I’m all jacked up on the Via I taste-tested a few hours ago, so I couldn’t stop myself from taking an early look at Bobo.
What kind of a person would think his readers might enjoy an extended and unexplained parable about David Hume and Jeremy Bentham? Why not just start signing this shit Bobo +6?
Morbo
Call me a food philistine, but what’s Via?
It would bolster his +6 if they inked his signature in purple to match his trademark tie.
DougJ
Call me a food philistine, but what’s Via?
Starbucks’ new instant coffee.
General Winfield Stuck
@Morbo:
I just googled it. Starbucks instant coffee. Personally, I’m a folgers instanter, I’m sucking down a cup of it right now with about 5 tablespoons worth in a little cup and French Vanilla. Pretty good poor mans Expresso that will keep me up most of the night and I will wonder why I can’t sleep.
Zam
@DougJ: How was it?
IndyLib
Via is pretty damned good IMHO, for instant. I’ve been adding a bit it to my regular coffee to strengthen it. My sister-in-law is temporarily living with us and she usually beats me up in the morning and her coffee is too, too weak. Also
Nicole
Okay, doesn’t Brooks know anything? Jeremy Bentham is pretty famous for creating the “panopticon” — an all-seeing circular prison tower that allows jailers to watch their charges at any time, all the time, without them knowing for sure if they’re under surveillance. It’s a form of psychological torture that the philosopher Michel Foucault eviscerated in his seminal text, “Discipline and Punish” (1975). The panopticon is essentially what Bentham is know (and criticized) for.
So, if Obama is ostensibly Bentham in Brooks’s formulation, then WTF is he getting at? Even his descriptions of JB’s economic policies are not quite right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Comrade Luke
@Morbo:
Let Me Google That For You
Comrade Luke
BTW, that doesn’t really help. I just wanted to use that link :)
jwb
Bentham, Bentham, he’s our man
Hume belongs in the garbage can
–or at least he earned that fetal position.
Seriously, Bobo gets paid to write this drivel?
I suppose I should just be happy that he
didn’t go ballistic on Obama and the Dems for a change when
performing a full Bobo–that’s usually what he does when
he goes into loony mode, and actually he’s overdue
(the conservative credentials need regular burnishing).
Morbo
@Nicole:
No. This has been…
r€nato
well, we’ve been doing it Mr. Hume’s ways for decades. Why should we change now after how marvelously that’s worked out for us?
Church Lady
@DougJ: Were you able to correctly identify which one was the Via? I did the taste test last week (I drink Starbucks everyday, even at home) and picked the wrong one. The Via was a whole lot stronger than the brewed Pike.
Splitting Image
God damn him for taking David Hume’s name in vain.
r€nato
I suppose I should try Via just so I can have an informed opinion, but I gotta tell you the coffee snob in me is awfully skeptical about any instant coffee. I don’t even like allowing American coffee to pass my lips.
SpotWeld
See, you’re trying to apply logic here. That might be your first mistake.
Second, never underestimate the crazy that can come out of someone who has been snorting pure medicinal grade wingnut.
jl
Coffee is no good before you read Bobo. A few shots of Everclear in some ice cold cool aid is what you do. Maybe quite a few shots. That is what keeps Bobo connoisseurs going.
Well, at least it works for me, and I am not even a Brooks connoisseur. If I were, I guess I would be a dipso.
So, this juvenile slander and misrepresentation of Hume and Bentham is supposed to accomplish, exactly what? More transparent propaganda for the GOP. If Brooks aimed for high toned, he missed the mark this time. It is like undergrad college philosophy skit night.
Hume a bumbling and confused upper crust British slacker incapable of analysis? Bentham as a totalitarian social engineer? Hooookayyy.
The conclusions is nuts. How is the insurance and health plan industry with Bobo’s erzats Bentham? I think the insurance industry is with the new Conservative Bible translatarians: Accept the Logic of Hell (ie, conservative status quo bias).
r€nato
(I meant in relation to health care)
Ben JB
Yeah, that was… weird. I’m especially put off by the end, where Bobo moves from “We need to have a discussion to see who has the better way” to “Bentham FTW” (paraphrasing here).
Frankly, this just rings Burkean bells for me. Oh, philosopher drinking game: somebody mentioned Burke, we all have to take an Oakeshott.
jwb
@IndyLib“My sister-in-law is temporarily living with us and she usually beats me up in the morning.” Tough family. How long has she been beating you up over the strength of the coffee?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Santiago
How can Bobo be friends with dudes who’re dead for over a hundred years? Is he a member of the clan McLeod? If so, how come he is still stupid? Where did the Quickening of Hume and Bertrand go?
