Posts filed under 'Government Sucks'
I have to admit that I’ve fallen out of touch with the state of the healthcare debate going on in Congress, and the votes. I found it so difficult to get past rhetoric and to facts, that it feels like I’ve been left entirely out of the debate. I’d love to discuss the merits, but it seems that everyone’s so set on passage or failure that discussion is only to determine who you feel sorrier for.
Plenty of the people I’ve spoken to think that healthcare is a human right. None have been able to answer my question about the extent of the obligation. Edge cases usually open for debate might be abortion or cosmetic surgery, and things like growth hormone treatments for kids who are destined to be short.
If healthcare is a universal human right, and I’m leaning towards thinking that it’s not, to what extent? I’ll forego the cases I mentioned above, and consider them certainly subordinate in terms of influencing my beliefs. I’m open to discussing first-aid and community-clinic level healthcare. Fell off your bike and broke your arm? Got a cold? Have a more dire symptom which may be something eminently treatable? I could buy into treating those as something considered to be a right.
If you need a triple bypass, it’s probably the consequence of lifestyle choices. If it’s your right to get a $50,000 operation, wasn’t it your responsibility to society to make good lifestyle choices? You have a right to both eat Big Macs and get someone else to pay for your choices?
Calling them “death panels” is a great way to demonize people who decide where the limits are, but someone’s got to make the decision. Rights must be balanced in some ways with responsibilities. There are limited resources available for healthcare. Even if the limit is now humongous, there’s only so much to go around. We can only pay with the money we have, and if healthcare becomes 100% of the economy, then nobody’s doing anything else.
If not, and there are a million people with something for which there’s a million dollar cure, we’ve got to spend a trillion dollars. What money will be left over for antibiotics when someone gets the measles because his neighbor refused to have his kids vaccinated?
If money gets in the way of the discussion, let’s instead consider that a cure for breast cancer can be made from the bark of a particular tree found only in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez decides to seize control of these trees and holds them “hostage”. Are we obliged to go to war to kidnap the trees for humanity’s sake? Even if there’s only 1, it’s 10,000 years old, doesn’t seed, and might die if cuttings are taken, or if we might foolishly attempt to relocate the entire thing? If we do try, and the tree dies during its extraordinary rendition, has someone committed a crime against humanity? If so, what if it can only cure one person?
There are obviously limits.
All I’m asking for is a discussion about what reasonable limits might be, and we can at least find out if there’s a place to compromise. After all, nobody wants even the best healthcare to be free if the system will collapse upon itself.
Got any ideas for a reasonable starting point?
December 11th, 2009
When you take some time to think about the mortgage crisis that’s helped turn our markets to mud, it seems to come down to overpaying for things without a well-reasoned calculation of risk.
Until about a month ago, I lived in Greenwich Village in New York, and walked by New York University’s buildings each day. According to the College Board, the costs for a student who lives on campus total $51,982 a year.
Assuming no increase in costs, that’s $207,928 for an undergraduate degree.
Somehow, they report that the average indebtedness at graduation is $33,637. I presume that they’re referring to the debt load that the student carries. What won’t show up in that figure is the amount of home equity borrowed against by parents to pay the expected family contribution.
In any event, someone’s coming up with $200k. There are many reasons why self-selection would dictate that the median household income of students at NYU would be higher than the $50,233 American average, but even if the average is twice that, after taxes and living expenses for the rest of the family, they’re not coming up with $52k out of pocket, unless they’ve been extraordinarily diligent in saving.
While undoubtedly there are a number of students who will work at high-paying jobs coming right out of school, most of their classmates won’t. Parents won’t always make rational decisions, putting something like the pride of having a child at Princeton above economic sense. If they’ve got the money, it’s none of my concern. If they don’t… who bears the consequences?
Imagine graduating college with $100,000 in debt, at 21 years of age. Assume that the graduate may have a child 10 years later. If a parent’s education isn’t paid off by the birth of his child, when will the cycle end? That’s $833 per month, every month, for 10 years, before considering interest. Twice that for a couple.
How do we get some sanity here?
Making more money available isn’t the answer. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to send everyone to college. Maybe we should treat education loans more like standard unsecured credit, or make education loan decisions based upon likely ability to repay given not just credit history, but school transcripts and historical economic success of similar loan applicants.
Of course, that idea dies an early death at the hands of those who think it unfair to the economically disadvantaged. So… what do we do? And how do we not screw ourselves with subprime education lending?
Are the people losing their houses now paying their student loans? Are they going to be any time soon?
May 3rd, 2009
One of the more difficult truths I’ve come to realize lately is that the type of idealism that I have, which tends toward the libertarian, simply doesn’t scale to the places the human population is going.
As global population increases, and global demand for resources at least keeps pace, we’ll have so many more quarrels about fairness of the distribution of resources. If nothing else, it may be cost that drives everyone into the cities, if energy and water are best provided (and protected from harm) there, if efficiencies of scale can be gained that offset some of the burdens we’re likely to have to bear.
As we get to live closer and closer together, as the far east spawns cities of millions sprinkled along the water’s edge, our lives necessarily intersect more. The guy who holds the doors open on the subway, delaying the train for 30 seconds, delays everyone on that train for 30 seconds — if there are 600 other people on the train, that’s 5 hours of cumulative lost time. And it happens all the time, and it happens everywhere. But it happens a lot less in Wyoming than it does in New York, Toyko, or Shanghai.
