SilverBulleits

Dwindling Democracy (again)?

Bay-area folks watching yesterday's Falcons/49'ers post-game show doubtless noticed what visiting fans everywhere do: the disappointed home crowd clears out quick.  Inasmuch as today is also the MLK holiday (putting a disproportionate number of butts in front of TV sets on a Monday), expect FoxNews ratings to reach new highs.  Why, simply because all the other networks will be reveling through their all-day/night victory lap.  Why do we even have 2nd-term inaugurals anyway?  We don't re-swear-in witnesses returning for a 2nd-day of testimony.  Isn't it just to give the the incumbent another bite at a national audience apple (another shot at preping us all for the always spell-binding State-of-the Union address coming up next month;-)?

Sour grapes? Maybe a little. But Washington and Obama aren't really what's on my mind this morning.  Rather, as I anticipate what the finest orator (sadly, IMHO not so much the finest leader of our time) is likely to say, I wonder whether we all blame (and credit) him and DC as whole, too much anyway? I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that what we're going to get at noon is another heapin' helpin' of, "If only Congress could find reasonable compromise during the next months and years, most of our problems would fade" [presumably into the rebirth of his hope and change legacy].  In other words, the perennial party line holds that the country isn't moving "forward" as it should mainly because Washington is broken.

But, is that the real reason? Or, could it be that Washington is doing nothing more nor less than reflecting a bitterly divided electorate?  Could it be that what's derided as intransigent extremism are, in actuality, our pervasive and deeply held beliefs: posiitons that are fundamentally at odds with one another? Could it be that Progressives' moral convictions about our natural obligations to care for one another are as genuine (arguably ingenuous) as Conservatives' (hyper-pragmatic?) faith in personal liberty and individual initiative?  If so, the outlook for American stability (let alone leadership) may not be so bright as mainstream TV commentators would have us all believe.

Here's why. Throughout history, every flavor of Democracy has been tried. And, they never endure!  More often than not, governments that really are "by the people" quickly devolve into various collectivist and then devisive patterns (e.g. bankrupt dystopian socialism and/or more centralized communist forms).  Our own Founding Fathers, of course, fully realized this and designed a Republic veiled in thin democratic clothes.  They had no intention whatsoever of trusting policy (nor even the selection of our most important leaders) to the whims of the masses.  What they could not, an did not, anticipate is a mass media that, in effect, has reverted key policy making to referendum: e.g., Republican congressmen that, in the past, could act in more compromising fashion are today fully aware of the primary-season beheading they'd shortly face in the face of a vote unpopular in their home districts!

Some counter that more progressive (a.k.a., socialist-leaning) policies work fine in Canada and certain Northern European countries.  Perhaps.  But, social scientists also note that the endurance of Common (a much longer discussion of its own) laws and public policies invariably vary in proportion to the commonly held principles, earning power, culture, ethnicity, etc, of the governed. In other words, a significant majority adhere to a common government only so long as they all more-or-less share the same values.

Think of the world's nations as large condominium complexes.  Anyone that's ever lived in a condo knows how exercised the home-owners associations can get when it comes to selecting leaders, changing rules, adjusting regular dues and special assessments, etc.  Typically, the income levels if the owners vary significantly, but not too much: i.e., penthouse and larger units pay more than lower-level efficiencies, but not so widely disproportionate that anyone feels that they're being exploited. However, when this balance gets out of whack--e.g., too many disagreements over who should pay how much for what--everyone begins to lose interest. In extremes cases, alienated owners with adequate economic mobility simply move out and an even worse degenerative syndrome settles in.

IMHO America is teetering tenuously close to a dysfunctional condominium: and no amount of association board (governing body) reconciliation is going to make individual owners compromise their more deeply-felt aspirations and interests.  So, as President Obama begins his 2nd term, it's my most sincere and fervent hope that he'll eschew the more strident voices on both sides and that he'll find a way to build upon our more natural (but fading) common vision of what America should actually expect from its government.  Instead of vacuous programs on gun control (that won't have any real impact upon our serious problem with violent crime and mental illness), instead of continuing to plummet the nation (if not the world) headlong into ruinous debt that robs future generations of any opportunity to form their visions and priorities, let's all hope that Obama looks to the dwindling democracy that can be sustained. So, let's give him a shot at doing it!