+5
Santiago
Bentham
+6
Craig
Brooks is trying to horn in on the devoted “Lost” audience.
jl
My personal opinion of Bentham is that he was kind of nut. Isn’t he the guy who had himself stuffed so he could be at all the future board meetings at his college?
I forgot about the panopticon. That is a monstrous proposal. But when Bentham applied his strict utilitarianism to criminal law, I think he was one of the first to point out the possibilities of unintended consequences of overly strict laws and punishments, especially on private behavior that produced no serious social harm. He was an early egalitarian too.
But the Hume is infuriating. Does Brooks think that because Hume wrote a philosophical attack on the current notions of causality, that Hume did not use that notion (and very insightfully) in his economic and historical writings? Or… I dunno. He thinks that when Hume was confronted with a practical question, he collapsed into a fetal position? That is not the Hume I have read.
It’s like George Will, I am sure he studied history carefully, but of what world? I need a drink.
kdaug
There can be only no.
jl
I’m going to write Brooks and request an insightful analysis of contemporary US public policy issues as interpreted by Ebenezer Scrooge and Mr. Micawber for next week.
Then, I dunno, how about foreign policy with Doctor Moriarty and the Mad Hatter?
It should be very enlightening and insightful, especially if he cribs from old BBC shows.
burnspbesq
Wow. That was frighteningly obtuse.
I have this nagging sense that there is an idea buried somewhere in all of that crap, but I have no idea how to organize a search and rescue mission to try and find it.
Martin
Ok, Starbucks is worried. They’re now undercutting their primary market advantage – accessibility.
This should be interesting to watch.
Eljai
I didn’t read it very carefully so I thought he was talking about Brit Hume. But that makes no sense. So then I used the google machine and I’m still confused. However, re: Via — it’s not bad if you just need something to suck on til you get some real caffeine.
Jack
Bobo goes PoMo. That’s what. Bentham and Hume weren’t topics for their, um, topical relevance.
But as paint to pollock at a dirty canvas.
bago
Just got back from San Francisco. Virgin America rocks. I sat next to another softie on the plane and schooled him on the Portable Executable format.
denverjenpeninpdx
This is what bugs me about all references to pomo- (when, granted, all constructs of the contemporary repub party platform are “pomo”- they are based on the subjective experience and the notion that there is “no truth, only experience”)! These memes are devoted to the notion of decentralization-not because decentralization leads to a firmer understanding of identity- but because it leads to a further alienation from reality. I am a lit major and I love this lit theory stuff. Applied to objective reality, it is all intellectual masturbation. Applied to life- it is an utter ruse. Whoever could of predicted that the repubs would apply french literary theory to politics. Oy! Freedom fries and boycott the library and all that. What douches. Does this mean I get my cake, professional tennis player, designer clothes, and decentralized plastic fantastic life, anyhow? Yahoo!
freelancer (itouch)
Maybe, just maybe…bobo’s a huge LOST fan.
MikeJ
We’ve had this abomination for about six months here in the Sodom on the Sound. I like the bit in the commercial where they make fun of people who yell at town halls, but the ad is the best thing about the product.
El Cid
This is the only part of the piece that Brooks gives a shit about.
It’s the typical right wing talking point bullshit, gussied up for all those loads of people who think David Brooks is some sort of serious thinker.
So, you get more long-winded bullshit with colorful analogies which apparently appeal to the shit-headed crowd which appreciates faux thinkers like Brooks pretending to appear to their sophisticated cultural knowledge (hey! I’ve heard of David Hume! Hey, I’ve heard of Jeremy Bentham!).
Thankfully Brooks gets paid a lot to write in the paper and go on TV and spout this standard bullshit day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day…
NYT
Meanwhile in the Post, they are getting in closer touch with the conservative movement via a monster profile of Orly Tatiz.
Oh and Richard Cohen says Obama needs to bomb Afghanistan more. If not he’s a big girl.
Common Sense
Hmm. More 25-54 viewers watch Fox’s “Red Eye” than CNN’s lead in prime time show. The website attributes some of the success to Beck’s repeats leading in.
Seriously, I might watch that if I were stoned at 2-3 AM. It sounds staggeringly stupid. Hysterically stupid. “Oww my Balls” stupid.
I humbly suggest that whatever Fox’s faults wrt public discourse Murdoch knows exactly what he’s doing.
valdivia
@Craig: FTW!
