Feb 17

Quote of the Day

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“The central contradiction in modern liberal politics is that Otto von Bismarck’s entitlement state for cradle to grave financial security is no longer affordable. The model has reached the limit of its ability to tax private income and still allow enough economic growth to finance its transfer payments.”

Feb 4

Healthcare and Political Philosophy

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I’m into it with my beloved cousin, again.  He writes, in relevant part:

we are not talking property or labor here Brett….what we are talking about is simple LIFE, LIBERTY and the pursuit of HAPPINESS. This is the right of every person walking the earth and is God Given. Problem is for the LIFE part you need Healthcare. Every other industrial nation in the world gets this except us.

I reply:

We *are* talking about property and labor, though, Josh. Your “right to life” means that government can’t arbitrarily take your life, i.e., murder you. It doesn’t mean that government is obligated to provide you with all the necessities of life, like food and clothing and shelter and, yes, healthcare. Those things are, as important as they are to human existence, commodities. They don’t grow on trees. Someone, for example, invests capital into becoming a doctor and setting up a medical practice. There is no political magic wand you can wave that gets around that reality. So when you say healthcare is a “human right” what you are really saying is that somebody else should be forced to provide you with healthcare — either the doctor himself, or taxpayers.

Yes I am saying that my country absolutely is obligated to do that! Bret, we already do and in a much much much more expensive way! We pay when they go to the ER and can’t pay for it. We pay for that with our taxes and our premiums. So why not offer them preventative care at a lower cost and take care of our citizens? The Constitution also does not state that corporate interests have the right to make life or death decisions regarding citizens of the United States. People who constantly try to throw the Constitution into the argument regarding modern complex issues either have no better ideas or no real argument for their cause. I still have not heard one person explain why it is BAD for government to help a sick citizen but OKAY for a corporation to refuse to cover them and allow them to die.

Let’s unpack that, a little at a time.

“Yes I am saying that my country absolutely is obligated to do that!”  But that’s the thing, Josh — it’s not “your country” that’s going to foot the bill.  Sure, the check might be drawn on the U.S. treasury, but the actual greenbacks come from other people.  So, again: you are saying that someone else, some other person, should be forced to provide you with healthcare.  That’s quite a controversial proposition given the American ethos of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.

“Bret, we already do and in a much much much more expensive way! We pay when they go to the ER and can’t pay for it. We pay for that with our taxes and our premiums.”  Nobody’s defending the U.S. healthcare system as a model of efficiency, but it’s only true that “we all already pay” because emergency rooms are required by law to treat anybody who walks in the door (nobody is compelled to pay higher insurance premiums resulting from indigent care, since nobody — at least for now — is compelled to buy medical insurance).  So repeal the law; using emergency rooms as primary care facilities for the indigent is an exercise in forcing a square peg into a round hole anyway.

“So why not offer them preventative care at a lower cost and take care of our citizens?”  Preventative care doesn’t save money.  Making preventative care available to everybody as part of a healthcare reform bill will actually raise costs, not lower them.

“The Constitution also does not state that corporate interests have the right to make life or death decisions regarding citizens of the United States.”  Quite so.  This is because the Constitution is a charter for a national government and not some loopy anti-corporate manifesto.  The Constitution is concerned with what government may and may not do, not with what citizens and corporations (who are really just associations of citizens) may and may not do.  A medical insurance company’s right to pay or not pay a claim derives from a voluntary contract between it and the policyholder.

“People who constantly try to throw the Constitution into the argument regarding modern complex issues either have no better ideas or no real argument for their cause.”  Er.  You were the one who brought it up, my friend.

“I still have not heard one person explain why it is BAD for government to help a sick citizen but OKAY for a corporation to refuse to cover them and allow them to die.”  Let me take a stab at it, then.