The Second Law of ThermoPolitcal Dynamics

My original topic heading on this post was to have been Democracy's Wet Dream Awakening; alas, I thought better of it.  Why begin a serious discussion with glib partisan (if not vaguely pornographic) images?  The misguided titling temptation was, I suppose, partly rooted in my perception of certain wildly unrealistic (if not obscene) perceptions of others'—many others: just over 50% of the American electorate's perceptions to be exact  I'm referring to an ideo-illogical cancer that IMHO may be threatening our nation (and, perhaps with it, most other Western economies as well): specifically, I'm concerned about the wide but shallow (if not immoral) perception that it's OK for Americans to continue getting $5 worth of "stuff" from the government for $3 (or less) indefinitely.  Even among those that subliminally recognize the arithmatic unworkability of this status-quo, many seem to cling nonetheless to an illogical reasoning: one that would hold someone else responsible for making up the difference (e.g. "the rich" and/or our children and/or our children's children).  This peculiar sense of fairness asserts that the small minority—that pays the large majority of the costs for the majority of services that the government provides to the majority of its citizens—isn't paying its fair share...seems (to me at least) bizarre.  I'll come back to this faux-fairness doctrine later; the larger part of why the "dream" analogy broke down is that, sadly, there's no evidence of an America actually "awakening" from it.

So, you may be wondering, how does this have anything to do with physics? Beyond general`what goes up must come down' sorts of allusions, maybe not that much; maybe everything. 

In a metaphorical sense, any number of non-scientists cite the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to make some inaccessible point on the preternatural order of things. Creation Science(?) believers, for example, awkwardly allude to the 2nd Law as proof that, left alone, things always move from more to less complexity: QED, if evolution has any legitimacy at all, they purport, it's nothing more nor less than than an Intelligent Design device chosen by the Creator. Maybe so. What they neglect to note about the Second Law, however, is the preeminence of the First: i.e., they only apply to a closed system.  When energy from an external source is introduced, disorder (or entropy as it's called) often tends to decrease.  In other words, given enough time, energy, the right elements and the right circumstances, even something as seemingly unlikely as life it itself not only could, but would, slowly emerge naturally.

But I digress; perhaps we'll come back to evolution in some future post.  For the balance of this one, let's stay on the entropy (or the naturally occurring tendency toward disorder) theme. 

Just as a broken egg doesn't reassemble itself, spilled milk stays spilled and weathered steel returns to a shine only when the entropically-formed rust upon it is removed, some forms of disorder are irreversible. Now, here's the important bit.  In classical physics, in a condition of pure entropy (or ultimate disorder), when everything is exactly the same as everything around it; when there's no difference in temperature, density, weight, illumination...it's all exactly the same...and it's all completely dark and dead. Where there are no differences nothing can happen; work, energy and matter itself all depend upon differences. Work can only get done in an environment of relatively low entropy. It's not just, as the French say, vive la différence; indeed, in a real sense, it's différence that makes being alive possible!

If the parallels here aren't yet jumping off the page yet, let's go ahead and cut to the chase. The history of civilization is hallmarked by a recurring struggle from disorder (or entropy) to order (well-operating systems wherein work gets done and lives are made better).  But, just as in nature itself, entropy tends to increase (that is, differences among individuals and their respective circumstances tend to fade) over time.  Ironically, this happens in human culture, in part, as a result of accumulating abundance and an over-wrought sense of fairness (over how the ensuing wealth should be distributed).  In other words, in our zeal to achieve equality, we eventually reach a point where the impetus toward above average achievement (hard work) dissipates and the regime heads toward collapse (or "heat death" in cosmological terms).  Common politically-charged ways of putting this phenomena are found in dictums like "making the rich poorer doesn't make the poor richer" or "taxing job creators (the top 2%) is not the right way to create jobs", etc. And the common predicate behind these notions turns upon a belief that the stratification of power and wealth is a necessary ingredient in a well-functioning economy: like heat, financial entropy moves from higher to lower levels of concentration; employers tend to be richer than employees, and without the rich (or, at least, those aspiring to be rich), there are no jobs for anyone!

A reverse case can be made as well: too little entropy (too little perceived equality) leads to a differently unstable society.  Returning to lessons of history, we all know that the durability of a nation is directly proportionate to the size and strength of its middle class.  Too little entropy—too much difference between the rich and poor— almost always trace a short route to abuse, exploitation and upheaval. In the end, peoples aren't really that different than any other population of species in nature: we live in an uneasy equilibrium of order and disorder, of hierarchical systems and chaos, of upwardly-mobile systems and corrupt or otherwise dysfunctional associations. Like it or not, for better or worse, the world need chiefs as well as Indians `lest they may all freeze to death in the next winter.

