Global swarming

Most of the educated liberals that I know are not very religious, but they seem to make an exception in the case of global warming.

Of all the topics that bubble up for this blog, this one is by far the most mind-boggling, to the point of amusement. People seem to have lost their mind. Case in point: here's an article that actually says some indigenous Peruvian mountain people are going to freeze because of global warming ... and it's the civilized world's fault. Honestly.

As near as I can tell, the following statements are true:

1) The earth may be warming, it's not clear
2) Humans may be causing the warming, it's not clear
3) Only at enormous cost could we substantially decrease the human contribution (greenhouse gases) to climate change, if it exists
4) Decreasing the human contribution may reverse global warming, if it exists
5) Global warming may be a bad thing, it may be a good thing ... either could be argued

And here is the non-sequitur conclusion I am being asked to accept:

Therefore, we should start shutting down all the factories and turn off all the cars and revert to a pre-industrial lifestyle. Now, before it's too late.

Does anyone realize that the average global temperature hasn't risen this century? During the entire Bush presidency he was berated for not doing something about something that didn't exist during his entire presidency. Actually, maybe he had a secret program to eliminate global warming and succeeded . . . maybe he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize more than Al Gore.

Since humans are not quite sensitive enough to temperature to notice a tiny fraction of a degree of warming over several decades, they must be very sensitive to something else in order whip themselves into such a frenzy. Could it be the scare tactics, propaganda and visions of the apocalypse? Or the political correctness of group-think that conveniently links environmentalism to anti-capitalism? Since we know that corporations are bad, anyone who opposes them must be good, right?

The science of global warming is shaky at best. The computer models are immature and are proven wrong with each passing day. I can write a computer model that predicts with 100% accuracy the past behavior of the stock market. I'll predict this week's performance next Saturday. You'll be very impressed.

My observation is that our planet is nicely self-regulating. The planet warms a bit thanks to extra CO2 in the atmosphere? No problem. That'll just lengthen the growing season and cause more CO2 to be absorbed by the planet's flora. Next thing you know, we're back to where we were. That assumes that CO2 is the culprit, not at all a certainty.

And what role do the solar cycles play? What if our computer models say that man is causing global warming but really it's an active period of the sun's brightness. What if we put dampers on our economy, reduced GDP and industrial output, only to learn that we're impotent after all? Wouldn't we look a little silly? Wouldn't a lot of people suffer for no good reason?

And (I can't resist adding this) I know no liberals who have reduced their intense vacation schedule via airplanes, luxury cruise ships and RVs in order to offer even a symbolic gesture to the cause. People, don't tell me we need cap-and-trade or rationing of fossil fuels and then jump on a plane to Vail ... you go from looking like a fool to looking like a clown.

The point is that we just don't know enough about the disease to prescribe radical remedies. It's like in the middle ages when a baby had a fever, we opened up the skull to reduce the pressure. In hindsight, those "doctors" were doing more harm than good.

Let's all pause, take a deep breath (didn't that fresh air feel good?) and cool down a little.

Are These Reasons Unreasonable?

Looks like the Senate version of the Health Care bill is likely to become law in the near future. As far as I can tell, the main motivation is to provide health insurance for a group of people that don't currently have any (not that they don't have health care, they just don't have insurance). Ask your average liberal and, as a broad smile covers their face, they'll tell you how great it will be to extend medical coverage to so many people.

However, there are also motivations to refrain from passing this bill. Let me try to list some of them.

1) The new law will require citizens to buy health insurance as a condition of existence . This is a first for our nation: become part of the collective or go to jail. In my view, it flies in the face of our nation's true independent spirit and violates the fundamental human right to choose your path through life. I have yet to speak to a liberal who even thought about this before getting excited about the bill, let alone saw it as a cause for worry. One suggested to me, after a day of chewing on it, that it's no different from the draft, when young men were forced to serve in the military. Given that the draft was temporary, full of exceptions (religious or conscientious objectors) and used only in national emergency, I don't see the equivalence. Will I be allowed to excuse myself from the new insurance requirement based on my fundamental beliefs in liberty and self-determination?