1. It’s not inherently bad for government to help a sick citizen.  It only becomes bad when government does so by infringing on the personal or economic freedoms of other citizens, as by saddling them with mandates and taxes.  A point I’ve made over and over again here is that socializing (in the spreading-it-around sense) injustice is not the same as redressing it.  Some injustices, like chronic illnesses, simply cannot be redressed.  Life sometimes simply drops a crap sandwich on your plate.  Forcing the rest of us to take a bite doesn’t change the taste.
2. It’s okay for a medical insurance company to refuse to cover a citizen because medical insurance companies aren’t charities.  The owners of a medical insurance company have made a capital investment in the company; the company’s board and managers, in turn, have a legal obligation to conduct the business in a way that maximizes the value of that investment.  Given the nature of insurance (any insurance, not just medical insurance), it’s frequently the case that refusing to cover a high-risk consumer is a more financially prudent course. 

I hope that helps.

Feb 1

Visualizing A Spending Freeze

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The Political Math guy is back, this time with a visualization of President Obama’s proposed spending freeze:

Again, I’m not opposed to the freeze.  But it should be understood as a baby-step concession to fiscal reality by an administration that has long been living in la-la land, rather than as a serious attempt to wrestle with the country’s budgetary trajectory.

Jan 29

The iPad, Snark-Free Edition — Epilogue

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As I noodle about the thing further, I think Tam has the right of it:

Fearless Prediction of the trajectory of “$Apple Product” (where “$Apple Product” != “Newton”):

1) Product is hyped to the sky before anybody’s seen one.
2) Product is released. Mac Fanboys line up to get raped at Apple stores worldwide.
3) Cutting edge Linux-using nerds mock it mercilessly for missing features and/or compromised functionality.
4) Mac Fanboys make tearful “Leave Britney Alone!” videos, defending their overpriced, underfunctioning tchotchkes.
5) Six to twelve months later, Apple releases “”$Apple Product G2“, with its deficiencies corrected and the price slashed by half.
6) Mac Fanboys howl bloody murder.
7) Everyone buys one, or a clone of one, as another industry gets altered for good.

And yet every time the loyal faithful can be found outside the Apple store on opening day, slightly dazed-looking, bowlegged, and holding large sums of crumpled bills in one sweaty hand and a tube of KY in the other, ready to do it all again…

So it’s “wait for the second-generation version,” then.

Jan 29

The Audacity Of BS

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If nothing else, one has to admire President Obama’s sheer chutzpah.  Today he made an appearance at a House Republican retreat, giving a short speech and then taking questions.  Congressman Steve King (R-IA) tweets:

President Obama just told us that most of Healthcare negotiations took place on CSPAN and that he’s a centrist and not an idealog.

Oooo-kay.  I mean, how do you even respond to that, other than to ask,  “What color is the sky on your planet, Mr. President?”

Jan 28

The iPad, Snark-Free Edition

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I am not susceptible to Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field.  Apple’s recipe for computing and consumer electronics is to wrap mediocre-to-decent technology in fantastic industrial design, promote its products as a lifestyle choice for the discerning consumer, and then charge said discerning consumers a small fortune for the privilege of owning an Apple product (and being subject to platform lock-in that’s arguably even worse than what one experiences with Microsoft).  So while I own a 3G iPhone I have no illusions about it: sure, it’s one of the better smartphones on the market, but the Droid kicks its ass in a number of significant ways.  Similarly, while I enjoy Justin Long’s work, I’m not likely to be in the market for a Mac anytime soon.

This all said, I’m guardedly interested in the iPad notwithstanding the epic product marketing fail that is the gadget’s name.  Here’s why: in mid-2008 I bought what was then a pretty high-end Dell widescreen gaming laptop because my desktop machine was getting long in the tooth.  Even now, almost two years old, it’s a fairly adequate desktop replacement.  Last year, though, I bought a new desktop and actually tried using the laptop as a portable, first during the California Bar Exam and then bringing it on flights from San Francisco to Boston and back again.  It’s an absolute boat anchor: my shoulders still haven’t recovered, I don’t think.  As a result, over the last few months I’ve been quietly eyeing netbooks, the Kindle, the Nook, and Sony’s eReader to see if any of these platforms offered the combination of portability and function that the laptop just plain lacks.

“What about your iPhone?”  someone inevitably asks at this point.  Well, as I said above, it’s certainly one of the better smartphones on the market.  The problem is that there’s a fair bit of connected functionality that’s compromised by trying to scale it down to a handheld form factor.  Web surfing and eBook-reading are good examples: Safari and the Kindle reader app are fine and all, but anybody who doesn’t get serious eyestrain after about ten minutes of staring at the 3½” screen is a mutant from the planet Zyrgon.  The iPhone, like all smartphones, is a phone, contact manager, and music player first and foremost; extensible, sure, but portable computing solutions of last resort.