So, where does that leave us? How are we to know what's best: are "we better together", or does progress really turn more upon the individual initiatives of individuals?  And the answer, of course, is both: societal entropy demands that we strike the right balance, to maintain a stable equilibrium between perceived and natural "fairness" if nothing else.

And the point of all this rambling (if indeed there really is one) is this: When we examine this same dispute within our current leadership, the key question devolves to whether our more collectivist current direction is the right one right now? Humanitarian concepts of fairness matter but so do orders of nature. Avoiding longer digression into tales of Golden Geese or a hunt for John Galt, suffice it to say that extraordinary progress almost always turns upon extraordinary effort which, in turn, almost always turns upon extraordinary risks and rewards. The right balance, then, would be a close call IMHO except for one thing: "right now" America is a deeply divided people; the problem is not really in government gridlock (though bellicose senators' threats of a [thermo] "nuclear option" aren't helpful).  As Pogo used to famously say, "We've met the enemy and it's us."  Unless and until a larger majority can agree upon what the right direction really is, we're not likely to make self-directed moves in any. Absent positive energy being brought into the system, natural entropy will gradually slide us in to an irreversible mediocrity  where nothing extraordinary can happen (and, follwing that, devastating collpase).  So, in closing, my biggest complaint about our current leadership is that it seems to me hell-bent on deepening the divide between us.  As Bill Bennet recently put it on CNN...

"The parameters and focus of the national and political dialogue has become predominantly about gender, race, ethnicity and class. This is the paradigm, the template through which many Americans, probably a majority, more or less view the world, our country, and the election. It is a divisive strategy and Democrats have targeted and exploited those divides."

 

 

 

Soft Secession

One of the first deep thoughts that I can recall involves how lucky I felt to be a Catholic male in America (hey, I said "one of the first": how deep can a young boy's thoughts really be?;-).  But the passing of a few years found my faith in free fall; and, I'm no longer sure that having been born a guy holds all the natural advantages that I once supposed either; but, I've never doubted how lucky we all are to be citizens of the USA.

That said, I can empathize with the thousands still smarting over last week's decision.  I certainly wouldn't presume to speak for them all, but I suspect that many were as disappointed as I in how, first debate notwithstanding, the core size-of-government issue that should have hallmarked this should-have-been-pivotal election got lost in expertly-executed (albeit one-sided) get-out-the-vote folderol.  But, does anyone really think that many of these same depressed if not dispossessed voters cum secessionist petitioners really want to renounce their nationality?

And, that said, the following Soft Secession scenario may not be so far fetched; it's far from ideal, but plausible nonetheless. Indeed, at some level it's been unfolding for a while now already!

Imagine one state, or a regional collection of states (think income-tax-free Texas and/or the whole South), upping the ante against places like free-taxing/spending California or dingy old New England.  Suppose that the sunbelt took off the gloves and promised West & East-coast businesses substantially more compelling incentives to move their companies' operations to hyper-right-to-work states sporting unparalleled negative tax and other incentives.  Maybe they'd turn up the temperature on this undeclared economic civil war by recruiting a veritable army of new workers similarly attracted to expanding employment opportunities, generous education an housing benefits, etc; who knows, perhaps the new New South would even consider a sudden reversal toward enlightened immigration policies--e.g., easily granting work visas especially to skilled and well-educated workers? 

On the political front, things could get uglier still: e.g., what if this new confederation formally formed something like a Constraining Government Council (CGC): one that attends US Congressional functions in only a perfunctory way? What if they made it clear that, apart from a National Security an few other issues, they would simply abstain an/or vote unwavering No's on any/all spending bills; and, in the meanwhile, they'd all also vow to conspire to obstruct and/or ignore most Federal Health, Education and other initiatives (e.g., taking full advantage--and then some--of the Supreme Court's rulings granting latitude to states to opt-out of ObamaCare)?