This new health bill says without hesitation: as a condition of living in this "free" nation, you will "pitch in". A seal is being broken that cannot and will not be repaired. I offer this guarantee: it's the first of many such tragedies.

2) The CBO conclusion that this legislation is fiscally responsible is a lie. The analysis was done over 10 years, the first 4 of which provide no benefits. This means that there are 10 years of revenue collection with only 6 years of expenses. Of course the numbers look friendly. But what about the following 10 years? Even assuming that it's possible to predict the financial viability of a government program 20 years out, no one is stressing about it. My sense is that the liberals know it will be a financial failure, requiring even more government intervention eventually leading to a single (govt) payer system. This is the holy grail.

3) Poor people being given tax money that they can use to buy their health insurance is yet another case of perpetuating the entitlement mentality and trapping people in their status quo. There has been nothing more cruel done to poor people over the last 50 years than giving them resources without earning them and with no requirements. How many generations of kids have to grow up watching Mom (and maybe Dad) dependent on govt for food, money, housing and now health care? Hey liberals, how did the housing projects of the 1960s and 70s work out? Don't you yet feel guilty for throwing these people into your prison cell? Could your expectations of the poor get any lower?

4) The "Health Care is a Right" slogan badly distorts the concept of a right. The founders of our nation had it correct: a right is inalienable, bestowed upon humans by our creator. A right can be violated, but not taken away. And a right is also not something that exists in one century but not another (Did Martha Washington have a "right" to a mammogram?) . Actual rights include freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Notice that none of these require another human to supply anything. There is no such thing as an inherent right for one human to control another.

But that is what is meant by the right to health care. Since MRIs, pharmaceuticals, surgeries and the like do not exist in nature and they must be created by other humans, a right to health care means a right to the labor of another ... absolutely and completely counter to our nation's ideals. I know that liberals feel strongly enough that the discussion should never come to this, that people should happily help their neighbor ... so strongly that they don't even bat an eye when forcing one human to help another. But slavery is what's happening nonetheless. Civilized slavery, but slavery.

5) There are better ways to reform health care, mostly by placing more responsibility and a sense of the costs involved closer to the individual. People should know that health care is not free, that there is not an infinite supply and that they should be smarter about their choices. It's not an all-you-can-eat buffet. But, people don't want to deal with the economic side of health care and this legislation further insulates the average patient. Here's a great article on that subject.

6) The significant problems with this health care bill will lead to another one. Medicare is on the way to bankruptcy and will need to be fixed. Liberals like to brag that Medicare has such a low administrative costs (3% compared to 20% for most insurance companies), but that's not exactly a fair comparison: insurance companies have to stay in business. My company could have a low overhead too if we had no expectation of financial performance. This new law, like Medicare, will go bankrupt and will have to be fixed. We're not passing a law right now, we're advocating a long series of them.

Please, liberals, tell me why these reasons are unreasonable and why we should tumble down this path. I'm sure I'm missing something.

Concrete Galoshes for the Competition

When I build my time machine, I'll make a stop at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia and whisper the following sentence into a few ears:

Except for the powers explicitly granted herein, Congress shall make no law interfering with free trade among the People.

Boy, would this have saved a lot of trouble. We could have stopped the meddlers, tinkerers and do-gooders in one swoop. Nipped all their mischief in the bud.

But, alas, this text is not to be found in the Constitution. Instead, after years of meddling, we have sufficient precedent for government (federal or state) to do anything that a lobbyist can dream up. All we need is an elected official in need of a few votes (or money) and a little confused about the original ideals of our nation and anything goes. Happens every day.

Why do car manufacturers not sell their product directly to the consumer? Why do health insurance companies not offer the same products in all 50 states? Why are private companies not allowed to compete with US Postal Service in letter delivery? Why is there a substantial tariff on imported agricultural products like sugar and beef? Why do microbreweries have production quotas in some states? Why are certain professions allowed to limit the number of people in that profession (doctors, lawyers, realtors, plumbers, electricians, hair dressers, taxi drivers ...) through licensing?

