Pangloss

So... you don't think the various implementations of socialized medicine have run into any snags along the way? You think it's been a complete success since Day One in every country in which it has been implemented? The subject of extended waiting periods has come up a number of times. Several countries seem to have come up with acceptable approaches here, including Canada, Great Britain and (off the top of my head here, so don't quote me on this) Finland. Other countries are said to still be dealing with the problem to some degree. But the good news here is that we can learn from their mistakes. Another subject that we're going to need to address is drug costs. The industry keeps putting up the argument that Canada (for example) has lower drug costs because they're not paying for the billions the companies have spent on research and development. I'm unconvinced -- I think their margins are inflated in some cases to the levels of insurance companies and monopolistic software giants (ar ar), and I'm curious to see what might happen if these companies were forced to deal with larger-scale bargaining power. I think this is one of those areas where free market capitalism breaks down into a Tragedy of the Commons-style scenario, and they (the drug companies) simply haven't made their case for maintaining the status quo. I can come up with more examples if you like, but these hardly fall into the category of "it makes people lazy". They're legitimate concerns. In my view they have legitimate answers from "my" side of the issue. But pawning these people off as mere ideologues says more about the pawner's own ideology than it does about the object of their scorn.

It doesn't pass my stink test, which is that if you flip it around the opposite way it becomes racist, meaning either the definition of "racist" is wrong or the original statement is also racist. There's no middle ground here, either it's racist both ways or it's not racist at all. You can say that it's acceptable one way or the other way, but it's still a double standard. Sometimes double standards are acceptable. But never, in my view, when they're unacknowledged/unrecognized.

Thanks! I thought the "closed" button was just for stopping replies. Turns out it stops voting as well.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17443

These are your nominations for 2005 SFN Person of the Year.

Padren, asking "why healthcare should not be universal" places a false premise of the position which you oppose. They're not saying healthcare should not be universally available. On the contrary, they believe that it absolutely should be available to absolutely everyone. You just want to use a different yardstick for determining that availability than they do. They want it based on ability to pay. You want it based on need, and you really don't want to have to think about payment. The coffers are big, and people are suffering, and people who think about things like money are just being heartless and cruel. Funny, that's almost exactly what they say about you. After all, who wants to live in a society where some dictatorial government decides whether you live or die? You want the latest medical treatment? Better meet society's dictated norms. Better be politically correct. Better be in an industry the government approves of. Better not question the wrong people. Better not inquire about the wrong things. Better toe the line. Or else. What a horrible thought, this idea that people would actually determine whether they get the latest medical care through their OWN actions and efforts. Gosh, what a horrible thing that is! Such people must be "conservatives" and "libertarians", issuing mere "diatribes"! They can't possibly be saying anything useful or intelligent. Now here's an alternative thought: Is it really so hard to see the "good" in both positions? To find some common ground, instead of demonizing one's enemy, and look for a place where you can build on your common desires and construct a better future? Anyway, I happen to share your view, but as I've pointed out here, your position is not the sweetness and light you'd like for it to be. There is a cost to YOUR generosity -- the bill that arrives in MY mailbox that I'm not allowed to refuse. I happen to think that that price is worth it. But I'm not going to pretend that there isn't a price.

Gotta love double standards.

(grin) We probably don't disagree as much as you might think, Phil. I'm not opposed to socialized medicine, I'm only concerned about the pitfalls. It's a compromise that I would be willing to make, were it to come down to a personal vote. But I'd want to see it administrated smartly, as it is in Canada, Finland (iirc), and a few others countries (active participation, good people working hard to improve the system and steer it away from the obvious pitfalls, etc). But my reasons for supporting it would probably be very different from yours. For example, I would point out that, in a sense, we already have socialized medicine, in that the cost is already being shared, it's already viewed as a necessary and required expense, and people already see it as a right rather than a purchased privilege. So we might as well reap the advantages of the real thing. I am, however, not convinced that there is no other alternative. I think that's a lazy argument. We (human beings) have the most powerful, inventive and imaginative civilization in world history, and the best we can come up with is to copy each others' "reasonably good" ideas? Hmm.

I see an awful lot of guilt-by-association and dissection going on in the above post, and not a whole lot of answering the questions raised. I don't think suggesting hidden motives and ignoring valid arguments is the best way to address the healthcare crisis in this country.