I could go on, but I think you get the nascent picture. And, it would be impossible to over-emphasize how unfortunate, IMHO, things like a CGC, or any other sort of "Soft Secession", would be.  But, borrowing a bit more than I should from Dickens, these are mere Ghosts of Christmas Future.  With any luck at all, Obama will ignore darker Democrat voices (e.g., Paul Krugman's); and, Boehner's buddies will follow through--on their signalling the President to lead. In any case, American Democracy may be tested during next couple of years as much as it has been since 19th century Reconstruction.  IMHO too many appreciate too little of how much trouble we're in and how deeply divided the country really is. It's not just Washington in deadlock: we really are torn more-or-less right down the middle!  Fiscal cliffs et.al are still manageable; but if one party tries to jam through another unwanted and insolvent "reform", a Soft Secession may be the best (and worst) end-game of all.

Extraordinary Times

How many times have we heard the old Chinese saw "May you live in interesting times"?  A close corollary, I suppose, could go something like "May you live in times of interesting choices." Well, you'd have to go back to the 1858 Lincoln/Douglas election to find an equally interesting (not to mention more important) debate than the one that we're having now!  

Every presidential election, of course, has it issues, personal charges and counter-charges: e.g., there are important debates underway even now over environment, immigration, healthcare, national security and a variety of other pressing concerns.  And, we've already seen the ordinary sorts of negative personal inter-candidate attacks being floated as well.  But, I'd be surprised to see this sort of pettiness persist, for two reasons: first, both candidates are unusually decent and intelligent men and, IMHO, gutter fighting's not really in either of their better natures; I could be wrong but, there's an "extraordinarily" important overarching issue that's already pushing this garbage aside and moving back to center stage.  Indeed, just this week the debate has returned squarely upon the very role and extent of government itself!

An earlier post upon this same topic opened with the same 2x2 matrix that was revisited in the post that immediately preceded this one; both posts discussed the appropriate size of government as well as a few polemics on how it can and should be financed.  And, just because this same issue—i.e., how much influence can/should government have upon its citizens' lives—was once important enough to have torn our nation apart (and IMHO may not be that far from doing it again!), I'd like to zero in on the same "can/should" question a bit deeper here.

And, just because the outcome of this debate is so important, let's try to frame it as fairly and as intellectually honest as we can. Let's begin then by Assuming the Affirmative Position...

Most left-leaning folks, indeed most folks [including moderate Republicans and/or Independents] would I think, say that, all other things being equal,`sure, we're all for anything that makes life better for us all'.  Isn't that what we all really want anyway?  Moreover, inasmuch as unjust inequities and abuses occur naturally or otherwise, wouldn't we all agree that it falls to our systems and institutions to regulate and correct them?  In short, the arguments challenging the Affirmitive positions below should be made on entirely pragmatic grounds.  And they are.

The problem with the Affirmative view is, simply, this: it just doesn't make financial sense!  There are well-proven limits to how much money a government operating in a free market economy can raise, and we're well past that point already.  Thus, it is not possible for elected officials to make the kind of excruciatingly painful trade-offs implied by new/different spending commitments.  Some would contend that, perhaps, Defense budgets could be pared by the $billions they'd like to see diverted to Social programs. [Indeed, under the Damoclean terms of the Congressional budget "Sequester", this very scenario is being played out; alas, cooler heads on both sides of the aisle are already signaling that this route may be too dangerous an option for either side's tastes].

In a different earlier post, I once argued that the expanasionary debt issue should be a sure fire Republican win theme.  My thinking there was that, in the end, our subliminal instincts just can't countenance leaving our children, and our children's children, holding the bag (a very big bag indeed!) for our own generation's bills.  I'd still like to believe that; sigh...the current discourse and commitment here is, to say the least, disappointing

Moving now from the purely pragmatic challenge—that an expansionary government is, simply, financially unfeasible—there would appear to be other compelling practical, as well as ideological, arguments weighing on the "shouldn't-anyway" side of the scale.

Though somewhat subjective, the full weight of human history suggests that the "equity" arguments on the left (of this chart and elsewhere;-) collapse upon themselves under the contention that all men are created equal.  Even if they are (all created equal), they don't all seem to perform that way.  And, in a larger sense, regimes that don't compensate extraordinary effort with similarly outsized rewards end up with...nothing extraordinary. Real progress entails real risks; and rational actors will always eschew risk (if not hard work) in the face of little opportunity for inherently unequal, but ordinate, outcomes.  By the same token, risks should be assumed by individuals not by bureaucrats; indeed, the unequal rewards that attend occasional , but uncertain, breakthroughs don't wear well in the public sector [witness the disturbing current results of Uncle Sam in the role of alternative energy VC].

