I wanted my blog to be about slightly weightier issues, or rather about my thoughts involving life and the universe more generally, and less about current events. I wanted to avoid that sort of blog that offers entry after entry starting with: “OMG, can you believe what they just did…” or “So and so is an Idiot/Communist/Nazi/Republican/Mean Person…”
In other words, while current events are interesting, they are so, well, current. It is hard to be reasonable and thoughtful in the passions of the immediate when one comments too currently on current events. There is something powerful and persuasive from gaining perspective through time. Therefore, I don’t want to be too current. It's not that I’m powerful or persuasive, but I can hope, right?
However, this time I am going to break my own rule.
I think we reached a milestone this week. President Obama signed the Health Reform bill into law on Monday. I certainly have my thoughts about this farce of legislation and saying that ought to tell you all you need to know about my stance on the subject.
I saw at least two different editorials, by accomplished and sophisticated writers, that talked about the Health Reform Bill in terms of “Civil War.” They meant a civil war in the sense that half the country sees an issue one way, an issue that they think is fundamental to their creed, existence, and life itself, and the other half sees it another way in the same fervent, locked in their beliefs, fundamentalist way. The writers were specifically referring to the idea of a civil war by harkening back to the 1860s when half the nation was willing to maim, kill, butcher, and devour the other half to impose its view of governing America.
This is scary!
We like to think that we are above the issues of the original American Civil War. We all learned in school that it was a war against slavery. It was, they taught us, a battle of good against evil. The North was the champion of good and the South was evil for its desire to own Negro slaves upon which its economy relied. The North could propagate this simplistic and revisionist history because it won the war.
Much greater thinkers and historians than I have told the story. I don’t presume to try to reinterpret the Civil War. Yet, it seems to me that there are so many parallels of that era to events of today that they bear comment.
Put away your Northern propaganda for a moment and consider. The South, regardless of the slavery and other issues, was primarily upset that the Federal government was trying to impose itself on what the Southern states saw as their constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty rights. Essentially, the Constitution forbids the Federal government from doing anything not specifically granted to it, and says the states may do whatever it does not grant specifically to the Feds. In other words, if the Constitution does not specifically give the Federal government authority over something, then the States have that authority if they so wish it and the Federal government may not say otherwise. The essential argument of the South was the Federal government had no authority to tell them whether they could have legalized slavery or not, because the Constitution made no mention of the subject. The South certainly had a very good point, especially considering that many of the framers of the constitution were slave owners themselves.
Some 80 years prior to the Civil War, the original 13 colonies got together and agreed to form a “Union.” They did not agree to give overarching power to a central authority, the Federal government. Far from it. They agreed to bond together, under a limiting agreement (the Constitution), to adopt certain laws in common, some basic economic restraints and taxations, some guaranteed individual rights, and so on. Remember, the States at this time literally thought of themselves as individual STATES, much the same as France, England, and Sweden were states. For lack of a better way of putting it, each of the states considered themselves individual countries in their own right. They considered themselves sovereign, and subject to no other authority except according to the limited agreements they had made in the Constitution. Think of it as a NATO of its time.
The proper way to deal with slavery was by constitutional amendment. That was never going to happen in the current situation in 1860 because it takes three fourths of the states approval, and the Southern bloc represented nearly half of the states and would not vote for such an amendment. What the North was doing, with its majorities in Congress, was requiring that new states could only join the union if they agreed to make slavery illegal in their state. If the union kept accepting only anti-slavery states it would be just a matter of time before the southern bloc represented less than a fourth of the states, and the three fourths needed to adopt the amendment would be reached. Recognizing the inevitability of that outcome, the South said, “We quit.” They wanted out of the union. It has always puzzled me why the North didn’t just say, “Fine, go.” I suppose, Lincoln and the North were not willing to let that happen, not because they wanted to save the slaves, but because they were in control of the economy and wanted to keep on with the good thing. I think just as importantly the nation was embarking on expansion across the whole of the continent and the North perceived that an independent South would be a competitor. It was all about turf. I certainly don’t buy the argument that the North was willing to kill millions in some sort of altruistic desire to preserve the nation.
I could go on for hours and hours, but the point is that when the North won the Civil War, they planted the seeds of our modern day overarching Federal government. We went from a States centric Union to a Federal centric one when Lee signed the surrender at Appomattox. Ever since then, the Federal government has hijacked one States’ right after another. In the twentieth century, the Feds used the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution as their principal pry bar to insinuate themselves more and more into the private lives and business of the citizens. It is also the chief justificaiton for Obamacare now. The chief architect of this movement was Franklin Roosevelt; more than any other President he turned us to the idea that the Federal government should be responsible for each individual’s welfare.
I can just hear my left wing friends (of whom I have not many) disagree and howl in righteous indignation (which is funny since they don’t believe in God or religion, but think and act so very religiously). However, I think Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison would be horrified at what the nation has become. This was not their vision, nor that of any person who took part in creating this country.
Many have come to think that it is we versus them. By that, they mean the government does not represent them, their ideals, their desires, their philosophy or beliefs. They are beginning to think that the folks running the government think of the rest of us as subjects. We are here to serve their desires, not them to serve ours. Have you heard the titles “King Barak”, “Princess Nancy”, and “Prince Harry”?
More than half the citizens of this country are opposed to Obamacare. I suspect that as many are also opposed to idea of adopting the European nanny state, and with it the increasing intrusiveness into our lives and restrictions of our personal rights. I suspect more than half the people in the country don’t think the government should be taking over and running private companies. That’s what they do in places like Cuba and Venezuela.
I think at least half the country is starting to think very much like the South thought in 1860.
If you ever travelled in the South, and mention is made of the Civil War, you immediately heard a local correct the name and call it the War of Northern Aggression. Perhaps the second civil war, if it comes to that, we will call the War of Left Wing Aggression. That will only happen if the left does not win.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Would You Believe?
One of my favorite concepts I learned in college came in a class on the Science Fiction novel. The Science Fiction genre uses plausible science and technology as the vehicle for the story, and, in almost all cases, the science and/or technology does not actually exist yet.