Interesting points on the political angle, Jim. I do wonder, however, if we've past the point where Republicans in congress can fix both whatever damage that they've done and the issues they aren't responsible for, and do so in time for the 2006 congressional election. There's only half a session remaining between now and then. I think that's really well put. At risk of digressing, getting back to Peikoff for a moment, I think that one way that libertarians and objectivists might be persuaded on the subject would be to point out that we make certain sacrifices for the common good, not necessarily (or just) because of the Golden Rule, but because generally taking care of people is an investment in society's future. (Unfortunately I seem to vaguely recall that objectivists have (or at least Ayn Rand had) an answer to this. I seem to remember her framing the question, in some obscure essay I read ages ago, as something along the lines of "Surely we need safety nets [my phrase] because you never know what suffering person might produce the next Einstein or Mahler." She had an answer, and I just don't recall what it was. Probably something disappointingly ideological -- I seem to remember losing the objectivists over points like this. But now I'm hopelessly digressing, so I'll stop!)

Just to post-script the above, I'm paraphrasing Peikoff's argument and adding my own comments, but I fully understand the logical flaw in that reasoning (I'm not an objectivist). He is basically suggesting that we can't improve the way things work, and of course that's silly -- we absolutely can improve people's lot. And more government intervention may be part of the solution.

Here's a question: If a new technique became available tomorrow in which a patient crawled into a machine, got zapped with zebra-rays (or whatever), and their cancer was instantly cured, but that treatment cost one billion US dollars per person, not because of the high cost of medical care, but because it simply required a billion dollars worth of resources, even priced at the cost it takes to acquire those resources.... would everyone have a right to that treatment? This is a question that we keep ignoring, but it's often at the heart of the problem. New medical technology comes out at high cost and everybody wants it cheap. That's not why healthcare is expensive in general, and I'm not trying to suggest that this is the central problem of modern healthcare, but it is an important problem that we ought to be able to answer. In a sense this is what Peikoff is asking, and one has to admit that he has a point. It is, in itself, a logical fallacy to say that this doesn't matter because people's lives are at stake. Of course it matters. We have a tendency in society to use phrases like "it's only money", forgetting that money is the financial foundation of society. If we bankrupt society to pay for medical care, how will we invent newer, better medical care? Say we found a way to spend $100 trillion to treat 100k cancer patients with the above new treatment. Well those 100,000 people are cured, but we're all living in trees and caves because civilization has ceased to exist. And it's a shame, because another scientist was right on the verge of constructing a machine that gave everyone immortality for only TWO hundred thousand dollars. And that technology also made the first kind of technology work for only $20,000 instead of $100k, and showed us a way that it would get even cheaper over time. I know that's a silly and extreme example, but in a less-extreme way this is exactly what happens all the time. But there are many who deny that this happens at all. Whatever it costs, whatever it takes, that's their motto, because people are suffering. People have always suffered. They suffer less now than ever before. Why can't we simply continue in that vein, instead of throwing all of our accomplishments away and actually creating more suffering because of a misplaced guilt-trip that drives us to end ALL suffering NOW? It's easy to be critical. It's easy to point out suffering and issue blame for that suffering. Finding solutions that work -- that's harder.

I had to stop and ponder for a moment before I remembered where I'd heard that name before. Peikoff is more or less the current leader of the Objectivist movement. As a teenager he hung out with Ayn Rand and that crowd, and he proof-read Atlas Shrugged. So you're not exactly talking to someone who is predisposed to favor any kind of system that involves taking money from taxpayers and redistributing it to people for any purpose whatsoever. I've heard some of his lectures before, and I think he's an excellent speaker. He is, of course, an ideologue, but he's also very intelligent and interesting. So I can see why you picked out his book to read, and I can understand your disappointment in finding obvious flaws in his reasoning. The same thing happens to me a lot. Kudos for considering differing points of view. I wish more people did that. Anyway, I think there is a point to be made about giving the government too much control over our lives, and I also think it's pretty dangerous (and flawed) to justify socialized medicine on the grounds that it's too expensive for people to afford (we should be addressing why it's so expensive). But I think that this is an area where we may ultimately have to make an exception to our concern about government involvement, and the high cost of medical care certainly makes an excellent motivation for change. So I agree with you there.

Thanks, I'm always forgetting about bugmenot. This article is fascinating. I've skimmed it but I'll need to look it over more closely. It appears to be a remarkable effort to take a hard but fair look at the subject and avoid bias as much as possible, which always intrigues me. Thanks for passing it along.

