Third, we can simply pretend it doesn't exist--and this is precisely what most of the political debate does.