Take, for example, Star Trek, a very popular Science Fiction franchise with a number of television series, movies, and books. The main premise of Star Trek is that a future Earth based society goes flying around the galaxy in a star ship having adventures and pondering the meaning of life. The science involves such things as faster than light warp drives, matter teleporters (Beam me up!), phasers, and other cool stuff. Much of the technology or the science behind the story may seem far out there, even though much of it has some basis in current theory.
Some of the things that seemed too weird to be possible we actually do have now 40 years after the original episodes. When Star Trek first aired in the mid 1960’s it had ubiquitous talking computers, for example. In real life at the time, computers were rare, owned only by large companies and the government, filled entire specially cooled rooms, and couldn't say a word. Today we have more computing power in our cell phones than some of the most advanced computers back then. Speaking of cell phones, aren’t they suspiciously like the communicator thing that Kirk would pull out, flip open, and say into, “Scotty, beam me up!” (I think I read somewhere that in all the original episodes, Kirk never uttered those exact words.)
I digress.
The point is, to meaningfully read and enjoy Science Fiction, and Fantasy, too, the reader has to do a thing the professor called “suspension of disbelief.” I think that’s a cool phrase. That which I am reading is generally unbelievable from a reality perspective, so I must tell myself not to disbelieve it so that I can enjoy it. Millions of folks do it every day. I think that’s why millions more don’t like Sci-Fi and Fantasy because they have a hard time convincing themselves to disbelieve.
Suspension of disbelief is a requirement for all fiction really, but more true for Sci-Fi and Fantasy than any other genre. The difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy by the way is that Sci-Fi deals with the scientifically possible even if sometimes improbable, while Fantasy deals with the magical, which is in many ways the opposite of science. The two genres converge at some point if you accept that magic may be scientifically measurable and reproducible. For example, the Star Trek Transporter (teleporter) is science based—they can really do some interesting things similar to teleportation with quantum states now—while a wizard who casts a spell to move himself to a different continent uses magic. However, they are both the same concept and at some point one could argue that what the wizard does can be learned and reproduced, and is therefore a subject of science.
I digress again.
So what is the difference between “believing” and the “suspension of disbelief”? If you tell yourself not to disbelieve aren’t you really telling yourself to believe?
I don’t think so. I think these are two entirely different concepts.
When I suspend my disbelief, I am making a deal with myself to forget temporarily that my disbelief exists. I am not agreeing to believe that the story, the science or the magic is real. I know they are not. I am just not going to let the fact that these things aren’t real get in the way. If Kirk pulls out a phaser and zaps some alien to a puff of smoke, then by God the evil, slimy, green and lecherous villain had it coming. I still know that the phaser and the alien and even Kirk himself don’t exist, probably never will, but I just won’t let that knowledge get in the way of the story.
Believing, now that is something altogether different.
If you believe Kirk is real, or worse that Luke Skywalker is, you probably have some other serious mental and emotional deficiencies or problems. Believing needs to be reserved for reality-based concepts, logic and reason, and, if you are so inclined, your religion of choice. I believe that 2 + 3 = 5 because there is a logic and system that makes it so, and I can repeat that logic and system whenever I want. I believe the USA is the best nation to have ever existed on this Earth. I can believe that because I can offer arguments laden with abundant evidence that many will accept as reasonable and true. Some might disagree with me and have their own beliefs. Though for you to believe that 2 + 3 <> 5 requires that you be a major nut job or are applying some mathematical system to the numbers other than the one 99.999% of us use.
Where this is going is that belief should have a basis in reality and should be reasonable. That is implicit in the concept of “suspension of disbelief.” We can’t and shouldn’t believe in that which is unreasonable, such as Captain Kirk smoking the alien, and so we have to suspend our reason in order to comprehend and enjoy the bad guy getting his comeuppances.
I briefly mentioned that you should also reserve belief for your religion of choice. I know that many folks would argue that believing in an all-powerful omniscient being or worshiping Jesus, Mohammed, et al, is unreasonable. They would say there is no proof that God exists. I won’t argue the point one way or the other, except to say that one of the things that make the USA so great is that we agree that we can believe and practice whatever religion we want. The deal with religion and belief is that when you get enough people together who share your belief that gives the belief legitimacy and makes it reasonable. In fact, we can believe whatever we want about anything we want, as long as we don’t hurt others or their property in the process.
If you think that there really was a Darth Vader and Princess Leia in a galaxy far, far away a long, long time ago, fine, knock yourself out. Just don’t try to pass a law that says I have to believe it too. Still, it is unhealthy to believe in too many unreasonable things. Living in a fantasy world may make you feel good, but it’s hard to be taken seriously by the adults at the table when you do.
Speaking of fantasy and health, I wonder how many folks really believe that Obama’s current health care reform will save all of us money. How many really believe that the government can make better health decisions for us than we can make for ourselves, or that we should let it? How many believe the government should have access to our personal medical records whenever it wants?
For those of you who really do believe these things, I will find it nearly impossible to suspend my disbelief that you are not a completely whacked out delusional idiot with less than the emotional and intellectual capacity of the 5 year old who still believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. If only we could have gotten you, and the rest of those like you, to go to that galaxy far, far away a long, long time ago.
Oops, I digressed again, but who cares?
Take, for example, Star Trek, a very popular Science Fiction franchise with a number of television series, movies, and books. The main premise of Star Trek is that a future Earth based society goes flying around the galaxy in a star ship having adventures and pondering the meaning of life. The science involves such things as faster than light warp drives, matter teleporters (Beam me up!), phasers, and other cool stuff. Much of the technology or the science behind the story may seem far out there, even though much of it has some basis in current theory.
Some of the things that seemed too weird to be possible we actually do have now 40 years after the original episodes. When Star Trek first aired in the mid 1960’s it had ubiquitous talking computers, for example. In real life at the time, computers were rare, owned only by large companies and the government, filled entire specially cooled rooms, and couldn't say a word. Today we have more computing power in our cell phones than some of the most advanced computers back then. Speaking of cell phones, aren’t they suspiciously like the communicator thing that Kirk would pull out, flip open, and say into, “Scotty, beam me up!” (I think I read somewhere that in all the original episodes, Kirk never uttered those exact words.)
