Blog hiatus

I took a blog hiatus while I went and got an ACL reconstruction last week. Unbelievable! I mean, everyone I have talked to that got this same procedure the old way has a completely different experience. My experience: 4 hours in a private office, two days on my back in the CPM machine, walking on it within 5 days, ascending stairs and walking slowly 1 weeks later, never took anything stronger than Celebrex for inflammation and Tylenol for a headache.

• Different patient, same surgeon, 20 years ago: 5 days in the hospital, 2 weeks on crutches, plenty of drugs, God knows how much it cost both in terms of the direct costs and the lost time.
• Different patient, different surgeon, 15 years ago: laid his knee open like a gutted fish, plenty of drugs, disregarded the CPM, had a repeat surgery 18 months later (no guarantee I won't be in the same boat, though).

A coworker told me that the cryo cuff and the CPM were the kinds of technology that drive up health care costs. Meanwhile, he insists that his 5 children which the rest of us subsidize require 12 doctor's office visits per year. I think he would still be better off with catastrophic insurance with a high deductible: it would cost more out of pocket, but he wouldn't have as much taken out of his paycheck. He disagrees: apparently, his desire to eat poorly (lots of high-fat foods), to refuse to exercise, and to make up for it with Lipitor trumps my desire to keep my own money.

The catastophic insurance would definitely have benefitted me, since I have only been to the hospital twice in the past 10 years. Everything else I could definitely have been money ahead to pay out of pocket vs. having the monthly premiums sucked out of my paycheck to subsidize my co-workers, most of whom pursue a much less healthy lifestyle than I do. Many of them drank heavily in their youth, consider softball to be exercise, and now have adult diabetes, its side effects, and other problems as a result of their choices.

Back to soccer this next spring, I hope!

Where's the Balance?

Okay, third time trying to get this posted without crashing Firefox/Blogger (grrrr) ....

Though I frequently disagree with him, I [used to?] respect Quiggin for his interesing posts on CrookedTimber. Then this:

Speaking as a reader, I wouldn't want to pay for the NYT Op-Ed page. The Editorials are worthy, but not very exciting. Of the columnists, only Krugman is consistently excellent, and most of his columns consist of necessary repetition of important truths well-informed readers are aware of, but most commentators are unwilling to harp on for fear of being called "shrill".

That could be because Krugman is shrill. Even that perennial blowhard, O'Reilly, showed him for what he really is in this interview. Just to pick one thing out of the debate, Krugman’s complete prevarication on his characterization of Bush tax policies. O'Reilly said that Krugman predicted they would deepen the recession, to which PK, author of a Bush Admin critique called The Great Unravelling (not Deviation from the Norm, or Slight Departure, or Policies with a Neutral to Slightly Negative Effect) responded: "nuh-uh, no I didn't".

Okay, I paraphrased, but he did deny that use of language as if his real language might be much less ... uh, ... shrill. However, we know that was not true because he did in fact use that kind of language. But what of it? It's just one more point on the curve.

My real problem with Crooked Timber right now is that they dedicated no less than 8 articles to the Lancet study on additional Iraqi deaths due to the war, but 0 to the more recent, broader UN study. Personally, I think the Lancet study is probably closer to the truth, but it is at least worth noting the UN study (hattip: Johan Norberg), which found about 24,000 additional deaths vs. the 98,000 found in the Lancet study. Blinded by ideology? I think so.

Woohoo! Smart finally here

First stop: Reno (Jalopnik, by way of Green Car Congress). Smart, I get. This, I don't. Sorry, Chris. I just don't. I mean, when are they going to finish with the beta version and release the real thing?

And this is just too fucking cool: a diesel Lamborghini.

I'm just trying to help out

Okay, so Jolly Old is having to contract out their medical services because it seems that NHS can't quite keep up. And Fidel has doctors to burn and could use the cash. The solution seems obvious, doesn't it? Kiss and make up, boys!

This is what passes as economic education?

Matthew Yglesias says this:

I might be an earnest, hardworking dude who works in the store. And somebody might die and give the store to me. The store may be worth millions and millions of dollars. If so, I ought to pay tax on it. Why? Because I've just inherited millions and millions of dollars, that's why. [EH: Oh, that's irrefutable, init?] That I'm earnest and hardworking, and that my riches came in the form of a valuable store rather than a heaping plate of gold matters not a whit. What about those sad folks forced to sell the family business? Don't cry for them. Here you are, you inherit a store worth $X. You owe $Y in taxes, with Y being less than X. So you are "forced" to sell the store, and accept "only" $X-Y as your inheritance. Note that X is a figure in the millions, and Y a small proportion of X. This is a very good problem to have, abstracting away from the fact that someone you love has probably died and this is probably a bigger concern of yours that the tax bill. This is, in other words, a non-problem.

I must not have been in class the week where they covered the theory that says that gold and real estate are interchangeable. Do you suppose that real estate is a good buy, now, what with inflation concerns on the rise and all? As compared to, say, a heaping plate of gold?

Also, as I recall, wealth is created by moving things from lower-valued uses to higher-valued uses. Apparently, an exception is made when the circumstances involve certain kinds of taxes. Then, moving them from higher-valued uses to whatever use is convenient to liquidate the tax bill created by relatives who have the bad taste of dying at inopportune moments, such as when your cash flow has not anticipated their death, is at worst value-neutral. So, as Matthew begins this ill-conceived tale, "fuck the small businessmen." Or perhaps not?