Common Sense
Damn no edit window on FF. More accurately damn my laziness and quickness to blame others for my refusal to proofread, preferring an automated easy solution. Viva America!
I should have noted that the Red Eye repeats are aired in the wee hours of the morn vs CNN’s (as I managed to type earlier) prime time broadcast.
valdivia
BBC telling me just now that The Shroud of Turin was a fake. Who knew ah?
valdivia
I rarely get an edit function. I use FF. What is the story with chrome?
Hugh Batchaw
@valdivia:
That’s pretty old news. IIRC a carbon dating put it somewhere in the Renessaince and the prime suspect being da Vinci, Leonardo.
bernini
@martin
Via’s strange roll out moment for me: listening to Starbuck’s employees spew corporate speak about how this will NOT undercut their brand. The only thing Instant is my desire for them to return to their “I am ignoring your worker pig latte ass while I converse about nothing with my hipster coworkers” attitude and leave the big brother assurances to the ad people.
aimai
Via? I start my morning with Unadulterated Balloon Juice. Maybe its just me but in a thread that had me rolling on the floor my favorite line was the simple, yet eloquent, gloss on Bobo
“Benthan FTW!”
but I loved it all.
aimai
WyldPiratd
valdivia@38:
Chrome is the shiznit for me. Firefox has increasingly gotten mo0re sucky with each upgrade. IE has been fucked up for 5+ years. Both of them of late for me are taking forever to load–if they load certain pages at all. Chrome is rock solid in comparison.
Michael
OT, but Dick Cohen is still a lying, piece of shit asshole who deserves to have his fucking teeth punched out of his face.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/06/obama_doesnt_seem_ready_to_lead.html
Fire McChrystal today and bring him up on enough charges to cost him stars. This shit is metastasizing.
Warren Terra
Chrome’s pretty good, but if (like me) you’ve got a fairly old computer with limited memory, and you tend to have a lot of tabs open all day long, you can spend a lot of time accessing the hard drive.
kay
@Michael:
That was a no-win for Obama. Had he reacted, they’d be writing that he’s young, untested, reckless and arrogant, rather than young and untested.
IMO, he cannot make decisions based on the media theme of the week. Doing that tied Clinton up in knots, and it always backfires.
There’s a contradiction inherent in punditry screaming “make your own decisions!” and then, at the same time, “do what we say!”
Obama’s not as knee-jerk decisive as Richard Cohen, but then, Obama’s decisions have actual consequences.
GregB
Ptoeey! There’s via in my balloon juice!
-G
DougJ
To all those who asked, I thought that Via sucked.
geg6
WTF is Bobo talking about? I’ve read both Hume and Bentham and I really don’t understand what point he’s trying to make about their philosophies. Bentham was the guy who said legislation should create the greatest good for the greatest number. Baucus’ abortion of a health care reform bill is about as far from that as anything I can imagine.
Meanwhile, politically, Hume was the dithering moderate, always trying to balance each side. Kinda, ummmmmm, like Max Baucus, I believe? I mean, he kinda sorta liked democracy but was cautious of upsetting the applecart in any way. He loved him some decentralization, but he also came up with the economic idea of beneficial inflation, which Keynes later expanded and is a bedrock of liberal economics.
I really don’t know what point Bobo is trying to make.
Suzan
Jesus!
You have a great blog.
I haven’t laughed so hard since Dubya gave away the tale by saying he had seen the first plane crash into the WTC before going in to read My Pet Goat that fateful day.
Thanks for providing my jumping off point everyday to the wonders of the intertubes!
S
Coffee is no good before you read Bobo. A few shots of Everclear in some ice cold cool aid is what you do.
Hawes
All I know is that David Hume
Can outconsume
Schopenhauer and Hegel.
ppcli
@geg6:
I think the Hume part is supposed to turn on Hume’s alleged inability to predict the future. Which Brooks bases, apparently, on the crass misreading of Hume’s analysis of causation and necessary connection that I give C’s for. When frosh in Intro to Philosophy write papers on it. (“So, like, Hume thinks that *We don’t know the sun will rise tomorrow*. Scary, man, scary.”)
Standard Brooks namedropping while knowing squat about the figure whose name is dropped.
Notorious P.A.T.