As a computer guy, I think the geeks should form a union and hire a lobbyist to get our fair share of the pie. Today, people install software and hook up printers on their own without the guidance of an IT professional. Imagine the benefits and efficiencies if they had an expert perform this work for them ... think how much better off people would be with properly maintained computers.

Yes, let's make it illegal to repair or upgrade your PC on your own.

Maybe our spokesperson (time to sweeten the pot for the liberals) could be from a minority group, someone with a diverse background who worked their way up through an unfair society to become an IT success story. Maybe our lobbyist could even be transgendered or come from a broken home. Works tirelessly to bring computers to poor children in the inner city. Gives great speeches. Inspiring.

Then things will change!

We'll limit the number of people who can be licensed to repair computers and we'll finally get the compensation we deserve. And society will benefit from having better computer technology. Or at least the ones that can afford it.

Which will lead us to the next phase ... because we have raised the cost of computer services, many people will not be able to afford computer care so we'll experience a backlash. IT service is a right! The Digital Divide must be bridged! But, instead of removing the government restrictions there will be a call for government takeover of IT services. The free market has had its chance and it has failed. In this day and age, computer technology is too important to be left to the capitalists!

This is what is commonly known as progress.

The Bell Curve

In my never ending quest to understand why intelligent, well intentioned people end up on the left, favoring more government and the attenuation of economic freedom, I have recently found wisdom in an engineer's old friend, the bell curve.

Sometimes called the "normal distribution" or "Gaussian distribution", the bell curve is a mathematical way of representing a distribution of data, usually fairly symmetric around the mean, or average, value.


For example, the height of human males is represented well by a bell curve. There are roughly as many people taller than the average as shorter. And the further you get from the average height, the fewer people there are at that height. The example to the right shows one such sampling and even with limited data points, you can see the classic shape of the bell curve forming. The bell curve can be found everywhere in nature and seems to be a fundamental characteristic of our universe.

Now, what does this have to do with politics? These days, it seems to have quite a lot. The bell curve stubbornly opposes a fundamental ideal of today's liberal left: equality. Equality is not a natural consequence of the world. Some people are smarter than others. Some work harder. Some are more attractive, more athletic, more articulate. And each of these qualities affects a person's likelihood of succeeding in life.

My impression is that liberals spend most of their life fighting this fundamental truth, one that is woven deeply into the fabric of our world. Even with historic examples of countries like China, Cuba and the Soviet Union, countries that went to great length to fight the bell curve, liberals continue to believe that this dream is somehow achievable.

The particular bell curve that probably upsets liberals the most is one that plots individual wealth. In a free nation, the natural result of economic activity yields a few poor people, a few rich people and a lot of people somewhere in the middle. This is clearly the case in the US and other mostly-free nations. In nations where economic liberty is diminished, the distribution of wealth is quite different: a lot of poor people and a few very rich people with not much in the middle. Socio-economic mobility is also mostly absent without liberty ... if you weren't born with wealth, you likely will never experience it.

What is revealing and tragically amusing is that liberals talk about changing the shape of a free nation's bell curve by eliminating poverty, however most of their actions are aimed at the rich. As if destroying, confiscating or redistributing the wealth of the rich will redefine the bell curve to just a big lump in the middle. They fantasize about eliminating the wealthy and the poor in one swoop, leaving only a happy egalitarian society wearing sandals and driving hybrids.

Michael Moore recently proposed confiscating the wealth of the 600 richest Americans (a few hundred billion dollars) in order to pay for the deficit and allow more government programs for the poor. This is exactly what Fidel Castro did in 1959 and the result was the destruction of a people who have yet to recover. But history aside, what exactly would the government do with Microsoft? Most of Bill Gates' wealth is in the form of stock in the company he founded (sometimes I think liberals believe his money is just piled up in a vault somewhere, just sitting there being evil). What are the consequences of taking more and more money from the rich? Answer: they become less able to create the wealth that the middle and poor desperately need. Do it a little and you get the US. Do it a lot and you get Italy. Take it to the extreme and you get Cuba.

The bell curve is not a starting point for social engineering. It's not a dial you can turn from Washington. The enlightened, intelligent liberals with such wonderful intentions would be more effective if they applied their abundant energy elsewhere. Mentor an inner city child, donate to a scholarship fund, open a business in a poor neighborhood, become a foster parent, ignore Michael Moore ... the list is long.

Do-gooders, meddlers, tinkerers and superiors

"Live and let live."

Anyone capable of reading these words has lived long enough to have developed a set of values, probably dearly held, by which they live. Good for you. I hope they serve you well.

That covers the first word. Now, the hard part, with which many people struggle, is the last 2 words: "let live". Don't force your values on others. Don't vote for representatives who do so. Don't give money to organizations that do so. Don't be a do-gooder, meddler, tinkerer or superior.

Who are these people that feel so confident, so righteous, about how things should work that they feel no hesitation to try to shape the world into that image? I guess it's tempting. On one hand, you see a poor man. On the other, a rich man. It just seems right that the rich man should be charitable and give money to the poor man. So, since the rich man doesn't share my values, I'll just support the passage of a law that forces him to give money. That way, my clearly noble value is imposed on these wayward people and we'll all be better off. Yes, that feels better.

Or the gay man living the life of sin. Doesn't he see the evil, the unholiness, of his life? I'm sure I can help him by making his lifestyle illegal. By not allowing him the same choices as a heterosexual man. He'll be better off and society will benefit by discouraging such behavior. Yes, that feels better.

Or the businessman that doesn't embrace the importance of diversity. Doesn't he see the richness of experience and the valuable points of view he could have? He lives in his ivory tower, unaware of all that today's colorful society has to offer. We can fix that by forcing him to have a mixture of employees, possibly through forced quotas or tax incentives. His company will be better off, society will benefit, people of color will be given opportunities to participate in the workplace. Yes, that feels better.

Motorcyclists should wear helmets? Credit card companies should not have high interest rates? Bars should be smoke free? Wall street pay should be limited? Strip clubs should be outlawed? Art should be funded by tax dollars? Beer should not be sold on Sunday? More people should be given home mortgages? Health care should be free and equal for all people?

Who are these people? The answer is: the vast majority of us. I have met very few people in my life who draw a line between promoting their opinions through friendly discourse and forcing an idea through government action. Everyone seems to have their own pet issue or two, happily promoting them through campaigning, donations or voting. Politicians even trade issues: you support mine and I'll support yours.

The truth is that very few people believe in "Live and let live." And the funny thing is that most people will say just the opposite. Just ask someone and their initial reaction will be "Sure, live and let live. That's my motto." And then probe a little deeper to find out what they want to outlaw or what government programs they support. Maybe they'll make the connection. Probably not.

I'm sure some people will say that I'm no different, that my pet issue is freedom. Since I support "forcing" freedom on people, I must be a meddler, a do-gooder. Supporting the absence of meddling is itself meddling.

Nonsense.

I draw my non-meddling inspiration from the greatest group of non-meddlers ever assembled, the Founding Fathers of the United States. I'm not sure human history has ever witnessed such an example of wisdom and restraint, with a vision toward the greatness of our potential, as our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Live and let live, coded into a system of government.

I find it amusing, but tiresome, when one meddler gets angry at other meddlers. I have a friend who adamantly insists that taxpayer money should be used to fund the NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts. People should support art and if they don't have enough sense to do it on their own, we'll just make them. Yes, that feels better. But then she gets upset when another meddler tries to direct taxpayer money toward abstinence counseling or the space program.

Yes, that's the true pragmatic reason for restraint, discipline and a commitment to limited government. Don't be a meddler because you don't want to open the door to other meddlers that may not share your values. You may not be able to force others to live in your heaven, but then you won't have to live in theirs either.

