Dangerous Dan Thoughts and musings on the world

As we prepare to pass a massive health care entitlement program that will destroy the quality of the current system and exponentially increase the size of the federal budget, the federal debt, and the power of the federal government in our lives, let’s consider a few things.

1. Name me a successful (or, as most actually are, seemingly successul) socialist program or system that is not parasitic on the private sector. On health care, for example, many people hold up Medicare as being great template for a quality government-run system, even though it about to go bust. If you can find a doctor who wants more Medicare patients or an all-Medicare practice, then it is highly likely you will next find a unicorn ridden by a leprechaun. Doctors and hospitals tolerate Medicare and the loss they take on the system because they are still able to make a profit from private insurers. Private insurance subsidizes Medicare. Should you take away the private insurance so that you only have a universal Medicare-type plan, what will subsidize it?

The great socialized medical systems of other countries are also parasitic on the U.S. The newest wonder drugs and most medical innovations come out of the U.S. because companies can make a profit here, but not elsewhere. And yet the other countries still benefit from innovations that come from the U.S. The massive socialized welfare systems of western Europe are the result of half a century of U.S. military protecction of the continent. They had the luxury of drawing down their militaries and building up their welfare states. They currently hardly have the ability to even defend themselves, let alone project any significant power abroad. If the leaders of western Europe had any sense, they would persuade the U.S. NOT to join the socialist democratic fold. If the European pattern were to hold here so that military spending will be replaced with welfare spending, we will no longer have ability to militarily secure Europe and the Europeans will suddenly be responsible for themselves without an assured back-up plan in the U.S.

1b. I also marvel at how people are so willing to allow the federal government to so intrude in their lives that they will allow it to dictate to them something as fundamental as their own health care and how they use it. I’ve always been baffled at how people complain about insurance companies and HMO’s and then their solution is to create one enormous monopolistic HMO run by the federal government, that paragon of efficiency, meritocracy, and friendly reliable customer service. When Obama talks of lowering costs, hwo do they really think that will be done? When the supply of available medical care remains static, but demand skyrockets and there’s no longer any price mechanism to ration the supply, how do they think the rationing will be done? How do they think new medical innovations will come about or new drugs created when there’s no longer any profit to be made in them for companies? How do they think the government will distribute money and resources through the system? By need? By merit? By consumer demand? By voter appeasement? By political influence? When Obama talks about “evidence-based” medicine and decisions, what evidence, chosen by whom, to effect decisions for what goals? What motivation will aspiring talented sudents have for going into the medical field when they can no longer make their own medical decisions, when they can no longer act on their own judgment and training, when they become bureaucrats executing options on a flow chart, when they cannot produce a meaningful income to reflect their education, training, and service provided, and when patients see them not as talented professionals from whom they are receiving a valuable service made valuable by what it costs the patient, but as an extension of the government system as surely as a glassy-eyed dullard sitting at a DMV window? Why go through that pain when instead they can become, say, lawyers with less investment of time, talent, and money and greater reward on the other end? Why contribute to the medical field when there are oh so many ways to become parasitic on it?

2. The role of proper government should be to preserve and protect individual freedoms and let individuals define and pursue their own versions of happiness and the good life (within bounds, of course, e.g. not allowing joyful murderers to exercise their hobby). The more instrusive the government becomes, however, through taxation, regulation, mandatory services, etc., the more individual freedoms are eroded and persons are forced to comform to the versions of happiness and good life decided on by the government as being best and proper. It doesn’t matter if my versions are different, I will be forced through either lack of choice and options or through coercion to comply. On health care, I may prefer a certain doctor or have a certain procedure done or make some other conscious choice that I think best, but under a government system, I will be constrained to doing what the bureaucratic rules say I can do.

2b. I would dearly love if some politician out there would articulate the case for economic freedom being general freedom, which I think is one of the best cases to be made against increasingly excessive taxation. The more of your own money you keep, the more you can pursue your own aforementioned versions of happiness and the good life. You can donate to charities, tithe, take educational courses, buy a ski boat, travel, play XBOX, contribute to political candidates or political causes you support, etc., etc. Whatever your version is, money allows you to pursue it. The more of that money that is taxed, however, the more your ability to pursue it is restricted. and is necessarily an infringement of what is supposed to be an unalienable right, the pursuit of happiness Again, erosion of individual freedoms.