Finally, if the arguments in the Northwest and Southeast quadrants are not compelling enough already, let's go back to the history books as well as current experience:  The record of Public Housing, Education, Health, Social Security, Parcel Post, you name it...is appalling.  Why on earth should we expect anything different looking forward? But, IMHO, the more tragic irony of well-meaning social programs is the ultimate damage done to the human spirit itself. Perhaps you've seen the distressing Life of Julia illustration on the Obama website?  Basically, it recounts a life lived with virtually uninterrupted government assistance.  For the life of me, I can't see how/why this implied cradle-to-grave dependence upon others isn't an insult to the dignity of women everywhere?

But, then again, this is just one man's current view.  And, inasmuch as this whole discussion strives for objectivity, there may be different, more compelling arguments on the left? If so, I hope that this post will help tease some of them out.  For, this November will see us all casting what will probably be the most important votes of our lives.  Let's get it right.

On`The Other Republicans'

In yet another stirring NYT editorial entitled The Other Obama, David Brooks has captured many moderate conservatives' concerns on the looming election year polemics: a hyper-political debate that, properly framed, may be the most profound issue of our (and others?) times. 

In an earlier The Ascent Of Rants post, I tried to depict "the real", IMHO, hyper-issue: the size, role and responsibility of government vs. private-sector alternatives. And without reopening that well-trampled dialectic again here the "concern", that I believe most Republicans share, is that we won't really get to have that debate.  Instead, what seems to be brewing, in both parties' kitchens, is just more heapin' helpings of demagoguery, distortions and other electioneered half-truths.

So, let me back up and quickly define what I mean by the "other Republicans."  I'm not sure how close (or how far) we are from the majority, but we're the ones that don't much care about gun control, capital punishment or the religious right; we do, however, share strong beliefs with our further-right brethren on national security, debt and American exeptionalism.  And, in particular, the most common threads tying an arguably frayed GOP together is our belief in personal responsibility, intiative, liberty, gumption and the unparalleled power of free markets to solve most problems most efficiently. 

Back to the point that I think Brooks was making, most of us Other Republicans truly are Americans first: we really would rather our President succeed than fail!  And that's what's so disappointing about Obama's current rhetoric: he's far too intelligent to not know, for example, that the Supreme Court does have the right to strike down even his signature policy achievement(?); notwithstanding the supreme ego (that he shares with anyone that's achieved the office that he holds), he's too smart not to have run the few numbers that it takes to realize that expanding entitlement programs cannot be financed by simply taxing the rich more; he may not be as thermodynamically sharp as, say Al Gore (not!), but someone on his staff has, doubtless, whispered in his ear how hopelessly impotent renewable energy sources are in fueling a growing economy (not to mention the folly of Uncle Sam playing the role of an artless VC).

In short, Brooks' typically superb piece, painfully caught the spirit of our (us Other Republicans')season of discontent. While we were hoping that our President would, at least, help frame an honest debate on the real issue, it looks like all he intends to do is sing to his same choir: the same elitist social liberals that Commented upon today's NYT article and that would afflict us all with the Fatal Conceit that ingenuously draws them all to the left.

Radical Consumerism

There's yet a another disquieting editorial in today's Times on the runaway costs of US healthcare.  In Less Than $26 Billion? Don’t Bother, Dr Ezekial Emanuel runs down the list of commonly-cited cures, to America's escalating health costs, carefully pointing out that few of them actually make a dent.  Sadly, Dr Emanuel's column seems to have done little more than touch off a fire storm of `it's all those greedy insurance companies' fault' kinds of comments.  These rants come, I'm sure, from many of the same OWS folks that lay all the blame for their troubles upon greedy bankers: i.e., for pandering to us innocent consumers' inclination to over-consume more debt than we should have rationally expected to service.  Why shouldn't the rest of us (a.k.a., the government) pay off all of our loans they ask? `no self-interest or "greed" in that.