Gag. Here’s another conservative quoting a prominent enlightenment figure, as if the world has changed not at all since then. “Thomas Jefferson wanted a small government!” Yeah, and he also wanted to crush in its infancy the monied incorporation.
anticontrarian
Even given the wild and willful misinterpretation and/or ignorance of his understanding of the two mens’ work and philosophies, there’s a clear subtext in Brooks’ piece that’s sympathetic to the Hume simulacrum (obligatory po-mo terminological reference), which, while understandable from the perspective of say, a Lifetime special aficionado, is a little bizarre given the subjects at hand. Why would we want someone who throws his hands up in the air in the face of complexity attempting to solve the greatest problems facing the world and the United States today?
Fail, both as punditry, and also as Intro Philosophy homework. This guy’s supposed to be smart? We’d’a ‘et him alive in undergrad.
geg6
@ppcli:
Well, I have to agree while considering it again. Why was I even thinking Bobo actually understood what he read of Hume (assuming he’s ever even read him…even Wiki has a pretty decent synopsis of his ideas)? This is the guy who thinks Applebee’s has salad bars and that that is somehow is a valid political point.
(smacks self in head)
When will I learn?
R-Jud
@Hawes:
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
wrb
Actually I think the article was good and actually supportive of how Obama has said he wants to do things over how congress + lobbyests will mangle them.
His reference to exchanges was to the Wyden amendment that Baucus Conrad Bingamen and Kerry killed at 1:30 am/
Kerry said Raytheon didn’t support it so he didn’t, Bingaman brought up some industry argument about it draining employer pans of health plans (CBO says not) then Conrad got a text that claimed that somehow the CBO scoring (which showed it saving many billions) was somehow suddenly incomplete and Baucua ruled it out of order.
The industry hated it because by giving everyone access to the exchanges it would force them to really compete on value for the dollar.
If a public option was one of the choices in the exchange they realy would have had to concentrate their minds.
I thought the freedom to choose was one of the one tangible benifits people would see early and would make the mandates argument much more palatable and “you’ve sold us out to industry” a much less powerful campaign issue.
Here is the film. Late night death porn.
Evening session part 2
Start at 1:17:00
http://www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/10/01/HP/A/23901/Senate+Finance+Cmte+Health+Care+Markup+Day+7.aspx
wrb
A concise explanation if the Wyden amendment
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09…..wyden.html
RSA
A piece of advice to Brooks on writing parables: If your main characters are to represent broad schools of thought, pick names that will be recognizable to your readers, of people who have views that famously reflect those schools of thought.
Me, when I hear “Bentham” I think of utilitarianism, and when I hear “Hume” I think of his problem of induction and the relationship between emotion and reason. Checking Wikipedia, I find that this is pretty much to be expected. So what does Brooks hope to gain from attaching their names to modern political events? No idea.
Chad N Freude
@Hawes: @R-Jud: The full roster is here and here.
Chad N Freude
@Hawes: @R-Jud: I posted two links to two different versions of the full Bruce, but for some reason it’s in moderation limbo.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Or no reason at all. Also.
wrb
@RSA:
The philosophers did seem to me to be just a pretentious wrapping that dulled rather than sharpened his point.
cmorenc
I don’t know whether its very reassuring or else very scary that Brooks is actually one of the most coherent, reasonable, articulate members of the GOP conservative movement, keeping in mind that the scale against which I’m using the words “coherent, reasonable, and articulate” is heavily weighted with insane wingnuts. Brooks is of himself, harmless and charming – he’d be a pleasant dinner or social companion for an evening, and isn’t really hell-bent on imposing toxic ideas on America despite being a conservative, whereas for example, you’d likely have to struggle mightily all evening long against the urge to choke, let alone remain polite, to Bill Kristol or Charles Krauthammer, who really are seriously intent on trying to impose noxiously toxic notions on the country. Try to spend an evening with Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, and you stand a 50-50 chance of being indicted for manslaughter the next morning. That is the scale against which I’m measuring Bobo – a harmlessly entertaining conservative pundit, one of the rare ones who’s not an abrasive asshole. Even if he does deserve the nickname “Bobo” for sometimes spouting impressively pretentious nonsense.
jl
When I said Bentham was an egalitarian, I meant that he was for equal opportunity. I think the college he founded was one of the first to admit anyone, regardless of race sex or economic class. I should check Wikiepdia to find out the name -University of London? Whichever it is, I think he is still there, stuffed, in glass case, ready for next board meeting of the rectors, or regents, or whoever runs it.
mclaren
It’s a formula. You mention a couple of famous 19th century philosophers, then you natter about what they would do today, then you conclude with “So we need to deregulate and pass a tax cut.”
Which of course is what Brooks does.
