Two unrelated topics, but my infinitessimal attention span has me tiring of this line of discussion. So deal.

By vertical integration I speak primarily about ‘approved providers’. This is one where I simply haven’t done the legwork as to understand its origins completely. But I can say with confidence that without the massive sized corporations created by barriers to entry and employer-insurance coupling, such things would not have been possible. Just think about Halliburtion. They routinely received no-bid contracts (which I disagree with) from Clinton, not just Bush. Why? Because they were a vertically-integrated juggernaut. They were the only one stop shop that could provide all the services sought by the contract. They had no competition, so government decided not to bother with a bidding process (again, I don’t agree with that logic completely).

When I was rear-ended all four times, State Farm did something that no HMO or PPO in the history of mankind has ever done. They cut me a check based on reasonable repair cost (that was actually reasonable), gave me a list of recommended repair shops, and then told me I could take it to whomever. Repair shops thus had to compete for insurance-based business. One of the benefits of getting a check for a set amount is that these repair shops can ‘buy’ my business by leaving money left over. Discounting, in a sense. I can do with this money what I wish, such as keeping it. Or, as many gearheads choose to do, invest the extras in performance and appearance parts to be installed during the repair and so eliminate future labor costs or driveway wrench-turning.

The end result, as prices are driven down by competition, is that insurance companies can lower payouts and hopefully pass it on to the consumer. As a future doctor, it’s probably imprudent to say many specialties are compensated at a level incommensurate with the amount of work, but many specialties are overcompensated. A radiology resident recently remarked that the lowest offer he’d gotten was 350,000, right out of training. I’ll be training longer, with similar (higher than average) malpractice insurance costs, and in a considerably more stressful specialty, and if I’m lucky I’ll make about half that at my peak. If radiologists and imaging centers had to compete it might look a bit different.

As for overuse of resources, comprehensive insurance plans encourage you to seek medical care when it may not be necessary ‘to get your money’s worth’. If you’re spending 3,000 to 5,000 dollars on health insurance, you might as well see the doctor 10 times in a year, none of them for anything resembling serious. You already paid for it right? Problem is, as I said in an earlier post, these premiums are based on average consumption. The more often you go, the more premiums will rise.

Prescription drugs now make up 10% of our total healthcare costs (compared with 20% for doctors, and 30% for hospitalizations) and that is slated to continue to rise. How much of this is really medically necessary? How much could be eliminated by simply manning up, altering behavior, or otherwise? Of course, this meteoric rise is rooted in Big Pharma’s advertising drive, which has quintupled in just 5 years.

But one must ask how effective this would be if we didn’t see health insurance as ‘already paying for it’? If we had emergency and critical care insurance, but had to pay for such garbage as sleeping pills, antidepressants (truly therapeutic in a minority of patients), and anti-fat pills, what would be the result?

In order for consumers to make informed decisions they must be able to recognize the costs and benefits of a given action. When these are concealed through multiple mechanisms, consumers lose the ability to make rational decisions. Markets become inefficient, and consumers waste resources where there is no need for such. This waste is pocketed by the suppliers.

someone got here searching for ‘romantic indian telugu sex stories’.

ewwwwww

Soaring premiums and profits, where did they come from? Why, government of course. And, not from Big Business Republicans but from the Democrats who claimed to be looking out for the little people. Funny that. What has happened is that Democrats have unwittingly (or possibly not) played into the hands of these companies,

Government regulation takes what is a de facto level playing field and then covers it in hills and valleys, slanting the entire thing to one end so the big businesses stand on high ground while the little guys find themselves knee deep in runoff. It creates barriers to entry by increasing the initial investment in both time and money. The more money you have, the more able you are to afford entry. In such a way, government regulation favors a few larger corporations rather than many smaller ones. Which of course substantially reduces competition.

But perhaps government’s most detrimental action was coupling employment to health insurance coverage. Big bad business owners should have to ‘care’ for their workers. So they should offer health insurance if they employ more than a certain number of people. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? Except for two major problems:

1. Just as payroll taxes are a form of concealed taxation, job benefits are a form of concealed income. Depending on the way one’s employer has set things up, one has little to no choice on whether or not they even purchase health insurance. In the few situations where they are allowed a choice, not taking health insurance means they lose the ‘income’ associated with it in terms of employer contribution/subsidy.

2. Employer-Provider coupling means that instead of competing for individual consumers, managed care corporations interact primarily with other corporations and businesses. This is a particularly destructive phenomenon as it not only eliminates choice for the end user, but prevents those who such decisions directly effect from having any say at the bargaining table.

Both of these problems are a direct result of democrat-championed legislation. Both of them have taken power away from the consumer. They’ve prevented competition, and they’ve reduced quality of care. As I said earlier, government created barriers to entry in the managed care field. This reduced the number of suppliers. They also made employers the primary buyers rather than the individuals themselves. Which reduced the number of consumers. The net result is a considerable reduction in the number of iterations between potential buyers and suppliers. Fewer opportunities means less competition. Less competition, higher prices.

But another aspect to consider beyond investment, is one’s return on said investment. Those who buy are not those who actually consume. They do so with the consumer’s money (see concealed income), but their primary concern will be how much of said amount they can pocket. An employer will have a much reduced incentive to look for quality in a managed care provider, instead looking for a plan that is as ‘comprehensive’ as possible (to lure in employees and satisfy legal requirements) while actually costing the least. Probably every one of us knows how that works. Denial-of-coverage. The bane of many of our existences.

While the barriers to entry may be more or less justified (some of those regulations do accomplish the job of protecting the consumer after all), we could find ourselves able to eliminate a considerable amount of profit and waste in the managed care industry by allowing consumers to do with their income as they wish, and to choose what level of insurance as well as their provider. An employer is a poor proxy for the individual when it’s your own health at stake. Ensuring that this concealed income does not evaporate if current legislation was abolished could be accomplished by a couple of different mechanisms, such as employer contribution matching, much as is done for retirement parties.

