Why our world doesn't resemble Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"...

References for this article: (a) monopolistic power may be an exclusively sociopolitical construct, and (b) monopolistic power is (for reason (a) above) historically quite likely to give way to more competitive forms of socioeconomic organization. In other words: Marx's law of increasing concentration has it completely backwards. UPDATE: Indulge your penchant for Utopian fantasy for one moment. Imagine a world in which property rights to all (electronic) medical records reside with the patient -- and, in this very same world, we can order computer software with an inexpensive electronic interface that plugs our car into our laptop and tell us in simply everyday language whether anything is wrong. Wouldn't it be fun, nice, and (yes) less expensive?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:33 AM

Shifting the cost curve up by shifting the supply curve back...

This disturbing article is dated 2005 -- if I can find anything more recent and more authoritative, I'll post it in an update. This even-more disturbing article appears in today's Investors' Business Daily. If even one in ten of the polled doctors makes good on his or her declared intention to retire early, the upshot is "health care reform" will generate the most disastrous labor shortage (i.e. shortage of doctors) in American history. UPDATE: An advantage of the current debate is the way it has mainstreamed at least some understanding of the "47 million uninsured" internal statistics. Case in point (about which we've been arguing with friend and family for years): just how many of the "47 million" might suffer personal financial damage owing to an individual mandate?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:55 AM

Monday, September 14, 2009

Bureau versus Business...

Via Instapundit, an essay purporting to show how and why the public option will resemble the IRS. Let's briefly review the difference between two alternate forms of what Max Weber called "modern rationality" (or, uh, something like that). A business has goals and meets these goals by (a) dealing with the public and (b) earning a profit by doing so. If condition (b) is not met the business ceases to exist. The point here is that this form of organization has a kind of a life of its own, a culture, a means of (in effect) "staying alive" through the repetition of certain procedures. A bureau also has goals and meets these goals by (a) dealing with whomever it is designed to deal with (sometimes the public, sometimes others) and (b) establishing and maintaining credibility with its overseer (whomever that may be). The problem here is a bureau's main method of establishing credibility is to expand both its mandate and its physical size. Whereas a business automatically fails if its goals are not met, a bureau automatically expands under the same circumstances. Thus we're really afraid of any upcoming creation of Fannie Med and Freddie Quack.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:23 AM

Friday, September 04, 2009

Sooner than global warming, more serious...

Via Instapundit, a sobering article on why default is likely.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:45 AM

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Islanders: pray for return of the cargo planes...

At Huffington Les Leopold says: These benefits did not fall from the sky or from the generosity of their employer. Verizon workers won these benefits by uniting with each other and with their union, the Communications Workers of America. They fought a series of strikes over the past three decades (with Verizon and with the companies that preceded it) to secure their benefits and to hang onto them against stiff company assaults. But isn't this a mentality that might claim cargo cults actually work? If these wonderful benefits can actually be generated by strikes, wouldn't GM workers have absolutely nothing to worry about?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:51 AM

 
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