More DMVs, please

Who are these people that go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get their driver's license renewed and say "Oh yea, that's how I want my doctor visit to be."?

Or someone who has the pleasure of dealing with the IRS and concludes "Yep, I want to go through that to get my pacemaker approved."?

The pat objection to today's health care system is that it's too "profit driven" and not "caring" enough. Capitalism doesn't work for medicine (as if the reformers approve of capitalism anywhere else). Well, being "profit driven" can be accused of a lot of things, but failing to reduce costs is not one of them. And Amtrak is not profit driven . . . exactly how "caring" would you say it is?

The truth is, today's health care system is not capitalist (meaning, it is not a free market). This is true for at least 3 reasons:

1) The American Medical Association (AMA) controls the quantity and type of physicians that exist on the supply side of the market. They have successfully directed legislation to the point that it is illegal to establish a competitive entity. It's like creating a legal monopoly that controls the number of grocery stores . . . think how expensive your food would be.

This fact also limits the types of physicians out there. Today it is illegal for someone to open a wart removal clinic without going through the AMA required process of education and certification, becoming at least a general physician. You can't just go to a 2 year school to learn all about warts and how to remove them and then open an office. Those against free markets say that a highly educated doctor should do it because it might be skin cancer or some other serious condition. But, you can go to the drug store and buy a wart removal product that freezes them off. I doubt the checkout boy at the Walgreens is an expert in melanoma. As always, the perfect is the enemy of the good. A lot of people could be served by an array of low cost health practitioners, but the government, driven by the AMA, won't let it happen.

2) Health benefits from your employer are not taxed like regular income. This has created a culture of special treatment of benefits that raise costs. For example, does it really make sense for your health insurance provider to pay for your annual checkup? This is like your auto insurance company paying for your oil change. Sure, it sounds great, but why do I need to pay someone to pay my bill for me? It just raises cost. There's no such thing as a free lunch, so that perk of not having to pay for your oil change would only raise your auto insurance rate and lighten your wallet more than if you had just paid it yourself.

Treating health benefits like regular income would, among other things, have the effect of returning insurance to its proper place . . . as insurance. Just like home, life, auto, fire, flood, theft and locust insurance, it only kicks in when something bad happens. Otherwise, you pay out of your pocket to get through life. Watch how costs go down and how you think twice about going to the family doctor for a simple cough or sore throat if it's coming out of your pocket.

3) Malpractice suits are unpredictable (hence, unacceptable) sources of risk for physicians, therefore enormous amounts of wasted resources are spent to avoid putting one's career in the hands on 12 jurors, each of which sees a doctor as insensitive, overpaid and too tan. The amount of money taken out of the health care system and put in the hands of trial lawyers, insurance salesmen, accountants and, of course, harmed patients is staggering. Beyond belief staggering.

A government that allows such a system to persist must be one run by trial lawyers. Contract law is perfectly capable of handling any eventualities that may result when a human doctor treats a human patient. Simply put a price on whatever may occur in advance, in writing and make it part of what motivates you choose one doctor over another. If one doctor will pay you $2 million dollars if he accidentally misdiagnoses your heart condition and another will pay you $4 million, maybe the second doctor has a little more confidence in his skills. Or maybe the first doctor's fees are lower because he's not running every test under the sun. In any case, you now have information you can use to choose your doctor.

(Note: Doctors having different business models and for folks to choose their physician based on such things is distasteful to some people. I respect that. OK, no I don't. Grow up.)

So, instead of letting capitalism do what it's always done (maximizing efficiency and innovation) we're going to put the government in charge of our health care system, undoubtedly dooming us with what it has always done (maximizing bureaucracy and stagnation).

This brings us to a troublesome reality in the health care debate: it's not about health care. The motivation for these reformers is not to improve the system or to make it more efficient. The real goal, as is their goal in so many things, is to tear down the rich vs poor class structure. Everyone should get the same . . . fill in the blank: health care, education, housing, retirement, food, car, vacation, wardrobe, cell phone . . . the list is all encompassing. It's a classic socialist dogma that no man deserves a better life than another, despite how hard he worked or the risks he took. Anyone who lives well is doing so at the expense of another and should therefore not be allowed to do so.