They say that actuaries have the highest job satisfaction of anyone. Which is slightly surprising, given that they make their living by determining the probability that someone will have horrible things happen to them based on demographic information. More than a little morbid, if you ask me.

The thing about insurance–any insurance–is that it relies on pooling people with a similar predictive characteristic together and then charging all of them an equal rate. This means that as a 22 year old male with a new sports car, I pay a rather high rate, clean driving record notwithstanding. Obviously, while I might not be a particularly high risk, 22 year old males in general–with all their impulsiveness, bravado, poor decision-making, and drunken habits–are.

With health insurance, you can’t get away with that kind of thing. So an obese 45 year old with diabetes and hypertension pays the same rate as a healthy, fit 30 year old for the same comprehensive insurance. This is important to remember. It’s almost socialistic in its ‘to each according to his need, from each according to the average expenditure’ mentality.

Keeping that in mind, let’s move back to the car insurance analogy. In high school, I drove a 1998 windstar with 100,000 miles on the odometer. I had liability insurance. The car simply wasn’t worth the extra expenditure for comprehensive. Because I road tripped pretty frequently, I payed a little extra for roadside assistance, although most of my friends did not. Now, driving a car I’ll likely keep for the rest of my life–one that is and will be worth considerably more–comprehensive insurance is a more prudent move as I see things.

But you could take things still further. With my little brother off to college, my father’s contemplating something fancy and european. One of those makes that includes servicing and maintenance in the price. This is essentially what you pay for with ‘health insurance’. Not only protection against illness and injury, but for prescription drugs, for visits to the doctor and to specialists, and in some cases for dental and eyewear as well. Even if you simply don’t need such a level of protection.

With automotive, home, and life insurance, several levels of coverage are available depending upon the consumer’s ascertainment of risk and the size of the potential loss. Most would consider this a good thing. However, this attitude disappears when it comes to health insurance.

Mitt Romney in his infinite wisdom has decided to force every citizen of Massachusetts to carry comprehensive health insurance. He uses the specious logic that since we require that all drivers carry car insurance, we should do the same for health insurance. We are required to carry liability insurance, not comprehensive. The idea behind these laws isn’t that we are protected, but that our potential victims are. No such correlate exists for the health insurance situation.

He isn’t alone in this. As I mentioned not too long ago, the AMA is supporting such legislation on a nation-wide basis.

Leaving out finer discussions on the nature of liberty (which if better understood, would have prevented such a mess), what we have here is a destruction of choice. Through years of well-intentioned but misguided legislation, choice in the level of coverage has been eroded when it comes to health insurance.

Simply put, not everyone needs the same level of health insurance. Earlier in his career, George Bush championed medical savings accounts coupled with catastrophic health insurance. It was one of the few brilliant suggestions he’s ever made. For tens of millions of people, all the extra services HMO or PPO coverage gives you simply are not needed. And in the rare cases they would be, catastrophic coverage would ensure you wouldn’t be left footing a bill rivaling property prices in Southern California.

In my short time on this earth, I’ve had a car wreck with injury, a debilitating nerve condition (caused by an unneccessary vaccine pushed by the Public Health Department), and a visit or three to the emergency room. But, if I’d have had to pay out of pocket, in none of those years would my total medical bills have been equal to the cost of health insurance.

Many people are simply too low-risk to need such expansive coverage. And when they are forced to partake in it through legislation, they end up paying for services they will never use. By stratifying levels of coverage, people would be able to choose policies commensurate with the potential for need. Younger, healthier individuals would be able to choose inexpensive options like the one proposed by our President. They might have to pay out of pocket for a visit or two to the general practitioner, maybe a shourt course of antibiotics or painkillers, even an x-ray or two. But said total would be quite literally a small price to pay when compared to the alternative.

Those with young children, or who are predisposed to certain illnesses, might choose a higher level of coverage which might include visits to the pediatrician, some medications, and specialists. But even they would find it largely unneccessary to seek insurance to cover the cost of a visit to the GP or the more routine laboratory tests.

And of course, some would choose the comfort of as expansive and bloated a plan as those that Governor Romney and the AMA feel we have a ‘responsibility’ to purchase. But as things currently stand, people are paying for services that they don’t and may never need. It is an inefficient allocation of resources that hurts the consumer. They are forced into what is in many–if not most–cases a poor decision. And who profits off of this inefficiency? The managed care providers, of course. How did they end up in this artificial position? Through government mandate and legislation.

Tommorrow, a look at the various factors that have conspired to limit our choice in this regard and how to change things in a way that would lower costs for everyone.

A couple years ago when I was in my prime, my little brother wanted to arm wrestle me. To make it fair, I used my nerve-damaged and atrophied arm. And he got to use both of his. I don’t remember who won, but it was a pretty close-run thing. But for the sake of this little story, let’s say he did. Would he be right in declaring that he was the stronger one?

Didn’t think so. The same principle applies when arguing the merits of ’single payer’–the PC term for socialized–healthcare versus private. In a recent post I made at homeland stupidity, a couple commenters replied that they’d rather have the Canadian system than the American system. Now, disregarding that irrationality, they make the fundamental mistake of assuming that the American system is a market system. Calling what we got right now ‘free market’ is like saying that I’m black. While elements of an open economy still exist in the American healthcare industry, it is far from a truly capitalistic environment. Much the same as despite the 15-20% of my DNA that is East African in origin (legacy of the trade relationship between ancient Eritria and South India in ancient times), it would be a fallacy for me to claim to be African.

In the Great Anarchy-Minarchy Debate, I went to great pains to emphasize the fact that the free market is a theoretical model of how things work in the real world. Models only reflect the real world when these conditions apply. When these conditions apply, the free market will produce the most efficient use of resources.

So before we write off a capitalistic solution to the healthcare ‘crisis’ (which wouldn’t exist if government hadn’t stuck their grubby, ignorant hand in the pot in the first place), we need to take an honest look at the factors contributing to market inefficiency.

