Max Borders

Climate Alarmism or Pascal's Wager?

Blaise Pascal, the 17^th Century religious philosopher and mathematician, asks us to consider his “Wager,” which says faith is a good bet:

1. The consequences of non-belief in God are hell and damnation.
2. The costs of believing in God are low by comparison, though still costly. (You can’t live any way you like, for example.)
3. If you believe – even if there’s no hell and damnation – you won’t lose everything.
4. But if there is a hell, you lose everything.
5. So, if you’re going to make a safe bet, believe in God.

Of course, a religious person might argue with Pascal that faith isn’t about placing bets. But we can agree, perhaps, that global warming alarmism takes on a strikingly similar form. 

1. The consequences of skepticism about manmade Global Warming are catastrophic.
2. The costs of “green” taxes and regulations are low by comparison, though still costly. (You can’t live anyway you like, for example.)
3. If you’ll just believe man causes global warming – even if there is no catastrophe – you won’t lose everything.
4. But if there is catastrophe, you lose everything.
5. So, if you’re going to make a safe bet, introduce green taxes and regulation.

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the largest tax increase in American history (cap-and-trade or carbon taxes) will be based on faith, a ‘safe bet,’ or something else. But when you consider the broader question – Is environmentalism a religion? – significant indicators point to a green ideology based more in faith and fear than in fact.

Countering Obamacare Talking Points

The following talking points are being circulated by Congressional staffers on the left. Here they are and how to counter them pithily:

• "Hold the insurance companies accountable." To whom and for what? They're already overregulated and overmandated - by you - to the point that insurance is now unaffordable for millions.

• "Remove them from between you and your doctor." ...And insert a government bureaucrat instead!
  
  
• "No discrimination for pre-existing conditions. No dropping your coverage because you get sick." This will ensure that irresponsible people get rewarded with healthcare after the fact, and responsible get punished with more expensive insurance! (More young people will risk going uninsured because it will be so unaffordable thanks to you.)
  
  
• "No more job or life decisions made based on loss of coverage." If this is the goal, why not stop subsidizing people to get healthcare through their jobs? Change the tax code, not the delivery system. (This is proof they want to kill the insurance industry, not build the individual market.)
• "No need to change doctors or plans." You'll be trapped in a single, monolithic government plan. Your doctors and care will be selected for you by bureaucrats.
  
  
• "No co-pays for preventive care. No excessive out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles, or co-pays. No yearly or lifetime cost caps on what insurance companies cover." Overconsume! Overconsume! Make sure it's expensive for everyone! Especially taxpayers!  

Then, if you get some absurd claim about why the other side has no ideas for improving healthcare, send them here.

PS: Please send this, right or wrong, (i.e. rat on me) to a White House staffer. Tell them I said fuck off while you're at it.

Automaker Fascism and a Chilling Proposition

Robert "Fourth" Reich proposes something chilling in the wake of government's takeover of the auto industry, from the NRO:

As Chrysler headed into bankruptcy, the government got the company’s creditors that were dependent on TARP funds to do its bidding and take a substantial “haircut.” The banks, too, knew to heed the directive of the ultimate interlocking directorate.

As the next logical step, former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich has proposed putting public directors on the boards of all companies in which the government has an ownership stake. “In exercising their oversight function,” Reich writes, “they should seek guidance from the president and his top economic officials.”

Over time, this public-private arrangement will be subject to all the traditional pitfalls of interlocking directorates, from collusion to conflicts of interest to strategic myopia. The directorates have at times been used to create cartels, commonly defined as “a form of collusion between firms in the same industry aimed at restricting output and increasing prices.”

What's worse? This is the sort of thing Mussolini did. Whenever college students say something about "corporate fascism," it's usually due to a brain spasm. Now that we actually have it, not a peep from the kids. They voted for the fascist. Due to our public education system, most Americans are ignorant sheep. "Mussa-who?"

Can We Compete With Free?

I attempt an answer over at TCS.

Government Hurting Healthcare, Again

In this post, I enumerated 11 reasons why health insurance is so expensive--at least 9 of which were due to government intervention in the marketplace (such as it is). In a couple of states where government mandates are so expensive people can't afford insurance - such as New York, who has "community rating" (pay the same as an old, fat person) and "guaranteed issue" (I have a serious illness, I'd better get insurance) - people have devised market alternatives to get affordable medical care. It's a montly flat fee-for-service -- keeping a doctor "on retainer," and it's a great idea. But not according to New York state regulators who want to define it as insurance, according to this story:

Veteran doctor John Muney says his flat-fee, $79-a-month medical service is a formula for making health care affordable and patient-friendly. But state regulators see it as self-styled insurance and have told him to shut it down.

The dispute, which emerged this month, reflects a rising issue in what is sometimes called "retainer" medical care. At least two other states have grappled with whether to consider such arrangements insurance, reaching different conclusions.

The question could become more pressing as jobs disappear in the ailing economy, taking many workers' traditional health insurance plans with them.

The debate "makes no sense to me. ... I feel that my flat-rate memberships provide a great service," Muney said at a press conference Wednesday. He is negotiating with the state Insurance Department to try to keep the service at his five AMG Medical Group centers around the city.

You won't hear leftwing activists and advocates for "access" speaking out against this sort of regulatory nonsense that denies people care. Instead, they will be in bed with the big insurance companies they so often malign so both can pressure state regulators to kill the market here, too. Insurance companies will get more rents. Leftwing activists will be one step closer to socialized healthcare. The unholy alliance is pretty perverse, eh? (Another Bootleggers and Baptists story -- all done in the name of "consumer protection.")

Full disclosure: My family has an HSA/HDHP combo and we use fee-for-service. We love our arrangement and we're not being harmed. State and federal regulators are trying to take away our HSA (federal) and I bet they'll be coming after our fee-for-service arrangement soon, if NY regulators prevail (state).