Need I say more?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
δύναμις (dunamis)
I haven't spoken to this for some time now, but I want to take a moment to return to my pet theory of energy as currency. I have bounced around a few different places and after several compilations, edits and other editorial slight-of-hand, I think I'm ready to deliver the goods...or at leasta beta version.
O~O~O
A major part of the current economic problems are derived from the current uncertainty of the worth and ownership of various real estate backed debt packages. In short, there is no shortage of doubt about how much things are presently worth, actually. Money can be thought of as a placeholder for the amount of energy in the social system. Adapting fromprevious policy, and some current thought, it might be useful to reestablish a hard currency and take the ambiguity out of the situation. Obviously we can't go back to the gold standard, there just isn't enough to actually cover all those T-bills.
The current theory of wealth is that something has value because it is rare. Gold is the perfect example. Gold is very difficult to come by. Gold is also next to useless.With the exception of some very specialized, advanced applications in electronics, you can't do much that's useful with gold. Its too soft and too heavy for anything but ornamentation. In the more openly superstitious past it was credited with supernatural value, but the simple fact is that the very qualities that make it great as a currency also make it useless for pretty much everything else. So why does gold still command such economic power that certain people still want to go back to using it as the backing of currency? Habit, mostly.That said, let's examine the basic argument for the gold standard. The idea of having something behind currency is appealing. If nothing else it gives you a sense of having something stable and valuable, something tangible. On the other hand, if gold is essentially worthless, why would it be any better than fiat currency? Well frankly it isn't. In real terms, gold is only valuable because we've decided it is, or rather we have never thought about asking why, about challenging that notion of value the way we have challenged so many other “facts” of life. It was once accepted that the earth is flat, women were essentially children in thought and feeling and that the sky was an immense crystalline sphere; the whole of our modern world is founded upon the challenging, the testing, of these and other such ideas.
So how do we gain the benefits of a solid, hard currency without falling for the fallacies of perceived value? We must be completely objective, as far as our power of reason will allow, and look for some thing that has genuine utility, genuine value in practical terms of productivity. It has to be a universally valued commodity, and it would be better still if this standard was one that could be adopted universally. The situation would be further helped if said commodity, like the concept of wealth itself, didn't exist in a strictly finite supply. That supply should be finite at any given moment, but subject to increase with sufficient investment, bearing in mind of course that investment must yield profitable returns; this is to say it must increase the over all supply and availability of wealth in the system.
This is important because basing a currency on an absolutely limited supply of anything creates the same circumstances that led to the creation of the fiat currency. Eventually productivity (which generates wealth) leads to consumption, specifically consumption of foreign imports which will eventually lead to there being more of your currency in circulation than can be supported by a given quantity of any single commodity, or eventually any combination of multiple commodities. On the other hand, if the supply isn’t limited at any given moment then you’re currency is effectively valueless.
So what fits the bill? Energy. Not petro-dollars; hydrocarbons (oil, coal, etc.) are just a storage medium, just as carbohydrates (sugar) or lipids (fat) store energy in various living organisms. We want to address energy as a substance in it’s own right: the basic unit of measurement of energy; the joule.
All goods and services can be described by the amount of energy required to produce/provide them to the market. From the amount of inherent energy in them, to the cost of extraction and processing, to transportation and even advertising, everything can be described in terms of what it takes to make it happen and get to the consumer. Differences in processes will result in tremendous motivation to pursue the greatest possible efficiency in order to provide products at a lower cost than competitors, thus helping to maximize profits without necessarily increase costs at point of sale.
All nations have access to energy resources; some are richer than others, due to variables such as territory (sunlight exposure), climate (wind strength) or reserves of stored fossil fuels. However, each has access to a continuing supply of new energy each day, and that energy can be tapped just like gold, and used to engage in global commerce. The stability of an energy-backed hard currency removes uncertainty, establishes universal value standards, eliminates the inequities created by various exchange rates and essentially solves the Triffin Dilemma by not having a single national currency employed as the global reserve. Everyone has got the same money and productivity becomes the sole defining factor in creating wealth.
The people who stand to derive the most immediate benefit are the Third World countries. The G7 have the technology and capacity for manufacturing, and the Third World provides a ready market for the technology and services that will allow them to begin energy production. It's a cheap buy that will immediately yield tangible results for their populations in terms of wealth garnered by delivering early excesses to developed nations while building the internal infrastructure necessary to make use of the available energy themselves in terms of manufacturing, heat, lighting and transit; all this creates demand for workers, thus providing the desperately needed employment that will further spur domestic markets for goods and services. Thus we convert political capital into monetary investment, which yields energy that becomes the basis of the new currency.
Once production has gotten under way, domestic marketing can be targeted inside the G7. The demand increases exponentially, ramping production and boosting productivity, thus spending. It's Henry Ford's basic principle, you pay people enough to buy the goods they make for you. Initial orders within the G7 will almost certainly be from the public sector, but Public Relations and cost effectiveness will bring the private sector in quickly. Once the average consumer starts producing power as well, the cycle of inflation-production takes hold.
With the basic mechanism outlined, we are obliged to look to the political considerations, especially in the United States, which is where the entire process is going to have to begin. The majority of the voting public in the developed world has an instinctive liking for the idea of a currency that is backed by something; they neither understand nor like the idea of floating currency. Currency isn't a sovereignty issue, although on the surface it does look like one. You aren't surrendering control of anything and the argument can be made, easily, that everyone else is following your lead. All you need to do is remind people that they'll be able to essentially make their own wealth; this engages the profit motive.
The point, again, is that we're shifting the focus of wealth, of available resources away from scarcity to production. Since energy is the key requisite for all production and service, having more of it available drives down costs; at the same time greater energy production increases your wealth, allowing you to have more of it available for use. In short, its like printing money, except that the money is actually backed by real value (energy).
The obvious push back on such an initiative would be from those who benefit from wealth based on scarcity. While anyone might have oil or gold on their land, the quantity will be limited by definition. Wind and sun, on the other hand, never run out; tapping energy freely from the environment would be tantamount to printing your own money, with the exception that, being backed by real energy, it would have exactly the same worth in the system.
But doesn't scarcity define wealth? If the amount of energy available is effectively limitless and everyone can tap it, would the currency then be rendered valueless by abundance? A built-in inflationary loop?
Not necessarily. In the first place, the amount of energy is going to be constantly consumed, as well as generated, thus remaining at a functionally stable level from day to day. In the second, while even a small net gain would result in an inflationary progression,continual production of energy will reduce the cost at point of sale through simple supply and demand; plentiful energy reduces the cost of production. This applies both the power needs of production and the cost of materials when measured in terms of energy cost to produce and transport.
Now we draw it together: energy as the medium of wealth causes an abundance of energy to inflate the energy-backed hard currency, while that same abundance also continually drives down the cost of production, thus reducing prices at the point of sale.
How do you store the energy entering the system? Realistically, you don’t do this very much on a wide scale. Goods can be seen as stored energy in our model, but once you have a product you cannot, normally, easily convert this back to energy. Exceptions can been shown in agriculture, but a leather coat cannot be efficiently reconverted back into production energy. This is where currency enters the picture. To be more specific, what we are saying here is that it isn’t necessary to store vast amounts of unused energy in the system in a fuel/battery format. Because we are relying on productivity rather than scarcity, we simply agree that currency markers will be redeemed, in specie by the government, in the order in which they are presented, by tapping the production cycle. We can do this because we know that the renewable supply will continue to produce with as close to absolute certainty as is possible.
One of the core ideas behind a hard currency is that the government only circulates enough markers to cover what's in the treasury. If you go to an energy backed currency, how do you determine exactly how much there is in the treasury? You can calculate this figure on the basis of two knowable numbers; the amount of stored energy reserves you have in terms of hydrocarbons and nuclear fuel and the amount of energy produced from your renewable facilities on average.
The logical place to begin is by establishing your known energy reserves, i.e., coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, and anything else that is a static, naturally occurring deposit of recoverable fuel. Common sense says you might not be able to establish the absolute supply because it extends beyond current detection. That's fine, you set a hard figure of what is known and adjust your tally upward as new resources are revealed or developed. Finally you tally the amount yielded from your renewable sources in a day, on average for a given fiscal year.
Once we’ve determined how to establish the contents of the treasury, we can begin figuring out the best possible way to make this work for the people at large, in order to both promote greater productivity and generate political will in wealthy nations such as the United States.
Governments begin investing in production of energy, by investing in renewable energy capture projects (wind, solar, etc). Tax payer funds are used to add to the amount of energy in the system, with revenues from production rebated to them on a monthly basis, minus tax on income. These returns add to the over all energy-backed currency value of the system, being stored as cash in banks (where it will earn interest)while the tax revenue is deposited by the government. Obviously, this plan works best in areas of fairly low population with plenty of environmental energy for capture.
At this stage, we turn to the matters of efficiency and productivity. Simply put: The citizens (consumers) are best served by being as efficient as possible in order to reap the largest possible rewards from production returns. Add to this the prospect of privately adding additional energy to the system, in return for further reimbursement, and you encourage even greater productivity.
The question that might arise that this would lead to everyone just generating energy instead of building goods and providing services. The answer is no. Simply because a private citizen could sit back and do nothing but collect on energy production, does not mean that they will. There will continue to be a demand for food, clothes, houses, transportation and luxuries. Someone will meet these demands because it is profitable to do so. Even if we reach a point where energy/currency production far exceeds consumption and provides an essentially free pool of capital exchange, there will still be demands that will need to be met, however little it may cost to do so.
On the other hand, a certain amount of mass-production may go out. With an abundance of energy-backed currency, many people will prefer to go into smaller scale, craftsmanship oriented production. Since essentially anyone could create a generic, mass-produced product at little cost, there could easily be a renewed focus on the craftsmanship of a particular commodity. This could lead to a renaissance of The Artisan. As energy is captured/produced, and used to back additional currency, you have to put that currency directly into the hands of the producers. In short, you have to make sure that every extra joule put into the system gets banked, where it in turn accrues interest and getsloaned out.
With large amounts of energy constantly being captured and stored, a continually growing supply of stored energy driving down costs, and the power of compound interest acting as a force multiplier, an economic system based on an energy backed hard currency would become supercharged; a pool of almost freely available energy/wealth, underpinned by constant production, provided that production exceeds consumption as the general rule.
Using this model, we can easily imagine a society, on a global scale, where eventually anything becomes possible simply because the energy/wealth is available to be thrown at it. Inefficient, cumbersome beginnings aren't prohibitive and open the door to costly scientific and technological Research & Development.
The current theory of wealth is that something has value because it is rare. Gold is the perfect example. Gold is very difficult to come by. Gold is also next to useless.With the exception of some very specialized, advanced applications in electronics, you can't do much that's useful with gold. Its too soft and too heavy for anything but ornamentation. In the more openly superstitious past it was credited with supernatural value, but the simple fact is that the very qualities that make it great as a currency also make it useless for pretty much everything else. So why does gold still command such economic power that certain people still want to go back to using it as the backing of currency? Habit, mostly.That said, let's examine the basic argument for the gold standard. The idea of having something behind currency is appealing. If nothing else it gives you a sense of having something stable and valuable, something tangible. On the other hand, if gold is essentially worthless, why would it be any better than fiat currency? Well frankly it isn't. In real terms, gold is only valuable because we've decided it is, or rather we have never thought about asking why, about challenging that notion of value the way we have challenged so many other “facts” of life. It was once accepted that the earth is flat, women were essentially children in thought and feeling and that the sky was an immense crystalline sphere; the whole of our modern world is founded upon the challenging, the testing, of these and other such ideas.
So how do we gain the benefits of a solid, hard currency without falling for the fallacies of perceived value? We must be completely objective, as far as our power of reason will allow, and look for some thing that has genuine utility, genuine value in practical terms of productivity. It has to be a universally valued commodity, and it would be better still if this standard was one that could be adopted universally. The situation would be further helped if said commodity, like the concept of wealth itself, didn't exist in a strictly finite supply. That supply should be finite at any given moment, but subject to increase with sufficient investment, bearing in mind of course that investment must yield profitable returns; this is to say it must increase the over all supply and availability of wealth in the system.
This is important because basing a currency on an absolutely limited supply of anything creates the same circumstances that led to the creation of the fiat currency. Eventually productivity (which generates wealth) leads to consumption, specifically consumption of foreign imports which will eventually lead to there being more of your currency in circulation than can be supported by a given quantity of any single commodity, or eventually any combination of multiple commodities. On the other hand, if the supply isn’t limited at any given moment then you’re currency is effectively valueless.
So what fits the bill? Energy. Not petro-dollars; hydrocarbons (oil, coal, etc.) are just a storage medium, just as carbohydrates (sugar) or lipids (fat) store energy in various living organisms. We want to address energy as a substance in it’s own right: the basic unit of measurement of energy; the joule.
All goods and services can be described by the amount of energy required to produce/provide them to the market. From the amount of inherent energy in them, to the cost of extraction and processing, to transportation and even advertising, everything can be described in terms of what it takes to make it happen and get to the consumer. Differences in processes will result in tremendous motivation to pursue the greatest possible efficiency in order to provide products at a lower cost than competitors, thus helping to maximize profits without necessarily increase costs at point of sale.
All nations have access to energy resources; some are richer than others, due to variables such as territory (sunlight exposure), climate (wind strength) or reserves of stored fossil fuels. However, each has access to a continuing supply of new energy each day, and that energy can be tapped just like gold, and used to engage in global commerce. The stability of an energy-backed hard currency removes uncertainty, establishes universal value standards, eliminates the inequities created by various exchange rates and essentially solves the Triffin Dilemma by not having a single national currency employed as the global reserve. Everyone has got the same money and productivity becomes the sole defining factor in creating wealth.
The people who stand to derive the most immediate benefit are the Third World countries. The G7 have the technology and capacity for manufacturing, and the Third World provides a ready market for the technology and services that will allow them to begin energy production. It's a cheap buy that will immediately yield tangible results for their populations in terms of wealth garnered by delivering early excesses to developed nations while building the internal infrastructure necessary to make use of the available energy themselves in terms of manufacturing, heat, lighting and transit; all this creates demand for workers, thus providing the desperately needed employment that will further spur domestic markets for goods and services. Thus we convert political capital into monetary investment, which yields energy that becomes the basis of the new currency.