What we have here in the United States is a mixed model of both government mandate and economic competition that brings the worst of both worlds to light. Start with medicaid and medicare with their growing eligibilities, add in the fact that only 30% of the uninsured ever pay their bills, limited freedom of choice in health insurance, and new government rules mandating levels of coverage, and what we have is only a step away from Soviet-style Central Planning.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think the medical market has anywhere near the potential to be as truly free or as efficient as other markets for various reasons. Namely the fact that the market stipulates that people behave in a perfectly rational manner given the information at hand. And that they operate using perfect information. Neither of those will ever hold true of the population when it comes to medical matters, although one can get mighty close in many–if not most–other economic sectors.

The causes of inefficiency in the American healthcare market can thus be tied to both external and internal factors. External factors include the various government interventions, regulations, and prohibitions that erode freedom of choice for the consumer. Internal factors are related to the degree to which the consumers fail to act in a rational manner, and to the lack of availability of perfect information.

I’m going to run with this for the next few days, dealing mainly with the external factors. I’ve already talked about the internal factors before, just click on the medicine category and browse.

Here are a few external factors to think about in the meantime:
1. Massachusetts (and the AMA’s) proposed legislation mandating full health coverage
2. The misnomer that is full health insurance coverage (does your car’s policy cover oil changes and engine repairs?)
3. The coupling of employer and coverage provider
4. The forced expenditure of income/payroll on said coverage provider
5a. The 70% of non-payers
5b. Overuse of medical resources by others under the same policy
5c. Overuse of medical resources by medicare and medicaid holders
6. The Public Health establishment as government coercion

There are actually two definitions of capitalism in common usage. When those on the right use the word, they generally do so in a positive light. Those on the left use the word most often in a disparaging fashion. The problem comes in that both sides have forgotten that they are in fact talking about two different concepts. In their collective minds, these two ideas have been conflated into a single chimeric entity–one that is anything but coherent. Conservatives find themselves championing a concept that should by all rights be anathema to them. While leftists use one logical argument where at least two are necessary.

Capitalism in its original definition is an economic term. It refers to a system in which production, distribution, and exchange of wealth are in the hands of private individuals. Essentially, the free market.

The newer definition, beloved by leftists, comes from the writings of Marx, and refers not to economic, but political organization. His definition of capitalism was tied to the hated bourgeoisie. It referred to a society in which political power was controlled by the wealthy. In other words (and I wish Marx had used this other word), he was referring to plutocracy.

His misuse of the term was compounded by the fact that in his writings, Marx regularly railed against both economic and political capitalism. However, close reading would suggest that he himself viewed them as two separate concepts. Marx was a rather intelligent individual, and I can’t help but think that this association was more than a little intentional. By leveraging the natural antipathy of the common man toward the rich against the theoretical and practical superiority of economic capitalism, Marx was able to kill two birds with one stone.

But–unlike his economic views–Marx’s critique of political capitalism (plutocracy) was more than valid. Any system in which political power devolves to a privileged group brings with it a recipe for tyranny. This is a lesson well-known to those classical liberals who have spent time pondering the rationale behind their political philosophy. It was a lesson held dear by the Founding Fathers. And, indeed, it is the greatest fault of democracy that a group of people can use government to create privilege on the backs of others through their voting power.

If most minarchists are like the author, they see conservatives as individuals who took a rest stop on their journey to political enlightenment and ended up putting down roots right where they lay. While their social views are perhaps their most obvious shortcoming, their failure to separate political and economic capitalism is perhaps more worrying.

When I was younger, I used to refer to myself as a ‘regular joe conservative [RJC]‘, as opposed to the ‘rich white guy conservative [RWGC]‘. Although our political positions were often quite similar, I came to realize that RWGCs saw government as another tool to garner them both prosperity and power. In this sense they were no different from any other power-grabbing group, and I ultimately came to feel that their desire for power far outweighed our political similarities. Among other things, it took me one step closer to severing my relationship with the Republican Party.

The RWGCs are a much bigger threat to liberty than the RJCs in my opinion. We have them to thank for the degree that corporations run our government. For their favoritism and for the creation of more than one unnatural monopolistic corporation. RJCs would be much more likely to see and understand this if they understood the difference between the free market (which they tend to be fans of) and plutocracy. Unfortunately, in many cases they are just as confused as leftists are about the term ‘capitalism’. All too often I hear RJCs praising political capitalism in the same way they do economic capitalism.

And although I’ll only mention them in passing, but the leftists would do well to remember that they can interfere with the market all they want, but so long as the people they put in power continue to be rich and privileged, all their talk of the ‘common man’ and the underprivileged will be for naught.

HT: Noangst

Beautiful. LEAP consists of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are willing to stand up and admit to the shortcomings of the War on Drugs. It’s a great thing to see that at least some of those with government-sanctioned power are not willing to abuse it.

They’ve also got an excellent 12 minute short featuring interviews from several members and supporters:

I find it odd that while Republicans (rightfully) scoff at the idea that gun bans will eliminate gun crime, they gleefully insist that the best way to deal with recreational drugs is in exactly the same manner. It also amuses me that despite being staunch defenders of capitalism they fail to understand how their anti-drug stance turns drug dealing into a far more lucrative market than it would otherwise be.

But nevertheless, I can understand their mindset. Despite possessing the off-color language of a sailor (worse actually, one of my best friends is in the Navy and I put him to shame), I’m a rather conservative guy in my social views. Especially when it comes to drugs. I don’t smoke, don’t get drunk, don’t even take the meds they gave me for the nerve pain because it interfered with my head too much. And it’s a natural part of being human to want society’s values to mirror your own. We see this in the continued ‘fake but accurate’/'bias? what bias?’ attitude of the media, the ‘I’m open to all ideas so long as they’re sufficiently leftist!’ take of most 18-25 year olds, or the ‘Faith, Family, Freedom’ slogan that I swear every politician in Oklahoma is using.

Of course, that doesn’t make it right. It is the essential nature of freedom that those most societally frowned upon behaviors are those that need the most protection. Much as it pains me to say, the 1st amendment was created for the Ward Churchills, not the Indian Cowboys. As long as what you are doing hurts no one else, we have no right to stop you from doing it, no matter how distasteful it is.

And what of drug-related crime? The key word here is crime, not drug. Someone impinged upon the liberty of someone else. The transgressor should be punished. End of story. Conflating the circumstances around the crime with the act itself is following the road to totalitarianism. This is the same exact logic as ‘guns cause crime’ and ‘food makes you fat’. And we all know what happens when we start enacting laws using that manner of specious logic.

We mustn’t forget how much drug-related crime is actually prohibition-related. Using the logic of the ‘drug crime’ mindset (of which I was once a part not too long ago), the gangsters, bootleggers, and Tommy Guns of the Prohibition era were all part of ‘alcohol crime’. Funny what happened when Amendment 21 was ratified. Most drug crime has more to do with the economics of the drug market rather than drug use itself.

I’m not the utopian type who thinks when regulation vanishes, so too will evil. Drugs will still ruin lives. Addicts will still commit desperate and violent acts. Society will remain imperfect. But in my experience, those who want to abuse drugs will do so. No matter how hard they are to get to. And let’s face it, despite the 69 billion dollar enforcement effort, it’s all too easy to get your hands on your substance of choice.

I want you to look at the picture to the right. Genetically, he’s considerably further away from middle easterners than the predominantly white readers of this blog are. Culturally, he’s got more in common with the Taoists and the followers of Shinto than he does with Islam. And as for where his loyalties lie? Well, I’d like to think he’d get along just fine if he found himself in a tavern discussing political philosophy with the Founding Fathers. Yet, he’s more likely than probably even most Muslims to be profiled if security searches are allowed to implement that bit of common sense.

Why’d I go through all that? Because people often willfully misunderstand the nature of profiling. First of all, profiling is not a presumption of guilt as various elements of the ethnically sensitive love to proclaim. It is a mere recognition that the guilty are more likely to be amongst people of a given group than another. And, because ‘muslim-looking’ is such a vague criterion, it is inevitable that people other than Muslims will be impacted by such things. Quite frankly, people should be more worried about how Sikhs, Hindus, and Eastern European Christians feel than Muslims. Racial profiling will inconvenience the innocent. But not racial profiling is hardly better.

My argument for profiling is essentially threefold:
1. Profiling is far more logical than our current system.
2. Profiling is far more efficient than our current system, and would result in much less disruption for most travellers.
3. Profiling will prevent the development of a routine on the part of security personnel.
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Profiling is all about using population-level characteristics. Now, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of statistics understands that what applies to a population does not necessarily apply to the individual. But that does not make the population-level characteristic useless. It merely means we need to be careful when applying it. As I said in the intro, the number one mistake that people make is misattribution. Most terrorists are muslim, but most muslims are not terrorists. Furthermore most does not equal all. This is exactly the kind of problem statistics was designed to help us solve, so I find it rather amusing that The Party Of Science fails to understand its use here as in so many other issues. Probabilities and likelihoods are just that. They are guides for our intuition to follow. And so long as we are heedful of the fact that likelihood is not certainty, it is far better to proceed with said knowledge than without.

Without the ability to use probabilities as our guide, many fields would find themselves paralyzed by the inherent uncertainty of the universe. Doctors would not be able to diagnose or treat, unwilling to move against the 1 in 1000 chance that they may be wrong. Engineers would never approve the building of a bridge, because what if a 180mph wind and a 6.3 earthquake did happen in the middle of appalachia? Using likelihoods and past experience is essential to any field, and that includes security.
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Profiling allows us to direct our efforts down the most likely paths. It allows us to effectively channel finite resources and time into the most crucial areas. For those of us who make large decisions, it is something we do of necessity every day of our lives, at home and at work. Although it may be distasteful to apply the same logic to racially sensitive issues, distasteful is not the same thing as wrong.

Personally, I find myself somewhat annoyed when a 30-something lady with 3 kids is being searched while I’m waved on. Obviously, I’d be somewhat annoyed to be the one being frisked, but for personal rather than pragmatic reasons. As the number of security checks grow larger, the list of proscribed items grows longer, and the lines of travellers get ever lengthier, we face a problem in just how to budget time and effort. Already, TSA and its sister agencies lack the time to give most individuals anything more than a cursory glance at the x-ray scanner’s screen. Given that they are unable to fully search every person and every bag, should they concentrate their efforts at random? Or should they screen the most likely threats preferentially.

When resources are limited, they must be allocated efficiently. Which would mean weighting it toward likely populations, yet not forgetting that the rare exception does occur.
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Basic human psychology. Many people have been entrusted with a task that required continuous alertness, just in case something bad happened one time out of a thousand. When they’re told how bad things can get that one time, they start out full of vim and vigor, but it isn’t long until they find their head nodding, counting the minutes and the days until their task is over. Yet tell that same person that he needs to check up on things just 2 or 3 times a night, and you’ll find that they give you every bit of mental acuity required. The idea that security personnel can just sit there month after month and yet be ready to sound the alarm at an instant’s notice is ludicrous. On the other hand, giving them ‘levels’ of readiness to maintain is much easier. Look for a given race, and then a given set of physical characteristsics (young, etc), and a demeanor (defensive, furtive, angry), be ready to give them a full and thorough search.
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Only an idiot would write of the explanatory power of statistics. Although I hate the field and I hate having to do the stuff, I can’t deny its usefulness. I suspect there are quite a few in my position. And seeing how much different I am from what probabilities and likelihoods would tell you, I’m pretty sensitive to the fallibility of playing the numbers game. Which is why if we do proceed with a profiling scheme, we should do so intelligently. The FBI continues to refine and sharpen their profiles even as we speak. Effective and intelligent profiles would catch a Richard Reid as sure as they’d catch an Abdullah.

…But I love latinas. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to stroll down the San Antonio Riverwalk and get some sight seeing in.

