Archive for the ‘Cautious Optimism’ Category
February 8th, 2010 | 
Author: We have photographic evidence! I will write and post more later, but for the moment:
Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers!
091014 – Cautious Optimism
So October is halfway gone. Fantastic.
My amigos and I have completed (to varying degrees of success) six episodes of LP120. The show has been a good experience for me so far. I have learned much including how out there some people can be. Honestly, some of the things people have written on the boards during the show are just plain nutty. But that’s ok because nothing says nutty like politics it would seem. I can now officially start looking at everything that is going wrong and like Boxer in Animal Farm dig my feet into the task at hand and say “I must work harder”. I am debating if it is worth it. I don’t really enjoy having to talk over people on a show where I sit in the Host’s chair. And I am not satisfied where it is going. Maybe I can change it in time. If not I will have to revamp the entire enterprise.
When it comes to work-work, that thing that pays the bills, it is continuing to string along. We are losing the battle but winning the war. It is hard to feel like a winner while losing. I can only stay motivated that the ethical activities of my superiors and the quality work of our enterprise will overcome the current economic situation. I am confident that my team is far from the chopping block that is the singing sword of layoffs, but that confidence does little to swage the disheartenment of my fellows who see our recent loses as a harbinger of darker tides to come. To wit, it is a hard pill to swallow, being the beneficiary of policies that you do not agree with because of the nature of your employment. It is a small but aggravating pain to indebted and sustained by the actions of big government so rightly detested. If not for what is owed and must be paid, I would shrug the atlas.
A recent poll conducted by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health shows that people by and large feel that government is not listening to them in the health care debate.
The article generated from this poll asserts that while people wildly disagree about what if anything should be done in terms of reform, one thing that is apparent: the elected representatives are not doing a very good job of representing.
But of course the article, like the rest of the media, misses the real story entirely.
When I was an intern in college, one of my supervisors commented to me that there are two types of jobs in the workforce: you get to paid to be somewhere or you get paid to do something. So I have been working weird hours recently, and unlike my normal grind, these hours trend towards being paid to be somewhere. This work has afforded me an opportunity to work on the web-show, but I haven’t spent much time working on Geekery. What can I say? Not enough hours in the day and my sleep schedule is really twisted. Honestly, my brain has been so wrapped around politics that I didn’t want to even attempt to put digital pen to digital paper. All I can muster is some trawling.
I have been looking for a new computer and a digital camera/recording set-up to use for the web-show. I also would like a new rig for gaming.
In other news: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Nearly three years after her husband passed away, Rose Friedman has joined him. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Friedman family in this time of loss.
History has its share of intellectual giants, but it is a true rarity that two are together so completely as the now eternal Mr. and Mrs. Friedman. Scholars will sing their praises until mankind transcends the use of monetary devices. As long as there is money, there will be the philosophy of a Friedman behind it. These champions of liberty have progressed the embodiment of their surname, derived from the Yiddish word “Frid” meaning peace. Peace to be reached through free and open trade. The peace of a humanity acting freely in its own best interest.
It is cliché to say that behind every great man is an even greater woman. It would be disingenuous to both Rose and Milton to make such a statement in this case. She is his counterpoint. They were, and are, one. Without Rose, there would have been no Milton. His life’s work has Rose’s golden touch. We can never thank them enough. Mr. and Mrs. Friedman in respect to the title of your memoir, it is we who are the lucky people because of the two of you.
If all Mr. and Mrs. Friedman had given this world was their work, it would have been enough, but they were even more fruitful. They multiplied. If these offspring were simple, hardworking, productive members of society it would be enough. However, the son, David is the uber geek. And his son, Patri is the son of uber geek. The rest of the descendents are either productive members of society or the family is damn good at keeping a lid on it. Pretty amazing considering the family a) promotes maximum individual freedom and b) has a lot of fiat currency to invest in vice if they so choose. It is not a stretch to say that Rose was the foundation for the success of the family pedigree.
I have only dialogued with Patri in passing on his STI forum, and do not flatter myself that I know the family on any personal level or even know the man himself. What I do know is that I am who I am largely because of my grandparents. As close as I observe the apple to sit by the tree, Patri and his father David did not fall far from the great tree of knowledge that is Rose.
We who remain are so blessed that her light was allowed to shine so bright for so long.
Patri, whatever you may feel about where (if anywhere) your grandmother is now, know that because of the continued work of you and your father, she will live forever.
Tags: So what would Tholan do with regard to Health Care? I am not exactly sure, but here are some ideas have read and I have made some embellishments of my own.