Once production has gotten under way, domestic marketing can be targeted inside the G7. The demand increases exponentially, ramping production and boosting productivity, thus spending. It's Henry Ford's basic principle, you pay people enough to buy the goods they make for you. Initial orders within the G7 will almost certainly be from the public sector, but Public Relations and cost effectiveness will bring the private sector in quickly. Once the average consumer starts producing power as well, the cycle of inflation-production takes hold.
With the basic mechanism outlined, we are obliged to look to the political considerations, especially in the United States, which is where the entire process is going to have to begin. The majority of the voting public in the developed world has an instinctive liking for the idea of a currency that is backed by something; they neither understand nor like the idea of floating currency. Currency isn't a sovereignty issue, although on the surface it does look like one. You aren't surrendering control of anything and the argument can be made, easily, that everyone else is following your lead. All you need to do is remind people that they'll be able to essentially make their own wealth; this engages the profit motive.
The point, again, is that we're shifting the focus of wealth, of available resources away from scarcity to production. Since energy is the key requisite for all production and service, having more of it available drives down costs; at the same time greater energy production increases your wealth, allowing you to have more of it available for use. In short, its like printing money, except that the money is actually backed by real value (energy).
The obvious push back on such an initiative would be from those who benefit from wealth based on scarcity. While anyone might have oil or gold on their land, the quantity will be limited by definition. Wind and sun, on the other hand, never run out; tapping energy freely from the environment would be tantamount to printing your own money, with the exception that, being backed by real energy, it would have exactly the same worth in the system.
But doesn't scarcity define wealth? If the amount of energy available is effectively limitless and everyone can tap it, would the currency then be rendered valueless by abundance? A built-in inflationary loop?
Not necessarily. In the first place, the amount of energy is going to be constantly consumed, as well as generated, thus remaining at a functionally stable level from day to day. In the second, while even a small net gain would result in an inflationary progression,continual production of energy will reduce the cost at point of sale through simple supply and demand; plentiful energy reduces the cost of production. This applies both the power needs of production and the cost of materials when measured in terms of energy cost to produce and transport.
Now we draw it together: energy as the medium of wealth causes an abundance of energy to inflate the energy-backed hard currency, while that same abundance also continually drives down the cost of production, thus reducing prices at the point of sale.
How do you store the energy entering the system? Realistically, you don’t do this very much on a wide scale. Goods can be seen as stored energy in our model, but once you have a product you cannot, normally, easily convert this back to energy. Exceptions can been shown in agriculture, but a leather coat cannot be efficiently reconverted back into production energy. This is where currency enters the picture. To be more specific, what we are saying here is that it isn’t necessary to store vast amounts of unused energy in the system in a fuel/battery format. Because we are relying on productivity rather than scarcity, we simply agree that currency markers will be redeemed, in specie by the government, in the order in which they are presented, by tapping the production cycle. We can do this because we know that the renewable supply will continue to produce with as close to absolute certainty as is possible.
One of the core ideas behind a hard currency is that the government only circulates enough markers to cover what's in the treasury. If you go to an energy backed currency, how do you determine exactly how much there is in the treasury? You can calculate this figure on the basis of two knowable numbers; the amount of stored energy reserves you have in terms of hydrocarbons and nuclear fuel and the amount of energy produced from your renewable facilities on average.
The logical place to begin is by establishing your known energy reserves, i.e., coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, and anything else that is a static, naturally occurring deposit of recoverable fuel. Common sense says you might not be able to establish the absolute supply because it extends beyond current detection. That's fine, you set a hard figure of what is known and adjust your tally upward as new resources are revealed or developed. Finally you tally the amount yielded from your renewable sources in a day, on average for a given fiscal year.
Once we’ve determined how to establish the contents of the treasury, we can begin figuring out the best possible way to make this work for the people at large, in order to both promote greater productivity and generate political will in wealthy nations such as the United States.
Governments begin investing in production of energy, by investing in renewable energy capture projects (wind, solar, etc). Tax payer funds are used to add to the amount of energy in the system, with revenues from production rebated to them on a monthly basis, minus tax on income. These returns add to the over all energy-backed currency value of the system, being stored as cash in banks (where it will earn interest)while the tax revenue is deposited by the government. Obviously, this plan works best in areas of fairly low population with plenty of environmental energy for capture.
At this stage, we turn to the matters of efficiency and productivity. Simply put: The citizens (consumers) are best served by being as efficient as possible in order to reap the largest possible rewards from production returns. Add to this the prospect of privately adding additional energy to the system, in return for further reimbursement, and you encourage even greater productivity.
The question that might arise that this would lead to everyone just generating energy instead of building goods and providing services. The answer is no. Simply because a private citizen could sit back and do nothing but collect on energy production, does not mean that they will. There will continue to be a demand for food, clothes, houses, transportation and luxuries. Someone will meet these demands because it is profitable to do so. Even if we reach a point where energy/currency production far exceeds consumption and provides an essentially free pool of capital exchange, there will still be demands that will need to be met, however little it may cost to do so.
On the other hand, a certain amount of mass-production may go out. With an abundance of energy-backed currency, many people will prefer to go into smaller scale, craftsmanship oriented production. Since essentially anyone could create a generic, mass-produced product at little cost, there could easily be a renewed focus on the craftsmanship of a particular commodity. This could lead to a renaissance of The Artisan. As energy is captured/produced, and used to back additional currency, you have to put that currency directly into the hands of the producers. In short, you have to make sure that every extra joule put into the system gets banked, where it in turn accrues interest and getsloaned out.
With large amounts of energy constantly being captured and stored, a continually growing supply of stored energy driving down costs, and the power of compound interest acting as a force multiplier, an economic system based on an energy backed hard currency would become supercharged; a pool of almost freely available energy/wealth, underpinned by constant production, provided that production exceeds consumption as the general rule.
Using this model, we can easily imagine a society, on a global scale, where eventually anything becomes possible simply because the energy/wealth is available to be thrown at it. Inefficient, cumbersome beginnings aren't prohibitive and open the door to costly scientific and technological Research & Development.
Bring Out You're Dead!
Okay, so the administration is commencing (finally) the prosecution of the detainees currently being held to account for the 9/11 attacks.
My own opinion on the prosecution itself is simple: about time. Of slightly more interest in the public forum (at least to the current herd of Elephants) is the decision of Justice to pursue the trial in old New York itself, practically in the shadow of the WTC itself. According to Faux News, this is the next sign of the impending apocalypse...or at least an invitation to "the bad guys" to stage another attack...or for the defendants themselves to do something disruptive (oh noezies!) ...or some other vague thing that we all need to A: be afraid of and B: blame on Obama. On of the chief complaints being raised from this quarter is actually the fear that somehow these men will be acquitted on a technicality; while I am generally loathe to agree with Mike Malloy's rhetoric, I freely admit that the lack of confidence in our system of Justice registered by the wing-nuts is, at the least, annoying. Of course there are also those who feel that we simply should not be extending our legal system and it's rights to these men; the hypocrisy of such people is galling. Are we to take it that we, as Americans, are more entitled simply by virtue being Americans? Asinine, at best.
Other people however have pointed out that while it is certainly possible these men may be released onto the streets of New York, their ultimate fate is unlikely to be much different than with a guilty verdict and we, as a nation, have the obligation to live up to our highest principles. Let me take this moment to recall the storage capacity of the Hudson.
Almost as bad is the rampant doom saying regarding the decision to move the prisoners of Gitmo to Illinois. The facts are rather enlightening and the voices from the locals are overwhelmingly positive; the people in the local in question want this, even as Republicans do their level best to monger fear and shout down the plan.
Once again...I am forced to recall my study of The Ethics which in turn forces me to say again, "If wish to be a just people, we must practice justice."
My own opinion on the prosecution itself is simple: about time. Of slightly more interest in the public forum (at least to the current herd of Elephants) is the decision of Justice to pursue the trial in old New York itself, practically in the shadow of the WTC itself. According to Faux News, this is the next sign of the impending apocalypse...or at least an invitation to "the bad guys" to stage another attack...or for the defendants themselves to do something disruptive (oh noezies!) ...or some other vague thing that we all need to A: be afraid of and B: blame on Obama. On of the chief complaints being raised from this quarter is actually the fear that somehow these men will be acquitted on a technicality; while I am generally loathe to agree with Mike Malloy's rhetoric, I freely admit that the lack of confidence in our system of Justice registered by the wing-nuts is, at the least, annoying. Of course there are also those who feel that we simply should not be extending our legal system and it's rights to these men; the hypocrisy of such people is galling. Are we to take it that we, as Americans, are more entitled simply by virtue being Americans? Asinine, at best.
Other people however have pointed out that while it is certainly possible these men may be released onto the streets of New York, their ultimate fate is unlikely to be much different than with a guilty verdict and we, as a nation, have the obligation to live up to our highest principles. Let me take this moment to recall the storage capacity of the Hudson.
Almost as bad is the rampant doom saying regarding the decision to move the prisoners of Gitmo to Illinois. The facts are rather enlightening and the voices from the locals are overwhelmingly positive; the people in the local in question want this, even as Republicans do their level best to monger fear and shout down the plan.
Once again...I am forced to recall my study of The Ethics which in turn forces me to say again, "If wish to be a just people, we must practice justice."
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tastes Like Chick
...aside from my usual annoyance at the religious, there are some people for whom I have to reserve a special measure of dislike. One such is Jack Chick, a comic artist who has elected to ply his trade as an evangelical. You may be familiar with his work, his little palm sized comics turn up in many, many places. Just now I found one sitting in a public toilet, on top of the paper dispencer...admittedly this is where I have, almost without exception, found his "Chick Tracks"...I won't go quite so far as to say that this is the most appropriate venue for his...work. I will happily suggest it indirectly however and let you reach your own conclusions.
Obviously I have a bias. I personally find his work offensive, chiefly because the man is quite happy to deride the beliefs of others and cite archeological, anthropological or historical data to support his attacks...yet never seems willing to provide any sort of similar evidence as to why his own particular brand of primitive superstition is immune to such arguments. Additionally, his work universally depicts any person not firmly and vocally in his camp as being either deranged, possessed or themselves an evil and diabolical villain.
I wouldn't even bring this up but I did, as I said, just find another of Chick's skreeds in the toilet.
I think possibly the worst part of this whole enterprise is the fact that the comic art form generally appeals most to children, who are least able to reason for themselves or identify the fallacies in the work. For instance, in this particular...I hesitate to use the word "publication" but nervertheless, Chick has a fatehr and son coming across a group of Muslim men engaged in their prayers at a Mosque. The child inquires about the prayers, the father tells us they are praying to a "moon god" which, no great surprise, motivates one of the men to approach him and address the insult. This of course winds up witht he Muslim being portrayed as a dangerous, threatening fanatic. fear not though, as the good Christian Father now procedes to enlighten us further about a questionable archeological finding (no reference info, of course) and a completely unsupported story about a power hungry Mohammad. Unsurprisingly, after this "revelation" the Muslim man in question abandons his faith, becomes a Christian on the spot and procedes to run back to the Mosque proclaiming this revelation and his intent to evanglize among them.
Vascillation
At some point in the last two weeks an odd thought came to me; have I been drifting too far to the left? Did I unwittingly drink the Kool-Aid and turn into a Commie-bot while ripping on the RNC and conservatives in general? How could I answer this question in an objective manner?
Well it hit me fairly quickly, as I was also bemoaning the basic lack of programming on POTUS, that I could cast my net into new waters and sample the channel which specifically labels itself as "Liberal Radio", on XM 167. I took the waters, as it were and I can only say one thing in all honesty.
Holy shit. Any suspicion that my enthusiasm for Obama and his overall administration thus far qualified me as being a "liberal" was blown completely out of the water. I mean wow. Just over a weak of listening to Mike Malloy and Alex Bunnett has cured me of any such illusions. Listening to Malloy reminds me of the old joke about what happens when you play country music backwards; substitute Limbaugh for Hank Williams. Apparently, according to Micky here, everything wrong in life can be laid at the feet of capitalism; frankly, if you listen to this lefty loonie tune, you can figure out he's a hold-over hippie who is still carrying a torch for communism. Bleeding hell I am tired of "-isms".
So what have I learned? I am hated at both ends of the spectrum and while I still have to politely (or not so much) disagree with both the loonies and the wing-nuts I can at least understand while they both hate each other. I have to return to my earlier position that letting these to waring camps hold the reigns of power is a hideously bad idea. Massive Left-Right political shifts in our national policies are going to tear this country apart and the only way to cure the affliction is the one thing we can't get people to do; we can't get them to actually reason and compromise with one another. This in the age of instant, real-time communication...the irony could gag a goat.
Throughout human history, numerous figures have cautioned against extremes in society. From Taoism to Aristotlean ethics we are again and again advised to avoid extremes...yet the dramatic nature of such draw followers like moths to a flame and even as they are immolated the followers of extremes hurl invective at we more moderate persons for our refusal to abandon our control and grasp of the mean.
If it wasn't for the fact that modern candle flames include nuclear energies, I would be tempted to ask these fools to hurry to their fate a bit faster.
Well it hit me fairly quickly, as I was also bemoaning the basic lack of programming on POTUS, that I could cast my net into new waters and sample the channel which specifically labels itself as "Liberal Radio", on XM 167. I took the waters, as it were and I can only say one thing in all honesty.
Holy shit. Any suspicion that my enthusiasm for Obama and his overall administration thus far qualified me as being a "liberal" was blown completely out of the water. I mean wow. Just over a weak of listening to Mike Malloy and Alex Bunnett has cured me of any such illusions. Listening to Malloy reminds me of the old joke about what happens when you play country music backwards; substitute Limbaugh for Hank Williams. Apparently, according to Micky here, everything wrong in life can be laid at the feet of capitalism; frankly, if you listen to this lefty loonie tune, you can figure out he's a hold-over hippie who is still carrying a torch for communism. Bleeding hell I am tired of "-isms".