If I were younger, I’d be flirting. Since I’m old and cynical, I know that once they open their mouths, there’s a 95% chance that my attraction will disappear. So I’ll just look.

I’m presenting my thesis to a bunch of primatologists for the first time, so wish me luck.

Here’s the abstract.

The family just got back from India. I was struck by the changes I saw when I was there last year myself. Western conveniences are not only there, but are now moderately affordable. Toilet paper in every house–comfortable toilet paper at that, not the sandpapery stuff that used to cost an arm and a leg five years ago. High speed internet, satellite and cable. Even large luxury SUV’s (not so sure that’s a good thing).

They say that the new affluence and materialism being funneled into India won’t destroy our culture. Me? I have my doubts. Seeing as I was born and raised here and have every western convenience at my fingertips, it’s hard for me to be too critical of their cultural devolution. But the fact that I have any valid criticisms–let alone non-hypocritical ones–is cause for more than a little apprehension.

The French don’t like to talk in English. But young Andhras don’t like to talk in Telugu (our mother tongue). I was a bit shocked last year when more than once I had to play translator for my Grandma while we were in India. There was something very unnatural about the whole ordeal.

And don’t get me started on religion. I believe religion–like government–is inherently corruptible. And just as in government, the only way to preserve religion is to watch it. Watch for the power-mongers, for the manipulators, for the bastardizers. Hindus have failed to do this. And it gets worse with each passing year. Our religion has lost its soul. We’ve become a nation of rajasics, people who pray for things. In a religion that was founded on the principle of dharma as devotion, duty to oneself and to others as the highest form of praise.

But the kicker? Leather furniture. It’s become exceedingly popular among the new middle class of India. Which really gets me. I mean, here I am corrupted by 22 years in the decadent West, and I have to special order my Mustang GT from out of state because I won’t drive one with leather (which is standard).

So I’m watching this TV movie on TNT tonight, because my parents and aunt were, and it hooked me after only a couple minutes. I would’ve been inspired if I hadn’t kinda already made the decision to head down a similar road a couple years ago. This is what it’s all about. Not coddling and excusing the behaviors of kids but toughening them up, teaching them what they’re made of.

People often complain that libertarians and conservatives have no compassion. That we simply don’t care about the less fortunate. While I can’t speak for others, I do care. Thing is, in my admittedly short time on this earth, I’ve learned the difference between acting like you care and actually caring. The dichotomy is something I’ve seen in relatives, friends, teachers, mentors…basically anyone in a position to affect the long-term behavior of anyone else in a meaningful way.

In practice, it’s quite easy to tell the two apart. One type defines caring in terms of what they themselves do. “I did [blank] for them.” Or “I gave them [blank].” The other kind of person defines it in terms of what they get others to do. The most important people in my life have always been of the latter type. In one or two cases, it took me several years to realize just how important they were.

Which doesn’t change the fact that without them, I would not have taken the path I did. I would never have known what it was like to break your own trail, to clamber over the obstacles in my way, to find the meaning of what strength is. Without them, I would have trudged down an easier path, worn smooth by the countless number of feet that passed before mine, and I would be lesser for it.

As steel must be forged in the hottest of fires, so too must the human spirit. And while there is a danger that one can go too far, becoming as brittle as the hull of the Titanic, in my eyes the far greater menace comes from not being exposed to the inferno in the first place.

We accept that the immune system is strengthened by exposure to pathogens, that muscles only grow when stressed to their limit, that without gravity, bones do not grow strong. But far too many of us deny the importance of being pushed to one’s limits when it comes to personal growth.

The key to a child’s success is not their diversity training, their self esteem, or their ability to use large words. It isn’t in making them ‘feel loved’, or in the clothes they wear. It isn’t in being passed along to get a meaningless high school diploma. It won’t be found in a four year degree either. People will only realize their potential when their success is contingent upon their own efforts.

Perhaps my biggest problem with leftist thought when it comes to this issue is that it is a mindset that consists of nothing but excuses. Why one ethnic minority can’t match the success of others. Why one sex hasn’t achieved what the other has in various pursuits. Why children of the poor are unable to achieve what the offspring of wealthier people are able to. And, as in all things, some of these arguments have merit, whereas others hold so little water as to remind me of my youth in the Dust Bowl.

The best of these are nothing more than extenuating circumstances. They explain why some people haven’t accomplished what they are capable of yet. And while they’re somewhat valid in that context, they do nothing to contraindicate the future success of these people.

Yet what the Left tends to focus on isn’t the fact that these people have unrealized potential, but rather the aforementioned extenuating circumstances. Social welfare now encompasses 43.5% of our budget. The ghetto? As large as ever to these admittedly cynical eyes. Affirmative action has before my very eyes grown to encompass some recent immigrant groups while ignoring others. Exclusionary politics and who hurt who are the rule of the day in their minds. And while righting wrongs is a noble pursuit, it does little to change what Maslow called self-actualization. While it’s a useful term, Maslow’s framework itself is exceedingly flawed. Many of the greatest figures in history never had the trappings of comfort and wealth; instead they succeeded because they were willing to push themselves. On the other hand, every one of us can point to many, many acquaintances who rather than being enabled by their wealth and comfort were instead hobbled by it.

Rather than getting their hands dirty as Mr. Clark did and as I hope I’ll do myself when I get out of school, they treat these symptoms, willfully turning attention away from the disease growing within. Social welfare now encompasses 43.5% of our budget. The ghetto? As large as ever to these admittedly cynical eyes. They reward people for their poor choices, they remove the sting of failure from the inability to realize one’s potential. They act like they care, but they never make the steps to actually better the lot in life of these people. They never show people what they’re capable of. And they never demand they do it.

They seek to spare us from the flames, and in doing so leave us as useless as a lump of raw pig iron.