I digress.
The point is, to meaningfully read and enjoy Science Fiction, and Fantasy, too, the reader has to do a thing the professor called “suspension of disbelief.” I think that’s a cool phrase. That which I am reading is generally unbelievable from a reality perspective, so I must tell myself not to disbelieve it so that I can enjoy it. Millions of folks do it every day. I think that’s why millions more don’t like Sci-Fi and Fantasy because they have a hard time convincing themselves to disbelieve.
Suspension of disbelief is a requirement for all fiction really, but more true for Sci-Fi and Fantasy than any other genre. The difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy by the way is that Sci-Fi deals with the scientifically possible even if sometimes improbable, while Fantasy deals with the magical, which is in many ways the opposite of science. The two genres converge at some point if you accept that magic may be scientifically measurable and reproducible. For example, the Star Trek Transporter (teleporter) is science based—they can really do some interesting things similar to teleportation with quantum states now—while a wizard who casts a spell to move himself to a different continent uses magic. However, they are both the same concept and at some point one could argue that what the wizard does can be learned and reproduced, and is therefore a subject of science.
I digress again.
So what is the difference between “believing” and the “suspension of disbelief”? If you tell yourself not to disbelieve aren’t you really telling yourself to believe?
I don’t think so. I think these are two entirely different concepts.
When I suspend my disbelief, I am making a deal with myself to forget temporarily that my disbelief exists. I am not agreeing to believe that the story, the science or the magic is real. I know they are not. I am just not going to let the fact that these things aren’t real get in the way. If Kirk pulls out a phaser and zaps some alien to a puff of smoke, then by God the evil, slimy, green and lecherous villain had it coming. I still know that the phaser and the alien and even Kirk himself don’t exist, probably never will, but I just won’t let that knowledge get in the way of the story.
Believing, now that is something altogether different.
If you believe Kirk is real, or worse that Luke Skywalker is, you probably have some other serious mental and emotional deficiencies or problems. Believing needs to be reserved for reality-based concepts, logic and reason, and, if you are so inclined, your religion of choice. I believe that 2 + 3 = 5 because there is a logic and system that makes it so, and I can repeat that logic and system whenever I want. I believe the USA is the best nation to have ever existed on this Earth. I can believe that because I can offer arguments laden with abundant evidence that many will accept as reasonable and true. Some might disagree with me and have their own beliefs. Though for you to believe that 2 + 3 <> 5 requires that you be a major nut job or are applying some mathematical system to the numbers other than the one 99.999% of us use.
Where this is going is that belief should have a basis in reality and should be reasonable. That is implicit in the concept of “suspension of disbelief.” We can’t and shouldn’t believe in that which is unreasonable, such as Captain Kirk smoking the alien, and so we have to suspend our reason in order to comprehend and enjoy the bad guy getting his comeuppances.
I briefly mentioned that you should also reserve belief for your religion of choice. I know that many folks would argue that believing in an all-powerful omniscient being or worshiping Jesus, Mohammed, et al, is unreasonable. They would say there is no proof that God exists. I won’t argue the point one way or the other, except to say that one of the things that make the USA so great is that we agree that we can believe and practice whatever religion we want. The deal with religion and belief is that when you get enough people together who share your belief that gives the belief legitimacy and makes it reasonable. In fact, we can believe whatever we want about anything we want, as long as we don’t hurt others or their property in the process.
If you think that there really was a Darth Vader and Princess Leia in a galaxy far, far away a long, long time ago, fine, knock yourself out. Just don’t try to pass a law that says I have to believe it too. Still, it is unhealthy to believe in too many unreasonable things. Living in a fantasy world may make you feel good, but it’s hard to be taken seriously by the adults at the table when you do.
Speaking of fantasy and health, I wonder how many folks really believe that Obama’s current health care reform will save all of us money. How many really believe that the government can make better health decisions for us than we can make for ourselves, or that we should let it? How many believe the government should have access to our personal medical records whenever it wants?
For those of you who really do believe these things, I will find it nearly impossible to suspend my disbelief that you are not a completely whacked out delusional idiot with less than the emotional and intellectual capacity of the 5 year old who still believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. If only we could have gotten you, and the rest of those like you, to go to that galaxy far, far away a long, long time ago.
Oops, I digressed again, but who cares?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
South Fork Day
On a lovely early summer morning in eastern Idaho, a friend and I went fly-fishing. We were intent on getting in on the hot action on the South Fork of the Snake River near the eastern border with Wyoming. Flowing out of the snow packs of the Grand Tetons, the South Fork is big, fast and cold. The report was that large, wily, killer trout were hitting ants floated near the holes that form under the banks.
We parked as close to the river as we could get without trespassing on private property. We carefully assembled our fly rods and selected among several reels, each filled with a different, but specific and, therefore, scientific choice of line designed to float just so high or so low, or sink this much or that. Then we donned our waders and fishing vests, whose pockets we filled with folding cases of flies, snippers, leaders of several weights and lengths, tweezers, floats and other essential gear. Among my hand tied flies, by the world’s foremost experts on Snake River fly-fishing and, therefore, very expensive, I had no fewer than eight varieties of simulated ants.
Just a short tumble down the bank saw us at the water’s edge. We parted; my buddy went upstream and I went down.
After a couple of hours of fruitless casting, I found myself fishing this slow but deep hole that was a backwater eddy of the main current. There was a sort of peninsula of the west bank that extended 300 feet or more downstream, so that the river eddied into this long, wide and very deep pool that was a hundred yards long and some 40 yards across at its widest point near the main flow of the river.