The government ought, perhaps, to facilitate some kind of lending arrangement so that people who prefer to keep the store and pay the tax down over time out of operating revenues can do so.

Yeah, maybe the government can facilitate "some kind of lending arrangement" for me the next time my withholding fails to keep up with changes in my income, deductions, and other tax events. There are so many, y'know? Why should small businessmen get all of the breaks?

Of course, that's the problem with Wonkism. At least physicists realize that coming up with grand theories of everything require some fantatic math and perhaps turning time on its ear, something that is not expected to be understood by everyone standing on line for the tube. Wonkers make the same demands and then want us to believe that the electorate will make sense of their impossibly byzantine grand-policy-of-everything-prescriptions. Apparently the New Socialist Man is equipped with a healthy dose of omniscience? Or will we have a caste of philosopher-kings like Mr. Yglesias to help us out?

More reasons to move from Canada

You know the joke: Canadians were ideally situated to have a nation with American government, French cusine, and English culture, but ended up with French government, English cuisine, and American culture. Empirical evidence for the type of government here and here. At least the Candian health care system is intact just as it is in Britain. And they did build that robotic arm thingy.

FarFromPumpin - FME

I posted this answer in a Samizdata comment section to a post on global warming.

What can a free market environmentalist do?

1) Work on your own environmental footprint where it's in your self interest. Replace your incandescents with fluorescents, consider an efficient vehicle the next time you buy one (VW TDI, Smart, Toyota, Honda, even Ford has a hybrid Explorer), and so on.

2) Insist that your government follow the greenies advice where the cost/benefit makes sense. For most people, things like solar and wind power are hard arguments to make because the payoff takes so long (10, 20, perhaps 30 years), but the government will probably still be occupying its buildings and conducting business as usual 30 years hence. Also, Amory Lovins' research for the DoD's use of fuel seems to me to be correct: it takes 9 gallons or so of fuel for every 1 gallon delivered to a weapons platforom. Therefore, the DoD should invest heavily in lightweighting and alternate power systems for its vehicles, vessels, and aircraft.

3) This is more controversial, but here goes: insofar as you think Coase was correct, someone has to enforce tradable emissions permit rules. Therefore, you should support well-designed cap & trade programs.

Those steps, though not consistent with a night watchman state, are consistent with a libertarian ideology.

The rest of the comments are here. Some of them are quite interesting. Many seem to be against any kind of non-private action, but there are plenty of expensive public good suggestions made. Nobody explains how to square the apparent contradiction (though, as Coase also showed, sometimes lighthouses are produced privately). Also, there is this.

My assumption is that even if global warming turns out to be due to albedo or other explanations, the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere is undeniable and there is a possibility that we could induce forced warming. By "we", I also mean China and India as their economies catch up (and someday, we hope Africa joins the party).

However, we develop cleaner and greener technology every year. After all, nobody wants to haul or heat waste products like sulphur, so it's in our own best interest to reduce pollution. The automobile is ripe for vigorous innovation, since only about 1% of the energy consumed goes into moving the payload (you, the driver) from A to B (you are about 5% of the mass, and only about 20% of the energy goes into moving the vehicle from A to B, while the rest goes into repeated acceleration from stop, fighting the wind and road friction, and making noise and heat). As a result, newer entrants to the industrial club get to leapfrog past old technologies straight into new ones. Most Chinese cell phone users never owned a landline, so the poles, repeaters, cables, and handsets won't have to be built and therefore Chinese telecommunications have smaller environmental footprints than if they had to build two systems (like the West did).

So, for the most part, the problem will become solved because it is in our interest to have it solved even if it weren't for the global warming potential.

StF(atR) and CYTtD? - Tradable Permits

I have a question for the left: If Kyoto is so great, why is there so much skepticism and outright denial of the benefits of tradable emissions permits, especially WRT mercury, but also WRT sulfur (a program that is now accepted as successful by everyone except the hardest of the left)? And, BTW, why isn't there more credit given to George H.W. Bush (not "W"), who after all signed the 1990 Clean Air Act that put the sulfur (or is it "sulphur"?) "cap and trade" program into effect? Y'know, as opposed to Bill Clinton, who signed no major environmental legislation at all (granted, for 6/8 of his term he wasn't working with his own party, but then neither were Nixon, Reagan, or HW, all of whom did sign environmental legislation).

I have a question for the right: If tradeable emissions permits are so great, what is wrong with applying the same lessons to carbon dioxide a la Kyoto? (hint: I actually think there is a legitimate answer to this question, but I can't think of a problem with tradeable CO2 permits in principle)

I have yet another question for my fellow free market environmentalists: If Coase was right, shouldn't we be getting behind more such proposals? And, BTW, who is going to enforce them? Obviously, the government. Sure, a significant portion of the monitoring and enforcement could be contracted out. It might even be enforceable on a contingency basis, though I'd be concerned about rent seeking, but even that wouldn't be significantly different from the current situation (yes, Dorothy, government bureaucrats and politicians do engage in rent-seeking).