3. I sometimes wonder if, though we are a common law society, we are becoming more civil law in tone and structure. Rules and laws are becoming exceptionally complex in their layout. Older real estate agents can tell you housing contracts are much longer than they used to be. Older profesoors will tell you how syllabi were once a page or two and now universities require they have sections on disability, discrimination, tardy policies, grading policies, reading schedules, et al, until a syllabus constitutes a packet. In all things, all bases must be covered and no loopholes left open.

The problem with all this is that rules replace judgment. People become afraid to make judgment calls because they fear they’ll leave themselves exposed to litigation or discipline if they choose wrongly. If there’s a rule they can follow, however, then they can do whatever it says and not bother using judgment, no matter how illogical, inconvenient, inefficient, immoral, or nonsensical it may be in a given situation. They are absolved of all personal responsibility. No matter the outcome or incomprehensible the decision, they are justified so long as they conformed to the rule. And then responsibility has been to displaced to whom? To the rule? Where is the accountability in the system? Suddenly, no one is accountable and no one is responsible so long as every one followed their own respective rules. The buck stops nowhere because it never started going anywhere at the start.

We’ve replaced minds with rules. Whatever happened to producing people with good judgment and good character who can choose wisely instead of merely stamping out drones who can do little more than offensively exploit loopholes and defensively cover their asses? We don’t want men of thinking, we want men of process.

4. Last, I was ruminating this morning on the rather contradictory positions of those who support higher taxes. On the one hand, they support higher taxation of those in the higher income brackets in order to generate revenue for various government spending. They do so on the supposition that those who are wealthy will continue working at the same pace as before and work with the same effort to increase income, productivity, etc., and also that they will not leave the jurisdiciton of the taxing entity. That is, they expect the higher tax to generate more revenue while having little to no adverse effect on the behavior of those being taxed.

On the other hand, these same people will turn around and purposely use taxation as a tool for behavior modification. They argue, for example, that gas taxes should be higher so people will push for and buy more fuel efficient vehicles. They push through higher taxes on cigarettes saying that doing so will make the cost of smoking prohibitively expensive and smokers will quit.

So, which is it? Does higher taxation change behavior or does it not? You can’t have it both ways. I haven’t decided if the attempt to do so is the result of naivity, convenience, or straight-out lying.

And that’s about all I think I think right now.

Any one of these deserves greater attention, but the real world is currently demanding a great deal of my time.  But here a couple of things I think I think.

1. Obama is turning out to be exactly who I thought he would be and yet I dislike him even more than I thought I would.  His efforts at various reforms of the society are wrong-headed and perilous.  He is also abusing the executive branch and has concentrated power in the presidency to a degree that I’m not sure has precidence.  Currently, a man with one year of experience in the business world (as a financial advisor) is the effective uber-CEO of the world’s largest budget, two major automotive manufacturers, large national banks and investment firms (and a number of smaller ones), and is also trying to become the head of a nationwide HMO.  I don’t know why people aren’t more worried about this than they are.

2. What depresses me is that I’m not convinced that if McCain were president and/or if the Republicans were still the majority in Congress, they wouldn’t be doing many of same boneheaded things Obama and the Dems are.

3. Regarding the auto companies, we’re witnessing what happens when the government takes over a business: it screws it up.  Anytime the government meddles in a market, it disrupts how that market operates.  A free market should be a meritocracy where only the best succeed and the good survive.  Politics, though, is an aristocracy of influence where the best connected succeed and the well connected survive.  I greatly fear that GM and Chrysler are going to become like Amtrak.  The companies will continue to operate inefficiently and will lose money (all the more so now that the unions have such a big stake in them) and they’ll just continue extorting Congress for more money.  After as much taxpayer money as has been invested in the companies, no politician wants them to completely fail on his/her watch and so they’ll just keep pumping more money while always claiming the automakers will become solvent, profitable, and independent tomorrow.  Would anybody like to buy a Trabant?

I’m currently watching National Geographic Explorer’s episode on executions, with a (understandable) focus on the Texas death row in Huntsville.  I’ve always like the Explorer series and they tend to play it pretty straight without taking sides (or at least without being too overt about it).  One gets a vague feeling of disapproval.  In times like this, though, I like to note the crimes for which these were executed.