I was down near the end of the peninsula, where the backwater joined the river, and had waded out into the pool. The water was over my bellybutton, just an inch or so from overflowing my chest waders. I was trying to work my way just a little further in because my casts were coming up short of the west bank where it narrowed before joining the main current. I had my eye on a spot in the shade of an overhanging tree. The west bank was a near vertical cut all along the pool at this point and the only way to get close enough to the spot was from the peninsula where I was. I knew trout were hiding in the shadows of that tree, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t seem to get my fly quite close enough.
Then, as my frustration nearly reached the tipping point, and injudicious steps were actually tipping small volumes of water over the top of my waders, it happened.
A double bowed drift boat came oaring downstream and turned into the pool I was fishing. I was pissed, no other word for it. Here I was working this pool, and one of those snooty drift boat guys, who think the river was made just for them, was rowing into my spot. It was just plain rude. It was not the code of the fly-fishing west at all.
But, then it got worse.
The boat came closer and closer, until it reached a point that was just outside my fly-casting range. Now, I would like to say this was 150 feet. But, the truth is, I couldn’t cast a fly accurately more than 35 feet without it slapping the water like a 2 ton stone falling from the sky; so this boat was about 40 feet from me.
And what do I see?
A 20 something stud, with broad shoulders, designer shirt and shorts, expensive looking polarized sun glasses and the most beautiful fly rod. He was standing at one end of the boat, making brilliant, accurate, and softest-landing casts I have every seen. His placement was perfect. His hair glistened in the sunlight as his rod arced back and forth, and the line raced through his fingers before the fly lit softly like a dandelion seed on the water.
He had a cold beer in a cup holder attached to the gunwale beside him. Even at that distance I could see the glistening drops of condensation on the can. He sipped at the beer between casts.
But this is not what really grabbed my attention. Rather, it was the captain of his boat. She was a goddess.
The virginal white of her skimpy bikini was blinding, glaring as it did in the sunlight. Her full head of blond hair tumbled over her tanned shoulders and she practically glowed as I imagined an angel from heaven might glow.The brilliance of her perfect head was outdone only by the gleam of her pearl white teeth as she smiled at something witty the man said.
She rowed the boat by pressing forward with both hands, and then dipping the oars deep into the water, arching her back and shoulders just so, leaning back while triumphantly thrusting her full breasts aft, straining them against the fabric of her bikini top so that the clasps must break, and then pulling back on the oar handles, digging the blades deep in the water, which swirled and foamed as she jerked the oars towards her magnificent chest.
It was a vision like none I had ever seen.
At that moment I knew that I was looking at the single most lucky bastard I had ever seen in my life.
How else explain that he came to have this beautiful young goddess with her amplitude of oiled and barely covered rowing musculature ferry him up and down a pristine wilderness river as he flopped his fly into deep dark pools and drank cold beer the while?
It all seemed designed to prove what a miserable existence I led.
As I stood in that pool of water with occasional ice cold glops of it running over the top of my waders and soaking me to shriveled oblivion, I saw this paragon of manliness lightly toss his fly into the very spot under the over hanging aspen that I had been trying to reach with my own poor miserable casts for the last quarter hour. The tree caused him no problem of snagging, for such does not happen to the Gods when they come among us. No, his fly lit softly like a bit of fluffy down on the water. Seconds later the water boiled. He gave the rod a quick twitch to set the hook, and in 15 minutes of exhilarating and splashy mano-a-pisce combat, he landed what must have been an 8 pound rainbow trout whose side colors flashed in the sun like so many jewels set before a king.
He held the fish up for his goddess to see. She blew him a kiss with a teasing laugh, and I could tell there was a world of promise in that gesture. Then he slowly lowered the fish to the water and released it. The goddess flipped her left oar a few times and turned the boat around, and they headed back for the main current. As they passed by, he gave me a little nod. Moments later the boat was just a speck disappearing downstream.
I was so depressed I worked my back to the bank and trudged the mile and a half to the car. I stopped fishing for the day, not having caught a thing.
I never told my friend about the man in the boat. I didn’t think he would believe me. Still, I sometimes think about that day. Each time I do, I find that I am still filled with one over riding thought about that lucky man in the drift boat. My thought and hope is that the beautiful bikini blonde babe gave that bastard genital warts or something equally incurable and disfiguring.
I mean, that would be fair, wouldn’t it?
We parked as close to the river as we could get without trespassing on private property. We carefully assembled our fly rods and selected among several reels, each filled with a different, but specific and, therefore, scientific choice of line designed to float just so high or so low, or sink this much or that. Then we donned our waders and fishing vests, whose pockets we filled with folding cases of flies, snippers, leaders of several weights and lengths, tweezers, floats and other essential gear. Among my hand tied flies, by the world’s foremost experts on Snake River fly-fishing and, therefore, very expensive, I had no fewer than eight varieties of simulated ants.
Just a short tumble down the bank saw us at the water’s edge. We parted; my buddy went upstream and I went down.
After a couple of hours of fruitless casting, I found myself fishing this slow but deep hole that was a backwater eddy of the main current. There was a sort of peninsula of the west bank that extended 300 feet or more downstream, so that the river eddied into this long, wide and very deep pool that was a hundred yards long and some 40 yards across at its widest point near the main flow of the river.
I was down near the end of the peninsula, where the backwater joined the river, and had waded out into the pool. The water was over my bellybutton, just an inch or so from overflowing my chest waders. I was trying to work my way just a little further in because my casts were coming up short of the west bank where it narrowed before joining the main current. I had my eye on a spot in the shade of an overhanging tree. The west bank was a near vertical cut all along the pool at this point and the only way to get close enough to the spot was from the peninsula where I was. I knew trout were hiding in the shadows of that tree, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t seem to get my fly quite close enough.
Then, as my frustration nearly reached the tipping point, and injudicious steps were actually tipping small volumes of water over the top of my waders, it happened.
A double bowed drift boat came oaring downstream and turned into the pool I was fishing. I was pissed, no other word for it. Here I was working this pool, and one of those snooty drift boat guys, who think the river was made just for them, was rowing into my spot. It was just plain rude. It was not the code of the fly-fishing west at all.
But, then it got worse.