Without descending into the depths of Adam Smith logic (that readers nor the writer of this posts cares to wade), let me just say this about insurance companies: IMHO they're no more nor less greedy than any other capitalist (and/or the rest of us for that matter).  To the extent to which health Plans are inadequately responsive to competitive market forces, perhaps more/better Regulation should be considered (see yesterday's post).  But, to suggest that a "single payor/national health plan" would, somehow, make the whole system suddenly more efficient, turns a blind eye to centuries' worth of market experience. Public vs private sector production paints a painfully-clear picture world-wide (think 20th century agriculture in Russia and China; better still, public housing health and education in America!).  The inarguable reality is that free markets, in the final analysis, simply do a far better job managing resources and services delivery than governments--irregular regulatory aberrations notwithstanding.

I'm sure that the arguments will nonetheless persist: Why can't all those health insurance execs' salaries and shareholders' profits be turned upon care for the needy?; and, How is that Socialized medicine in other countries seems to deliver better results at lower costs?  These and other good questions require more space to answer than this post permits. Suffice it say that answers to questions like these also require a little more basic Economics sense and intellectual honestly than many are willing to lend.

The short answers to the two example questions above, however, are these: good Management has costs, and the best management entails proportionate rewards. Given the size of our national health expenses, we spend considerably less managing the complex value chains involved here than in most other industries.  Contentions that government (e.g., Medicare/Medicaid) does it better are highly ingenuous at best: government agencies take a free ride on private plan mgmt—i.e.,in simply discounting the costs that are arduously managed in the private payor space.  And, costs are less in Socialist countries simply because there's not as much healthcare consumed in them! 

Another post could poke into why—why/how other developed countries maintain better health with less healthcare—but the central point that I want to make today is somewhat different. It's this: the ticking US healthcare time-bomb cannot and will not be defused on the supply side: almost every element in the value chain there (aggravated by most all new technology coming down the pike) contribute to more, not less, per-capita costs looking forward!  The ONLY promising place to look, therefore, is on the demand side: i.e., what set of circumstances will cause Americans to consume less healthcare (better still, to become more healthy)?  Think about it.  Given our unique culture, are Americans likely to be more content having government ration care than insurance companies?  Indeed, political forces will mitigate in the opposite direction (government "death panels" are even less palatable than private cost "capitation" policies)! Thus, all other things being equal, an Uncle Sam as the "single payor" will find himself forced to bend net expenditures in the wrong direction.

So, I'll close for now with the same question: What scenarios are most likely to induce Americans at large to assume more direct responsibility for, and more sober judgment applied to, decisions concerning their own health (cum healthcare consumption costs)?

On Micro, Macro and Mega-Trends

By way of once again attempting to get back on "participatory web" topic, I'd like to capture a few more "semi-idle thoughts" on participatory healthcare (a.k.a., healthcare consumerism).  More specifically, this post focuses upon the most participatory (albeit electronically lagging) web of all: public policy.

Yesterday my friend Ed Lovern added a post to his always-illuminating BLOG suggesting that, perhaps, a little more "free market-based" [healthcare activity] may be just what the doctor ordered (pardon the pun). My first reaction was a benevolent...DUH?  Without lapsing back into partisan political positions, I and many others beleive that too much public policy almost always stifles productivity and the general well-being.  In fairness, however, we must also acknowledge that too little public oversight (e.g., regulation) can be just as damaging. For example, it can be argued that we're still having trouble striking the right balance in regulating the Financial Services industry: too little of it undeniably led to the banking meltdown, but too much reintroduced in repsonse arguably threatens to inhibit recovery?

The chart above illustratively depicts other extremes as well as more balanced situations.  And, without further adieu here, I'll cut to the chase and assert that heathcare is dangerously over-exposed to public policy already!  Unless we want to see our health future in the same toilet bowl that public education can be too easily seen, we'll embrace ideas like concierge medicine, CDHP, P4/PCMH and other healthcare consumerism paradigms with both arms.  Yes, even that road will be bumpy; but, unlike public/national health plans, it's not palpably headed off a cliff!

Indeed, why can't we apply some of the consumerism "megatrendes" that Ron Bachman and others admonish us to consider (e.g., individuals, in industry after industry, have productively demanded more direct control over how they consume product/services)?  On an even larger scale, why isn't someone considering strategic scenarios that project healthcare industry evolution on a trajectory followed by so many others before it (e.g., as industries become detached from adequate market force [think natural monopolies] regulation appropriately steps in; conversely too much regulation tends to insulate that same industry from the efficiencies naturally brought by market pressure (think municipal utilities]). 

Here's but one example of the kind of strategic scenario "discovery" that might be found in a more rigorous retrospective/futures-driven look at healthcare consumerism. 