So what have I learned? I am hated at both ends of the spectrum and while I still have to politely (or not so much) disagree with both the loonies and the wing-nuts I can at least understand while they both hate each other. I have to return to my earlier position that letting these to waring camps hold the reigns of power is a hideously bad idea. Massive Left-Right political shifts in our national policies are going to tear this country apart and the only way to cure the affliction is the one thing we can't get people to do; we can't get them to actually reason and compromise with one another. This in the age of instant, real-time communication...the irony could gag a goat.
Throughout human history, numerous figures have cautioned against extremes in society. From Taoism to Aristotlean ethics we are again and again advised to avoid extremes...yet the dramatic nature of such draw followers like moths to a flame and even as they are immolated the followers of extremes hurl invective at we more moderate persons for our refusal to abandon our control and grasp of the mean.
If it wasn't for the fact that modern candle flames include nuclear energies, I would be tempted to ask these fools to hurry to their fate a bit faster.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Election 2009
So as I was going down the road last night, I caught Pete's show and he asked a very interesting question; what do the results of the 2009 elections mean, if anything? Given all the drummed up hype from the radical right about this being a "national referendum on Obama", its a reasonable question.
The short version of the results is that the two governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia both went to the Republican candidates by long and narrow margins, respectively, while the Democrats one each of the House seats up for grabs, even managing to take New York District 23, a Republican stronghold since the Civil War. Finally, the same-sex marriage law passed in Maine was shot down by the locals ballot veto power, by a somewhat narrow margin. The various mayoral races are still being resolved. For purpose of my point, I'm going to stick to the specific issues I've raised.
The first thing that springs to mind is that the political right in this country may want to rethink their "referendum" line, in view of the actual results. While the Republicans did take the races in NJ and VA, they soundly lost the House seats; this could be taken as an indication that predictions of the Republican Party no longer being a national force are valid. I'm not entirely convinced of that, but it could be seen in that light. In my own opinion, I'm given to think that A: the VA race was completely predictable (massive voter drop-off), B: the NJ incumbent was very unpopular and the voters wanted something different without being sufficiently motivated to choose the 3rd party candidate (also not much of a surprise) all while C: the general opinion in national politics remains that the Republicans both screwed the electorate and refuse to help do anything to clean up the mess.
So...why did the Republicans fail in the nationals while winning in the states? For this I return us to the old debate of republicanism v. federalism. Without going into too much history, the basic point is that republicans prefer to see small, localized governance while federalists favor a centralized, accountable organization. Both positions have merits but at the moment I want to focus on the constituencies. In short, what we currently call conservatives or a traditional Republicans are all generally small "r" republicans while Democrats and "progressives" are generally federalists, and each camp is generally motivated to turn out for the issues they feel the most strongly about. In the case of the former it tends to be state and local concerns while in the latter it tends to be national issues.
The short version of the results is that the two governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia both went to the Republican candidates by long and narrow margins, respectively, while the Democrats one each of the House seats up for grabs, even managing to take New York District 23, a Republican stronghold since the Civil War. Finally, the same-sex marriage law passed in Maine was shot down by the locals ballot veto power, by a somewhat narrow margin. The various mayoral races are still being resolved. For purpose of my point, I'm going to stick to the specific issues I've raised.
The first thing that springs to mind is that the political right in this country may want to rethink their "referendum" line, in view of the actual results. While the Republicans did take the races in NJ and VA, they soundly lost the House seats; this could be taken as an indication that predictions of the Republican Party no longer being a national force are valid. I'm not entirely convinced of that, but it could be seen in that light. In my own opinion, I'm given to think that A: the VA race was completely predictable (massive voter drop-off), B: the NJ incumbent was very unpopular and the voters wanted something different without being sufficiently motivated to choose the 3rd party candidate (also not much of a surprise) all while C: the general opinion in national politics remains that the Republicans both screwed the electorate and refuse to help do anything to clean up the mess.
So...why did the Republicans fail in the nationals while winning in the states? For this I return us to the old debate of republicanism v. federalism. Without going into too much history, the basic point is that republicans prefer to see small, localized governance while federalists favor a centralized, accountable organization. Both positions have merits but at the moment I want to focus on the constituencies. In short, what we currently call conservatives or a traditional Republicans are all generally small "r" republicans while Democrats and "progressives" are generally federalists, and each camp is generally motivated to turn out for the issues they feel the most strongly about. In the case of the former it tends to be state and local concerns while in the latter it tends to be national issues.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Department of Why's and Means.
While going over my fresh copy of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics earlier today, my mind began to gather the threads of The Philosopher's arguments together and assemble them thus:
Aristotle urges us all to adopt what he calls "the mean" in all our thoughts and deeds. In brief, this is his position that "the good" is best to be found by living persons in practicing moderation. This line of thinking matches nicely the basic premise of Taoism or Mahayana Buddhism; in fact, the admonishment of the madhyamā-pratipad (Sanskrit, if you wish to research it) is expressed explicitly as "the path of moderation away from the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification".
Almost a word for word reiteration of Aristotle.
The second thought that came to me was the great similitude among the philosophical and religious practices of human kind, until the ascendancy of monotheism in the west. Until the Emperor Constantine elevated Christianity from obscure cult to official state religion, monotheism was all but unknown. Until this moment, nobody much cared about the Jews and Islam did not yet exist. The only other attempt by anyone to establish a monotheistic tradition, then with only marginal and extremely short lived success, was Amenhotep IV's establishment of Atenism, or what some people now call the Amarna heresy. What is the relevance? Continue on, dear reader...
In brief, the ancient polytheisms described the world and natural phenomena in the only terms they had; they created agents, ascribed motivations to them and divided the world up under their respective jurisdictions; in many, I would wager most, cases these categories are repeated and replicated from pantheon to pantheon, from tradition to tradition. Why? Because all human brains work in essentially the same manner, reaching essentially the same conclusions, given the same experiences. This is a primitive manifestation of the same practice of science that codifies, classifies and organizes phenomena into its various fields. This is, as others have established in behavioral studies, the normal operation of a human brain; we seek out patterns and associations then commit them to memory for ease of recall and reference.
Which brings me to my more basic point: Monotheism runs counter to the natural behavior of the human brain. Rather than, as polytheism and science do, observing and explaining phenomena in relation to each other and the various known and unknown results of their interactions, monotheism attempts to describe everything in relation to a single, exotopic origin. The infamous Thomas Aquinas attempted to justify this approach by absconding with Aristotle's principle of "The Unmoved Mover". The attempt is flawed though; Aristotle was using the concept in a mechanical argument explaining the seeming motion of the Heavens around the Earth in an early (in my opinion brilliant) attempt to address the "cosmological questions" in a scientific ("how question") manner. When Aquinas and his fellow monotheists adapted the point as a "proof" of gawd!'s existence, they translated into their own subjective terms. Instead of observing the phenomena, seeking the mechanism and then investigating possible agencies, they assume an agent in the forming the question itself. The crux lies in the words "why" and "how".
The usual argument meted out by modern apologists references NOMA, which I have addressed elsewhere and won't explain here again. The short version is this: why and how can both be used to inquire after the cause of an observed phenomenon but (and this is important) why, in it's proper context, always implies a motive because why, excepting only when employed in exclamation, is an inquiry after reason and reason can only be attributed to rational beings. Keeping this in mind, we can now acknowledge that the fundamental question for which philosophers and theologians both seek an answer is, "Why does exist/happen?" Since why implies a purpose, we're left asking, "Who's purpose?" Gawd!'s, naturally.
So here is my second thought's basic point: Why questions, in the religious sense, are inherently dishonest because they demand the exclusion of any answer that does not include any agent.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Liberate Tu Me
Okay, I know I have a reputation for calm, lucid discussion but this time I cannot contain my agitation.
Exactly how in the fuck can anyone claim to support freedom of speech then turn around and decide that it isn't acceptable to express an opinion on an idea simply because some hypersensitive, irrational, superstitious, primitive wack-jobs with control issues can't understand that they are not special?
Worse yet (and I'm not generally one for slippery slope arguments) has it not yet occured to anyone that once you make it okay to silence dissenting opinions under such a braod heading that the real bad guys will start tucking their various atrocities and abusses under that heading? Think I'm being an alarmist? Take long, hard look at Iran or North Korea.
I don't generally disagree with Fearless Leader, but if this plan is getting play from the top, then here is absolutely one area where I'm willing to tell Barry-Boo to check his shit and try again. The only acceptable cause for restricting speech is to preserve public safety; hence the bit about not inciting riot or yelling Fire! in a theater. Such an argument simply does not apply here, period.
Exactly how in the fuck can anyone claim to support freedom of speech then turn around and decide that it isn't acceptable to express an opinion on an idea simply because some hypersensitive, irrational, superstitious, primitive wack-jobs with control issues can't understand that they are not special?
Worse yet (and I'm not generally one for slippery slope arguments) has it not yet occured to anyone that once you make it okay to silence dissenting opinions under such a braod heading that the real bad guys will start tucking their various atrocities and abusses under that heading? Think I'm being an alarmist? Take long, hard look at Iran or North Korea.
I don't generally disagree with Fearless Leader, but if this plan is getting play from the top, then here is absolutely one area where I'm willing to tell Barry-Boo to check his shit and try again. The only acceptable cause for restricting speech is to preserve public safety; hence the bit about not inciting riot or yelling Fire! in a theater. Such an argument simply does not apply here, period.
Back To The Future, Part II
The refrain has gotten nauseating: "The Republican Party/Conservative Movement needs a new leadership to take them/us back to what they/we used to be. They/We need a new, charismatic, inspirational figure, a new Ronald Reagan."
"Just Say NO" might have been a tactic devised by the Reagan White House in dealing with rising drug crime statistics, but the supposed inheritors of that legacy have made it their mantra and modus operandi in dealing with the current reality; appropo then, that this band of not-so-cheerful idiots is determined to meet the new challenges of of tomorrow by regressing, by looking backwards and trying to reach new horizons with their eyes locked steadfastly on the past. Am I painting with too broad a brush mayhaps?
Obviously. That's part of my point; not every person marching under the heraldic Elephant is going to fit under that umbrella and frankly we should be glad. Unfortunately, those persons best positioned to right (pun intended) the party from its current lurching, hobbling gait are being shouted down, villainized and excoriated by their "colleagues" while simultaneously being overshadowed by them. You will not here Arnold, Olympia or Collin calling for a new Reagan and a return to the policies of that Era; they are busy trying to deal with the realities of today and tomorrow, trying to craft a way forward, rather than backward. Instinctively, I think most Americans recognize this on a subconcious level; even the arch-conservatives among my fellow truck drivers ("real Americans" one and all) admit that right now, they mostly like to talk about Reagan in terms of leadership ability, not policy. Even these staunch Commie-Haters recognize that times have changed and that maybe, just maybe, they weren't completely right about everything, all the time.
Unfortunately, this view is embraced by only a tiny minority of party leaders at the moment. These few openly moderate Republicans are undoubtedly gnashing their teeth, unable to challenge the extreme obstructionists without appearing ideologically unreliable which, in a time when every right-wing pol is preparing to fight for political life and the need for campaign funding, in the face of a devastating Democratic advantage, is forcing the RNC and its affiliates to cut off candidates with dicey odds or questionable credentials. The result? A politcal movement that is very visibly trying to back into the future, able only to see its past through rose colored glasses and remaining completely oblivious to the oncoming facts of a changing world.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of all this is the current stream of "we have been wronged" tripe coming from the likes of Boehner and McConnell. They claim to be getting shouted down by the Democrats while "offering common sense, conservative solutions" to the current set of problems besetting the nation. Yet, even when citing this very claim (USA Today, Oct 21, 2009) they never quite seem to get around to describing these supposed "alternatives". Instead, McConnell runs of at the mouth about "political Olympics" while Boehner whines and whinges about how much everything costs. Not one cited solution offered, only paragraphs of complaint, self-pity, jealousy and more of the now characteristic obstructionist prattle. may I remind the gentleman from Kentucky that one does not get to claim offense when patently bad policy is rejected; one "proposal" from the right on the issue of health care proposed that insurance premiums be the target of reform efforts, rather than the going over all expense. Several other proposals all consisted of patchwork "reforms" of select policies without a coherent, systemic plan. one is almost inclined to think the idea was to leave the insurors as many loopholes and vague "requirements" as possible. Given that the entire objective of reform is to change the status quo, rather than enable it, how can these people genuinely expect such proposals to be adopted?
I know I've covered this before, but reforms that do no reforming...are not reforms. We need substance, gentlemen, not semblence.
"Just Say NO" might have been a tactic devised by the Reagan White House in dealing with rising drug crime statistics, but the supposed inheritors of that legacy have made it their mantra and modus operandi in dealing with the current reality; appropo then, that this band of not-so-cheerful idiots is determined to meet the new challenges of of tomorrow by regressing, by looking backwards and trying to reach new horizons with their eyes locked steadfastly on the past. Am I painting with too broad a brush mayhaps?
Obviously. That's part of my point; not every person marching under the heraldic Elephant is going to fit under that umbrella and frankly we should be glad. Unfortunately, those persons best positioned to right (pun intended) the party from its current lurching, hobbling gait are being shouted down, villainized and excoriated by their "colleagues" while simultaneously being overshadowed by them. You will not here Arnold, Olympia or Collin calling for a new Reagan and a return to the policies of that Era; they are busy trying to deal with the realities of today and tomorrow, trying to craft a way forward, rather than backward. Instinctively, I think most Americans recognize this on a subconcious level; even the arch-conservatives among my fellow truck drivers ("real Americans" one and all) admit that right now, they mostly like to talk about Reagan in terms of leadership ability, not policy. Even these staunch Commie-Haters recognize that times have changed and that maybe, just maybe, they weren't completely right about everything, all the time.