The boat came closer and closer, until it reached a point that was just outside my fly-casting range. Now, I would like to say this was 150 feet. But, the truth is, I couldn’t cast a fly accurately more than 35 feet without it slapping the water like a 2 ton stone falling from the sky; so this boat was about 40 feet from me.
And what do I see?
A 20 something stud, with broad shoulders, designer shirt and shorts, expensive looking polarized sun glasses and the most beautiful fly rod. He was standing at one end of the boat, making brilliant, accurate, and softest-landing casts I have every seen. His placement was perfect. His hair glistened in the sunlight as his rod arced back and forth, and the line raced through his fingers before the fly lit softly like a dandelion seed on the water.
He had a cold beer in a cup holder attached to the gunwale beside him. Even at that distance I could see the glistening drops of condensation on the can. He sipped at the beer between casts.
But this is not what really grabbed my attention. Rather, it was the captain of his boat. She was a goddess.
The virginal white of her skimpy bikini was blinding, glaring as it did in the sunlight. Her full head of blond hair tumbled over her tanned shoulders and she practically glowed as I imagined an angel from heaven might glow.The brilliance of her perfect head was outdone only by the gleam of her pearl white teeth as she smiled at something witty the man said.
She rowed the boat by pressing forward with both hands, and then dipping the oars deep into the water, arching her back and shoulders just so, leaning back while triumphantly thrusting her full breasts aft, straining them against the fabric of her bikini top so that the clasps must break, and then pulling back on the oar handles, digging the blades deep in the water, which swirled and foamed as she jerked the oars towards her magnificent chest.
It was a vision like none I had ever seen.
At that moment I knew that I was looking at the single most lucky bastard I had ever seen in my life.
How else explain that he came to have this beautiful young goddess with her amplitude of oiled and barely covered rowing musculature ferry him up and down a pristine wilderness river as he flopped his fly into deep dark pools and drank cold beer the while?
It all seemed designed to prove what a miserable existence I led.
As I stood in that pool of water with occasional ice cold glops of it running over the top of my waders and soaking me to shriveled oblivion, I saw this paragon of manliness lightly toss his fly into the very spot under the over hanging aspen that I had been trying to reach with my own poor miserable casts for the last quarter hour. The tree caused him no problem of snagging, for such does not happen to the Gods when they come among us. No, his fly lit softly like a bit of fluffy down on the water. Seconds later the water boiled. He gave the rod a quick twitch to set the hook, and in 15 minutes of exhilarating and splashy mano-a-pisce combat, he landed what must have been an 8 pound rainbow trout whose side colors flashed in the sun like so many jewels set before a king.
He held the fish up for his goddess to see. She blew him a kiss with a teasing laugh, and I could tell there was a world of promise in that gesture. Then he slowly lowered the fish to the water and released it. The goddess flipped her left oar a few times and turned the boat around, and they headed back for the main current. As they passed by, he gave me a little nod. Moments later the boat was just a speck disappearing downstream.
I was so depressed I worked my back to the bank and trudged the mile and a half to the car. I stopped fishing for the day, not having caught a thing.
I never told my friend about the man in the boat. I didn’t think he would believe me. Still, I sometimes think about that day. Each time I do, I find that I am still filled with one over riding thought about that lucky man in the drift boat. My thought and hope is that the beautiful bikini blonde babe gave that bastard genital warts or something equally incurable and disfiguring.
I mean, that would be fair, wouldn’t it?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Doctors and the Cost of Health Care
I was listening to talk radio on the way to the gym the other morning. No doubt many of you are surprised to read the pronoun “I” in the same sentence with gym, but it’s true nonetheless.
Anyway, talk radio. This fellow who called in posited as his basic premise that part of the issue with health care reform and why so many people were for it was that doctors make too much money. The host immediately took the caller to task and asked a series of penetrating questions. They ranged from how much is too much, to if we tell the doctor how much he can charge then shouldn’t we also tell the farmer and Dell, and on and on. The host’s point was that the free market and not some government regulatory body should dictate doctor’s fees.
Too bad for the caller, since he was semi-inarticulate and the host had the better of him. For the most part, the host was right on the money, pun intended. Of course, the host completely jumped over the caller’s point that the reason so many people are for Obama’s idea of health reform is that those same people perceive in their own minds that doctors charge too much. It doesn’t matter if they do or not, only whether the rest of us think they do or not.
But, you know, conservative free marketer that I am, I must still take issue with the host’s point and stick up for the hick, who probably really was complaining that doctor’ charge too much. They do.
Gasp! Shudder! What’s that Wilson guy drinking now?
Let’s start with the host’s point. The free market should decide the cost of health care. Great. I’m all for it. Except the free market hasn’t dictated medical pricing for the last hundred years or more. Why not?
Well, there is the big problem of the intervening player in the cost of medical care, our good friends the lawyers and courts. Part of the reason doctor’s charge so much is because their medical malpractice insurance is so expensive. It is so expensive because juries, at the urging of greedy-guts attorneys, and with the connivance of courts and tort friendly laws, all too often render runaway verdicts against the doctor. Don’t get me wrong, doctors who make mistakes should be just as liable as the rest of us are for our mistakes. Let’s also give a nod to reality, however, and agree that far too often, the awards against them are all out of proportion to the wrong they did or the duty they owed. Further, these guys and gals are not all seeing and all-knowing, and they can’t always fix everything that goes wrong with us, or that we do to ourselves. We shouldn’t hold them to some unattainable standard and then take their money away when they don’t meet it. Medical malpractice, either in the form of insurance or verdicts, is a huge driver of the cost of medical care.
On the other hand, let’s give another nod to reality that often those same juries see a very wealthy and arrogant doctor acting like God and they want to take ol’ doc down a few pegs. So part of the problem with the cost of medical malpractice forcing doctors to charge so much is that the doctors charge so much and get rich doing it. I don’t want to say it’s the chicken and egg thing (oops, I just did), but many doctors get wealthy in spite of the plaintiff’s bar.