I’ve been the offending party, certainly. I’ve been lost like a tourist, or snuck into a closing elevator. But I feel a little guilty about it… and then realizing that as long as I feel guilty about it, I’m better than those who don’t, and get over my guilt. I’m often conscious of my transgressions, sometimes to the extent of anxiety. But I’m surrounded every day by so many people in New York. I see blatantly rude and selfish social behavior. I see blissfully ignorant folk completely unaware of the impact they’re having on the people around them, whether it’s the people who don’t know to get to the side if they’re not sure where to go, or the people who get into screaming matches with the traffic cop who’s telling them not to make a right onto 34th Street. 5 slow-walking people shouldn’t walk all 5 astride, and when they’re doing so and chatting, they have no idea that someone might want to pass…
Yes, I have to smile a concession smile when people ask me why I live in New York if I hate people.
So… back to libertarianism and scalability… I see how little regard people have for each other on a minute-by-minute basis. Carelessness gets magnified. Selfishness has an impact on others. Maliciousness affects anyone and everyone around.
If we look at the Internet as a model for our interconnectedness as people, we see that sometimes the interconnectedness is accomplished better by the upstarts. South Korea has 12.2 million fiber broadband connections. Africa, grossly underserved by fixed-line providers, is expected to have 378 million cell phone subscribers by 2011. We also learn about how the incumbent network providers and the wily Cogent play nasty with each other… will we ever get another permanent member to the UN security council? If we do, isn’t it likely to be the troublemaker upstart who’s seized sufficient power to wrestle themselves in? Cogent’s been playing the Hugo Chavez role, holding resources hostage to try to gain legitimacy as a peer.
I’d include modern cell phones into what I’m calling the Internet even if they don’t have IP connectivity — if there’s MMS and a camera phone, there’s a connection to the global information network which will reproduce news across all media. The flow of information among people has grown dramatically, to the point of overload at times. Millions of tweets and texts have been sent both to organize peaceful political action, as well as spread disinformation or orchestrate violence. We’ve seen security holes in widely distributed software lead to the taking down of websites and even the connectivity of entire countries. We’ve seen countries block content they deem unfit for their nodes, and we’ve seen people overcome those blockades with encryption and various other techniques. Sometimes they do it for good, other times for evil.
You can opt out, refuse to take part in the Internet. But it’s increasingly more difficult to remain unaffected by it. If your power company hasn’t properly secured their systems, or all of the systems upon which they are dependent for proper operation, your electric service may be vulnerable to hackers. What other systems am I referring to? Telecommunications facilities which carry the networks between the interconnected systems required to be able to manage the grid. Environmental control systems at those telecommunications facilities, where forcing systems to overheat, failures can be induced… or the sprinkers could be set off, and the power cut automatically. Once the grid can’t communicate, it’s considerably more vulnerable… and I wouldn’t be surprised if parts would shut themselves down automatically when they lose connectivity to the other nodes.
We’re getting more connected as people just as we are on the Internet. We’re facing resource shortages, including economic growth, while we find new equilibria in this interconnected world. We’re recognizing how interconnected action is required to face some of the problems that we’ve created, and we’re a part of a blame game in the tradeoffs between growth and responsibility for the impact of industry.
As much as I have an inherent appreciation for Locke’s second treatise, I can see how it has problems when population scales and resources become scarce. It would be trivial to say that those who do not work should get nothing, but in this overconnected world we’re a part of whether or not we like it, we know that someone will have to take care of those who refuse to help themselves. They won’t be allowed to die in droves. If that starts to happen, some among them will strike back. And in this interconnected world, just a few motivated individuals can impact even the most “secure” of us.
Pragmatism demands that I try to figure out the extent to which I want to see a safety net defined, be it for money, healthcare, or anything similar… and participate in at least the discussion of that definition. While I don’t think that it’s my responsibility to provide for everyone, if I take the stance that it’s all unacceptable, I’m likely to be bypassed. I think that I’d better be a part of the solution that I can believe in rather than simply have it defined around me.
I’m given hope when Obama talks about encouraging personal responsibility, as much as I’m dismayed when he talks as though people have an inherent right to things. But it’s time to become part of the discussion. I’ll be writing more here shortly to help solidify my thoughts and further discussion.
November 10th, 2008
With this whole “mortgage crisis” where people are finding out that they screwed themselves by borrowing too much money, and then want the government to bail them out…
Excuse me…
I didn’t get in on the action because I had the sense to know that the risk involved with my buying a house would be too much. Then I get to pay the tab for the people who tried and failed?
I know that life’s not fair, I just wish that we did less to give safety nets to people who caused their own troubles. Natural selection doesn’t occur if people aren’t allowed to fail.
July 25th, 2008
The dollar also fell against other currencies, reaching parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time since November 1976. One U.S. dollar now buys one Canadian dollar. [link]
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
Looks like we’re going to hell on a toboggan instead of a handbasket.
Pretty soon, Canadians will be able to make fun of us for a lot more than Jerry Springer and George W. Bush. I think I’m going to go cry now.
September 20th, 2007
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