Take six basic needs of a human being: food, clothing, health, education, shelter and transport. Roughly speaking, in most countries the market provides food and clothing, the state provides healthcare and education, while shelter and transport are provided by a mixture of the two – private firms with semi-monopolistic privileges supplied by government: crony capitalism, in a phrase. Is it not striking that the cost of food and clothing has gone steadily downwards over the past fifty years, while the cost of healthcare and education has gone steadily upwards?