Imagine there’s a bomb with a 30 minute timer. A two man team from the bombsquad is dispatched to disarm it. The first guy spends 25 minutes in front of the bomb, not doing anything much. Just kinda sitting around, unsure or unwilling to start defusing it. With 5 minutes to go, he hands it off to the other guy and says ‘Your turn’. Unfortunately, a bomb this complex and intricate usually takes at least 10 minutes to disable. The bomb explodes while Number Two is working on it.

Number One’s cheerleaders stand up screaming “It’s all Number Two’s fault! He was holding the bomb when it went off!”

Number Two’s followers immediately stand up and say “Number One didn’t do a damn thing with the bomb for 25 minutes, it’s his fault. And there hasn’t been another bomb explosion in 5 years! Number Two is clearly better!”

Both are idiots. Saying that Clinton had no part in 9/11 is retarded. He was offered Bin Laden’s head on a platter and said ‘no thank you’. Under his administration the plot was brewing. For the exact same reason it is sheer lunacy to say that Bush’s efforts have been a success when it comes to terror. Whether an attack has occurred thus far is irrelevant. What is important is whether terror is being plotted under our noses or not. And there is no doubt in my mind that it is. By permant residents and citizens of the US.

And this is the most important fact we need to understand if those who truly want peace (including muslims) are to be victorious over the islamofascists. While the middle eastern terrorist organizations will always be a threat, the much greater danger comes from those who live within our borders, willing to partake in our prosperity but not our way of life. Thus far, incidents in the US have been relatively minor, but we could look to the ‘great experiment’ of Europe for what may lie ahead. The riots in France, the 7/7 bombings, the new airplane bomb attempt thwarted today. And if you’re lucky enough to have friends in the midlands of England, you can find out just how much worse the Islamofascist violence is than they let on. Which is kind of shocking considering that only a hundred miles away in London, I had no idea just how bad things were.

Being a strong proponent of free speech, I’m not much for the term ‘hate speech’. Quite frankly, no matter how intolerant, how harsh, how degrading the language you use to talk about someone or some group, I don’t think you can consider it a crime. But at the same time, there’s a line where speech and action blur, where a man’s words are intended to cause violence through the actions of others. Even this I am hesitant to call a crime, but that is what it is.

It is conspiracy to commit crimes against the citizenry and the nation itself. I know of no other way to describe it. And it is happening. Every day in mosques around the West. Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America is notorious for it, as are certain mosques in the UK and France, to name three of the countries where it is most likely to be a problem. And there are a host of organizations at the ready to play apologist while providing little in the way of reform against the radical elements of their religion (CAIR comes to mind for one). Granted, there are plenty of mosques where this does not happen. And I think that they could be our strongest allies in expunging the blight that is islamofascism from this planet.

In any exclusionary religion (namely the Abrahamic religions), there are two modes of thought when it comes to how to treat non-believers. There are those who would take up arms against the others and eliminate them entirely. And then there are those who, while they don’t believe other religions are right, are content to let God judge them for their beliefs. In Judaism and Christianity, the violent people have been largely eliminated. Yet in their sister religion Islam, they remain in large numbers. There are those who take up arms themselves, there are those who support them financially, spiritually, there are those who cheer them in the streets, and there are those who condone them. Every one of these people–even the latter–is a part of the islamofascist power structure.

But there are plenty of peaceful Muslims to be found. More here than in Europe, but nevertheless these people are just as horrified as we are by what is being done in the name of their religion. Yet they, like any immigrant group, are of split identity. They see themselves as both Muslim and American. As such, they share a common ground with us as well as with the islamofascists. The key is to acknowledge their unique cultural identity, and also win their loyalty. When they think ‘us vs. them’ we want them to think of ‘us’ as Americans and ‘them’ as the Islamofascists. Rather than feeling somewhat torn as many immigrant groups do when the political interests of their new home collides with the old. And I speak from personal experience there.

When the peaceful Muslims do so, they will cease to see the twisted Imams at ICA, in New York, in California as fellow travellers. They will see them for what they are: Hate mongering, anti-american, terrorist supporters.

If we are to win the war on terror we must acknowledge the two Islams and welcome one with open arms even as we turn away the other. And we must be unafraid to label something for what it is no matter what guise it appears in.

Full post up at Homeland Stupidity

here’s a teaser:

Before the SUV craze, soccer moms and families on road trips availed themselves of the station wagon. Available with three rows of seating (although those back seats weren’t the most comfortable), V-8 engines, and taking up no more space than a large sedan, these were truly the best of all worlds.
–snip–
Under CAFE, these relatively efficient and easy to use animals (when compared to SUVs) became unsustainable as fleet mileage was pushed ever higher.

It’s shorter than my usual fare, which is why I didn’t quote more.

So what has CAFE given us?
1. destroyed the large family car
2. made cars small and light to the point of being unsafe in crashes (as my knee can testify to)
3. reduced the incentive to move off foreign oil
4. pushed people into SUVS (admittedly along with several other factors)
5. falsely favors hybrids due to the retardation of EPA testing
6. reduces the incentive to move to biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel

I covered both points 3 and 6 in Quitting The Oil Addiction: Leave CAFE Alone in which I compared quitting oil to to quitting smoking, and in a piece I did for Homeland Stupidity.

There’s probably plenty more that CAFE has hurt. But I am at pains to remind people that the primary impetus behind my distaste for CAFE is that it prevents us from moving to biofuels sooner. Yes, it’s a libertarian standpoint, but it’s one that happily coincides with my deeply rooted and religious devotion to conservation.

No post till later today.

Heading to the 45th ID museum. I drive by it everyday on the way to school. Supposed to have one of the finest firearms exhibits in the country. As well as a 15 acre military vehicle park. Those two things being my favorite kind of mechanical contrivances, it’s ridiculous I haven’t been there yet. Especially since it’s free.

I’ll be rectifying that and doing my best to fill the 1gig card on my digital camera. Pics etc. hopefully sometime today.