Unfortunately, this view is embraced by only a tiny minority of party leaders at the moment. These few openly moderate Republicans are undoubtedly gnashing their teeth, unable to challenge the extreme obstructionists without appearing ideologically unreliable which, in a time when every right-wing pol is preparing to fight for political life and the need for campaign funding, in the face of a devastating Democratic advantage, is forcing the RNC and its affiliates to cut off candidates with dicey odds or questionable credentials. The result? A politcal movement that is very visibly trying to back into the future, able only to see its past through rose colored glasses and remaining completely oblivious to the oncoming facts of a changing world.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of all this is the current stream of "we have been wronged" tripe coming from the likes of Boehner and McConnell. They claim to be getting shouted down by the Democrats while "offering common sense, conservative solutions" to the current set of problems besetting the nation. Yet, even when citing this very claim (USA Today, Oct 21, 2009) they never quite seem to get around to describing these supposed "alternatives". Instead, McConnell runs of at the mouth about "political Olympics" while Boehner whines and whinges about how much everything costs. Not one cited solution offered, only paragraphs of complaint, self-pity, jealousy and more of the now characteristic obstructionist prattle. may I remind the gentleman from Kentucky that one does not get to claim offense when patently bad policy is rejected; one "proposal" from the right on the issue of health care proposed that insurance premiums be the target of reform efforts, rather than the going over all expense. Several other proposals all consisted of patchwork "reforms" of select policies without a coherent, systemic plan. one is almost inclined to think the idea was to leave the insurors as many loopholes and vague "requirements" as possible. Given that the entire objective of reform is to change the status quo, rather than enable it, how can these people genuinely expect such proposals to be adopted?
I know I've covered this before, but reforms that do no reforming...are not reforms. We need substance, gentlemen, not semblence.
The CAT's Out Of The Bag!
In USA Today's Forum section on the 14th of October, 2009 I came across a very interesting article. The author, one David Zinczenko, is the editor in chief of Men's Health and the editorial director of Women's Health and Children's Health magazines. Until reading this article I had no idea who the man was or any regard for those publications he supervises; as of the moment this has changed.
The suggestion of a Calorie Added Tax simply floored me. Here is a concept of stunning, simple elegance with subtle and far reaching effects which I can foresee no ill consequences to. Furthermore, it dovetails so very, very neatly with my own idea for establishing an energy-based global currency. Certainly the conversion between joules and calories would be slightly annoying but here is a perfect opportunity to not only improve our collective health, but to begin shifting to a stable and sustainable economic model in not one but two significant arenas; the model of currency and wealth and the future cost of health care.
Leaving my pet cause aside a moment, let me take up and dust off my MLT hat for a moment. The fact is, people, that no matter how many fad diets and clever chemical supplements society develops, the basic mathematical formula remains and is unchanging: you take in more calories than you burn and your ass is going to balloon. I can attest to this from personal experience; the best health I ever enjoyed was during a time when I was taking in about 1200 calories a day and burning a little more than twice that in my daily exercises. Additionally, the connections between obesity and debilitating, expensive ailments is clearly defined and demonstrated. Finally, it is an inescapable fact that the "food" we as Americans tend to eat the most of are absolutely packed with procedurally added calories, such via the HFCS mentioned by the Honorable Gentleman above. For the record, my current occupation has regularly found me consuming this crap as a regular part of my "diet"; I know whereof I speak.
With that established, let me take a moment to draw your collective attention to another inescapable and ugly fact; there are entirely too many of us buying and eating this "food" because, thanks to the aforementioned subsidies, it is cheap. We have little incentive to spend money on better choices, especially those of us who already live in at best fragile economic conditions. In other words, its cheaper and more convenient to buy and eat the same crap that is practically engineered to be addictive.
So, all that said, let me be the first to second the CAT motion; I don't like paying taxes any more than the next guy but for the sake of all our health, I'll bite that bullet.
The suggestion of a Calorie Added Tax simply floored me. Here is a concept of stunning, simple elegance with subtle and far reaching effects which I can foresee no ill consequences to. Furthermore, it dovetails so very, very neatly with my own idea for establishing an energy-based global currency. Certainly the conversion between joules and calories would be slightly annoying but here is a perfect opportunity to not only improve our collective health, but to begin shifting to a stable and sustainable economic model in not one but two significant arenas; the model of currency and wealth and the future cost of health care.
Leaving my pet cause aside a moment, let me take up and dust off my MLT hat for a moment. The fact is, people, that no matter how many fad diets and clever chemical supplements society develops, the basic mathematical formula remains and is unchanging: you take in more calories than you burn and your ass is going to balloon. I can attest to this from personal experience; the best health I ever enjoyed was during a time when I was taking in about 1200 calories a day and burning a little more than twice that in my daily exercises. Additionally, the connections between obesity and debilitating, expensive ailments is clearly defined and demonstrated. Finally, it is an inescapable fact that the "food" we as Americans tend to eat the most of are absolutely packed with procedurally added calories, such via the HFCS mentioned by the Honorable Gentleman above. For the record, my current occupation has regularly found me consuming this crap as a regular part of my "diet"; I know whereof I speak.
With that established, let me take a moment to draw your collective attention to another inescapable and ugly fact; there are entirely too many of us buying and eating this "food" because, thanks to the aforementioned subsidies, it is cheap. We have little incentive to spend money on better choices, especially those of us who already live in at best fragile economic conditions. In other words, its cheaper and more convenient to buy and eat the same crap that is practically engineered to be addictive.
So, all that said, let me be the first to second the CAT motion; I don't like paying taxes any more than the next guy but for the sake of all our health, I'll bite that bullet.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Personal Physician
There is a doctor out there by the name of Marc Siegel. This notable, an associate Prof. at NYU is apparently offended. Why? Because it has been pointed out that there are some patently mercenary buggers in his profession, more interested in making money than in attending to the health and well-being of patients. Furthermore this person, seemingly specially vulnerable to offence, takes exception, seemingly, at the idea that he may be called upon to discuss the end of life with a patient.
Let me cut to the chase. This particular demagogue is determined to combine his professional credentials with a patently nonsense emotive plea in order to sway persons susceptible to such rubbish. He even makes a plea to the theologian Maimonides, bolstering his scarcely concealed superstition and obviously partisan politics with the assumed authority of religion. He cites anecdotes regarding humane treatment of poor and destitute patients in a purely charitable fashion by someone else as if this somehow repudiates the call for efforts to fix what is broken; "Look at this example of something laudable happening! Why do we need to do anything about anything else, which I am not willing to here discuss, when this particular instance runs totally counter to the thousands of demonstrated examples you're citing?"
However, allow me to demonstrate the integrity of proper medical science: here we have a patient, presenting an assortment of septic, oozing sores from which they bleed without clotting, delirious from septicemia and infested with a multitude of parasites but they are able to walk, and talk and just about two thirds of their tissue is still quite healthy. Shall we attempt to make them well, Doctor, or shall we not because, after all, they are still in the majority sound? Or shall we observe the patient as a whole? That is the core of the question; do we settle for letting the mostly functional system go on as it is or do we try to cure what ails it?
The good Doctor specifically refrains from discussing, "what form any reform should take" and here I cannot help but remind the gentleman of the adage about treating the symptom, since he seems more interested in defending his personal ethics, which nobody is attacking; only a genuine idiot would assume that mercenary or litigious behavior by the extreme minority is held to apply generally. Although one my wonder about guilty consciences. Additionally he seems greatly disturbed by the idea that he may have to face the reality of patients dying.
"My principles run contrary to the idea of meeting with a 65-year-old to discuss specific ways I may withdraw care," sounds noble, but the point it references is far more so; human beings grow old and eventually our bodies and thus our lives fail. Would the good Doctor deny useful information to his patients simply because it makes him uncomfortable? Given his invocation of the "death panel" tripe, even to use it as a negative argument, seems to indicate that very thing. How any physician could make it through med school without grasping this fact of life should consider a refresher course. Life ends sirrah, and you can't treat death; it has been suggested (though I forget the source) that we look to the late Senator Kennedy for inspiration. Death is a part of life; we'd be better served if we focused on living through it instead of trying to escape it. Those who've tried escaping life have generally not been either successful or happy.
In any case, I've already wasted too much time on this. The gist is that this Marc Siegel is taking personally something that is not aimed at his person. Bypassing further digression, I'll make the most important and revealing point: Change is hard and in the process something that has been ceases to be, in other words it dies. I suspect the Doctor should re-familiarize himself with the five stages and recall the old adage, "Physician, heal thyself."
Let me cut to the chase. This particular demagogue is determined to combine his professional credentials with a patently nonsense emotive plea in order to sway persons susceptible to such rubbish. He even makes a plea to the theologian Maimonides, bolstering his scarcely concealed superstition and obviously partisan politics with the assumed authority of religion. He cites anecdotes regarding humane treatment of poor and destitute patients in a purely charitable fashion by someone else as if this somehow repudiates the call for efforts to fix what is broken; "Look at this example of something laudable happening! Why do we need to do anything about anything else, which I am not willing to here discuss, when this particular instance runs totally counter to the thousands of demonstrated examples you're citing?"
However, allow me to demonstrate the integrity of proper medical science: here we have a patient, presenting an assortment of septic, oozing sores from which they bleed without clotting, delirious from septicemia and infested with a multitude of parasites but they are able to walk, and talk and just about two thirds of their tissue is still quite healthy. Shall we attempt to make them well, Doctor, or shall we not because, after all, they are still in the majority sound? Or shall we observe the patient as a whole? That is the core of the question; do we settle for letting the mostly functional system go on as it is or do we try to cure what ails it?
The good Doctor specifically refrains from discussing, "what form any reform should take" and here I cannot help but remind the gentleman of the adage about treating the symptom, since he seems more interested in defending his personal ethics, which nobody is attacking; only a genuine idiot would assume that mercenary or litigious behavior by the extreme minority is held to apply generally. Although one my wonder about guilty consciences. Additionally he seems greatly disturbed by the idea that he may have to face the reality of patients dying.
"My principles run contrary to the idea of meeting with a 65-year-old to discuss specific ways I may withdraw care," sounds noble, but the point it references is far more so; human beings grow old and eventually our bodies and thus our lives fail. Would the good Doctor deny useful information to his patients simply because it makes him uncomfortable? Given his invocation of the "death panel" tripe, even to use it as a negative argument, seems to indicate that very thing. How any physician could make it through med school without grasping this fact of life should consider a refresher course. Life ends sirrah, and you can't treat death; it has been suggested (though I forget the source) that we look to the late Senator Kennedy for inspiration. Death is a part of life; we'd be better served if we focused on living through it instead of trying to escape it. Those who've tried escaping life have generally not been either successful or happy.
In any case, I've already wasted too much time on this. The gist is that this Marc Siegel is taking personally something that is not aimed at his person. Bypassing further digression, I'll make the most important and revealing point: Change is hard and in the process something that has been ceases to be, in other words it dies. I suspect the Doctor should re-familiarize himself with the five stages and recall the old adage, "Physician, heal thyself."
Neville Chamberlain is Alive and Well
Spare me a moment to indulge in a bit of growling in the general direction of one Oliver Thomas for his recent contribution to the The Forum page of USA Today, "Is Secularism Saving Marriage?" (Monday, September 14, 2009)
My views and opinions on ecclesiastics should, by this point, be well known to any person who has taken the time to familiarize themselves with my writing. Furthermore, I dislike finding myself in the position of sending negativity in the direction of person who might otherwise consider themselves to be allies...or at least sympathetic to certain of my opinions. However, I can't allow myself to agree that non-antagonistic faith-heads are not also part of our collective social malfunction right alongside their more vehement and violent Brethren.
O. Thomas's pondering about marriage and his conclusions (such as they are) while not immediately offensive still carry the distinct tenor and odor of condescension that generally raises my hackles. I am prepared to let pass unchallenged his general mystification that secularism does not lead to the "other half" of society getting divorced; I can easily grasp that recognizing that false conclusions follow logically from false premises isn't easy for someone who assumes their premises are inerrant to begin with. What irks me is firstly his assertion that religious institutions should be heeded because they "have constructive things to teach us" about marriage. The breezy citing of the X-ian admonishment against adultery grates however; can he honestly expect any intelligent person to think that a prohibition against pursuing another person's mate is somehow unique to religion? Or is it simply that he supposes the rest of us are too stupid to understand, instinctively, that such behavior would be disruptive, to say the least?
Less definite but more important is the generally magnanimous tone of the article; how generous and conciliatory of him, to acknowledge that it could be possible that good and socially proper behavior might follow from so wayward a source as human behavior which is, in his own confessed opinion, inherently sinful. No doubt he feels both quite clever for seeing such connection and inclusive for expressing it, openly, and even endorsing the way this contributes to the religious argument.
I admit freely that Mr. Thomas most probably means well. It does not escape me that I may very probably be allowing my own bias to color my perception. I have history on my side however and I defy anyone to demonstrate that my growling and pacing is unjustified.
My views and opinions on ecclesiastics should, by this point, be well known to any person who has taken the time to familiarize themselves with my writing. Furthermore, I dislike finding myself in the position of sending negativity in the direction of person who might otherwise consider themselves to be allies...or at least sympathetic to certain of my opinions. However, I can't allow myself to agree that non-antagonistic faith-heads are not also part of our collective social malfunction right alongside their more vehement and violent Brethren.
O. Thomas's pondering about marriage and his conclusions (such as they are) while not immediately offensive still carry the distinct tenor and odor of condescension that generally raises my hackles. I am prepared to let pass unchallenged his general mystification that secularism does not lead to the "other half" of society getting divorced; I can easily grasp that recognizing that false conclusions follow logically from false premises isn't easy for someone who assumes their premises are inerrant to begin with. What irks me is firstly his assertion that religious institutions should be heeded because they "have constructive things to teach us" about marriage. The breezy citing of the X-ian admonishment against adultery grates however; can he honestly expect any intelligent person to think that a prohibition against pursuing another person's mate is somehow unique to religion? Or is it simply that he supposes the rest of us are too stupid to understand, instinctively, that such behavior would be disruptive, to say the least?
Less definite but more important is the generally magnanimous tone of the article; how generous and conciliatory of him, to acknowledge that it could be possible that good and socially proper behavior might follow from so wayward a source as human behavior which is, in his own confessed opinion, inherently sinful. No doubt he feels both quite clever for seeing such connection and inclusive for expressing it, openly, and even endorsing the way this contributes to the religious argument.