As for the details of his scam, it’s laughable. Brooks asks
Because they’ll all collude and jack up their prices in unison, you moron.
You have to admit, though…by comparison with the gibberish Palin or Friedman spew out, Brooks’ stuff looks like Deep Thinking. If memory serves, one of Friedman’s recent columns sang the praises of that glorious one-party state dictatorship haven of freedom and entrepeneurialism, China. You’re really getting lazy as a commentator when you point out a dictatorship that shoots its own citizens en masse as a superior model of government to a democracy.
Erik Vanderhoff
@RSA:
In modern conservative intelligentsia parlance, liberalism must perforce = utilitarianism. Mentioning Bentham is just the dog whistle. It’s like they’ve never read a word of Mill.
wrb
@mclaren:
“Because they’ll all collude and jack up their prices in unison, you moron”
So competition never works? Not one of the dozen will go for the win?
We have relatively few auto manufacturers. They are making such fat profits because they collude?
McDonnell Douglas is still cranking out the airliners because Boeing and Airbus refused to compete?
Right now insurers are heavily protected from competition. But the idea that they would not be forced to compete if there was an open marketplace in which people could examine their record, reputation and offerings and then pick is dubious.
mclaren
Hey, wrb, if competition works so well, how come the prices for Campbell’s soup are exactly the same as the prices for Progresso? Pure coincidence, huh?
How come DSL broadband is always exactly the same price as cable broadband? Just random chance, right?
You’re not very bright, are you, wrb?
If competition among giant behemoth corporations actually worked, we’d have $2 tickets at movie theaters and cut-rate bargain prices on best-selling books instead of $27 for every single hardcover book, across every publisher, in every bookstore. Ever hear of tetrapoly? Duopoly? Pentapoly? Today, with all the anti-trust laws gutted, giant corporations realize it’s much more profitable to collude to fix prices instead of starting a “race to the bottom” with cost cutting.
Wake up and get a clue. America doesn’t practical capitalism, it practices monopoly and its kissing cousins duopoly, triopoly, tetrapoly, etc.
wrb
@mclaren:
Funny.
In my super market there are maybe a dozen brands of soup ranging from from gourmet and organic selection to Campbells to a cheaper store brand and others that are cheaper yet. Then there are powdered soups, ramen, boxed soups…
To me that looks like a lot of choice. Choice that seems to resulted from soup makers competing hard to offer a combination of price, convenience and quality that is best for different groups of individuals.
I kinda like it better than when only Campbells was on the shelf, but hey what do I know, not being very bright and all. I do know that I can buy soups of far greater quality than I could when I was a kid.
wrb
@mclaren:
btw- your latter two examples are both cases where government restricts competition via copyright. I personally have no problem with that, I think artists should get paid. But it makes for a problematic example of market failure.
I live in a small town that has a great old locally-owned theater where tickets are only $3-$5. Movies don’t come here until they are already out on DVD, though.
At the book shop are a bunch of big tables with hardbacks for around $5. Maybe not the latest releases but good books none the less..
There is quite a bit of competion in books with expired copyrights. I bought a cheap ($6) Dover edition of Sebastiano Serlio’s Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva but the translation was unintelligable and the illustrations awful.
So I bought the competing edition with the Vaughn Hart translation and illustrations from the original for $180 and am most content.
geg6
@Erik Vanderhoff:
Of course. Because Bentham was a commie! And if they bring up Mill…well, then it’s a hell of a lot harder to call them commies.
I can’t believe idiots who write shit like this pass for our intelligentsia in this country. Bobo has never read anything these guys wrote, let alone anything any of their philosophical descendants. As far as I can tell, Bobo didn’t even take the trouble to read the Wiki entries on them. Pitiful.
Calming Influence
@Comrade Luke:
Thanks, that was helpful!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@wrb:
I think you need to look at other things beyond just price in evaluating how a “open” market will or will not serve the bests interests of consumers.
One of the problems with insurance in general and health care insurance in particular is that the range and complexity of admissible claims is daunting even for somebody with actuarial knowledge to evaluate, much less the average consumer, especially given that this involves evaluating the probability and cost of potential events which may occur well into the future. The amount of information needed (and the amount of fine print one would truly have to read through and understand*) to make a correct judgment is staggering. And to avoid having the insurance co. use its superior access to such information to “game” the terms of their products to the detriment of the consumer (such as disqualifying common illnesses from coverage in a way which is difficult for a non-specialist to detect), the regulatory state inevitably is drawn in to constrain some aspects of the contract, such as the process of determining where the line is drawn between admissible and fraudulent claims and of adjudicating disputes over claims.
