From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Fri May 11 2001 - 16:15:45 PDT
Matt Jensen wrote:
> This is the most common economic tautology of all. "If someone does X, X
> is what they want to do, or they wouldn't have done it." It's a
> tautological definition of "want".
>
> Thanks for suggesting a gun analogy. If someone places a gun to your head
> demanding money, and you give them money, then clearly both parties are
> better off, and you chose what you wanted (you wanted to live). Never
> mind that you might have wanted more choices than those.
Go Matt!!! John's near-felonius "logical" sophistry here is pretty damn close to
Dave Long's perennial argument that pisses me off every time he spouts it...
namely "if you want to pay less taxes, just get a job that pays less." Not the
same, of course, but similar and suggestive.
> Linus says Newton, the
> IETF, etc, have enabled more progress by sharing rather than hoarding, and
> all you can say is "bullshit", as you send your SMTP mail after reading an
> HTML article over HTTP, found via DNS.
Good old Ben Franklin serves us well with his PoV, from his autobio, re: a stove
he built:
"This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the
construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a
patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a
principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we
enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an
opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely
and generously."
> But all things aren't equal. Note the different lifespans in modern
> countries with socialized medicine vs. the United States, despite the same
> knowledge base and potential for government actions.[1]
Now, Matt, correlation doesn't equal causation; you can't claim that socialized
medicine --> greater healthy lifespan just from the facts in [1]. There are a
very large number of variables involved, including critically important things
like dietary habits, exercise habits, population genetics, work culture and other
stress impactors, etc. If you wanted to prove your assertion above, you'd have to
prove that access to healthcare has a significant impact on healthy lifespan, and
you'd have to prove that socialized medicine improces access to healthcare. If
you're up for proving that then you can probably win some kind of big-kudo prize
and change the world; but if you can't prove that, be careful with your claims.
:-)
$0.02,
jb
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