The doctors will argue, logically and with much justification, that they spend the first 30 or more years of their lives engaged in a brutal educational environment just learning to be doctors while making barely more than subsistence wages. The education of doctors is long, tortuous, competitive in the extreme, and survived by only the brightest and most dedicated. All of this, they say, means that they should be entitled to make a lot of money once they pass successfully through the process. I know if I was a doctor I would feel that way. So would everyone else in this country, save for a few who would be saints in another time and place.
The talk show host’s strong argument related to this point in several ways. Consider Economics 101. The availability of a good relates directly to the cost of the good. Supply of the good in relation to the demand for the good determines how much the seller can charge that a buyer is willing to pay. There aren’t that many doctors because the process for becoming one limits their number. Meanwhile, there is a strong demand for their services. We all want or need a doctor from time to time. When we really need one, cost is usually not a consideration.
So, we should blame the educational system? Maybe we should blame the high standards of knowledge and intelligence we hold our doctors to have? Perhaps, but I’m not buying it.
A study published in 2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that for that year there were 67,000 medical school students in the US. The number had not changed for 10 years, being 67,000 in 1995.
This is a profession that, albeit with a grueling educational and on the job training program, tends to make most of its practitioners wealthy. In 1994, the average annual salary was regularly reported as $186,000. You will find many asterisks next to doctor salaries, however, if you Google it, and I for one think that is a PR number put out by the AMA to make it look like doctors aren’t really making so much. The qualifiers include whether the doctor works in a salaried position, such as NASA, a private company like a pharmaceutical lab, as a professor, or chucked it all 10 years ago and lives in the jungle healing
Amazonian Indians in exchange for fish out of some wealth inspired guilt complex. Other factors determining a doctor’s pay include whether he/she is the owner or partner in a private practice or clinic, his/her years of experience, specialty (spinal surgeons average salary was 1.32 million by one report I read), and others.
The point is that doctors make a lot of money and most of them get rich by the standards of the rest of us. How is it that out of 300 million people in the US, only 67,000 of them at any given time are in medical school to learn a profession that will make them rich? Shouldn’t people be pounding on the gates to be let in?
In fact they are. I read a statistic, who knows if it is accurate, that only 1 of every 100 who apply to medical school ever gets in. Part of the reason there are so few doctors is that there are so few medical schools and teaching hospitals. It would be reasonable to conclude that a whole lot of folks who could be successful doctors never get the chance. It is not that the entry requirements are so high, it is because the available slots are so few.
The same JAMA article that said there were 67,000 medical students at any given time also referenced that there were 125 LCME (Liaison Committee of Medical Education, a branch of the American Medical Association) accredited medical schools, or an average of 536 students per school. Another number I saw in another source said there were 150 medical schools. Still, that is a surprisingly small number to my way of thinking.
We could build more medical schools and teaching hospitals. If we doubled the number, all by itself that would double the number of doctors in just a few years. More doctors equals more competition equals lower doctor’s fees. Economics 101.
There is no reason to suspect that the quality of medical care would go down in this event, either. I’ll come back to this point in a bit.
The reason we don’t have more doctors is the doctors themselves. Through the American Medical Association and other political affiliations, doctors have artificially restricted their number. One of the easiest ways to do that is restrict the number of medical schools and the number of students. Keep a lid on the number of doctors in the pot at any given time keeps the demand for them high. Indeed, restricting access to their profession is one of the principle agendas of the AMA, despite all their protestations and PR to the contrary.
Others will argue that only a small number of people have the intelligence to become a doctor. Really?
Remember the numbers above, 300 million population and 67,000 medical students at any given time? That’s 0.02%, or 1 medical student for every 5,000 population. The chances of a baby being born autistic in 2005 were 35 in 5,000. For mothers under the age of 30, the chances are 5 in 5,000 that their child will be born with Down’s syndrome. For mothers aged 36, the chances of a Downs birth was almost 17 in 5,000, and that’s after many mothers abort their Downs fetus after being tested for it. Do we really believe that only 1 person in 5,000 is smart enough to go to medical school and be a doctor, yet 5 will be Down’s syndrome babies?
Remember that 1 in 100 accepted to medical school number? You might think that 99 of them just couldn’t cut the mustard. Any number of articles are available that talk about how medical schools are doing various things to increase the diversity of their students. Let’s be honest and simply admit that what we are really talking about is they want to accept more blacks and Hispanics. So, let’s take the high road and say there were all these deserving blacks and Hispanics who before were being denied the opportunity to attend medical school because of their race. So now, in our enlightened society, medical schools are atoning for their evil ways. Atonement, however, judging by the 1995 and 2005 numbers, does not include increasing the available number of medical student slots. No sir, we are only going to put more black kids into medical school by seeing to it that some white kids are not going to get in who would have previously. Are those white kids suddenly less capable or not so smart? No. All it means is that the availability is artificially restricted.
Another thing the AMA has successfully lobbied for is government controls that force up the cost of care. Here is one that caught my eye, and illustrates exactly the point I want to make.
I saw an advertisement on TV for a company that offers stroke screening. They do it by taking an ultra-sound of the major arteries. The theory is that blockage in these arteries are the chief causes of strokes. They look and if they see a blockage then you know to seek treatment to do something about it. Now, this company doesn’t offer any treatment, just the screening. However, they promise that a “board certified” physician will do the screening. The kicker for me was a little text tag at the bottom of the screen that said in effect that in Texas a Texas licensed physician must first refer you before this company could do your screening.
Why would the State of Texas require that a Texas doctor refer you to the screening that is done by a board certified doctor? The obvious answer is the screening doctor doesn’t have a Texas license, and this is one way for Texas to get their licensing fees. Still, what does the State of Texas care? It’s not as if you are going to receive any treatment or prescription drugs. All that’s going to happen is that someone will press an ultra sound wand to various places on your body and take some pictures. Your Texas doctor isn’t going to read these pictures or interpret them. Most of them aren’t trained to do that, not like the “board certified” doctors who are doing the ultrasounds. No, your doctor’s only involvement in this process is to give you permission to get your picture taken, and for that permission he charges you for the referral. See, it’s as if you’re too stupid to figure it out for yourself, so you have to get a doctor to tell you its okay.
