Noble gesture?

A story about a kid who stops at the 2-yard line rather than score another touchdown against some down on their luck school is being widely advertised on Yahoo. The breathless writing makes it clear that we're supposed to regard this kid, and the team, as some modern day hero[es]. It was a "noble gesture" even, according to the title! Near the story was a pointer to a different, but similarly themed, story about a kid with Down Syndrome who is brought into a football game late, when the game is out of reach, and given the ball and allowed, by the opposing team, to run it in for a TD.

Whenever I hear about these alleged "noble" gestures, or teams catching hell for scoring too many pts in a game, I always think there are lots of things more disrespectful than running up the score against someone or not letting a kid with Down Syndrome inaccurately believe that he's able to score a touchdown. At least in those cases one respects his/her opponent to take them seriously. More disrespectful, IMO, is being the kind of patronizing person who holds his/her opponent in such low regard that he'd condescendingly stop at the two yard line rather than bother to score. Or another example, perhaps, being the kind of person who would make a fool out of someone by creating a farce in which he's led to believe he's scored a legitimate TD when in fact he hasn't and everyone around him knows it.

Market based health care dilemma

Here's a dilemma I've been thinking about after yet another health care discussion (YAHCD) and some recent commentary from David Frum

As is well known, the US doesn't match up well with other nations in comparisons regarding some fairly basic health indicators, e.g., life expectancy, infant mortality, etc. See the report linked in this post. When faced with this fact, defenders of the current US health care system have been known to argue along these lines: "There are a lot of contributors to these factors in addition to medical care. Things like diet, lifestyle, environment, etc. all play a factor." Many then go on to argue that Americans have worse diets and more sedentary lifestyles than much of the world. So, suppose we accept that. Doesn't this fact actually undermine an important arguments against socialized medicine, i.e., the moral hazard argument? If people aren't forced to pay the costs of their health care, they lose an incentive to be healthy and avoid the need to access expensive health care. But, in fact, nobody pays more for their health care than Americans do and yet this moral hazard has no positive effect on their willingness to remain healthy and avoid the need for health care.

Holder's investigation

Some people, the president and the 08 Republican nominee for president included, keep asserting that with respect to allegations of torture during the Bush administration, we should "look forward, not back". And Holder's announcement that he intended to investigate regardless generated concerns that such an investigation could hurt morale and effectiveness of the CIA.

It's hard for me to understand how these constitute effective arguments. The first suggestion is just utterly silly. First, it seems that it could be applied to any criminal investigation, all crimes have occurred in the past and yet we go back to investigate them. But it's much more dangerous in this particular case, the question of whether or not the US endorsed and/or participated in torture and whether or not the country is willing to take a stand and indicate whether or not that was permissible goes to the very heart of what the country's principles are. How can the country "move forward" while those questions remain unaddressed?

As to the CIA morale argument, well, of course, criminal investigations hurt morale at any organizations, but surely if this is a legitimate argument, then we've effectively given the CIA carte blanche. Prosecution for any criminal wrongdoing will require investigation. Any investigation will hurt morale at the CIA, so if the general principle is "Never hurt morale at the CIA", it follows that we can never prosecute any criminal wrongdoing at the CIA, so the CIA is free to do whatever they'd like.

Cash For Clunkers seems a little Clunky to me

I don't doubt at all that Cash For Clunkers has a stimulative effect on the economy. I'm far more sceptical about claims that it has a positive environmental impact.

Consider the environmental impact of producing a new car, let's call that amount EIP. Suppose that we can expect a car to last Y years, then the environmental impact of producing (EIP) a car is EIP/Y for each year it's on the road. If I have an old car that I might have driven for, say, three more years but which I retire early, then I have to replace my old car but the EIP of my old car has already been paid. It's paid if it lasts for a week or a century (the longer a car lasts, the less its EIP/year). So the total EIP is a fixed amount and we might even say that, in effect, the EIP/year goes up if I take the car off the road early.

Now consider the new car that I buy3 years earlier than I would have. That is a brand new cost of 3*(EIP/Y), a cost we wouldn't have had to pay had we kept my old car on the road for three more years. Now, further suppose that I drive 12000 miles/year and my new car gets 22 mpg while my old one got 17. With my new car, I'd have to buy 1636 gallons of fuel vs. 2117 with my old car. Let's call the environmental impact of burning a gallon of gas, EIGG. Is it obvious that 3*(EIP/Y) < 481*EIGG? If it's not, we incur an environmental loss from the C for C program here. (And what if the buyer uses the program to gain a 2 mpg improvement?)