As outlined previously, I began my search to understand Health Care from a primitive prospective. No matter how advanced we become we will never overcome our primal selves, nor should we try. It is our primal self that rose from the great contest and became a man, the steward of all creation.
Yesterday I posted my belief that the market is the superior form of rationing, not only because it efficiently distributes scarce resources, but it does not deny people the opportunity to preserve themselves.
Before I post the skeleton of my ideas for fixing the inequities of our health care system, I must first state that the problems of health care in the United States are grossly overstated. As pointed out by Mr. Ridley in his interview by Reason in the Friedman library, we are living 30% longer and are 3 times wealthier then we were 50 years ago. This is significant for two reasons: modern medicine as we understand it has only existed since the development of penicillin, and people are in the prime of their productive lives longer. There can be little doubt that much of humanities gains in science, technology, and even the understanding of ourselves can be directly attributed to medical advancement. We will never know the full impact of our collective prosperity in the free markets of the free world. How brief would the history of time had been if Hawking was cut down in his youth? How far have we come standing on the shoulders of people who just fifty years ago would never had lived.
Major breakthroughs in the care premature birth including the development of artificial lung surfactant happened just months prior to my birth. Without those advancements I would not be here today. Without those advancements the work of my life would not be done. Without those advancements I would not be married, nor would I have a pregnant wife. Read the rest of this entry »
Much of the debate in health care now dances around the issue of rationing. While this is a valid concern when it comes to a centralized system designed to control bottom line pricing, it is the acme of foolishness to state or even imply that rationing does not exist in the current American system. Of course rationing exists, its just that when it happens without direct mandate its referred to as “the market.”
Whenever scarcity of an item and demand for that item coexist a market is created for that item. Few things in the world do not have scarcity of some degree. The items that don’t have scarcity (or functionly no scarcity) have no market in normal time. Air is plentiful, so no one pays for it. Pure Oxygen is scarcer (it must be harvested) so people actually pay for it. Medical care items (be they objects or services) are scarce (arguably more scarce then need be) and thus a market exists for these items.
A market is rationing. This must be agreed upon before a conversation on why the market form of rationing is superior to centralized rationing.
Before I begin, I must beg your forgiveness. It is late and this idea has been rattling around in my skull. I must let it out before it pulverizes itself into a puff of dust and logic. I apologize in advance for any typo’s, errors, and omissions in this rant. I am going to scribble down as if it were crayon on a cave wall and then go back to bed without so much as a second glance.
…
For a long time I have taken a very primitive view of health care and tried to apply it to the modern condition. I reasoned that until very recently in our collective history people worked and played in very consistent groups. These groups had three types of people: harvesters, traders, and servicers. The harvesters were the people who farmed or mined. They- like their modern counterparts in Eve, WoW, or LOTRO- brought forth the raw materials from the Earth. Tradesmen bartered for these raw materials with refined items their talents had created. Industrialists of all kinds are the modern equivalent. Whether a person is making the widget or selling it, they are a tradesman. The servicers didn’t manipulate the Earth or materials directly, they provided a secure and stable environment for these more basic market activities to occur. Servicers included everyone from chieftain and shamans, priests and pastors, police and firemen, entertainers and scholars, garbage men and doctors.
While the primitive world may have had chieftain farming crops in addition to being old school community organizers, the larger the community became the less time the chief had for farming. The modern world has brought us the double edged sword of being so specialized that we forget our basic nature; and people in service forget the meaning of service.
It is decidedly unfair to say that servicers are a drain, because the market tells us otherwise. But there is something easily forgotten: overspecialization leads to inefficiency and waste. One does not have to think too hard about bureaucracy to see this is true. Image your daily life where perhaps you can do something yourself in half an hour at a cost to you of $50 or you can give it to another person to do in an hour at a cost of $40. While you have lost time in the transaction you have gained capital, but what happens if the second person take two hours and costs you $80? This is a very oversimplified example of problems we face in the real world everyday. Given the example above, you would not have the second person do the task, unless you had a guarantee that the work would take less then an hour and fifteen minutes. But in the modern world, the reality is seldom that transparent. Read the rest of this entry »
President Obama is 48 today. So happy birthday Mr. President. Happy Birthday to you.
May the next year bring you wisdom and a sense of patience.
President Obama having a smoke, compliments of Reason.
And for the love of Vice President Biden, I hope you have many, many more Birthdays infront of you.
For all those people floating through cyber space, there is this wonderful website: www.dictionary.com
At this website you can learn the meaning to such distastefully colorful words as:
Racist and Socialism and Dissimulator.
And you can also learn the definitions of perfectly wonderful words like:
Constitution and Republic and Liberty.