Come on. Who’s that stupid? It’s like requiring you to pay your barber for a referral to a store so you can buy some Rogaine.
The truth is the Texas doctors got the State of Texas to enact some laws to protect their cash flow. Do you think that adds to the cost of medical care in Texas? You bet, and it happens in most other states in one way or another.
I can just hear the doctors screaming about protecting us from unscrupulous, fly by night, shysters who are going to sell us arsenic laden snake oil. (Have you ever seen an oily snake? They are quite dry in my experience.) In some cases that is undoubtedly true. But, as my example above illustrates, that is not the only reason, and in cases like this, not any part of the reason.
I like my personal physician. I think he is a square guy. Honest, personable, funny and decent. I have had great experience with just about every doctor I have had. I think we are better off with the system we have in place now, than with some of the others being proposed. Government run health care? Please, 99% of bureaucrats couldn’t stick a stapler up their ass without hiring three government employed experts to tell them how to do it, so how are they supposed to determine whether I need a prostate exam or not?
Nevertheless, come on doctors, you caused a lot of this anxiety about the cost of health care yourselves. All of your self-righteous indignation aside, the rest of us are not stupid, and we can see who are the haves and who are the have-nots. Doctors do make a lot of money, and they do it by holding us hostage to our mortality. For a lot of people, that just tastes bad.
So, do they charge “too much?”
If doctors were a Standard Oil or Microsoft what they do would be called restraint of trade, a violation of the anti-trust laws. But, they do it with the connivance of government, so there’s nothing illegal here. Yet, it does mean they are able in many cases to charge whatever they want and we are compelled to pay it, one way or another. I think when that happens it amounts to “too much.”
Anyway, talk radio. This fellow who called in posited as his basic premise that part of the issue with health care reform and why so many people were for it was that doctors make too much money. The host immediately took the caller to task and asked a series of penetrating questions. They ranged from how much is too much, to if we tell the doctor how much he can charge then shouldn’t we also tell the farmer and Dell, and on and on. The host’s point was that the free market and not some government regulatory body should dictate doctor’s fees.
Too bad for the caller, since he was semi-inarticulate and the host had the better of him. For the most part, the host was right on the money, pun intended. Of course, the host completely jumped over the caller’s point that the reason so many people are for Obama’s idea of health reform is that those same people perceive in their own minds that doctors charge too much. It doesn’t matter if they do or not, only whether the rest of us think they do or not.
But, you know, conservative free marketer that I am, I must still take issue with the host’s point and stick up for the hick, who probably really was complaining that doctor’ charge too much. They do.
Gasp! Shudder! What’s that Wilson guy drinking now?
Let’s start with the host’s point. The free market should decide the cost of health care. Great. I’m all for it. Except the free market hasn’t dictated medical pricing for the last hundred years or more. Why not?
Well, there is the big problem of the intervening player in the cost of medical care, our good friends the lawyers and courts. Part of the reason doctor’s charge so much is because their medical malpractice insurance is so expensive. It is so expensive because juries, at the urging of greedy-guts attorneys, and with the connivance of courts and tort friendly laws, all too often render runaway verdicts against the doctor. Don’t get me wrong, doctors who make mistakes should be just as liable as the rest of us are for our mistakes. Let’s also give a nod to reality, however, and agree that far too often, the awards against them are all out of proportion to the wrong they did or the duty they owed. Further, these guys and gals are not all seeing and all-knowing, and they can’t always fix everything that goes wrong with us, or that we do to ourselves. We shouldn’t hold them to some unattainable standard and then take their money away when they don’t meet it. Medical malpractice, either in the form of insurance or verdicts, is a huge driver of the cost of medical care.
On the other hand, let’s give another nod to reality that often those same juries see a very wealthy and arrogant doctor acting like God and they want to take ol’ doc down a few pegs. So part of the problem with the cost of medical malpractice forcing doctors to charge so much is that the doctors charge so much and get rich doing it. I don’t want to say it’s the chicken and egg thing (oops, I just did), but many doctors get wealthy in spite of the plaintiff’s bar.
The doctors will argue, logically and with much justification, that they spend the first 30 or more years of their lives engaged in a brutal educational environment just learning to be doctors while making barely more than subsistence wages. The education of doctors is long, tortuous, competitive in the extreme, and survived by only the brightest and most dedicated. All of this, they say, means that they should be entitled to make a lot of money once they pass successfully through the process. I know if I was a doctor I would feel that way. So would everyone else in this country, save for a few who would be saints in another time and place.
The talk show host’s strong argument related to this point in several ways. Consider Economics 101. The availability of a good relates directly to the cost of the good. Supply of the good in relation to the demand for the good determines how much the seller can charge that a buyer is willing to pay. There aren’t that many doctors because the process for becoming one limits their number. Meanwhile, there is a strong demand for their services. We all want or need a doctor from time to time. When we really need one, cost is usually not a consideration.
So, we should blame the educational system? Maybe we should blame the high standards of knowledge and intelligence we hold our doctors to have? Perhaps, but I’m not buying it.
A study published in 2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that for that year there were 67,000 medical school students in the US. The number had not changed for 10 years, being 67,000 in 1995.
This is a profession that, albeit with a grueling educational and on the job training program, tends to make most of its practitioners wealthy. In 1994, the average annual salary was regularly reported as $186,000. You will find many asterisks next to doctor salaries, however, if you Google it, and I for one think that is a PR number put out by the AMA to make it look like doctors aren’t really making so much. The qualifiers include whether the doctor works in a salaried position, such as NASA, a private company like a pharmaceutical lab, as a professor, or chucked it all 10 years ago and lives in the jungle healing
Amazonian Indians in exchange for fish out of some wealth inspired guilt complex. Other factors determining a doctor’s pay include whether he/she is the owner or partner in a private practice or clinic, his/her years of experience, specialty (spinal surgeons average salary was 1.32 million by one report I read), and others.
