Economic Freedom In Action

The plan proposed will not in any way “make the exchange comparable to mutually beneficial exploitation of comparative advantage” because the poorer country doesn't benefit equally since the cost of a doctor is not only his training. On top of what we just said in the rebuttal of their first point, just compensation also includes the cost of the lives a doctor or nurse won’t be able to save and as the evidence below about Africa shows it shall at least include the cost of replacing the expatriates by a foreign western doctor. Africa has lost a third of its skilled professionals in recent decades and it is costing the continent $4b dollars a year to replace them with expatriates from the West[[http://emeagwali.com/interviews/brain-drain/education-in-africa-brain-drain-problem-worldnet-africa-journal.html]]. Therefore, it couldn't be clearer that investment couldn't be compensated just by the cost of training. Even if poorer countries had a comparative advantage in training doctors, we have already discussed how the compensation scheme will either be insufficient or not competitive enough for it to be worth it, however, if rich nations started sending their med students to poorer nations they could pay the lower bill without taking away any doctors from that other nation. That way they will pay the low cost of a medical training and avoid brain drain of a country. The proposition is wrong when they say a rich country will get the “product” (a estrange way to refer to human beings) at best price and efficiency. As for price, there is no better price than zero, which is the price rich nations are currently paying. How would having to pay from now own is the best price? And regulation, we'll show, only causes less efficiency. They over-reach when they assume that the profit of the exchange will promote the investment in new medical personal, it might as well end up in a Swiss account or paying for a weapon purchase or any other activity. Besides, the government might not see any profitability in the production-selling (in the prop's preferred term) of medical personnel, because as they put it, in their plan rich nations would only have "fully reimbursed for the costs of their education", which implies that they pay for the exact amount for the training of the professional, without allowing the government any surplus, banning accounting tricks. Stating that different wages always means different medic capabilities is a very simplistic way of expressing things by ignoring important factors in determining the wage such as working conditions, and the abundance or scarcity of a particular set of skills in a labor market. However, if they believe that the "disparity in aptitude of trained medical personnel" would be expressed "through wage differentials", then when rich nations get cheaper doctors, they would arguably be getting less capable doctors. If they are getting less capable doctors, then the quality of care in the country would decrease as a result. In this scenario their solution is clearly suboptimal, since: 1. Rich nations would be better off training more high quality doctors at home than importing lesser quality doctors from poorer nations, as this would give them a higher quality of health-care and physicians trained on the locally relevant diseases. The Proposition has not showed why rich nations need to settle for less than top quality, and there's no evidence on the table that suggests they are unable to make this investment, therefore this is the best option on the table 2. Poorer nations would be better off keeping their doctors and thus being able to cover their basic health care needs, so they can finally engage in their own research, improve the quality of life of their citizens and keeping the full value of their investment in human resources. About workers or actors being no different from doctors, we have to agree, doctors are no different. Losing local talent is a problem whether it is engineers, scientists, nurses or actors who are leaving the country. They all matter. Even a massive emigration of farmers would also adversely affect a country's economy. The consequences of losing local talent are recorded at least since the expulsion of the jewish and muslim population from Spain. It's an over-statement to say "our model is the expression of the international market for resources acting freely": the compensation plan doesn’t establish any improvement to the international labor market for it doesn't address the migration barriers, a real model of free labour market could be the Schengen agreement [[http://www.migrationsverket.se/infomaterial/om_eu/schengen_en.pdf]], this model has no similarities to it. Furthermore, it promotes that states use their power to intervene the market, creating situations were they could impose restrictions on doctors leaving because delay of the compensation, or governments that push their doctors to leave for earning compensation, or importing a large amount of foreign doctors to weaken the bargaining position of local doctors. We on the opposition side agree that free labor market is good and the prop. undermines it when they promote intervention in the market.