I admit freely that Mr. Thomas most probably means well. It does not escape me that I may very probably be allowing my own bias to color my perception. I have history on my side however and I defy anyone to demonstrate that my growling and pacing is unjustified.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Emergent Misbehavior
I am goingto make this breif; I typed a gorgeous 3 pager and then accidentally deleted it.
I have recently identified what I think to be a disturbing pattern in the behavior of the Right Wing of the GOP. Please understand that I am not identifying the GOP as "the Right Wing", because the truth is that this is not the case. Once upon a time they word lead primarily by centrists who were evry good at finding compromises with the center-left leadership of the Democratic Party. After the conservative hardliners took control of the Republican leadership in the mid-90's though, there was an end of it. As I have noted previously (thanks to mum, it was her phrasing) we are no longer talkign about a difference of opinions characterized by, "I'm right and you're wrong and we can talk it out." Now we are quite firmly in the grip of, "I'm right and you're evil and that's an end of it because we will not negotiate with evil."
The pattern I have identified is something that I have dimly, subconciously aware of for years but which only recently came into my immediate awareness in the last year or so and which I have only felt able to properly express since the GOP rebuttal of Obama's healthcare address to the joint congress on September 9th, 2009.
My conciousness of this was first sparked by a British film, In The Loop by Armando Iannucci. In this film, a US official does something that is greatly disturbing. He instructs an underling to run through the available data and find those things which support a particular administrative assertion which in turn is used to justify a particular administrative action. Why is this such an alarming thing?
Reason commands us to observe the data and to follow it, logically, to the conclusion which the data supports. What this fictional official (and I am sad to say this is a photo-perfect characterization of the conservative of the last decade or so) is the exact opposite. He wants information to be produced which supports what he has already decided. Let me be clear, this is not case of making an assertion and then testing it against the objective data; rather it merely seeking to justify an assertion after the fact. That screaming and weeping you here is the entirety of the dead philosophers, logicians, historians and scientists of Western civilization.
Let me give some extracts of mine from a recent thread on Pete's forum:
...This whole incident is sordid and a perfect example of the power of truthiness. Does it matter what the actual facts are when there are people out there ready to believe whatever seems most agreeable to them? Here is an interesting fact: human beings have a habit of assuming the intelligence and integrity of any person who says things they themselves say. The have a habit of assuming the worst in the case of any sort of cognitive dissonance...
And then a little farther down:
...Let me draw a little wisdom from someone who isn't a doctor, but does play one on TV(sometimes); "A diagnosis that doesn't diagnose anything isn't a diagnosis." By the same token, an explanation which does no bonafide explanatory work is not an explanation and, building along this logical progress, any solution which does not actually solve the problem is in no way at all a solution.
So, once again and rephrased, how much time should we commit to nonsolutions, and why...
...The president (and those of us who support him on this issue) are more than willing to entertain and even endorse a multitude of conservative ideas, not because it is good politics but because the ideas themselves are sound.
However, we need to make it understood and to that end I will repeat myself again, "The validity of any one propsition does not in any way validate other propositions from the same source. Nor does said validity invalidate any proposition from an opposing source, purely on the basis of those sources..."
...let me once again reiterate that this issue is not a binary equation, despite the desperate efforts of certain persons to frame it as such; neither is the demonstrated pattern of post-1994 right wing hard ballers of fitting fact to fancy a legitimate method of winning an argument. This gist of any such "method" winds up reducing to, "There are select facts which, exluding other facts, support my assertion and therefore whatever is said by anyone disagreeing with my assertion is necesarily false." Considering that this is the same "logic" employed by these conservative lawmakers' notorious "Real American" constituants, I suppose we should not be suprised...
Keeping all of this mind, let me draw your attention back to the GOP rebuttal of the president's address, as delivered by Representative Charles Boustany. What a damningly obvious proof of my claim. Knowing full well that these people recieved advance copies of the speech, that they are all well educated, that they must be aware of the public's ability and demonstrated willingness to fact-check and that they had to be paying attention as Obama was delivering the address one is left wondering, slack-jawed, at the fact that the first salient point made in the rebuttal was to state plainly that Obama hadn't shown any willingness to budge on what we are calling "the public option" less than ten minutes after he stated exactly that!
Words fail. I am left having to decide if the right wing leaderhsip of the GOP is insane, idiotic or simply so contemptuous of the American people that they are convinced they can ignore reality altogether when it fails to conform to their rhetoric.
I have recently identified what I think to be a disturbing pattern in the behavior of the Right Wing of the GOP. Please understand that I am not identifying the GOP as "the Right Wing", because the truth is that this is not the case. Once upon a time they word lead primarily by centrists who were evry good at finding compromises with the center-left leadership of the Democratic Party. After the conservative hardliners took control of the Republican leadership in the mid-90's though, there was an end of it. As I have noted previously (thanks to mum, it was her phrasing) we are no longer talkign about a difference of opinions characterized by, "I'm right and you're wrong and we can talk it out." Now we are quite firmly in the grip of, "I'm right and you're evil and that's an end of it because we will not negotiate with evil."
The pattern I have identified is something that I have dimly, subconciously aware of for years but which only recently came into my immediate awareness in the last year or so and which I have only felt able to properly express since the GOP rebuttal of Obama's healthcare address to the joint congress on September 9th, 2009.
My conciousness of this was first sparked by a British film, In The Loop by Armando Iannucci. In this film, a US official does something that is greatly disturbing. He instructs an underling to run through the available data and find those things which support a particular administrative assertion which in turn is used to justify a particular administrative action. Why is this such an alarming thing?
Reason commands us to observe the data and to follow it, logically, to the conclusion which the data supports. What this fictional official (and I am sad to say this is a photo-perfect characterization of the conservative of the last decade or so) is the exact opposite. He wants information to be produced which supports what he has already decided. Let me be clear, this is not case of making an assertion and then testing it against the objective data; rather it merely seeking to justify an assertion after the fact. That screaming and weeping you here is the entirety of the dead philosophers, logicians, historians and scientists of Western civilization.
Let me give some extracts of mine from a recent thread on Pete's forum:
...This whole incident is sordid and a perfect example of the power of truthiness. Does it matter what the actual facts are when there are people out there ready to believe whatever seems most agreeable to them? Here is an interesting fact: human beings have a habit of assuming the intelligence and integrity of any person who says things they themselves say. The have a habit of assuming the worst in the case of any sort of cognitive dissonance...
And then a little farther down:
...Let me draw a little wisdom from someone who isn't a doctor, but does play one on TV(sometimes); "A diagnosis that doesn't diagnose anything isn't a diagnosis." By the same token, an explanation which does no bonafide explanatory work is not an explanation and, building along this logical progress, any solution which does not actually solve the problem is in no way at all a solution.
So, once again and rephrased, how much time should we commit to nonsolutions, and why...
...The president (and those of us who support him on this issue) are more than willing to entertain and even endorse a multitude of conservative ideas, not because it is good politics but because the ideas themselves are sound.
However, we need to make it understood and to that end I will repeat myself again, "The validity of any one propsition does not in any way validate other propositions from the same source. Nor does said validity invalidate any proposition from an opposing source, purely on the basis of those sources..."
...let me once again reiterate that this issue is not a binary equation, despite the desperate efforts of certain persons to frame it as such; neither is the demonstrated pattern of post-1994 right wing hard ballers of fitting fact to fancy a legitimate method of winning an argument. This gist of any such "method" winds up reducing to, "There are select facts which, exluding other facts, support my assertion and therefore whatever is said by anyone disagreeing with my assertion is necesarily false." Considering that this is the same "logic" employed by these conservative lawmakers' notorious "Real American" constituants, I suppose we should not be suprised...
Keeping all of this mind, let me draw your attention back to the GOP rebuttal of the president's address, as delivered by Representative Charles Boustany. What a damningly obvious proof of my claim. Knowing full well that these people recieved advance copies of the speech, that they are all well educated, that they must be aware of the public's ability and demonstrated willingness to fact-check and that they had to be paying attention as Obama was delivering the address one is left wondering, slack-jawed, at the fact that the first salient point made in the rebuttal was to state plainly that Obama hadn't shown any willingness to budge on what we are calling "the public option" less than ten minutes after he stated exactly that!
Words fail. I am left having to decide if the right wing leaderhsip of the GOP is insane, idiotic or simply so contemptuous of the American people that they are convinced they can ignore reality altogether when it fails to conform to their rhetoric.
A Furious Vengence
...I return to you, my netizens, like a dead and buried Jesus; I am, however, no meek and mild mild redeemer but like my dear freind Spider, "Pissed as all hell, gnawing my nail-holes and wondering which Roman ass to kick first." ...no offence to any Romans who might be reading this; I deeply admire your civilization, culture and art. Please don't invade me.
I cannot and will not make any excuses for my long neglect of my duties as your beacon of truth and light (get the sun block, mate; I have been known to cause cancer) and will say only this: I allowed myself to be coaxed into the frame of mind that the fight was essentially over, that the grow-ups were back in charge and that I could go back to minding my own business, worrying my own troubles and generally let Fearless Leader do his job. I was wrong. How wrong? Epicly.
Stay tuned.
I cannot and will not make any excuses for my long neglect of my duties as your beacon of truth and light (get the sun block, mate; I have been known to cause cancer) and will say only this: I allowed myself to be coaxed into the frame of mind that the fight was essentially over, that the grow-ups were back in charge and that I could go back to minding my own business, worrying my own troubles and generally let Fearless Leader do his job. I was wrong. How wrong? Epicly.
Stay tuned.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Iran Before I Walked
So I've been perched at the top of the mountain behind Wheeling, WV at the TA truck stop for a few days, and been getting blasted by Faux News for the entire time. Aside from the usual questions about how many ulcers this is going to cause, I have a specific question raised by Glen O'Reilitty van Sustren.
Exactly what the hell do these people want from Obama, with regard to the current unrest in Iran? Quick review:
June 12th, 2009 saw elections for the Presidency of Iran. The challenger, Hossein Mousavi, called the whole thing a fraud, after incumbent President Ahmadinejad had claimed to have been re-elected by a margin of 11 million votes. The protesting began and Mousavi has been calling for the whole thing to be thrown out and a new election to be run, presumably one allowing outside observers, although I can't confirm that. Meanwhile, at Friday prayers on the 19th the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement ruling out election fraud, condemning protesters, blaming foreign powers for causing the whole row and generally trying to tell everyone to shut up, sit down and get back to business.
That went over like a lead falafal and street show has carried on since, unabated, with Mousavi calling for marches and strikes. additionally, there have been protests and demonstrations here in the US and possibly elsewhere, I haven't been able to confirm that yet either.
Now with all that going on, we turn briefly to the White House and Fearless Leader, aka President Barack "Barry" Obama. This fellow has been talking about dialog and diplomacy, trying to use discourse and understanding to repair and maybe normalize relations with Tehran. in the face of the current situation, his response has been very measured and carefully worded.
On the 16th, he gave an interview with CNBC where he addressed the election, saying that while the whole thing bears scrutiny, our aims and our obstacles won't change substantially. On the 20th, he delivered more forceful remarks, but has maintained his stance that this is an internal affair of Iran. It would seem though, that isn't sufficient for the Foxists.
This whole weekend has been committed, almost exclusively, to A: saying Obama isn't supporting the American Ideal because he's not....I dunno, not saying mean enough things to Tehran? Not sending our armed forces to get involved in yet another foreign war? ...anyway, and then B: talking about how wrong Obama is for not doing those things I just said, especially since lots and lots of people in Washington (you know, those super-patriots the Republicans) are just tripping over each other to bash the Islamo-fascists. McCain's been all over this, in a nice, thinly veiled "Well if _I_ were to have won..." session, which is absolutely hilarious because he of all people should understand why getting involved in foreign wars is a bad idea which is a lesson that even old man Kissinger seems to have picked up on.
So again I ask, what exactly is it these people think they want? To continue the same tired old rhetoric that hasn't work for the last 40 years? To get involved in yet another foreign war? Seriously people, this game is just getting silly. The world has changed, the Cold War is over, we don't need to keep running in Us versus Them mode. Seriously people. The war is over.
Friday, June 19, 2009
A Pounding of Prevention, pt. 2
Let's take a moment to talk about communism, capitalism, humanity and health care. How does it all relate? Read on, True Believers!
First of all I want to address the accusations of socialism and the cries of rampant nationalization being leveled at Fearless Leader.
I favor the establishment of a Federally run health insurance or care option. Not a outright nationalization, but the providing of a baseline option. Now before anyone cries Trojan Horse, let me point out a little fact about a government provided service: the public school system. What exactly am I trying to point out? The fact that the existence of the public school system, which has been operated as a government institution for decades, has not caused the disappearance of private education. Same-same with the Post Office; we have FedEx, UPS and other private parcel shipping companies even though there is this thing called the USPS that is largely subsidized by federal tax dollars. So much for the Trojan Horse.
Now the next point I want to address is a bit convoluted, but bear with me.
I am a fan of the free market. I like Capitalism and have a healthy distrust of Communism, simply based on the track record. Specifically we have seen, through the Rise and Fall of The Soviet Union that Communism tends to commoditize human beings, essentially treating them like the property of the state. I don't think anyone would argue against that (except of course, genuine Communists). That being said however, we must keep firmly in mind that "The Market" is not a moral or ethical entity; "The Market" is a construct, a mechanism for distributing goods and services. Even in a liberal society, that is one that is largely free from governmental dictation, we must keep in mind that the sole concern of "The Market" is fulfilling its function as a mechanism and that the societal values we purport to hold dear are the work of the participants in our society, not the products of Capitalism.
The problem, Oh My Children, is that Capitalism cannot and does not make value decisions about anything other than profitability and when profit because the focus of a society, you get the exact same problem that you get under Communism. People become commodities, like raw material. Which brings me to my point.
My Sainted Mother (who will both deny and beat me for saying it again) likes to continue repeating to me that, "People are not things." Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened in the current health care system.
I'm told that once upon a time, hospitals and health insurance were strictly no-profit agencies. Then at some point in the 1970's certain parties lobbied, successfully, to be allowed to run for profit set-ups, on the theory that profit motive and market force competition would improve the quality of health care and many good things have come from the competition for the next big breakthrough or advance. Unfortunately what has been gained has come at enormous cost, in terms of health care for the vast majority of people.