For some years now, progressive electric utility companies have struggled with the apparent conflict of interest brought about by an energy conservation imperative.  Inasmuch as some of them have now found new business models wherein energy suppliers can, in fact, make money by stemming demand (a.k.a., selling energy efficiency), why can't progressive healthcare systems find new business models (call them market-driven ACO's) wherein wellness become a profit center?

tbc...

On Asymmetric Deceit

When I first heard of Paul Krugman's unfortunate comments in yesterday's Times, I was incredulous.  How could anyone (let alone a Nobel laureate) find in the occasion of 9/11/11 a source for American "shame" ? Adding insult to injury, he punctuated his journalistic cowardice by disallowing comments and throwing yet more un-BLOG-like/no-comments-allowed salt in the wound: i.e., by recanting the historically-inaccurate indictment on American leaders' response (in both the wake of 9/11 as well as its 10-year-later commemorations). See More About 9/11

Dealing first with Krugman's (and many others) "historical inaccuracies": America's response to 9/11 was not an invasion of Iraq.  While a different BLOG could argue (either way) what combination of the longstanding problems with Hussein (and the UN), fears of WMD, bad intelligence,...whatever ultimately did (or did not) justify that move later, what we actually did do in the months following 9/11 was demand that Afghanistan's Taliban-controlled government assist in an international pursuit of Al Qaeda; and, upon being stiffed, and with the full support of virtually all other nations (as well as Democrats here), we invaded that country (it was a full year and half later that the world's attention turned back to Iraq).  Indeed, Obama still insists that (Afghanistan) was/is the good war!

Again, rehashing Iraq is far beyond the scope of this particular post.  That said, it has always sruck me as curious how many Americans (and others) seem willing (if not eager) to accept the following contention: that our leaders are, at the same time, capable of the most vile deceit; but, somehow, the same leaders are just incongruously scrupulous enough not to mask it!  For example, how is it that we can believe that the neocon's (Chaney, Rumsfeld et.al) could trump-up a case for WMD but decline to actually plant some?  How easy would it have been for the CIA to drive a tractor-trailer load of anthrax into the Iraqi desert and, then (just in case), tip off Geraldo Rivera and camera crew where to find it?

In short, contentions of Asymmetric Deceit (an ability and willingness to lie big but, then, refrain from covering it up) is ontologically illogical: In other words, it just doesn't make walking around sense when you think about it.  So, why do so many want to think so little about so many of our leaders?

Dialectic Deadlock

“Without contradiction there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, war and peace, love and hate: they are all necessary parts of the human condition.”                                                                                  -William Blake

Notwithstanding the closing promise of the last post—to return at last to the participatory web—I think that it's necessary to cut the President some slack first.  Not so much because he's earned it; rather, because we tend to credit our leaders with more credit and blame than they deserve. In fact, the larger and more natural world wide web—the collective opinion or zeitgeist—is what actually moves change (and, much more often, resists it).  Inasmuch as the electronic web has dissolved much of the latency of information transfer it has the power to accelerate change; but, inasmuch as the information being transferred conveys no new consensus, nothing really happens no matter how much attention is paid by how many how fast. In other words, unless and until a pervasive new "zeitgeist" emerges, new directions inspire little movement and no leader can synthesize one alone.

"Synthesize" turns out to be a key word here. In a long-ago post, I channeled the timeless wisdom of W.G.F. Hegel. At a time when philosophers were like rock stars, Hegel was at the top of the charts; and, his widely-played dialectic was later used to lay foundations for Communism, Nazism and who knows what other `isms that, doubtless, roll Hegel in his grave.  But, at it's essence, Hegelian Logic tells history in the timeless context of unending confrontation and struggle: a thesis is opposed by and antithesis and, eventually, both merge into a "synthesis" that collapses the best of both positions into a new one.  The synthesis then becomes a new thesis in an unending triadic dialectic. But the somewhat simpler point of this post is what Hegel called the actualization: the dialectic process that ripens only at its own natural pace.  Just as Lincoln did not, and could not have, emancipated the slaves (before or after the broader sweep of the Civil War), just as Roosevelt, Napoleon or Hitler could not have done what they did under any different circumstances that they found, Obama cannot unilaterally synthesize a transformational direction.

Maybe I'm letting him off a little easy; and, maybe we're better off not embarking on "new directions" before their time anyway?