The Future of Journalism???

Some time ago I wrote out some thoughts on what might be done to save the newspaper, essentially a coming together of newspapers in sort of a cable TV model, i.e., where one pays for access to any and all of the sources, and where revenue is split according to proportion of page clicks. Since then I've realized that I'm not alone in making this suggestion. For instance, David Simon has been arguing for the newspapers to do essentially the same thing and lobbying to get an antitrust exemption exactly for these purposes. Personally, I like the idea because it retains newspapers in something like the function, if not the same form, we have now, i.e., a relatively independent group beholden to no one doing the kind of job that we once envisioned newspapers doing.

On the other side, we have, well, a lot of people. A lot of people oppose efforts at walling off content, and, relatedly, of obligating news aggregators to cough up fees. I've been following King Kauffman, who used to write a brilliant sports column for Salon, and Katherine Mieszkowski's blog: The Future of Journalism. They've been fairly critical of the David Simons and even the Ian Shapiras (who recently complained that Gawker was stealing his content). But, I'd think and sometimes even comment, what in the world do we propose in their stead? Are bloggers ever going to provide the kind of painstaking journalism which Simon has described? Will amateur bloggers ever break a Watergate? Well, I was assured, you're assuming they'd be amateurs, maybe they'll be paid, this is America, we're full of ingenuity, we'll find a way to monetize. Don't worry.

Ah, yes, well, apparently they've found it. According to a tweet from Kauffman and an article in their blog, the "future of journalism" may very well be what is described in this article: "From a Texas Small Town and a Bedding Company, the Future of Journalism, Marketing, or Both". The article discusses a corporate sponsored blog, in which some former journalist is now paid by Carpenter Company to write about Stephenville, TX. Yup, that's the future of journalism, that's why we can all laugh at David Simon and say's he's just being paranoid and standing in the way of progress. We've found a way to monetize. We can now safety let the newspapers die. Good riddance ya bums and don't let the door hit you on the way out But what about independence of the press? Oh, don't worry, the article assures us, "Dan's free to chronicle small town life as he sees fit. So he roams Stephenville, capturing residents' hopes and dreams and idiosyncrasies and taking literal and figurative snapshots" Yeah, sure he's free. And I'm sure the town can look forward to his hard-edged articles on, for example, how questionable corporate practices at the town's largest employer affects the residents of Stephenville. Mieskowski bizarrely dismisses this kind of potential conflict as Hollywood fantasy, "But this is real life." Um, yeah, you got me there.

You thought GE telling Olbermann to shutup was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Papa Bear on life expectancy

In this clip Bill O'Reilly claims that the reason life expectancy is higher in Canada is because the US has 10 times as many people resulting in ten times as many deaths and crimes, etc. I try to be charitable, I've misspoken lots of time, momentarily misunderstood a metric or a stat when presented with it in the heat of discussion, and as such, probably made a stupid remark or asked a dumb question. But this is uttered by a "talking head", a man whose job it is to analyze, discuss and elaborate on the issues of the day. He's ostensibly doing an analysis of health care systems and it's a prepared bit, not an off the cuff reaction to someone calling in. Life expectancy, for better or worse, is a very simple metric frequently used in comparing health systems. There cannot be any excuse for coming on the air and pretending to speak intelligently on an issue while failing to grasp such a simple idea. Try as one might to be charitable, it's hard to conclude anything other than the man is a complete moron, a blowhard who cares nothing for truth, only winning arguments. Yet tens of millions of people listen to him and form opinion based on what he's saying, a man so fucking stupid and/or pig-headed that he doesn't even understand, or bother to try to understand how to interpret life expectancy metrics. This is the man playing a key role in helping Americans form opinions in the health care debate. Sometimes I think my head will explode.

health care and the free market

Krugman's recent blog explains why free market principles just don't work well when it come to health care distribution. He's essentially summarizing an important paper Kenneth Arrow wrote way back in 1963, "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Health Care". To summarize his summary, there are two key factors that make health care very different than things that the free market might be able to distribute more efficiently:

a) health care is completely unlike most good or services because it's largely unpredictable when we'll need it and when we do need it, it is very expensive. Hence, it requires some kind of insurance and consumer choice becomes largely a non-factor. (and insurance companies are not out to get you effective coverage but to minimize costs)
b) health care is far too complicated to allow us to do things that can make us effective agents in the marketplace, you can't rely on experience or comparison shopping.

I'd rant on about this but Krugman does a great job of summing up the situation in my opinion: "There are a number of successful health-care systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn’t work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence."