One more month to go? - 3 December 2009

[silveradept]

Hi, desirable people of great attractiveness. Leading off with something intended to get your heart rate up to a more exercising pace, the stupidity of homeowner's association contracts - they are threatening a recipient of the Medal of Honor with legal action because the flagpole he has in his front yard is in violation of their covenants after they denied his request to put one up, considering it not asthetically pleasing.

Out in the world, North Korea announced a sudden revaluation of the currency, where 100 of the old unit, the won, is now worth one of the new. This looks to be a move intended to stomp out a significant amount of private enterprise and profits in the nominally socialist state.

An opposition group accuses the Iranian government of poisoning a prominent dissenter with drug-laced salad after exposing that prisoners were tortured in Iranian prisons.

The Australian parliament rejected a bill that would set up a carbon permits exchange. Let the people who believe climate change is an error continue to crow.

Domestically, lacking actions that they can hang their hat on as solid liberal victories, the liberal base may decide they're not all that interested in turning out for the 2010 elections.

New York State could see a shakeup, as while the bill to legalize homosexual marriage in the state failed, it also put the state senators on the record, meaning now advocates and opponents know where to aim and fire.

Senator Boxer is calling for an investigation and criminal charges for the hackers that exposed the e-mails of the East Anglia University climate researchers, pointing out that whatever you believe about climate change, a crime was still committed. This will likely be ignored in the rush to accuse climate scientists of keeping their alarms on to get more money, despite their own results telling them climate change wasn't really happening, we believe. The sane position, as always, has been to say, that climate science is not sealed away one way or another, because some of the data is clearly corrupted. Thus, confident doom prediction and confident conspiracy predictions are both wrong.

So, as part of the President's remarks delivered at West Point outlining his Afghanistan decision, he apparently implied that the previous administration did not fully resource or fulfill troop requests. Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld denies allegations that military generals were not given adequate funding and people during his tenure, and their requests for more people were denied, while also either stating or implying that there were no denials during the rpevious administration at all. Current Chariman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, made note of at least one incident in 2008 where requests for additional troops were denied, making some part of the Rumsfeld claim suspect.

With an upcoming summit on employment, the situation in the United States puts additional pressure on President Obama to reverse the dismal numbers currently reflecting the state of employment.

Last out before opinions, resolution to the New Haven Firefighters case - the Supreme Court upheld their suit, and their promotions are scheduled for December 10.

At opinion places, The WSJ talks up how it believes the Senate halth care bill actually drives up costs, claiming the Congressional Budget Office backs their position, and declaring the administration wants to take over health care, yet making no mention at all of the measures intended to control costs that are in the bill, and commenting based on the passage of mandated insurance coverage, but no competition for those insurers. Thus, concluding that prices will go up because there are more people and community rating is not that hard to predict.

Mr. McGurn takes umbrage at a bill introduced by Mr. Specter that Mr. McGurn claims would allow terrorists to sue the government frivolously, because the bill would supposedly reverse the standard of needing to prove you have a case before discovery can proceed in a lawsuit.

Mr. Lowry suggests that President Obama is conflicted because he is really a neoconservative who wants to "win&quo;t Afghanistan, but he has to try and avoid alienating his liberal, anti-war base who want him to get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, the sooner the better. Mr. Lowry is almost right - the President is more of a centrist than a neocon, but he was further liberal than the conservative candidate, and further liberal than many of the liberals presented. Elsewhere, Mr. Musharraf says that the only way to win in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to leave when the job is done and not according to any arbitrary time frame. If that is the case, though, one could be stuck in a war that surges back and forth, but never resolves, unless one side decides to apply overwhelming force and then let the natives rebuild from there, much like the usage of atomic weaponry.

Investors Business Daily wants us to be afraid of nuclear Iran and take them seriously, in the "glass them before they get going" kind of way.