I’ve been similarly unenthused about the various e-reader gizmos.  They’re all perfectly nifty, but they’re dedicated devices and that leaves me cold.  Can’t, for example, watch streaming video on or blog from a Kindle.

So that leaves me in Netbookville, for all intents and purposes.  But for whatever reason I just haven’t been able to fall sufficiently in like with a netbook to bring myself to buy one.  They’re so small as to feel like kiddie laptops, and when you’re dealing with a 9″ LCD screen there’s something to be said for tall and narrow (like an e-reader) rather than short and wide (like a laptop).  Tablet PC manufacturers were, I think, onto something, even if the category never quite took off the way they hoped.

Thus, the iPad.  Ignoring the Kool-Aid guzzling clowns who’re claiming this heralds the end of the PC era, it seems to be a pretty good, though not perfect, solution.  It’s small and light.  While manufacturer propaganda about battery life is an open joke in the industry, if the iPad’s good for even half of what Apple claims it’ll be competitive with netbooks and have enough juice for a cross-continental plane flight.  It’ll run everything the iPhone can.  Though I’m skeptical about the iPad’s backlit screen being as easy on the eyes as the e-ink on a Kindle, the iBook store seems like another way for Jobs to part me from my hard-earned quatloos.

The same things that Troy Wolverton mentions are giving me pause, though: the inability of the OS to multitask is barely excusable on the iPhone, and it’s completely inexcusable in something that’s being positioned to compete with netbooks.  Even the crappiest netbook will let me run an email client and a web browser at the same time.  Similarly, the fact that the iPad doesn’t support Flash media is a ball of suck (though I’m pleased to see that unlike the current iPhone OS the iPad will finally — finally! — support .vcf files).  Wolverton’s also cranky about the absence of a front-facing digital camera for videoconferencing applications, but that doesn’t bother me so much; it’s not like I do a lot of videoconferencing.

Here’s what I’d love to have: an iPad app that’s a visual client for Westlaw.  Any takers?

Jan 28

Cato Institute’s Video Response To SOTU

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Excellent, excellent stuff.  Ten minutes of awesome.

Jan 28

SOTU Reactions

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As with last year’s February address, I have some thoughts on the President’s State of the Union speech, in no particular order:

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Jan 27

Madame Speaker Wanders Off Reservation, Falls Into Well

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Mindboggling.  As I discussed yesterday, many on the left are in an uproar about Mr. Obama’s idea for a spending freeze because it flies in the face of Keynesian articles of faith prescribing government spending to prop up aggregate demand as a policy response to economic recession.  They’re, in other words, captive to the broken window fallacy and believe, urgently, that the U.S. economy remains moribund because government hasn’t spend lavishly enough on economic stimulus.

Enter Nancy Pelosi, who’s critical of the freeze not on the economic merits, but because it exempts defense spending.  In other words, if there’s to be a freeze, she wants to freeze more, not less.

Two possibilities present themselves.  Either:

(1) Madame Speaker is ignorant of economics and has been going along with the administration’s policies for the last year out of political tribalism and because they tickled her ideological erogenous zones.  Freezing non-defense discretionary spending without also taking a whack at those warmongering bubbas at the Pentagon was, for her, simply a bridge too far, notwithstanding the views of her base; or,

(2) Madame Speaker has completely misunderstood her base’s complaints about the freeze idea as being unrequited peacenikkery rather than unrequited Keynesianism, and accordingly, as she attempts to pander, is tripping over her own shoelaces.

What is this woman thinking?  Is she thinking?  Help me out, here.

(Hat tip: Hot Air)

Jan 27

Comments

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I’ve been reluctant to open up comments on the blog, principally because I’ve been skeptical of policing comment-thread pissing matches and/or dealing with trolls and spam.  But I’m going to start enabling comments and trackbacks on new posts on an experimental basis, to see if doing so enlivens the blog at all.

Participation in the comment threads is subject to a zero-tolerance “don’t be an ass” policy enforced at the sole discretion of the management (me).