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a programme would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators. –Neville Chamberlain

I found reading the words of the man who nearly brought destruction to the British Isles and Europe in the years leading up to World War II to be both enlightening and astonishing. Then-Prime Minister Chamberlain sounded not too dissimilar from how the American and European Left sound today. Whether speaking on the need to see things from the other’s point of view–no matter how barbaric–or the infallibility of diplomacy, it was like I was reading the latest missive from DailyKos or the most recent editorial in the New York Times.

Chamberlain was thankfully succeeded by a man of strong will and stronger judgment. One who was neither afraid of being blunt in words nor being decisive in action:

We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight our people were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, “No, we will mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us.” The people with one voice would say: “You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst - and we will do our best.” –Winston Churchill

In later years, Churchill criticized Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, saying that it is nothing more than feeding others to a crocodile, hoping you’ll be the last to be consumed. What makes appeasement so dangerous–particularly from the Chamberlains of the world–is that they themselves may not realize what they are asking for:

This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. –Neville Chamberlain

Central to their misguided belief is that peace is always possible. How they justify this central premise, I have never heard articulated in a logical manner. Men fight for many reasons. Sometimes they fight over property. Sometime over some slight–real or imagined–made by one against the other. But sometimes they fight because they hate the other with every fiber of their being. As in the case of the proverbial Hatfields and McCoys, it is entirely likely that conflicts of the latter kind are rooted–somewhere in the fog of antiquity–in disputes of a more tangible nature. Whatever their origin, when it comes to pass that one group defines themselves by their very hatred of the other, such matters become irrelevant.

Diplomacy can only provide a solution when the discord is directly tied to a given action or series of actions. When a state fights another, not because of who they are but because of what they did. In such cases, negotiation can provide the means to provide redress for the offending parties. The source of agitation now removed, peace is possible, indeed likely.

When the catalyst for one state’s aggression against the other isn’t what they did but who they are, there can be no peace. There can exist for a time an uneasy ceasefire. A hostile and brooding silence. But the roots of the conflict remain in place. Such an untenable situation is hardly to be desired, yet this is the limit to what negotiation can bring us. For while agreements between ambassadors and heads of state can silence the guns, they cannot change the hearts and minds of people.

What the West, Israel, and the parts of the East not already fallen face with Islamofascism is precisely the latter situation. Only intentional ignorance could lead one to any other conclusion. From the attempt to push Sharia in France and England, to the hostility of several immigrant muslim activism groups in the West, to of course the words of their own leaders, one can be left in little doubt as to the intentions of Islamic leaders. Just as Mohammed himself preached death to non-Muslims, so too do these groups. They hate the way we pray (or don’t pray), they hate the freedom we allow women even more than the freedom we allow men. They hate us for no reason but the fact that we are not them. And though many Muslims may not feel the same way, far too few will stand up against the despotic tyrants who cage their people and seek to murder us in our beds. There is no possibility of peace with men who hate you for who you are. Only an ephemeral and strained armistice.

If this is your goal, then by all means, engage in talks that will usher in your temporary truce. But know what it is you are asking for. Know that as long as you leave the men who hate you in power, they will be plotting your destruction, even as you drop your guard for the ‘peace’ you have bought.

I was 10 years old when Newt made his Contract With America. It wasn’t until this past year that I became familiar with it and what it entailed. Considering the alacrity with which the terms of the agreement were breached, it’s easy to understand why it took me a dozen years to finally hear about what turned to be nothing more than a blip on the radar of a progressively more statist nation. Granted, when they violated the compact, we neglected to evict them.

Which is the crux of the problem. We have continually failed to hold our legislators accountable for breaking their promises and forcing ineffectual regulations and bureaucracies down our throats. If anything is to change in this country, this must.

The political climate is filled with opportunity, but not without its share of danger. Dissatisfaction with the Republican Party has grown to levels I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. Self-described conservatives have ever lower opinions of the GOP. Bush’s plummeting approval ratings would not be possible without a healthy minority of Republicans and conservatives voicing their discontent. And much of the positive feelings toward the President could probably be chalked up to a comparison of the lunatic fringe alternative; despite his dismal performance these past 6 years, Bush is still better than the alternative.

Conservatives want a smaller government, and perhaps not a few are put off by the increasingly theological tone of the Republican Party. They provide a nearly ideal recruiting ground for a neolibertarian uprising.

The danger comes from the fact that it may yet be too early to attempt any kind of revolution. With the strength of leftist ideology worldwide and particularly amongst our youth, we may end up doing no more than dividing and conquering ourselves. The world has largely accepted that socialism is a failure. But it retains a curious faith in the nearly identical welfare state. The rose-colored glasses that the mainstream media dons whenever discussing interventionism plays no small role, particularly as they are our primary source of information on the doings of Old Europe. Old Europe is to the left what the USSR was to socialism. It is the most influential, most extensive, and oldest welfare state system in the world. And those libertarian-leaning individuals who have had the (mis)fortune to see western europe with their naked eye know that just as the USSR crumbled, so to will these nations.

Personally, I give it two decades at most. When Europe falls, the blinders will be ripped off the faces of many who ascribe to leftist thought. They will be shown, once again, that the state is the enemy of liberty, no matter how nurturing it describes itself as.

It is at this point, when disillusionment with Big Brother and Nanny have turned the right- and left-leaning away from their respective parties, that change can come.

I want to say something about the working man and classical liberalism but don’t feel like making the assertion without something resembling tangible proof. There are those who assert that only by ascribing to leftist ideologies can you show your solidarity with the working class. I don’t believe it for a minute.

	What Is Your Personal (Not Household) Income?
	Under $25,000/Student/Unemployed
	$25,001-35,000
	$35,001-45,000
	$45,001-55,000
	$55,001-65,000
	$65,001-75,000
	$75,001-85,000
	$85,001-100,000
	$100,001-250,000
	More than $250,000

In neurobiology you learn about a condition called pain asymbolia. This condition is fairly unique in that people with this disorder have pain messages transmitted up the spinal cord into the brain and they can acknowledge that this pain is uncomfortable, but it completely lacks emotional context. They aren’t particularly scared, annoyed, perturbed, or angered by pain, treating it like they would any other harmless stimulus.