(Challenge to the reformers reading this: Be honest, in your heart of hearts, this is your deepest motivation, isn't it? Take a minute and tell the truth.)

Ending these blogs on a positive note these days is difficult. Look around and it's clear the direction we're headed. But, at least your doctor and the DMV can use the same eye chart equipment. That'll save some money, right?

Talkin Bout My Generation

If Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, would we have entered World War II? In both hemispheres? Would we have had the resolve to see it through? Or would we have watched from the safety and comfort of home while good people suffered at the hands of some of the most evil characters the world has ever known?

I like to think the Greatest Generation would have jumped into the fight anyway, for both our strategic interests and in defense of the innocent. History certainly would have been different, but in the end evil would have been defeated.

But after WWII, for some reason, we started to doubt ourselves. The peace-at-all-costs crowd gained influence over media and education (especially at the university level), making it more difficult to rally the nation around any cause that involves the military. Yes, in July of 1953 the fighting in Korea stopped and a line was drawn. No winner, no loser, just peace. But look at what became of the North and South since then, perfectly illustrating the true nature of collectivist versus individualist ideologies. I would like to ask the anti-Korean War protesters of the time: Was it worth it? Have 50 years of intense suffering by the North Korean people been preferable to steeling our resolve and winning the war?

And if Korea showed the slippage of our national pride, we hit rock bottom in Vietnam. Like Korea, we were there for a reason: to stop the spread of an evil ideology and to defend innocent people from its effects. But by this point the question "War, what is it good for?" had no one to answer. It was just too cool and a sign of enlightenment to denounce any war, for whatever cause.

But again, we watched the results unfold. Yes, we brought our boys home from the war, but we also condemned millions to death and misery in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in yet another stark example of what transpires in the absence of American influence. I wonder if Jane Fonda ever thinks about those poor people . . . she certainly is never asked about them during her "Larry King Live" appearances.

Over the last few years, we have seen this pattern continue to play out. After 9/11, we briefly regained our desire to assert American values in the shakier parts of the world. Afghanistan was obvious . . . go get the guys who attacked us. And at first, invading Iraq and ridding the world of Saddam Hussein was well supported here at home. The naysayers were a small minority, especially when Saddam's statue came down so quickly.

But then things got difficult . . . a hard slog. Mistakes were made and the mission wasn't quite accomplished. Good men and women died and it was heart wrenching to watch. This is when public sentiment started to turn, led by some of the most opportunistic and shallow politicians the world has ever known . . . almost all from the Democratic Party. What happened during those long months when victory was not assured, when the path forward looked worse than the path back, when the only reason to keep going was a belief in core principles of our nation?

Character was revealed.

A philosophical rot has taken hold at our core. How many people do you know that were supportive or OK with the war at first and then jumped ship a year or two down the road? Take note of these people and be reminded not to rely on them for anything important. They will let you down. Again.

Fortunately President Bush did not waver and ensured Iraq was won before he left office. But, the price we will pay thanks to the wobbly left is impotence against Iran. This is an evil regime, on the road to becoming dangerous. If we, as a nation, had stayed committed to winning in Iraq and now turned our attention to Iran, we may have been able to gain influence without further military action. Now, there seems to be only one path: a nuclear armed Iran and a foolish hope they won't use it. They will.

It's no longer in style to believe that America is great, that our values are fundamentally noble. Apologies are in vogue. Bowing to monarchs that have no respect for individual rights and shaking hands with socialists who condemn America . . . Presidents used to not do these things.

Sometimes fighting for what you believe in requires actual fighting. There are people who want to tear down what we value. Embracing them will not change that. Do we really have to continuously learn that the hard way?

(PS - 20-April-2009, on the 2 year anniversary of Harry Reid's declaration: ''...this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything ...")