In the first case we have the dark side of profit motive currently afflicting health care operations: Greed. In the continuing search for more money, patients are being rammed through as fast as possible. Doctors spend something like fifteen minutes with a patient in a given visitation and then move on to the next as quickly as possible. The rule is to push as many people through the doors as fast as possible in order to rack up as many sales as possible. This is not good medicine, which like any scientific discipline should be handled in a careful, deliberate manner with an eye for accuracy. We're talking about people and their health, not ticket sales for an amusement park.
Secondly is the matter of individual practitioners. There are now fewer general practice physicians than ever entering practice while the ranks of the highest paid specialists swell, particular in fields such as cosmetic surgery. It isn't hard to understand why; that's where the money is to be made. So now we can compound the production line health care policy with a paucity of GP's, which both increases the strain on those GP's and decreases the number of patients which can be seen at a given time.
Third on the list, we need to have a long, hard look at the pharmo-corps manufacturing the medications vital to our health care. Now I don't think anyone cold possibly argue that the drug companies have every right to make a profit on the discoveries they make. Nor can anyone legitimately argue that they shouldn't try to match supply with demand. At what point however, was it decided that non-therapeutic modifications of existing drugs constituted a legitimate reason to exploit patent laws in order to create a monopoly? Furthermore, current direct to consumer marketing has created a situation where individual patients are coming to their doctors and screaming for drugs they don't need for conditions they either don't have or whose legitimacy is at best questionable; we're talking about convenience drugging. Dammit people, we're talking about pharmaceuticals not bloody soft-drinks!
Point the fourth is the shameless profiteering of the insurance companies. I can almost give these people a certain amount of sympathy; they have a mandate, as profit companies, to maximize shareholder value. How do they do that? Simple, only insure people who are the least likely to actually need health care and charge the highest possible rate you can. In other words maximise revenues and minimize expenses, which is basic econ. The problem here is that the people who most need health care are the exact same ones that the for-profit insurers do their bloody best to drop from the rolls as fast as possible, assuming they ever sign them to begin with! Worse yet, if you do happen to need to use your coverage (assuming you have any) and further assuming they can't get rid of you afterwards then you can reasonably expect your rates to double or even triple, as the insurer does its level best to extract the money they spent out of you.
There's more but there you have the single biggest, most obvious problems. What does it amount to? In short, in the business of health care, health care has taken a back seat to profitability. Patients have become commodities to be shuffled about and traded, like little potted money trees.
Finally, there is the problem of rampant, frivolous lawsuits and abuses of laws enacted to protect the rights of patients from slipshod medical practice. Vast amount of time and money are wasted in the practice of defensive medicine.
I don't know, maybe I'm more sensitive to the situation than most having worked in the medical field, in the production end. Having worked, furthermore, as part of the DoD health network. I can honestly say that I've seen the system work, at least in my own experience. Admittedly it isn't perfect and I know personally of a truly spectacular case of bad judgement, but that was a matter of a human being making a piss-poor decision. The decision wasn't the result of a system failure, other than failing to sufficiently impress on the individual in question the importance of correct medical judgement. That sort of thing can be dealt with through proper training. In any case, setting the issue of federal health care aside, lets just take a minute to consider a proposal.
Why is it a good idea to pay doctors on the basis of volume? Should they be judged on the quality of their work, rather than the quantity? Some hospitals bring in doctors and pay them salary. I think that this, combined with returning hospitals to their non-profit orientation, would produce a good net result. How, you ask? Because the way to improve health care is to put the focus back on patients instead of profits. It is possible to do this without completely stripping out competition or individual motivation. Converting hospitals back to nonprofits doesn't eliminate their ability to hire and pay health care workers on a competitive, salaried basis. Hospitals that want the best physicians will compete with each other for those physicians, in terms of salaries and spending on R&D, equipment and the myriad of ancillary services that the best health care demands. Physicians will be competing with each other for entry to the best hospitals with access to all the above.
Additional measures should include:
Reform of drug patent laws which allow a handful of companies to monopolize drug production and prevent the availability of inexpensive generic medicines
Reform of medication marketing laws which allow these major manufacturers to by-pass the trained medical community and push drugs directly on the public.
Reform of medical lawsuits, to protect health care workers from frivolous suits and end the practice of "defensive medicine".
Finally, health insurance agencies need to be restructured as non-profit organizations, with regulations specifically tailored to protect patients' rights to treatment and guarantee the ability of providers to focus on treating patients instead of maximizing monetary gains for the insurer.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Tyranny of Democracy
So where to begin? Logically, the basic question.
Which takes precedence, personal liberty or majority rule? That is the dilemma presented by a democratic society. The ideal behind democracy is self determination but any society requires individuals to surrender at least some freedoms in order to coexist peacefully. OK, fair enough, but where is the line between cooperation and coercion?
Just to avoid an confusion, let me state specifically that yes, I'm talking about California and that farce called Prop 8. The basis of the argument is simple; a majority of voters in California have said that the state of "marriage" is specifically and exclusively a condition between one male and one female. So, being democratic, they won the vote and that's it right? Majority rule.
Well, actually no. You see there is this thing called a tyranny of the majority. It means that the majority uses its power to marginalize or exploit the minority. Its been a fact of life in every, even nominally democratic nation in history, starting in ancient Greece and running up to the modern era. Probably the most blatant form is the outright enslavement of a segment of a population, and the most obvious, recent historical instance within these United States has got to be the "separate but equal" tripe promulgated under Jim Crow and the Black Codes.
Today we are seeing the old struggle again with a new segment of the population, sparked by a particular issue, as is usual. The point of contention this time is marriage and the group in question are homosexuals. The group of people who are trying to keep the discrimination in place are, no surprise, religious types with a superstitious ax to grind. Sound unfair and inflammatory? Well, a quick Google search for "Argument against gay marriage" turns up as its first link, the "Ten Arguments Page" for NoGayMarriage.com.
A quick read demonstrates that this particular community uses its personal religious convictions as the core of its "arguments", most of which are obvious fear-mongering.
A perusal of "Focus on the Family" reveals that what seems like a rational and benevolent organization is simply a less inflammatory forum for the exact same primitive superstitions. The chief argument against gay marriage (and indeed any kind of 'sexual deviance') is that it/they "are not part of God's will". This is backed up by many opinion pieces which attempt to make connections such as, "Childhood Sexual Abuse and Male Homosexuality". The piece is laughable; the authors and the publishers don't seem to understand that correlation is not the same thing as causation. Or it may be that they simply don't care, so long as they can paint a graphic and negative mental picture fr their audience. They certainly don't seem concerned with such trivialities as putting an end to bullying by more aggressive, more physical boys. Perhaps they see it as the victim's fault, for not being sufficiently "manly".
In any case, the arguments are essentially the same as those put forward a century ago when we were discussing race. Either its "ungodly" or "unnatural" or "socially unhealthy". What it really comes down to though, is "I don't understand this, it makes me uncomfortable and I don't want to have to deal with it." If it were somehow possible for people to not have to explain sex to their kids, I expect this wouldn't be so much an issue; they would be able to simply ignore the entire thing. So that's the whole issue, really, and it rings hollow in any case.
There is no escaping the fact of homosexuality and these people are doing their precious children (whom we're all apparently supposed to be thinking of) a tremendous disservice by not dealing with it. The fact is, the kids are going to encounter it at some point and the only responsible thing to do is address it, just like you are supposed to explain hetero sex to them.
None of that matter much to the likes of those mentioned above; read the language of their rhetoric and you can easily discern that what they really want is for all of these uncomfortable issues to just go away. Whether because they just find it all icky and confusing or because they are genuine "true believers" who thinks its offensive to their imaginary friend in the sky, they all think the world would be a much better place if the homosexuals would just go away. So they are bound and determined to make life as unequal and intolerable and uncivil as possible for this particular minority. All for no better reason than the accident of their birth.
Taken from a different angle, this irrational behavior on the part of the Prop 8 crowd is blatant sexism. They aren't upset that two particular people are in a relationship, they're upset because one of them isn't the right gender!
"That person is male/female, how dare you, a male/female, want to be their partner?!"
This is no different than:
"That person is white/black, how dare you, a black/white, want to be their partner?!"
In both cases we're talking about a physiological trait that the subject was born with. How is the one anymore acceptable a form of discrimination than another?
Of course these same protectors of public morality are willing to extend an olive branch; homosexuals can have something else, we'll call it a civil union, that can be equal to marriage, only separate.
Separate but equal. Should sound familiar to a great many people, but in case it isn't, let me remind you of Brown v. Board of Education, where we were supposed to have learned that separate is inherently unequal.
Ironically, those voices which are the loudest in declaiming their support for the rights of individuals in more modern battles are the ones demanding that rights be withheld from others. The Becks, Hannitys, O'Reillys and Limbaughs all like to tell us how much they value personal liberty, how sacred is individual freedom. They also proceed to tell us that apparently a significant chuck of society needs to have those liberties and freedoms denied to them, for the benefit of all. Of course the benefit they're talking about usually refers to either A: the freedom of the majority to marginalize a minority or B: the supposed need to comply with the demands of the imaginary friend that lives in the sky.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
50%, plus one.
This is a terrifying way to run things. How many evil things have been justified in the name of "majority rule"? How many times has the majority been shown to be either A: a highly vocal minority, or B: just plain wrong? Hard telling.
I find it almost comical that we're still having this argument. Its tellingly ironic that those people who claim to be the great protectors of personal liberties (yeah, I mean the barking dogs of the right) are the loudest and most aggrieved opponents of same-sex marriage. As with smoking, I'm not a participant, but I don't see the bloody problem. ...as always however, let me start with basic principles.
...you know what. Fuck it.
Normally I'd do a detailed and scathing assault on the likes of Hannity, Beck and the rest of the trogs, but I'm not up to it tonight.
Let me just strip this whole thing to the bones: There is a large segment of society, maybe or maybe not an actual majority, which is determined to stop another segment from enjoying the same civil liberties as themselves. Why? It doesn't matter why, its fucking wrong.
I cannot grasp this. What sort of bizarro world are we living in where I have to defend the freedoms of my fellow human beings in the United States of America? Last time I checked, personal freedom was supposed to be assumed, not subject to authentification.
This is a terrifying way to run things. How many evil things have been justified in the name of "majority rule"? How many times has the majority been shown to be either A: a highly vocal minority, or B: just plain wrong? Hard telling.
I find it almost comical that we're still having this argument. Its tellingly ironic that those people who claim to be the great protectors of personal liberties (yeah, I mean the barking dogs of the right) are the loudest and most aggrieved opponents of same-sex marriage. As with smoking, I'm not a participant, but I don't see the bloody problem. ...as always however, let me start with basic principles.
...you know what. Fuck it.
Normally I'd do a detailed and scathing assault on the likes of Hannity, Beck and the rest of the trogs, but I'm not up to it tonight.
Let me just strip this whole thing to the bones: There is a large segment of society, maybe or maybe not an actual majority, which is determined to stop another segment from enjoying the same civil liberties as themselves. Why? It doesn't matter why, its fucking wrong.
I cannot grasp this. What sort of bizarro world are we living in where I have to defend the freedoms of my fellow human beings in the United States of America? Last time I checked, personal freedom was supposed to be assumed, not subject to authentification.
Tu Quieres Con Papas?
Let’s cut to the chase. Disenfranchisement is a scary idea.
Nobody likes the thought that suddenly their voice isn’t going to be counted any more. The idea of suddenly losing the power to control your own life is effing frightening and for good reason. Disenfranchisement can so easily lead to exploitation, loss of civil liberties and exclusion from the best opportunities on offer in modern life.
Many people around the world, throughout the course of history, have killed and died over the issue; many others have never known that there was even something to be missed. Unsurprisingly, those who’ve known what its like to be one the powerless minority are frequently the most vocal supporters of expanding the franchise and including as many people as possible. Also unsurprisingly, those who’ve never not been a part of the franchise are generally the ones least inclined to be very supportive of such actions. This is hardly a shock in a system reliant upon elected representation; when numbers of votes dictate who has the power, any sensible faction would commit all available resources to monopolizing as many votes as possible.
This is true of the general electorate, of the houses of legislature…and of the members of the Supreme Court. Enter Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
So why am I rambling on about the franchise and minorities? Well what the hell exactly is it you think the Elephants are so scared of? This nomination represents, in a single stroke, not one but two demographic variations from what they are comfortable with. She’s Hispanic and a woman. The combination represents a total unknown for them and the unknown, as we all know, is the single most terrifying thing in the world to a conservative. Compounding the problem is the little issue of numbers I mentioned above; there are a fixed number of seats on the bench and therefore a limited amount of power. If some of that power goes to Sotomayor and whatever it is she represents, then there must, by definition, be less available to the grey-faced, old, white men. Now you see where I’m going with this?
Having said this though, we need to be honest with ourselves; the fear of the Elephants is real. It isn’t contrived or an act. Think hard and look back to the first sentence I put up there at the top.
Its easy to disparage the angry white man as a stereotype. We see him as an ignorant, insensitive, arrogant, shot-sighted bastard. At best, comically self-defeating and at worst actively and successfully malevolent, it is far too easy to forget that there is a real person behind it with real feelings, real fears such as suddenly finding themselves disenfranchised. This is not an apology; my Caucasian brothers are dead wrong when they let themselves descend to racism, sexism or religious bigotry. This is merely an attempt to explain the mechanism driving it. It is also an attempt to point out the glaring flaw, the painfully obvious point of origin of the problem. In a word: hypocrisy.
Unlike certain right-wing leaders, I will not make a claim of being able (or even willing) to read the minds of a collection of Enlightenment scholars and diplomats who’ve been dead for 200 years. It may well be that they were all a pack of small-minded, misogynistic racists and bigots; I choose to think better of them and believe that, despite the practical realities of the time, they really meant for all men (as a species, not a gender) to be equals. The work they left us certainly seems to back me in this. What is inescapable however is that we, their inheritors, have failed to uphold such an ideal and that is why the Elephants are afraid and have been for so long. A long legacy of disenfranchisement of the minorities has lead them to believe, perhaps rightly, that such their fate.