Willie Earl Pondexter: Pondexter and accomplices Ricky Bell, Deon Williams, and James Henderson met together and discussed robbing Martha Lennox, a wealthy 84-year-old woman in Clarksville. They parked a few blocks away. On their first attempt to enter the house, they saw a patrolling police car. The men ran back to their car, but later returned to Lennox’s house. After Pondexter kicked in the front door, all four of them went inside and went upstairs to Lennox’s bedroom. The victim was there, sitting on her bed. Williams then took $7 from the victim’s coin purse. Lennox was then shot twice in the head with a 9 mm pistol. The intruders then fled in the victim’s car. Pondexter and his companions drove Lennox’s car to Dallas, using the money they stole to buy gas. The day after the murder, they were arrested after attempting to rob a man on the street. At Pondexter’s trial, Deon Williams testified that Henderson shot Lennox in the head first, then handed the gun to Pondexter. Pondexter then shot Lennox in the head and said, “that’s how you smoke a bitch.” James Lee Henderson was also convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. He remains on death row.

David Martinez: Martinez lived with his firlfriend, Carolina Prado and her two children, 14 year old Erik and 10 year old Belinda. On July 10, 1994, Martinez beat Carolina to death with a baseball bat in her bed, and used the same bat on Erik in the living room. Belinda was left tied up but unharmed and had seen her brother beaten to death by Martinez. She escaped and returned with her Grandmother who discovered the bodies. Upon arrest, Martinez confessed to the murders, bragging that he had killed them like cockroaches. No apparent motive for the murders was revealed.

I’ve always had a rather unsophisticated argument for the death penalty and it goes like this: Some people just deserve to die.  That’s pretty much it.  No nuance about justice, costs, etc.  These guys commit horrific crimes and their lives become forfeit.  They simply deserve to die.

While I’m not typically in the habit of reproducing comments I leave elsewhere, I’ll do so this time. Given the time it took to write them and that my blogging hasn’t otherwise been productive lately, it’d be a shame to waste them.

These were in response to this post over at Moonbattery about Charlie Sheen jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon and positing that a plane never hit the Pentagon. A few people took the opportunity to support Mr. Sheen and the conspiracy theories. I posted the following three comments taking them to task. The most interesting is, I think, the second in which I argue that conspiracy theories tend to be self-perpetuating and that for the dedicated conspiracy theorist, the theories cannot be disproved since all evidence necessarily proves the theories.

1)
The most telling quote from Sheen: “It feels like from the people I talk to in and around my circles, it seems like the worm is turning.”

Ah, surely.

It’s amazing these claims are still out there despite being debunked again and again.

I refer you to this very nice compilation of moonbat myths concerning 9/11 and their thorough smack down by Popular Mechanics.

2)
Interesting.

The problem with hardcore conspiracy theorists is that their theories become self-perpetuating. They start with motivated speculation and then add assumptions, coincidences, bad data, and poor reasoning. Anything that contradicts their hypotheses is merely added to proof of the conspiracy.

Thus, when I linked to the Popular Mechanics article debunking the multiple myths the theorists have generated, Moonbat Supreme, instead of confronting the content, merely rhetorically asked why PM would be motivated to discredit the conspiracy theories. That is, because what PM said ran counter to his conspiracy theories, that by default meant that PM itself was part of the conspiracy. That, bizarrely enough, is taken as further proof of the conspiracy.

The problem is that absolutely nothing can dissuade the determined conspiracy theorist. Anything that supports the theory proves the theory, and anything that discredits it (no matter how damning) also proves the theory. So in the mind of the conspiracy-minded person, the theory is impossible to disprove. All evidence only serves to prove the theory, despite whether it augments or detracts from it.

So to you conspiracy folks, please explain to me how I am the one being close-minded to possibilities when your minds funnel any and all evidence towards support of your pre-determined position? You accuse us of denying evidence. This is because we argue against it. You, however, merely and conveniently assert that all evidence supports you. This improperly absolves you of the responsibility to confront the content itself. Instead, the conspiracy just grows ever-larger. The problem with this, though, is that the larger the proposed conspiracy, the less likely it’s true. How large have these conspiracies grown?

3)
Prince, indeed. So let’s do something interesting and turn the pithy questions back on them. M. Supreme, though I have my doubts, I will assume you have an adequate amount of common sense. Let’s think about the following.

Planting demolitions explosives is an intensive and time consuming endeavor requiring a great deal of skill. You don’t just stick them in a building, you must strategically place them on key supports, cutting some supports, etc. If these were planted in the towers, how is that nobody noticed?

If 9/11 was a big conspiracy and the government flew two jets into the towers (that planes hit the towers isn’t under debate), why would the government neglect to hit the Pentagon with a plane? I would think that if they had gone to the trouble to do so with the towers and that they lacked the moral scruples to do so, there would be no reason NOT to hit the Pentagon with a plane. Not to do so and then claim it had happened anyway would have been extraordinarily foolish and dangerous to the conspiracy. Are the plotters malevolent geniuses or sloppy amateurs?

The reason the likelihood of a proposed conspiracy being true is inversely proportional to its size is because larger conspiracies involve greater numbers of people. The more people who are involved, the more likely it is that someone will talk and expose the conspiracy. As it is, your conspiracy involves, at least, thousands – possibly tens of thousands. Among the people that would have to be in on it to some degree: administration officials, CIA, FBI, various local officials, police forces, foreign intelligence agencies and their governments, demolitions experts, the people on the airplanes, congressmen (both Democrat and Republican), various military entities, all media outlets, eyewitnesses, and the list continues growing. Why has nobody talked? In over four and a half years? These are not all government stooges, but many common people. Surely someone would have a crisis of conscience.

Democrats would have to know about the conspiracy. Why not reveal it and crush the president and Republicans?

Reporters would have to be in on it. Why not reveal it and crush the president and Republicans?

Foreign governments not friendly to the U.S. or at least those that don’t like Bush would have to know about it. Why not reveal it to get rid of Bush?

Domestic intelligence agencies haven’t been able to keep a lid on many, many classified operations due to “whistleblowers.” Why have none blown the whistle on this, which is much larger and more important than any of the other operations?

Surely the civilians on the planes didn’t volunteer to die and their phone calls to friends and family described the hijackers. If the 19 hijackers were government agents, why would they volunteer to die? Why wouldn’t they also use weapons that would better guarantee them of success? Surely the conspiracy could have arranged some reason for guns to be planted somewhere on the plane.

Why have the experts in building demolitions not come forward? Especially since controlled building demolition isn’t particularly a government or military expertise, it’s a civilian one.

If it was a grand conspiracy, presumably the goal would be to inculcate fear without causing peripheral damage. That is, preserve the economy. Why pick a technique that destroyed a major financial center, grounded civil aviation, and severely hurt the economy which in turn hurt Bush? Why not do something that could still cause fear without the severe economic damage?

Why pick something so complicated as what happened on 9/11? For terrorists, they can identify weaknesses and exploit them. Exposure of their plot after it’s in action is unimportant. Conspirators, though, need to continue concealing their plot after the fact. So why do something as complex as hijacking four planes, flying one into a field, flying two others into the towers at roughly the same point where they had previously planted large amounts of explosives (while somehow keeping the explosives intact and keeping them from detonating until the appropriate time), apparently making the fourth plane disappear but detonating explosives in the Pentagon anyway and saying a plane hit it, etc. This would be an unnecessarily complex operation with too many people involved and too great a chance of being uncovered. It would be foolish. Real conspirators would have kept the operation small and with few or no loose ends.

Considering that the accepted opinion is that 9/11 was the result of terrorists and not a conspiracy, considering that you want to convince everybody that it resulted from a conspiracy, and considering that you are acting as a plaintiff indicting numerous people of malfeasance, the burden of proof is, at the very least, pragmatically yours. Thus far, you have presented speculations based on assumptions that are in turn supported by outright improbabilities which are suspended in the ether. What say you to my questions? And remember that it is not enough that you point out oddities or coincidences, you must be able to present a cohesive case for a conspiracy that cannot only explain the oddities and disprove accepted events, but also bear a reasonable chance of success and also remain concealed to this day. Can you do it? Can you make a thing that defies common sense and is of absurd complexity and improbable likelihood more plausible than what’s accepted?