For example: if he had the power (and his Democrat backers held a gun to his head for, say, a new energy policy), doubtless we'd get something only the greenies really loved. And, just has these same renewable wet dreams have helped wreck the Spanish economy, a pile of dis-economic public spending on windmills and such would surely shove us the rest of the way off the recessionary cliff as well. Similar catastrophes would attend even small majorities pushing the public as whole in directions not embraced by most. Witness the Affordable Health (a.k.a., Obamcare) Act.  And, as pointed out in a recent post, even though Obama might like to join us in a conclusive debate on Leftist vs. Conservative policies, we're evidently not quite ready to even consider a new New Deal.

Once again, I'm not suggesting that all this often-painfully-slow progress is either good or bad, only natural.  Then again, when the change comes, when ignition occurs, it can often seem blindlingly fast to those not engaged in the dialectic debate.  And, in our time, the web can accelerate time!

"What is real is rational; and what is rational is [sooner or later] real"                                                                                         -G.W.F. Hegel

  

Working, The Issue

Inasmuch as I've been (or, at least may seemed to have been) off topic in my past few posts, I'd like to conclude the recent discussion by drilling down into the true challenge facing America (and most all other nations as well!).  This same denouement will also help me segue back into the traditional topic of this BLOG: participatory web dynamics.

Yesterday's NYT contained a Tom Friedman editorial that almost tells the whole story in its final paragraph

"We are increasingly taking easy credit, routine work and government jobs and entitlements away from the middle class — at a time when it takes more skill to get and hold a decent job, at a time when citizens have more access to media to organize, protest and challenge authority and at a time when this same merger of globalization and I.T. is creating huge wages for people with global skills (or for those who learn to game the system and get access to money, monopolies or government contracts by being close to those in power) — thus widening income gaps and fueling resentments even more."

As kids, we used to say that "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. So, boys and girls, can you find the one word in Friedman's column that almost entirely undoes his typically sage commentary ?...

Well, it's the first one: the personal pronoun "we."  We, either as individuals as well government as a whole are not the cause, at least not in any accountable sense.  Rather, it's a much larger and more pervasive set of detached and dispassionate agents at work: the quickly-changing nature of work itself!

Friedman ascribes key contributors to IT and Communications (that, from his pronoun selection, I infer are under the control of "we"); and his main point points toward a polarizing population and shrinking middle class. A recent post in my friend Doug Poretz' Facebook offers a complimentary perspective.  He argues that our leaders' futile preoccupation with jobs misses and essential point: what's needed is an evolved appreciation of the nature of work: the way's in which folks collaborate to produce more/better services and stuff.

This Doug would add to that Doug's remarks the following: perhaps, there's still another layer to this wealth of nations' and everyday folks' tale—the real value and nature of the products themselves!  In other words, what new services and different stuff might actually find a materially expanding demand?  What scenario replaces the  patterns of bygone middle-class work (that need more and more labor to get done?): e.g., what's to replace our dimishing need for soldiers, farmers, factory workers, etc?

I, for one, haven't a clue.  But, I am fairly sure that if someone doesn't crack this code soon, the kinds of violence done, by disenfranchised youth erupting all the around the globe, is likely to get a lot worse!  And, FWIW, this is where Poretz, Friedman and I agree: what makes the situation all the more volatile, what's different now than in previous periods of widespread disruption, is the ubiquitous an instaneous communications (a.k.a., social networking) environment that surrounds us.  People are far more able to collaborate, for good or bad ends, than ever before.

In his dense but rewarding The Information, James Gleick elaborates on an emerging belief that Information is not just the real stuff of life (i.e., the genetic code) but that it comprises the third element of everything! Quoting Seth Loyd, Gleick writes

"Earth, air, fire and water, in the end, are all made of energy; but, the different forms that they take are determined by information. To do anything requires energy [and space/time]. But to specify what is done requires information."

It follows, then, that the faster information flows (and as Metcalfe and others note, the larger the network within which it moves), the more happenings happen.  So, isn't it reasonable to conclude that we are, in fact, headed toward what Kurzweil calls The Singularity: a point at which our exponentially-expanding information transitions to the wisdom we need to solve most any problem that we can imagine?

And, on that positive albiet metaphysical note, I'll close for now once again marveling over the potential of the participatory web: i.e., to, at the same time, be the source of concern but more hope for our future.