Although the result of a problem with the wiring of the brain, this condition can be reproduced in perfectly normal individuals. While no human mother has ever been quite overprotective enough, laboratory researchers have shown that when puppies are raised in a pain-free environment, they are unable to learn from painful experiences and so never lean to avoid injury.

While this doesn’t sound like a particularly dangerous condition, when you realize that pain is merely a signal for injury, and that these people–not being able to feel pain–are completely unable to anticipate and avoid said injury, you can understand just how harmful to your health such a cognitive problem can be.

What a ‘government that cares’ gives us is something all too similar. It acts as a buffer preventing people from feeling the full consequences of their actions. ‘Society’ takes much of the load. For almost any bad decision a person can make, from unintended pregnancy to drug addiction, there exists a government or private program that will pay the costs for you. The injury occurred, but you never felt the pain.

This situation is exacerbated when the nanny state moves from a ’safety net’ as we still often refer to it in the states, to a ‘human right’ as they have become in Europe. With the former, at least it is acknowledged that you did screw up. With the latter, what you did to end up on the rolls is irrelevant: you deserve that handout no matter what you have done.

In England, it wasn’t too uncommon to come across multiple-generation teenage mother families. Great grandmothers under 50, three generations of absent men, and three generations of women who had never worked a day in their lives. Because ‘the government owes it to them’. It wasn’t uncommon to see lushes and addicts of all kinds on the rolls either. Our situation here isn’t quite so bad, but I can remember more than one personal encounter in which someone insisted it was their right to have the government support their family so they didn’t have to work.

It’s a delicate balance to maintain; so many of these government protections go toward families. And one would rather not have the sins of the father revisited upon the son. Even in the depths of my heartlessness I find it hard to acknowledge that a child should starve because the stupidity of his mother. Yet clearly something must be done.

At the most basic level, people must pay for their mistakes or they will never learn from them. And if a portion of that punishment is to be subsidized by the state, and thus the taxpayer, they must be made to acknowledge that the pain would be far worse without others to help them. And there must be a penalty for multiple infractions, another incentive for learning.

The most basic lesson to be learned from evolutionary biology, economics, and the failure of socialism is that all individuals are self-interested. Without incentive to work harder, they won’t. Without incentive not to make mistakes, they will. Without a reason to be good and a greater reason not to be bad, people will not choose good. When a comfortable life becomes a right people will fail to grow.

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.–Daniel Webster

The uniting feature of all leftist ideologies is the belief that a central government is an inherently good thing. That only through unilateral control can the evils of man be subdued. The problem with this, of course, is that it is men who make up said entities. It is very possible that, as the esteemed Mr. Webster remarked, the originators of such political philosophies really were good men; Leon Trotsky strikes me as one such individual. But it is also oft said that power inevitably corrupts; the greater the power the greater the temptation. It would thus seem inevitable that government would come to embody the very evils it was meant to suppress. Government in its purest form is nothing but power. The power to control, the power to suppress, the power to protect, and the power to enable. Power, like any other tool, is a neutral entity. Under a benevolent dictator like Pratchett’s Vetinari, a powerful government is almost transparent, doing little more than greasing the occasional squeaky wheel. Yet those who found their necks under Stalin’s jackboots had quite a different opinion of tyranny. It would make sense, then, that if one were to advocate for a powerful central government, one would take some care in choosing his leaders.

For the past several years, I have remained dumbfounded by the Left’s inability to champion anyone who wasn’t an insincere self-serving egomaniac as a popular, cultural, or official leader. In college, Che Guevara t-shirts abounded. Of all his crimes against humanity which included thousands of executions of enemy combatants as well as the brutal murder of innocent peasants, perhaps his most heinous was his role as the architect of the Cuban ‘labor camps’ in which people were ‘re-educated’ for not believing in the flawed concept of Marxism. Using governmental power for thought control and persecution of dissidents, clearly Guevara was an exemplar of the use of the state in curbing the more unsavory aspects of man’s character.

In the political arena, we have an assortment of silver spoon rich WASPS claiming to actually care about the less fortunate among us. From their class-obsessed lifestyles, to the privileges they would deny us yet retain themselves the position that they are in fact sincere in their leftist tendencies would strike any honest man as completely without basis in reality. This cast of characters is exemplified by Hilary Clinton. If ever there was a character in the political arena who answered to ambition and ambition alone, it would be her.

But what sparked this insight on my part was the self-absorbed nature of Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos himself. Although the man has not declared an interest in running for office, he is nevertheless a political and popular icon among the left and so wields no small amount of power himself. Leaving aside the warped worldview that allows the man to declare he’s a libertarian without bursting into fits of self-induced laughter, the man has named a gathering of his followers…after himself. The YearlyKos he calls it. As the real implications of this hit me, I merely sat dumbfounded for several minutes. Here we have a man who preaches ‘equality’, ‘opportunity’, and ‘prosperity’ yet is so narcissistic as to organize an entire conference of leftists in his own name.

Leftists would create a government of unprecedented power and then willingly hand over the reigns of the terrible beast to those who would be most likely to misuse it, only to look up in shock as the wheels of the juggernaut moved to crush them.

Government is an attempt at the solution of societal ills through the application of power. Power is the method, not the purpose, of government. To lose sight of this is to invite both failure and totalitarianism, as Hayek prophetically warned us so many decades ago. Why then does the Left continue to choose leaders more interested in the use of power than the solution of societal problems?

It is true that there are power-mongers and egocentric people among libertarians. And there are figures who are nearly universally respected amongs us: Thomas Jefferson, Robert Heinlein, Patrick Henry. And there are politicians we unabashedly and nearly unanimously support: Ron Paul, John Cornyn and…that’s about it. But there is a limit to our respect and our support. We do not define ourselves by these people, we do not put them up on pedestals. We see them as fellow travelers, perhaps with a taller soapbox, perhaps with a little more prestige, but we see them as like-minded individuals not rulers. But more importantly we don’t trust them with such formidable power.