But as soon as state regulation is involved, we have a race to the bottom problem – whereby the insurance companies will shop for the most favorable regulatory venue from their point of view, thereby preventing any other states from imposing what they see as a more reasonable and consumer friendly regulatory environment. All you have to do is look at the current market for consumer credit cards to see what this is going to lead to. Delaware or some other such state will set up a Randian paradise and the insurance industry will flock to it, thereby effectively gutting the regs in any other state and making it impossible to establish consumer protections at a level above that of the lowest common denominator across the 50 states.
Now if insurance were a commoditized product such that a consumer didn’t need much info beyond price to judge what was best for them, this state of affairs might be acceptable, but for a complex product like insurance this is a really bad idea. And if you think the answer is to get the states out of the business of regulating insurance entirely, then I suggest you take a closer look at what 19th Cen. practices were like in this area and how well that worked out.
*Note that one reason why we don’t hear more consumer complaints about the incomprehensible complexity of their insurance contracts right now is that most people who are getting health insurance via their workplace don’t really have a choice. They don’t have to grind through all the fine print or hire a lawyer just to make sense of it all, because there really isn’t much point in doing so up until they are denied a claim, and by then it’s too late. An open market for insurance would change this – a lot of people are going to be very unpleasantly surprised by how difficult it is just to read the contracts they are putatively evaluating, much less make an informed judgment as to which one is “bettter”.
mclaren
Your examples are laughable. Try finding any soup less expensive than Campbell’s or Progresso — you can’t. They’re a dupology. They’ve fixed the market.
You may have a cheap movie theater, but most small towns don’t. They’ve been driven out of business by collusion among the 4 giant media companies which control all the books printed and sold and all the movies shown and all the DVDs sold and all the CDs manufactured and sold in America.
What planet are you living on? 4 vertically integrated giant media monopolies own and control essentially everything on every DVD rental store shelf, ever movie theater, every chain bookstore. It’s a tetrapoly all the way up and down.
Same with health care. A handful of gigantic companies like Wellpoint own and control it all. Set up a market “pool” and those giant companies will merely collude to fix the prices, which coincidentally rise by 10% every year, year in, year out.
It’s useless talking to Randroid crackpots like you. Enjoy your $3,000 a month health care insurance premiums — courtesy of that magnificent “competition” you boast of, those premiums will double within 7 years.
Cheryl from Maryland
Thanks Bobo and BJ. I can’t get the Monty Python philosopher song out of my head. Suggestion to WaPo and NYT — hire Michael Palin to write commentary. It will be better and funnier than what you have now.
Oh, John Stuart Mill of his own free will on a half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
wrb
@mclaren:
“It’s useless talking to Randroid crackpots like you”
You aren’t very good at reading people. I find Rand unreadable and a bit despicable.
The heath care monopolies have grown up under government protection.
I used to think that a single payer or even a NHS service would be best. However some countries that have preserved some competition, such as France and Japan seem to have systems that perform better than do the ones in England or Canada.
I’ve come to believe the best system here would involve a public option that is available to everyone combined with a Wyden-like exchange that is open to everyone, with the public option one of the choices available in the exchange.
Private plans would have to become much more efficient to compete with the public option, but almost as important, the public option would have to stay efficient and offer good service to compete with the private plans.
A single-payer plan with no competition is vulnerable to the whims of congress, to self-perpetuating systemic inefficiency and to regulatory capture by those who stand to profit.
And my supermarket does offer soups that are much better and other soups that are cheaper than Campbells.
wrb
@mclaren:
The books I mentioned:
One is printed by the Dover Press and the other by the Yale University Press. Which of the four giant media companies control them?
Looking at my shelves it appears that over half of the books are from small presses.
wrb
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I agree with your points.
Wyden, as I understand it, is proposing a regulated national exchange. Plans would need to qualify, and to work there would have to be transparency as to performance. This would be much easier to achieve in such a simplified system than it is in the Byzantine system of local monopolies we have, which is wonderful for anyone wanting to avoid scrutiny or game the system.
It seems that the insurance companies hate this proposal at least as much as they do the public option. That is suggestive.
Bubblegum Tate
@Common Sense:
I have done this. It’s not what you’re hoping for. The show is just plain bad. Greg Gutfield is horribly unfunny, and the guests are Fox News bimbettes (OK eye candy, I suppose) and D-list “celebrities.” If you’re stoned at 2am, I guarantee you staring at the wall will be much more entertaining.