Sam Harris Talk

An interesting talk by Sam Harris, of "The End of Faith" fame, at TED. This is worth listening to, about 18 minutes. His idea is that there are scientific facts that tell us a lot about what we should value, which begins to bridge the gap between science and morality, ultimately making it possible to have a "science of morality".

Healthcare Humbug from Mathews

Chris Mathews slipped in a puzzling comment on Hard Ball last night, that he's in favor of "ObamaCare" because he thinks people should "take responsibility" for their health care. This is an odd invocation of the concept of responsibility. Why should being forced to purchase something be thought of as "taking responsibility"? I have a friend, for example, who's in his mid-twenties and hasn't been to the doctor in years. He's not happy about adding another line item for expenditures each month, because frankly put, he's not worried about getting sick. If he did get sick I suppose he'd pay out of pocket if it wasn't too serious, or go to the emergency room if it was (I didn't ask, but I suspect I'd receive these types of responses). In short, he doesn't want to purchase health care, because he's healthy. He wants to spend his money on other things (say, giving to the Red Cross for disaster relief, or, okay, buying nice stuff). He wants to take responsibility for his own purchasing decisions, you might say.

So this is the point: Mathews' line about purchasers of mandatory insurance "taking responsibility" is humbug, because the concepts of "responsibility" and of "coercion" are naturally at odds with each other. When we tell our children to "take responsibility" say, for cleaning their rooms, we typically mean that we are tired of reminding them, and that we want them to internalize the value of it without us threatening them with punishment. Likewise, when my friend resists spending money on a health plan for himself, on grounds that he's healthy and wishes his money to be put to other uses, he is taking responsibility for his health care; he's saying "I'm not interested in making the purchase at this time", which is making a decision based on his circumstances and his judgement about his needs. It's therefore silly to claim that he'll be "taking responsibility" for his healthcare, just as soon as it's made compulsory. Downright humbug.

That $%#@$ Stupak!

WSJ reports that Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, who has been targeted by antiabortion folks after voting for the health care bill, is now in the crosshairs of the prochoice camp, furious because he voiced concerns about abortion funding in the legislation in the first place (translation: even if you voted for it, Stupak, you talked about not voting for it first, damn you). Says Elizabeth Shipp, political director of NARAL Pro-choice America:

"This one's personal. For us and a lot of our members in his district, we're going to do what we can to make that man leave office and retire."

Love the "that man" thing. But Shipp's threat is worlds better than the messages Mr. Stupak has been receiving from the antiabortionists, who've expressed their displeasure with his vote with suggestions that he get diseases, bleed out of orifices, and die (really).

Oh, well. Sucks to be you, Mr. Stupak. Perhaps we should modify Lincoln's famous aphorism about only pleasing some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, to something about pleasing no one, ever.

Boring Numbers

The Associated Press is reporting that economists believe the economy will not continue to pick up steam:

"Many economists, however, think the economy has slowed in the current quarter to about half the pace seen at the end of last year."

Why? Last year's growth came from manufacturing, not consumer demand (which weakened), restocking dwindling inventories from businesses who had let them lapse in the face of weakened demand for goods.

Like this:

Consumers stop spending --> businesses stop buying goods --> inventories go down --> factories occasionally get orders to restock the shelves --> small blips in production show up, but don't last (because consumers haven't started spending yet)

So? Sooo? So the unemployment is at 9.7%, not likely to change much, because the economy is forecasted to grow at only 2.5 - 3% next year, which isn't enough to pull us out of the bad effects of the recession. (I suppose the bad news will breathe new life into Super-Keynesian Paul "Spend, Baby, Spend" Krugman, who will argue afresh that this proves that the first stimulus wasn't enough.)

Oh well, on the economic debate goes. As actress Kate Beckinsale once quipped, "numbers are boring". Well, they are. And scary sometimes, too.

ACORN Packs It Up

This isn't breaking news anymore, but I'm still bitin':

Community activist group ACORN is disbanding, blaming failure on partisan attacks from the right. This ignores, of course, an obvious explanation, regarding getting caught on camera giving tax advice to pimps and prostitutes. Still, where are our priorities? And how prude have we become? Members of the oldest profession can now expect greater difficulty getting quality tax tips. Nice job, catchers-of-ACORN-giving-tax-tips-to-pimps-and-prostitutes. I hope your high-minded caught on camera antics were worth it.

Health Care's Many Voices

Katrina vanden Heuvel writing for the Washington Post assures us that the Health Care bill--now law--is a good start, but does not go nearly far enough on the road to government-managed medicine. Holman W. Jenkins writing for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) explains why insurance companies--supposedly the "evil" players in health care--are quite happy about ObamaCare (hint: if everyone has to have coverage, there are lots more people to stick with skyrocketing costs).

David Brooks writing for the New York Times (NYT) observes, convincingly, that we're not really wrestling (yet) with the enormous costs we're incurring as a country, health care the latest charge on the card:

"This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay for it."

One of my favorites, moderate Tom Friedman, also writing in NYT brushes aside the partisan "yes we did" (Democrats) and the "OMG, they did?" (Republicans) on the health care debate in favor of an interesting discussion about fixing government, making it work better for all of us. As he puts it, we need a "tea party" for the middle of the country.

And my opinion? Oh, who knows? It's too early to tell. Punt.

Those Polarizing Bloggers

Law professor Cass R. Sunstein argues in Infotopia that blogs tend to create group polarization, where political views become more radical (so, if you're conservative and read conservative blogs, you become more so, and so too with liberal views and liberal blogs). Of course everyone wants to pretend that their view is just "the reasonable one", but the truth is that having a point of view will tend to put you somewhere on the political spectrum. Case in point: if you believe abortion should be legal--if you support the Roe ruling, for instance--you're almost ipso facto socially liberal, as few if any social conservatives are pro choice. On the other hand, what makes people so interesting is that many of us have strange amalgums of liberal and conservative views. One might, for instance, be pro choice and "pro military", in the sense that one doesn't support spending reductions in the military, supports the war in Afghanistan (I guess the war in Iraq was "won", by the standard that the media doesn't talk about it anymore, leaving it to historians), tough foreign policy on Iran, and so on.

Anyway, following Sunstein, we would do well to read a range of blogs to avoid polarization (which he argues is bad, as one might have guessed, since it tends to reduce the amount of available information in groups, which means there's less chance of making an informed decision).