The point is that doctors make a lot of money and most of them get rich by the standards of the rest of us. How is it that out of 300 million people in the US, only 67,000 of them at any given time are in medical school to learn a profession that will make them rich? Shouldn’t people be pounding on the gates to be let in?
In fact they are. I read a statistic, who knows if it is accurate, that only 1 of every 100 who apply to medical school ever gets in. Part of the reason there are so few doctors is that there are so few medical schools and teaching hospitals. It would be reasonable to conclude that a whole lot of folks who could be successful doctors never get the chance. It is not that the entry requirements are so high, it is because the available slots are so few.
The same JAMA article that said there were 67,000 medical students at any given time also referenced that there were 125 LCME (Liaison Committee of Medical Education, a branch of the American Medical Association) accredited medical schools, or an average of 536 students per school. Another number I saw in another source said there were 150 medical schools. Still, that is a surprisingly small number to my way of thinking.
We could build more medical schools and teaching hospitals. If we doubled the number, all by itself that would double the number of doctors in just a few years. More doctors equals more competition equals lower doctor’s fees. Economics 101.
There is no reason to suspect that the quality of medical care would go down in this event, either. I’ll come back to this point in a bit.
The reason we don’t have more doctors is the doctors themselves. Through the American Medical Association and other political affiliations, doctors have artificially restricted their number. One of the easiest ways to do that is restrict the number of medical schools and the number of students. Keep a lid on the number of doctors in the pot at any given time keeps the demand for them high. Indeed, restricting access to their profession is one of the principle agendas of the AMA, despite all their protestations and PR to the contrary.
Others will argue that only a small number of people have the intelligence to become a doctor. Really?
Remember the numbers above, 300 million population and 67,000 medical students at any given time? That’s 0.02%, or 1 medical student for every 5,000 population. The chances of a baby being born autistic in 2005 were 35 in 5,000. For mothers under the age of 30, the chances are 5 in 5,000 that their child will be born with Down’s syndrome. For mothers aged 36, the chances of a Downs birth was almost 17 in 5,000, and that’s after many mothers abort their Downs fetus after being tested for it. Do we really believe that only 1 person in 5,000 is smart enough to go to medical school and be a doctor, yet 5 will be Down’s syndrome babies?
Remember that 1 in 100 accepted to medical school number? You might think that 99 of them just couldn’t cut the mustard. Any number of articles are available that talk about how medical schools are doing various things to increase the diversity of their students. Let’s be honest and simply admit that what we are really talking about is they want to accept more blacks and Hispanics. So, let’s take the high road and say there were all these deserving blacks and Hispanics who before were being denied the opportunity to attend medical school because of their race. So now, in our enlightened society, medical schools are atoning for their evil ways. Atonement, however, judging by the 1995 and 2005 numbers, does not include increasing the available number of medical student slots. No sir, we are only going to put more black kids into medical school by seeing to it that some white kids are not going to get in who would have previously. Are those white kids suddenly less capable or not so smart? No. All it means is that the availability is artificially restricted.
Another thing the AMA has successfully lobbied for is government controls that force up the cost of care. Here is one that caught my eye, and illustrates exactly the point I want to make.
I saw an advertisement on TV for a company that offers stroke screening. They do it by taking an ultra-sound of the major arteries. The theory is that blockage in these arteries are the chief causes of strokes. They look and if they see a blockage then you know to seek treatment to do something about it. Now, this company doesn’t offer any treatment, just the screening. However, they promise that a “board certified” physician will do the screening. The kicker for me was a little text tag at the bottom of the screen that said in effect that in Texas a Texas licensed physician must first refer you before this company could do your screening.
Why would the State of Texas require that a Texas doctor refer you to the screening that is done by a board certified doctor? The obvious answer is the screening doctor doesn’t have a Texas license, and this is one way for Texas to get their licensing fees. Still, what does the State of Texas care? It’s not as if you are going to receive any treatment or prescription drugs. All that’s going to happen is that someone will press an ultra sound wand to various places on your body and take some pictures. Your Texas doctor isn’t going to read these pictures or interpret them. Most of them aren’t trained to do that, not like the “board certified” doctors who are doing the ultrasounds. No, your doctor’s only involvement in this process is to give you permission to get your picture taken, and for that permission he charges you for the referral. See, it’s as if you’re too stupid to figure it out for yourself, so you have to get a doctor to tell you its okay.
Come on. Who’s that stupid? It’s like requiring you to pay your barber for a referral to a store so you can buy some Rogaine.
The truth is the Texas doctors got the State of Texas to enact some laws to protect their cash flow. Do you think that adds to the cost of medical care in Texas? You bet, and it happens in most other states in one way or another.
I can just hear the doctors screaming about protecting us from unscrupulous, fly by night, shysters who are going to sell us arsenic laden snake oil. (Have you ever seen an oily snake? They are quite dry in my experience.) In some cases that is undoubtedly true. But, as my example above illustrates, that is not the only reason, and in cases like this, not any part of the reason.
I like my personal physician. I think he is a square guy. Honest, personable, funny and decent. I have had great experience with just about every doctor I have had. I think we are better off with the system we have in place now, than with some of the others being proposed. Government run health care? Please, 99% of bureaucrats couldn’t stick a stapler up their ass without hiring three government employed experts to tell them how to do it, so how are they supposed to determine whether I need a prostate exam or not?
Nevertheless, come on doctors, you caused a lot of this anxiety about the cost of health care yourselves. All of your self-righteous indignation aside, the rest of us are not stupid, and we can see who are the haves and who are the have-nots. Doctors do make a lot of money, and they do it by holding us hostage to our mortality. For a lot of people, that just tastes bad.
So, do they charge “too much?”
If doctors were a Standard Oil or Microsoft what they do would be called restraint of trade, a violation of the anti-trust laws. But, they do it with the connivance of government, so there’s nothing illegal here. Yet, it does mean they are able in many cases to charge whatever they want and we are compelled to pay it, one way or another. I think when that happens it amounts to “too much.”
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