The fallacy of this line of thinking is obvious but seems feeble in the face of far more visceral fear. The argument from the Elephants is that somebody has to hold the lash and they are far happier being the ones doing the holding. They cannot, emotionally, grasp the idea that we can throw it away.
Nobody likes the thought that suddenly their voice isn’t going to be counted any more. The idea of suddenly losing the power to control your own life is effing frightening and for good reason. Disenfranchisement can so easily lead to exploitation, loss of civil liberties and exclusion from the best opportunities on offer in modern life.
Many people around the world, throughout the course of history, have killed and died over the issue; many others have never known that there was even something to be missed. Unsurprisingly, those who’ve known what its like to be one the powerless minority are frequently the most vocal supporters of expanding the franchise and including as many people as possible. Also unsurprisingly, those who’ve never not been a part of the franchise are generally the ones least inclined to be very supportive of such actions. This is hardly a shock in a system reliant upon elected representation; when numbers of votes dictate who has the power, any sensible faction would commit all available resources to monopolizing as many votes as possible.
This is true of the general electorate, of the houses of legislature…and of the members of the Supreme Court. Enter Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
So why am I rambling on about the franchise and minorities? Well what the hell exactly is it you think the Elephants are so scared of? This nomination represents, in a single stroke, not one but two demographic variations from what they are comfortable with. She’s Hispanic and a woman. The combination represents a total unknown for them and the unknown, as we all know, is the single most terrifying thing in the world to a conservative. Compounding the problem is the little issue of numbers I mentioned above; there are a fixed number of seats on the bench and therefore a limited amount of power. If some of that power goes to Sotomayor and whatever it is she represents, then there must, by definition, be less available to the grey-faced, old, white men. Now you see where I’m going with this?
Having said this though, we need to be honest with ourselves; the fear of the Elephants is real. It isn’t contrived or an act. Think hard and look back to the first sentence I put up there at the top.
Its easy to disparage the angry white man as a stereotype. We see him as an ignorant, insensitive, arrogant, shot-sighted bastard. At best, comically self-defeating and at worst actively and successfully malevolent, it is far too easy to forget that there is a real person behind it with real feelings, real fears such as suddenly finding themselves disenfranchised. This is not an apology; my Caucasian brothers are dead wrong when they let themselves descend to racism, sexism or religious bigotry. This is merely an attempt to explain the mechanism driving it. It is also an attempt to point out the glaring flaw, the painfully obvious point of origin of the problem. In a word: hypocrisy.
Unlike certain right-wing leaders, I will not make a claim of being able (or even willing) to read the minds of a collection of Enlightenment scholars and diplomats who’ve been dead for 200 years. It may well be that they were all a pack of small-minded, misogynistic racists and bigots; I choose to think better of them and believe that, despite the practical realities of the time, they really meant for all men (as a species, not a gender) to be equals. The work they left us certainly seems to back me in this. What is inescapable however is that we, their inheritors, have failed to uphold such an ideal and that is why the Elephants are afraid and have been for so long. A long legacy of disenfranchisement of the minorities has lead them to believe, perhaps rightly, that such their fate.
The fallacy of this line of thinking is obvious but seems feeble in the face of far more visceral fear. The argument from the Elephants is that somebody has to hold the lash and they are far happier being the ones doing the holding. They cannot, emotionally, grasp the idea that we can throw it away.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Ask Not
As President, John Kennedy (may he rest) once challenged this nation to rise to an impossible challenge; to do something that had never before been done and whose feasibility was questionable at best. He challenged to go to the moon and return safely. We rose to that challenge and the history of what came of it is writ large.
In the current day, Barrack Obama has challenged us to do a task which may well be just as, if not more, monumental but whose parameters are known to us. To move away from unsustainable energy policies and invest instead in cleaner, more efficient technologies such as personal cars powered by alternative energy and efficient mass transit systems. I've talked about this before and hope that I communicated my points well.
What has me so absolutely agitated today is the attitude of the silly buggers at "The Cato Institute". Okay, I get the whole differing view thing. I myself would start getting nervous if everyone suddenly started agreeing all the time. On the other hand, if your going to be a productive contributor, aren't you supposed to follow up your objections with alternatives? This is not what I'm getting from Jerry Taylor and Randal O' Toole. There chief objection seems to be, boiled down, "It's expensive!"
Exactly how much are these guys getting paid? Of course its going to be expensive! Strange as it may seem, that's part of the point. You get money circulating by spending it; on workers, equipment, land purchases and a host of other less obvious expenses involved in building infrastructure. Let me move on to specific arguments however...I'll start with Brother Jerry.
Taylor open by simply attacking the MPG plan, specifically pointing out that,
"If the proposed fuel efficiency standards were in place today, Edmunds.com reports that only two cars — the 2010 Toyota Prius (50 mpg) and the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid (42 mpg) — would meet the standard."
Has anyone bothered to point out that it isn't 2016 yet? Exactly what point is it that Taylor is trying to make here? That if things were different, then things would be different? This is a nonsense reference designed only to make a future standard seem unreasonable in the present, and thereby elicit a negative emotional response in the reader. This is then directed and amplified in a blatant case of vilification;
"Angry environmentalists might thus find themselves key-scratching "gas guzzlers" such as the 2009 Honda Fit (31 mpg), the 2009 Mini Cooper (32 mpg) and the 2009 Smart ForTwo (36 mpg)."
In the first place, Taylor conjures an image of eco-jihadis viciously vandalizing other people's property and in the second he invents an intolerance towards three specific, excellent examples of perfectly reasonable transition technology. Taken as a whole the paragraph serves no purpose beyond demagoguery. In the immediately following paragraph, Taylor appeals to the authority of mathematics and simultaneously reaches for the middle ground while highlighting a"confession" from the administration.
"There is little dispute that, as a consequence, cars would become more expensive and industry profits more scarce. Even the Obama administration concedes that automotive costs would increase by $600 per car on average and that industry revenues would decline by $13 billion to $20 billion a year. Others offer larger figures, but it's difficult to peg costs with any certainty."
Implementation of new technologies is going to raise costs? Seriously? That's your argument? I seem to recall a similar argument being forwarded in the debate over vehicle safety equipment. Additionally, having bought two cars myself, I can honestly say that the additional $600, when I know I'm getting a better product, isn't a problem. Particularly when the "better" relates to fuel efficiency in an era when we are at or near peak oil as well as facing a global environmental crisis.
Corporate profits will decline? Really? Well perhaps this is a moment when the much vaunted innovative power of the market to reduce costs and improve process could be brought to bear. It might just result in more market competition, yielding better, stronger, more nimble manufacturing corporations. Heck, it might just result in the development of improved technologies with unforeseen knock-on applications.
So then Taylor goes on to talk about how little benefit will be garnered by these terrible reforms;
"We wouldn't reduce our reliance on foreign oil: If we reduced global demand for crude oil, the most expensive-to-produce oil would go away first, and that oil is not in the Middle East. It's in North America."
What he completely ignores are the actual numbers involved. in 2007 the U.S. produced 5,064,000 barrels/day and imported 10,031,000 barrels/day. Our oil exports were just 1,433,000 barrels/day. We're using up roughly three times what we produce. New technologies use roughly half the fuel of vehicles built just back in the 1990's. Basic math here; if you only produce 1/3 of the oil you use and you then reduce what you use by 1/2...you have to get the difference from your imports, so yes, you do in fact reduce your reliance on foreign oil even if you take out your domestic production first.
"Consumers would not be better off: If gasoline prices remained in today's neighborhood (that is, near their historical average, adjusted for inflation), the fuel savings from these new hybrids would not offset the higher sticker prices."
The flaws in this are so obvious it hurts me to point them out. In the first place, you have to make an assumption that runs totally counter to reason: that gas prices remain the same. Basic economics; what happens when demand for a commodity drops? That's right, the price drops. Basic logic; what happens when cars uses less gas? That's right, demand drops! So, logically if we use less gas, thus lowering demand, price of gas drops. A preceding argument stated that sticker prices could go up in the neighborhood of $600; so that's between 30 to 40 tanks of fuel, which is easily accounted for in the first 1.5 years of the average vehicle. So in the second place, yes, the extra cost up front is paid for in fuel savings.
"Moreover, many consumers would be forced to buy cars they don't want."
Except that consumers do want to buy more fuel efficient cars and there several monetary incentives to do so, such as tax credits. Additionally, what consumers what to buy is, in a practical sense, dictated by what is on the market to begin with. For instance, I don't want to buy a fossil fuel driven vehicle at all. I want a hydrogen powered one, my choices are limited to what is on the market, however.
"Greenhouse gas emissions might not decline much, if at all. U.S. emissions would likely decline, but reduced U.S. demand for crude would mean reduced global crude prices, which in turn would increase demand for — and consumption of — oil outside the USA. Eventually, most if not all our reductions might be offset by increases elsewhere."
Right, and why should we do the right thing if nobody else does? Maybe for the same reason we didn't replace our old king with a new one and went with a representative democracy instead. Maybe because its the right thing to do. Its called leadership and has been generally lacking from our domestic policy for a while. Additionally, if you need a good market motivator, consider the value of exporting said technology to those other nations.
Next we come to the traditional vague implication of threat;
"Finally, drivers and passengers would be less safe. Plenty of hard evidence suggests that smaller, lighter cars equal more highway injuries and fatalities."
Actually, its irresponsible, dangerous drivers that cause those highway injuries and fatalities. This is a spineless adoption of the "blame the object" argument so many pro-gun advocates deride. What's true of one inanimate object is true of the other; cars don't cause accidents, people cause accidents. Also, however exactly does he reach the conclusion that a smaller, lighter car will cause more damage than a bigger, heavier one? It runs counter to all logic.
One thing Taylor gets absolutely right is calling fuel efficiency "a means to an ends". That is absolutely true. Where he fails is in implying that this particular means is supposed to be sufficient unto itself to achieve that end. It isn't, obviously, but it is necessary to that end. Speaking of which, let me move on to Brother Randal's bit of tripe. It seems obvious to me that they split the issues in an attempt to divide attention and create an illusion of these being completely unrelated issues.
"At first glance, President Obama's enthusiasm for building a high-speed rail network linking major cities seems like a wise move. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that the plan would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and do little to reduce traffic congestion or improve the environment."
Okay, first lets look at the framing of the paragraph; it creates the impression that there are multiple layers to this proposal and that the "second" layer, the cost, is somehow obscured. Only two possible interpretations present themselves: this is unintentional and suggestive of incompetence or else it is intentional and suggestive of deception. Does Brother Randal really think people are so stupid that they wouldn't understand the project is going to carry a hefty price tag? One should hope so, because if he doesn't one might be inclined to think he was trying to be manipulative.
O'Toole here has far more clever rhetorical command than Taylor, he spaces his positions and explanations which makes it more difficult, at a glance, to argue with him. So we have to jump around a bit.
"Obama's 9,000-mile high-speed rail plan reaches just 33 states, yet the $13 billion he proposes to spend would cover about 2.5% to 25% of the cost, depending on how the system is built."
Okay, let's don't forget the $13 billion is called, specifically, a down payment; as in, more to follow. Only an idiot is going to honestly believe that this transit network could possibly get built that cheap. Secondly, "just those 33 states" accounts for the overwhelming majority of private and commercial traffic. I'm a truck driver, I know; you don't need a high-sped from Boise to El Paso. Of course the implication of this bit is really to make people angry about a "secret" future tax hike, which is probable; what it ignore however is that when it comes to concrete services, people suddenly get a great deal less resentful.
"Most of Obama's plan should really be called "moderate-speed rail," as it would upgrade existing freight lines to run passenger trains at top speeds of 110 mph. At around $5 million per mile, the total cost would come close to $50 billion."
Here we again see the tactic of implied deceit paired with a "revelation". I listened to the speech myself and Obama said himself that a large part of the project on the front end would be exactly this sort of upgrade. Is anyone really surprised by this? Is anyone really surprised that its going to be expensive? Again, that's part of the point; that money isn't going to just magically vanish, its going to get paid to workers, fabricators and engineers as well as a whole slew of other private sector economic drivers.
"Not satisfied with moderate-speed trains, California says it wants half of all federal funds so it can build brand-new 220-mph rail lines. But it's unlikely other states will settle for the slower trains if California gets the faster ones. Building fast trains nationwide would cost at least $500 billion."
Right, unsurprisingly we have vilification of California for implied decadence, followed by the further implication that the other states will make unreasonable demands so that they can "keep up" capped off with a paternal and patronizing monetary flourish.
"Besides the high costs, these trains do little to relieve congestion. "Not a single high-speed track built to date has had any perceptible impact on the road traffic" in Europe, says Ari Vatanen, a European Parliament member. California predicts its 220-mph trains would take just 3.5% of cars off of roads. California highway traffic grows that much every two years."
I love it when guys like O'Toole try to borrow the authority of foreign officials; its as if they feel they can gain credibility by sounding cosmopolitan. Let me tell something about Monsieur Vatanen. For starters, his credentials as an MP are: he was a famous race car driver. His credentials as an analyst of traffic statistics vis a vis mass transit are: he's an MP...who used to be a race car driver. Did we mention he's currently a member of the French Union for a Popular Movement, which is the native analog of the Republican party? Are we surprised that a Cato writer is citing the man, incompletely and without reference? Also, exactly what is the source of O'Toole's traffic statistics in California? Can can we possibly get some verification of claims?
"Moderate-speed trains would do even less. Nor would such trains be good for the environment. Amtrak diesel trains are only a little more energy efficient than flying or driving, and pumping those trains up to 110 mph would reduce their efficiency. Because planes and cars are growing 2% more energy-efficient per year, rail would fare poorly by such measures over the next 15 to 20 years.
Moreover, high-speed rail consumes enormous amounts of energy and emits enormous volumes of greenhouse gases. These would cancel out any operational savings over cars and planes."