You're right, that's an apt example. I'll have to remember this one. Thanks guys.

It's coming up as premium content for me. If you have another link feel free to post it, or maybe if you can provide some title and author info I can try and hunt it down somewhere.

What's a composition fallacy? You lost me there but it sounded really interesting, if you don't mind my asking.

I guess the answer to that question becomes a little more clear when you consider the inclusion of county election officials in the lawsuit. But I do think Sisyphus has a valid question there. Even if one stops short of accusing the Justice Department of playing politics (which Sisyphus didn't suggest at all, but the accused Mr. Brown did), it raises interesting questions about the obligations of party officials. I don't know what the law says on the subject, and the article was not forthcoming about that. I look forward to hearing and reading more about it. I think the case of Ricky Walker (described in the article) may help to clarify Ike Brown's obligations somewhat. Walker is a prosecutor who ran for local office, as a Democrat, only to be told by Brown (his own party chairman) that the party was going outside the county to bring in a black man, and that they were doing so because Walker is white and the other man is black. So clearly that's not an appropriate thing for a party official to do. But is it illegal? I guess that's something a lawyer will have to answer. All I can say at the moment is that if the roles were reversed then Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would already be marching in the streets.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1449254 The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against local election officials and Ike Brown, the chairman of the Democratic party in Noxubee County, Mississippi. Under the auspices of the 1965 Voter Rights Act, the contention is that they racially discriminated against white Democratic candidates, discouraging them from running for office and encouraging voters to vote against them. Brown is quite open about his bias against both white candidates and white voters, and while he isn't really supposed to be objective, being the chairman of a specific party, one would think that he would have to be racially unbiased. Perhaps of more interest here are the unnamed "local election officials". Here's a typical quote from Brown: One can't help but wonder what would have happened had a white chairman of a local Republican party branch said something like this: This clearly fails my "stink test" for bias -- if the reverse is clearly outrageous, then the former position ought to be seen as outrageous as well. (This subject, and how it pertains to the news media, is explored at length in Bernard Goldberg's interesting recent books, Bias and Arrogance.) But with regard to this particular case, the aspect of discrimination against white voters is interesting. The county where the lawsuit was filed is predominently black, and whites are a minority. Are they not deserving of exactly the same protections that were put in place to protect voting blacks when they were the minority? Thoughts?

Sorry for the late reply. With the holidays and family visits and whatnot it's a little harder for me to be online consistently. I understand, but it wasn't a news source, it was an opinion piece. I'm satisfied with your further sourcing above, and your last post above was fine (except for the snide comments directed at me). As for those comments, you know what you're doing wrong, you AGREE that it's wrong, and pawning it off as my problem isn't going to win you favor, it's going to win you warnings and deletions. It's your choice, but if you have anything further to say about it, do so privately.

I think this is fascinating given the current context of the "war on terror". It goes right to the heart of a number of issues. The gist of the issue here is that Steven Spielberg's latest film, "Munich", has raised some controversy because of its portrayal of the down side of retribution. The movie focuses on Israel's actions following the killing of its atheletes at the 1972 Olympic games, suggesting that there was an awful price to pay for hunting down those terrorists and killing them. In essence, the cycle of violence continues. I couldn't find the Sun-Times piece, but here's a quote from it at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2005-12-26/film/4 In essence it's a "root causes" argument, but I think it's coming from an interesting source. What do you all think?

It would be helpful to know what the administrator's reasons for the suspension were. I'm not sure we can accomplish a whole lot here without that information.

Bascule, I'm going to remind you once again not to throw lengthy articles at people in lieu of expressing your own opinion. It's basically just another way of saying "you're an idiot and you're only saying that because you haven't read what I've read", which is a complete load of horse manure. That's also an opinion piece, and therefore doesn't substantiate squat.

I think the technical aspects of this are interesting, and this article updated my knowledge of what the NSA generally does past the point of the Bamford books that I read in recent years. It was also interesting from the perspective of just completing a Master's degree which raised my level of knowledge about AI, data mining, search algorithms, etc, and the various applications of them. Having spent quite a lot of time over the last year in the ACM Portal perusing academic articles (zzzzz), I can't help but wonder now how many of those were also being perused by NSA planners and scientists and mathemeticians. It's interesting getting a little glimpse into their world here.

Interesting points.