And last out, earning himself a solid Worst Person In The World, Mr. Scrooge Williams, taking his libertarian beliefs to their proper end - no person should have to have their money taken by the government to assist someone else, and to do so is slavery and theft. Including in those situations where someone has fallen sick and has no insurance - they should suffer and possibly die, adn nobody should be required to lift a finger to help them. I seem to keep thinking of this quote when I get around Scrooge Williams all this time, so once more, from Mr. Dickens:

"Are there no prisons?...And the Union workhouses...Are they still in operation?...I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there...If they would rather die,...they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

In technology, the best reason to enforce a net neutrality position and government regulation - we've already done the unregulated bit before, with the telegraph, and it was villains and monopolies the whole way, a warning from the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department about trusting your forecasting abilities, because even with forecasts, Humes tend to be too optimistic about their chances, commentary from the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department about the low nuimbers of people identifying themselves with either major political party in the United States, which should be a warning sign to both of them that a sufficiently motivated population with the right kind of independent leader might smoke both their hides in an election. Finally, the CEO of Google says that the Internet will not kill print media, but will instead transform it into something new.

That's all for today. Enjoy your football selection shows or other such useful things.

Comments

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) If there are more people able and willing to do a certain job at a certain wage, then it is not strange for the wage to fall until supply meets demand: until those able and willing to do the job at that wage and in those conditions are roughly equal to the positions available to be filled. If the pool of people shrinks, likewise, then there is pressure in the other direction to widen the number of people willing to work in a certain job (by changing the wage or/and conditions). To impose limits on this which result in an unrealistically large applicant pool for a much smaller number of available positions seems perverse.

'exerted severe pressure on those without to ensure that they stayed without': in what ways?
Again, this seems to be a natural consequence of humans being in low demand and high supply. Arguably the 'improve themselves' aspect for other jobs could be relevant, but one would imagine that if there was a high demand and a low supply for such jobs, there would thence be a strong incentive to provide the training/improvement necessary for those jobs to be filled.

N?) Are there policies in place to ensure that it is in fact temporary, that only a certain set amount will go towards each family and not repeatedly be called on? Are there non-temporary measures in place which could be used to fund reproduction, and would sterilisation be a reasonable condition for them?

N?/B?) By default, such accidents bring death. By technology, death can seemingly-miraculously be avoided. By expensive technology, if someone has amassed enough monetary value in that person's lifetime (taking into account others who have a stake in that person's life et cetera), even certain instances of near-certain death can be avoided. However, this is not something to be taken for granted, or viewed as a right or something which all deserve to have. This is an unusual avoidance of something which otherwise by all rights would have happened. To demand to live after one has been shot, or fallen in front of a car, or contracted a deadly illness is itself absurd, and to be made reality necessarily requires an investment of value proportionate to the expensiveness of the means necessary to change the normal consequences of that person's state.
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That said, I can also see your (presumed) point of enforcing equality, a level playing field in a sense: that if there are enough resources to affordably maintain all at a certain level of healthiness, that it might be seen as desirable to enforce that, and render it the same as the police case of a certain level of security for all.
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However, it still seems preferable to implement such a thing as an opt-in state. As it is, in turns into a separation of 'those who have' and 'those who have not', with those who are self-sufficient and willing to take their chances (and die if mistaken or unlucky) unwilling to give away what is theirs, and those who are not wanting to take the resources of the first group. The first group stands to gain nothing of value from the second group, the second group stands to give nothing of value to the first group.
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The solution: an opt-in approach. Yes, let the many who are weak combine their power to save those of them who come across ill-fortune. Give to those in need, and in return be given to when in need. However, do not give, nor take to those who are unhappy with the arrangement and do not wish to be a part of it. Let them risk dying if they wish to risk dying, and die if they are unfortunate. Let them do what they will with what they have, and succeed if they are fortunate. Do not give, and do not take.
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It's a pleasant ideal to combine the power of many to enforce a set level of healthiness within the group, but it's a broken ideal if it can only be accomplished by leeching off those who want no part in it.
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How does that sound to you? (The idea of making it an opt-in (or alternatively opt-out, the effect hopefully being roughly the same) system.)
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(...I wonder what it would look like with separate groups... those with greater levels of self-sufficiency able to exist a group with a larger rate, able to afford a higher level of baseline healthiness... ah, but that's making the concept unnecessarily complicated at this point.)

[silveradept]

It may seem perverse, but it's the way that one prevents the market from falling into a situation where no job actually provides sufficient wage to live or nor sufficient safety conditions for that work, because there will always be more applicants for a particular job than there will be jobs. Thus, the market really doesn't give a damn about protecting and keeping workers alive, because they can always get someone else. (Similarly for training, because of the way that learners shoulder the burden of most of their training expenses.)

Temporary, oh, yes - some of those assistances have only a set amount, others require a significant amount of paperwork to be filed detailing all the attempts that someone made to find employment, but usually the greatest ensurance of temporary is that the benefit amounts aren't really enough for a safe and secure existence. Enough to keep someone and their children alive, usually with the assistance of minimum wage work, but that's it. And while it may seem that it "funds reproduction" because the benefit amounts change with more children, the change isn't enough to cover all the expenses of the child.

The rest of your point is the Platonic idea of an insurance policy - people pay in to a pool of money with the understanding that it will pay out if they need it to in case of an incident, and those who don't feel they need the protection stay out. With enough people, there may be a need for an administrator to oversee it all. What happened in practice, though, is that the profit motive attacked, and now, many insurance companies are more beholden to their shareholders than their policyholders, and they've learned the easiest way to make a profit is to deny the requests that the company pay, thus breaking the contract that they often cancel right before or after denial, so as to give them better ability to continue to deny, because the person is no longer part of the agreement, despite all the money they've paid into it. The other easy way is to require everyone to pay in more money for the same amount of benefit, so rates skyrocket and people, despite having insurance, are not assured that they will be able to use it when they really need to.

If insurance were exactly as you described, we probably wouldn't have the discussion we are having right now.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) If no job provides sufficient wage to live, then people will die until it does. Is this odd for a situation in which more people have been produced than there is useful work to be done?

Are those who fail to obtain an alternate source of income then adequately dealt with?

What prevents a government from implementing this, ostensibly for the benefit of those who enter into it rather than for a profit motive? Granted, the same sorts of problems may seem to arise in different incarnations.
--hmm, my/our knowledge of the current situation is incomplete. Is the current situation that the government in question forcibly takes money for its own insurance policy, or does it select such untrustworthy insurance companies and give them the forcibly-taken money?

[silveradept]

According to pure market capitalism, no, it's not strange, it's market equilibrium. It does concentrate the power of life and death into the hands of those providing work, though. If they decide that they can do without as many positions, they are essentially consigning others to die. That power can then be used by employers to drive down wages and remove benefits because people will come to them for employment, sufficiently desperate to be making any wage at all.

Well, there is the image of the unfriendly bureaucrat looking for an excuse to terminate benefits, but yes, they are adequately dealt with in that their benefit payments will eventually dry up and force them to see alternate income or charity elsewhere.

The situation is currently neither. While there are government-provided health care options that are tax-funded, they are age or profession-restricted. There are currently proposals on the table, one of which wants the first option, a government-run insurance program funded for by taxation that all people are eligible for and automatically enrolled in, and the more likely one, which will do the second - require that all persons pay some of their monies to for-profit insurance companies or pay fines, taking some tax monies and using them to assist those who cannot afford the insurance. The first option is derided as "socialism", "nanny state" or "welfare state" plans, or other items attempting to raise the spectres of millions killed in dictators that called themselves socialists. The second is usually opposed more along the lines bot6h of your argument - why should I pay for someone else's insurances, and mine - why are we forcing people to deal with untrustworthy for-profit companies who will gladly take our money and then find a way of not upholding their end of the bargain?

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) Until their numbers or offered wages fall to levels at which they aren't satisfied with the positions offered any more. Otherwise, are you referring to a price-fixing arrangement between employers, similar to if employees form unions to reach unrealistically high wages?

That's convenient. *nods*

*nods slightly* The first approach seems more in line with the spirit of the concept, but it seems as though it would be oppressive if participation was involuntary. (The same, regarding oppressiveness, for the second as well.)

[silveradept]

Not necessarily explicit price-fixing and collusion between employers, which would likely be illegal, but that the threat that there are more people willing to do your job for less money can be leveled by an employer to an employee so as to drive down the wages of those employees already there, who will accept some amount of it because they wish to remain employed. Especially in our current system, where employers are the providers of health care benefits, and unemployment means lack of insurance.

Unions are, in some ways, the counterpressure to that instinct, because they want higher wages and better benefits under the threat that there will be no person there who will work for the employer, and thus they can get no business done because no person will work for them.

As for the mandatory insurance, that is one of the arguments, that it is oppressive and contrary to the spirit of America to require a private citizen purchase a service and levy fines if they do not. That said, there are certain services that are required with the purchase of things like houses and automobiles, so the concept could be extended to the idea that since you have your body, you are required to insure it.

The argument for compulsory single-payer insurance of all is that by getting everyone insured, one has such a large pool of people contributing that the cost per person is small enough that even the really sick can afford the insurance, because all the healthy people are also participating. Additionally, no person can then be denied or find the price of their insurance multiply exponentially because they have an expensive sickness.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?) Is this a true threat or a false bluff? (*ponders possible redundancy*)

Either arguably stands to bring disaster: for the employer cases the cases you've noted arguably apply, whereas for the union cases cases such as pressure applied to keep paying miners to mine mined-out mines (effectively paying them to do nothing productive) can result, either way the market being distorted unrealistically. *ponders the government regulatory methods levied against such such as those preventing employees of one industry from taking part in a different industry's strike ('flying pickets'?)*

The automobile case can be explained regarding the many hurt by them accidentally, but why do houses need to be insured? (Even in places with a lot of tornadoes, one wouldn't think they fall on that many people... [/attempted humour])
Houses and automobiles are opt-in purchases; it's contradictory to say the least to claim such a thing while simultaneously not legalising suicide. Even stepping back from there, one could argue that treating 'life' as a baseline, a body is currently a necessity for life, whereas a house or an automobile is not (and so, either way, it is unfair to legally treat it as something voluntarily purchased). The question of why purchased houses have to be insured would also apply to bodies.
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This isn't relevant to the discussion, but to check: are you aware while holding this discussion that while we have American citizenship (holding dual nationality), we do not and have never for a significant length of time (for instance, never as long as a year, or probably even half a year, or maybe even a quarter of a year) lived in America? *curiosity*

In short, the pool is too small for the desired things to be done with it when only the willing participate, so it is expanded to compulsorily include those who are unwilling to participate. It seems difficult to approve of this.
'Expansion to include those who are not willing for the sake of those who are willing': even if those who are willing are/were in the majority, is this approval-worthy?

[silveradept]

One could argue the practice of outsourcing, especially overseas, is the employer threat made good in a global economy.

Yep - both forces can create untenable conditions left unchecked. One would hope they could balance each other through the struggle, but that's not necessarily the case, so we'll need regulations still.

I don't honestly know why houses require insurance, but I'm guessing that because banks make big investments in lending people the money for houses, they want to make sure they can recover losses in the case of those houses falling down on people. Also, someone else's house falling on you has the same possible suit problems as someone else's automobile hitting you.

One could make a somewhat distorted argument that by parents making the decision to have a child, they are in effect "purchasing" a body that they should then be required to insure until the person has sufficient rights so as to make that decision for themselves. It won't affect the problem of sick adults without insurance they cannot afford, but it could at least make for the possibility of healthy children (and perhaps, the indirect effect of having less children because of the new requirement.)

According to a liberal argument, insurance companies deliberately place higher prices on persons who are or have high risk of sickness, because of the logical assumption that the high-risk and the already sick are going to need care and treatment, which costs money and impacts profitability. They will happily price those who need to be most covered out of the market so they don't have to cover them and pay costs, while providing affordable rates to those who have low risk of being unprofitable. An argument for required coverage of all is then presented, in addition to "making costs affordable to all", as a check on the profit motive of an insurance company, to attempt to steer them back toward their ideal, where they cover lots and pay claims, rather than looking for ways to maximize profit through minimized spending.

We were unaware of the lack of America experience, but since the original author is American writing about an American bill, we thought America would be appropriate context.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?) The term 'comparative advantage' comes to mind, along with the mental image of many people redundantly doing the same jobs as each other in different countries finding that they can waste a lot less resources by using a much smaller number of people to do the jobs for all countries. Even if you assume that the number of people (in all appropriate respects) was exactly aligned with the number of job positions, it's reasonable that with the transition to a global economy (at least in that respect) the number of positions would drastically decrease (as redundant positions are merged) and so the number of people would have to fall, the conditions available for people falling considerably until supply fell to meet demand again.
(This may or may not be irrelevant to what you wished to convey.)

Monopoly-prevention regulations also come to mind (a concept fairly similar to the price-fixing concept).

Isn't that 'using a house as collateral (for a mortgage)', rather than 'buying a house'? It doesn't seem to apply if you bought the house outright with money that you got through means which didn't require using the house itself as collateral for said money.
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Insurance for the event that one's house kills/hurts someone? Curious. Would personal insurance then be insurance for the event that one killed/hurt someone (in a non-automobile or -house related way)? Speaking of which, what decides whether the insurance system or the criminal justice system handles the proceedings when someone in an automobile hurts/kills someone else?

Whatever the means, it seems as though it could easily be made one of the many responsibilities held by guardians while the guarded one is legally judged incapable of responsibility. The case of not allowing to imbibe neurotoxin also comes to mind.
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This also tangentially (?) ties into the question of what should happen when one parent makes one decision and the other makes the other. Even if you argue that initial body-construction is something only directly relevant to one parent, the issue of monetary support until it reaches [legal age of personal responsibility] is one in which both should be equal it seems. *wonders*

Even that can only be extended to 'required coverage for all willing'.

Presumably, yes. In-depth knowledge of the background is lacking, though, and so any discussion will be based on general thought or information about the legal situation in question gleaned from you (or the article in question) during conversation. It may or may not be helpful to be aware of this (e.g. in regards to understanding certain questions or misunderstandings).

[silveradept]

Actually, you grasped the idea exactly, and the elimination of redundancies argument is sound. It is inefficient at the moment because we still have nation-states, instead of working together as one world unit, and I'm not sure how much of it is driven by profit motive now as opposed to simple efficiency of work. If it were equally as expensive to insource as to outsource, I do not know how many companies would take that option.

Well, it's not so odd if you think of insurance as "purchasing protection against catastrophic costs", because usually, the criminal justice system and/or the civil courts are the first option of handling the proceedings in case of injury/death through houses or automobiles. Insurance not only purchases protection from some of those costs (in certain situations. In others, the person with the insurance may still be required to pay significant costs.) In the case of personal insurance, costs for many procedures or hospital visits will bankrupt someone, and thus they wish to purchase protection from those costs.

Most insurance plans offer the ability to expand one's personal coverage to include dependents and spouses at additional cost, but it is not required. As for the parents making opposite decisions, that can be a big problem, and often results in fights or the family court system getting involved. Even more interesting when the parents are not living in the same house and have custody agreements between themselves.

One could argue that all are willing to accept coverage, especially when insurance is argued in the "protection against catastrophic costs" vein - most people don't want to be on the hook for many thousands of dollars/pounds that they don't have and can't afford. If that premise is true, then the question comes down to finding ways of covering all at prices they can afford.

We will try to be better about explaining Americanisms.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) *happiness at praise (?)*

'thus they wish': reasonable if it's voluntary.
For house insurance, is it a one-time lump sum added onto the cost of the house, or is it a repeated tax?

Problematic for there not to be a set resolution in place, as it seems as though it would come up fairly often.

If all are willing, then why are some complaining about it in such articles? If nothing else, it seems reasonable to give the option of opting-out, so as to silence them if they wouldn't opt-out and similarly (by letting them opt-out) silencing them if they would.
This reminds me of the 'women are intrinsically unable to become lawyers/etc., thus it should be illegal for them to be': if they were, then making it legal wouldn't change anything. Likewise, if everyone actually was willing then there would be no purpose in making it illegal to not act as though one were willing.

Most concepts can be picked up from context (and/or taken as a 'in this hypothetical setup which may or may not reflect the state of a real country' case).

[silveradept]

Yes, praise.

No, it's a repeated tax for insurance on houses.

One would think so, but no matter what the resolution was, there would be someone who felt they were discriminated against by that procedure, and thus we go back to the courts.

They are complaining because they feel it should be their decision on whether to opt-in, rather than a government decision that all are in. It is a manifestation of the American idea of freedom and liberty, meaning "I can do whatever I want and no person or entity should be able to stop me, with a few exceptions (and sometimes, not even those)." Opting-out would reduce the pool of risk and increase the prices, so that's not really an option - the government would likely ensure that those opting-out would still be financing those opted-in, through fines or penalties.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N?/B?) *happiness*

Ah.
*gathers thoughts* One would probably argue that there may be a case for enforced insurance-buying when unrelated third parties are commonly at great risk (as in the automobile case), but that this largely disappears once (as in the house case) the people at risk are almost exclusively only those who live in/use the house: as the risks are accepted as part of the voluntary decision to obtain the house, to take those risks or mitigate them through insurance is a reasonable decision to leave to the decision-maker in that circumstance.
In the case of automobiles, it seems relatively reasonable that a person responsible for harming an unrelated third-party should provide the cost of treatment for that third-paty, and problematic if whether this could take place depended on a voluntary choice of the person responsible. There are other possible ways of dealing with the situation (just worse punishment if not able to pay for treatment of another?), but enforcing insurance-usage in such situations seems as though it could be an effective way of somewhat-protecting those who get involved in such situations (mostly) outside of their control. A house, by contrast, does not seem to bear the same sort of risks to unrelated parties.

If it were a completely symmetrical arrangement which treated those involved as though they were boxes labelled 'Person A' and 'Person 1' (for instance) with no other identifying features, how could it be claimed to be discriminatory?
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Besides that, aren't there procedures in place to stop the same issues coming up before the courts time and time again[ in other areas of law]? If nothing else, being thrown out of court on basis of precedent...? (Though I can see that that might hypothetically also give rise to problems.)

Thus we return to the early position. Effectively, then, they are not all willing. Likewise, if it's a policy which will by nature fail once all those in it are willing, scrapping it altogether seems preferable.
*is aware that there may be flawed logic in the above paragraph*
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*rereads earlier paragraphs* 'Expansion to include the non-willing for the sake of the willing'. The question of resource-seizing may also have been addressed in the lower half-thread.
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On the one side are those who can complement each other's strengths with their comparative advantages, and on the other side are those who want that side's strength without offering anything worthwhile in return.
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The liberty-related concept is also indeed significant. The government is not there to oppress the minority for the sake of the government. The government is not there to oppress the majority for the sake of the government. The government, if anything, is there to prevent the oppression of either. Not charitably giving someone your money is not oppression of that person. Using force to coerce another to give you that person's money is oppression (repression, e.g. 'Help, help, I'm being repressed'?) of that person. Usage of a government to do such things is likewise something which merits calling in a government to put them in their place. Something of a Catch-22 there, unless there are hierarchies of government. Another option might be if there were some sure-fire way of preventing a government from violating its precepts.