Except, once again, O'Toole follows the formula and winds up creating a false dilemma; fossil fuel rail or fossil fuel cars. As if electrifying the rail system just isn't an option because he choose not to discuss it. And before anyone gets started, yes, I know that the power has to come from somewhere; who says it has to be a coal fired plant? Or even a current-spec coal fired plant? Please.
Now, the next statement is interesting;
"Interstates paid for themselves out of gas taxes..."
It is interesting chiefly because it directly contradicts an earlier statement that I reserved until now, to contrast the two;
"In contrast with the interstate highway system, which paid for itself out of user fees..."
Now I am forced to conclude one of the following: O'Toole doesn't know what he's talking about, O'Toole is being deliberately misleading, or O'Toole simply neglected to say explicitly that a complex, heterogeneous combination of solutions are at times called for to address complex problems. For the sake of charity I will assume the latter of these.
And finally I want to address these two statements;
"Although every taxpayer would share the cost of these trains, high-speed rails are not about serving the common people. Instead, they are aimed at the elite."
-and-
"Rail requires huge tax subsidies and would regularly serve only a small elite. Which is the better symbol for the America President Obama wants to build?"
Now I can't speak for anyone else but when I lived in Bethesda, MD which itself is part of D.C.'s metro rail system I was hardly one of the "elite" (although O'Toole never deigns to define exactly what that means, so maybe I was!). I was a very junior sailor living in the barracks and learning my trade as an MLT. For just about a year and a half I used that transit system to go everywhere. More than that, I used the AmTrak hub at Union Station to go as far as NYC on several occasions and closer points regularly. Right now I'm one of the loudest (if not prominent or influential) voices for development of a similar system in Cincinnati, OH.
It utterly escapes me how a publicly available mass transit system, improving mobility for student and workers, could possibly be interpreted as being reserved for some mythical social "elite" in a country where private transportation has always been the hallmark of the upper-classes; from carriages to yachts to limousines to private jets, the elite have always been easily identified by such luxuries.
In the current day, Barrack Obama has challenged us to do a task which may well be just as, if not more, monumental but whose parameters are known to us. To move away from unsustainable energy policies and invest instead in cleaner, more efficient technologies such as personal cars powered by alternative energy and efficient mass transit systems. I've talked about this before and hope that I communicated my points well.
What has me so absolutely agitated today is the attitude of the silly buggers at "The Cato Institute". Okay, I get the whole differing view thing. I myself would start getting nervous if everyone suddenly started agreeing all the time. On the other hand, if your going to be a productive contributor, aren't you supposed to follow up your objections with alternatives? This is not what I'm getting from Jerry Taylor and Randal O' Toole. There chief objection seems to be, boiled down, "It's expensive!"
Exactly how much are these guys getting paid? Of course its going to be expensive! Strange as it may seem, that's part of the point. You get money circulating by spending it; on workers, equipment, land purchases and a host of other less obvious expenses involved in building infrastructure. Let me move on to specific arguments however...I'll start with Brother Jerry.
Taylor open by simply attacking the MPG plan, specifically pointing out that,
"If the proposed fuel efficiency standards were in place today, Edmunds.com reports that only two cars — the 2010 Toyota Prius (50 mpg) and the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid (42 mpg) — would meet the standard."
Has anyone bothered to point out that it isn't 2016 yet? Exactly what point is it that Taylor is trying to make here? That if things were different, then things would be different? This is a nonsense reference designed only to make a future standard seem unreasonable in the present, and thereby elicit a negative emotional response in the reader. This is then directed and amplified in a blatant case of vilification;
"Angry environmentalists might thus find themselves key-scratching "gas guzzlers" such as the 2009 Honda Fit (31 mpg), the 2009 Mini Cooper (32 mpg) and the 2009 Smart ForTwo (36 mpg)."
In the first place, Taylor conjures an image of eco-jihadis viciously vandalizing other people's property and in the second he invents an intolerance towards three specific, excellent examples of perfectly reasonable transition technology. Taken as a whole the paragraph serves no purpose beyond demagoguery. In the immediately following paragraph, Taylor appeals to the authority of mathematics and simultaneously reaches for the middle ground while highlighting a"confession" from the administration.
"There is little dispute that, as a consequence, cars would become more expensive and industry profits more scarce. Even the Obama administration concedes that automotive costs would increase by $600 per car on average and that industry revenues would decline by $13 billion to $20 billion a year. Others offer larger figures, but it's difficult to peg costs with any certainty."
Implementation of new technologies is going to raise costs? Seriously? That's your argument? I seem to recall a similar argument being forwarded in the debate over vehicle safety equipment. Additionally, having bought two cars myself, I can honestly say that the additional $600, when I know I'm getting a better product, isn't a problem. Particularly when the "better" relates to fuel efficiency in an era when we are at or near peak oil as well as facing a global environmental crisis.
Corporate profits will decline? Really? Well perhaps this is a moment when the much vaunted innovative power of the market to reduce costs and improve process could be brought to bear. It might just result in more market competition, yielding better, stronger, more nimble manufacturing corporations. Heck, it might just result in the development of improved technologies with unforeseen knock-on applications.
So then Taylor goes on to talk about how little benefit will be garnered by these terrible reforms;
"We wouldn't reduce our reliance on foreign oil: If we reduced global demand for crude oil, the most expensive-to-produce oil would go away first, and that oil is not in the Middle East. It's in North America."
What he completely ignores are the actual numbers involved. in 2007 the U.S. produced 5,064,000 barrels/day and imported 10,031,000 barrels/day. Our oil exports were just 1,433,000 barrels/day. We're using up roughly three times what we produce. New technologies use roughly half the fuel of vehicles built just back in the 1990's. Basic math here; if you only produce 1/3 of the oil you use and you then reduce what you use by 1/2...you have to get the difference from your imports, so yes, you do in fact reduce your reliance on foreign oil even if you take out your domestic production first.
"Consumers would not be better off: If gasoline prices remained in today's neighborhood (that is, near their historical average, adjusted for inflation), the fuel savings from these new hybrids would not offset the higher sticker prices."
The flaws in this are so obvious it hurts me to point them out. In the first place, you have to make an assumption that runs totally counter to reason: that gas prices remain the same. Basic economics; what happens when demand for a commodity drops? That's right, the price drops. Basic logic; what happens when cars uses less gas? That's right, demand drops! So, logically if we use less gas, thus lowering demand, price of gas drops. A preceding argument stated that sticker prices could go up in the neighborhood of $600; so that's between 30 to 40 tanks of fuel, which is easily accounted for in the first 1.5 years of the average vehicle. So in the second place, yes, the extra cost up front is paid for in fuel savings.
"Moreover, many consumers would be forced to buy cars they don't want."
Except that consumers do want to buy more fuel efficient cars and there several monetary incentives to do so, such as tax credits. Additionally, what consumers what to buy is, in a practical sense, dictated by what is on the market to begin with. For instance, I don't want to buy a fossil fuel driven vehicle at all. I want a hydrogen powered one, my choices are limited to what is on the market, however.
"Greenhouse gas emissions might not decline much, if at all. U.S. emissions would likely decline, but reduced U.S. demand for crude would mean reduced global crude prices, which in turn would increase demand for — and consumption of — oil outside the USA. Eventually, most if not all our reductions might be offset by increases elsewhere."
Right, and why should we do the right thing if nobody else does? Maybe for the same reason we didn't replace our old king with a new one and went with a representative democracy instead. Maybe because its the right thing to do. Its called leadership and has been generally lacking from our domestic policy for a while. Additionally, if you need a good market motivator, consider the value of exporting said technology to those other nations.
Next we come to the traditional vague implication of threat;
"Finally, drivers and passengers would be less safe. Plenty of hard evidence suggests that smaller, lighter cars equal more highway injuries and fatalities."
Actually, its irresponsible, dangerous drivers that cause those highway injuries and fatalities. This is a spineless adoption of the "blame the object" argument so many pro-gun advocates deride. What's true of one inanimate object is true of the other; cars don't cause accidents, people cause accidents. Also, however exactly does he reach the conclusion that a smaller, lighter car will cause more damage than a bigger, heavier one? It runs counter to all logic.
One thing Taylor gets absolutely right is calling fuel efficiency "a means to an ends". That is absolutely true. Where he fails is in implying that this particular means is supposed to be sufficient unto itself to achieve that end. It isn't, obviously, but it is necessary to that end. Speaking of which, let me move on to Brother Randal's bit of tripe. It seems obvious to me that they split the issues in an attempt to divide attention and create an illusion of these being completely unrelated issues.
"At first glance, President Obama's enthusiasm for building a high-speed rail network linking major cities seems like a wise move. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that the plan would cost taxpayers billions of dollars and do little to reduce traffic congestion or improve the environment."
Okay, first lets look at the framing of the paragraph; it creates the impression that there are multiple layers to this proposal and that the "second" layer, the cost, is somehow obscured. Only two possible interpretations present themselves: this is unintentional and suggestive of incompetence or else it is intentional and suggestive of deception. Does Brother Randal really think people are so stupid that they wouldn't understand the project is going to carry a hefty price tag? One should hope so, because if he doesn't one might be inclined to think he was trying to be manipulative.
O'Toole here has far more clever rhetorical command than Taylor, he spaces his positions and explanations which makes it more difficult, at a glance, to argue with him. So we have to jump around a bit.
"Obama's 9,000-mile high-speed rail plan reaches just 33 states, yet the $13 billion he proposes to spend would cover about 2.5% to 25% of the cost, depending on how the system is built."
Okay, let's don't forget the $13 billion is called, specifically, a down payment; as in, more to follow. Only an idiot is going to honestly believe that this transit network could possibly get built that cheap. Secondly, "just those 33 states" accounts for the overwhelming majority of private and commercial traffic. I'm a truck driver, I know; you don't need a high-sped from Boise to El Paso. Of course the implication of this bit is really to make people angry about a "secret" future tax hike, which is probable; what it ignore however is that when it comes to concrete services, people suddenly get a great deal less resentful.
"Most of Obama's plan should really be called "moderate-speed rail," as it would upgrade existing freight lines to run passenger trains at top speeds of 110 mph. At around $5 million per mile, the total cost would come close to $50 billion."
Here we again see the tactic of implied deceit paired with a "revelation". I listened to the speech myself and Obama said himself that a large part of the project on the front end would be exactly this sort of upgrade. Is anyone really surprised by this? Is anyone really surprised that its going to be expensive? Again, that's part of the point; that money isn't going to just magically vanish, its going to get paid to workers, fabricators and engineers as well as a whole slew of other private sector economic drivers.
"Not satisfied with moderate-speed trains, California says it wants half of all federal funds so it can build brand-new 220-mph rail lines. But it's unlikely other states will settle for the slower trains if California gets the faster ones. Building fast trains nationwide would cost at least $500 billion."
Right, unsurprisingly we have vilification of California for implied decadence, followed by the further implication that the other states will make unreasonable demands so that they can "keep up" capped off with a paternal and patronizing monetary flourish.
"Besides the high costs, these trains do little to relieve congestion. "Not a single high-speed track built to date has had any perceptible impact on the road traffic" in Europe, says Ari Vatanen, a European Parliament member. California predicts its 220-mph trains would take just 3.5% of cars off of roads. California highway traffic grows that much every two years."
I love it when guys like O'Toole try to borrow the authority of foreign officials; its as if they feel they can gain credibility by sounding cosmopolitan. Let me tell something about Monsieur Vatanen. For starters, his credentials as an MP are: he was a famous race car driver. His credentials as an analyst of traffic statistics vis a vis mass transit are: he's an MP...who used to be a race car driver. Did we mention he's currently a member of the French Union for a Popular Movement, which is the native analog of the Republican party? Are we surprised that a Cato writer is citing the man, incompletely and without reference? Also, exactly what is the source of O'Toole's traffic statistics in California? Can can we possibly get some verification of claims?
"Moderate-speed trains would do even less. Nor would such trains be good for the environment. Amtrak diesel trains are only a little more energy efficient than flying or driving, and pumping those trains up to 110 mph would reduce their efficiency. Because planes and cars are growing 2% more energy-efficient per year, rail would fare poorly by such measures over the next 15 to 20 years.
Moreover, high-speed rail consumes enormous amounts of energy and emits enormous volumes of greenhouse gases. These would cancel out any operational savings over cars and planes."
Except, once again, O'Toole follows the formula and winds up creating a false dilemma; fossil fuel rail or fossil fuel cars. As if electrifying the rail system just isn't an option because he choose not to discuss it. And before anyone gets started, yes, I know that the power has to come from somewhere; who says it has to be a coal fired plant? Or even a current-spec coal fired plant? Please.
Now, the next statement is interesting;
"Interstates paid for themselves out of gas taxes..."
It is interesting chiefly because it directly contradicts an earlier statement that I reserved until now, to contrast the two;
"In contrast with the interstate highway system, which paid for itself out of user fees..."
Now I am forced to conclude one of the following: O'Toole doesn't know what he's talking about, O'Toole is being deliberately misleading, or O'Toole simply neglected to say explicitly that a complex, heterogeneous combination of solutions are at times called for to address complex problems. For the sake of charity I will assume the latter of these.
And finally I want to address these two statements;
"Although every taxpayer would share the cost of these trains, high-speed rails are not about serving the common people. Instead, they are aimed at the elite."
-and-
"Rail requires huge tax subsidies and would regularly serve only a small elite. Which is the better symbol for the America President Obama wants to build?"
Now I can't speak for anyone else but when I lived in Bethesda, MD which itself is part of D.C.'s metro rail system I was hardly one of the "elite" (although O'Toole never deigns to define exactly what that means, so maybe I was!). I was a very junior sailor living in the barracks and learning my trade as an MLT. For just about a year and a half I used that transit system to go everywhere. More than that, I used the AmTrak hub at Union Station to go as far as NYC on several occasions and closer points regularly. Right now I'm one of the loudest (if not prominent or influential) voices for development of a similar system in Cincinnati, OH.
It utterly escapes me how a publicly available mass transit system, improving mobility for student and workers, could possibly be interpreted as being reserved for some mythical social "elite" in a country where private transportation has always been the hallmark of the upper-classes; from carriages to yachts to limousines to private jets, the elite have always been easily identified by such luxuries.
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