Trigger warning: Borderline coherence -- or worse -- ahead.
Much as I like this post, there's a flaw both in it and, apparently, Thrasher's book: That the state is *that* powerful. Yes and no, but the ancient rule is that we get the state that the Powers That Be, that the elite (a word I hate in this context) allow. The US elite and, I suppose, the western/capitalist elite want an extractive economy, a plutocratic, anti-democratic, theocratic state (the last for keeping the little people compliant and in their places).
With that is the core of Objectivism, what Objectivism sort of parodies (unintentionally, of course): that poorer people -- that is ~95% of the population -- are worth only of what and how they benefit the elite.
And the state that the Powers That Be finance and buy and corrupt aren't paid to give as much of a shit about the little people as any functional state should and does. As always, see the shit show that was our national response to Covid before SCOTUS made that a few magnitudes harder by way of a ruling based on bullshit and, yes, sociopathy.
So, you know, touching on sad over state ineptitude or failure to act without going deep on why it does really weakens the thesis and, indeed, does a disservice.
I would say, though, the prescription -- that it's on us to help ourselves because until we mange to change the power structure (if we can or will) -- is the way to go.
Maybe I erred in not mentioning the big role corporations -- pharmas especially, and private prisons etc -- play in the paradigm of the book. Of course they're the dog that wags the tail. But government is where we meet the power, and I recall a time when it could smack the dog.
You only erred if the book mentioned it and you passed over it. If the issue wasn't discussed in the book, you ha a choice. But I find it dangerous to overestimate the power of the state when said power is ever more limited -- yet again, too weak to have a nationwide response to a pandemic or to protect the power of the vote among numerous other failings.
We children grew up during a time of a relatively strong, beneficial state so overestimating the power of the state is understandable. Ditto failing to clearly see the decline of state and nation since the late 70s specially since the MSM has done a fine job of ignoring it.
When you get a minute, take a gander at the list below. For developed countries government spending is somewhere between 40% and 60% of the whole economy. The U.S. is firmly in the middle at 46%, China is near the bottom at 36%.
Seems to me that neither the left or the right knows how to come to terms with this fact.
I’m not sure that that factoid is, by itself, relevant to anything. For example, a highly atypical amount of our government spending goes to national security so, given the actual value of that spending, the 46% is an even “softener” number.
Of course, I may be missing something. Feel free to tell me what I’m missing. OTOH, this nation was founded to have the weakest possible central government and were now being returned to that state.
Well, let's start with the right-wing fantasy of "drown the government in a bathtub." It's half our economy, and it always gets bigger, never smaller, through all administrations, Republican or Democrat. I'd bet a good part of the free-floating rage that exists among rank-and-file Republicans stems from this fact, that they've been sold a fantasy, they see every day that it's not being realized, and they'll never understand why not. You'd think this would be a common talking point among right-wing politicians: "My God, the government is now HALF OF OUR ECONOMY". And yet it isn't, possibly because they don't want to remind their own voters how completely they've failed.
On the left, it's the mistaken belief that the right is being successful in its efforts to shrink the government.
I think you need to be a little more specific here. The right wants to drown the parts of the government that exist to help people, primarily the poor, in a bathtub. The parts that help the rich they are fine with. That last includes defense. It should also be noted that business profits are to a first approximation equal to government deficits. The right doesn't want to kill this, they want more control over which businesses get the profits.
Also, you need to consider whether areas of the government are growing faster than population growth. Also, too, the parts of the government designed to help people have always been underfunded, then they were block granted so that Brett Favre and Tater Reeves could plunder the money for themselves
Gotta be me but I still don’t see how a number without context or, in this case, what that 46%. Part of that is defense/national security budgets that percentage-wise are much bigger than other nations’. The flip side is that nations with smaller government spending on a percentage basis do more for its people.
because no matter how successful one might be at changing those people and organizations above, they'll never be lending hands downward. It is not in their portfolio nor their interest nor their nature.
I don't have much to add here, except to say that capitalism is ruthlessly efficient at marginalizing and eliminating the people it doesn't want or need, intentionally or otherwise. However, I'd like to mention the part about "a system no one really believes in", because it brings up a pet theory of mine.
I'm sure there are quite a few people at the very top who strongly believe in capitalism because the system has benefited them, albeit at everyone else's expense. For example, hedge fund managers. Or Sean Hannity, who went from a nobody who got kicked off local college radio to a rich, famous presidential advisor, just by being the loudmouthed, bigoted asshole he naturally is. Why shouldn't such people support the system that has rewarded them so handsomely?
And it doesn’t help that the high muckity-mucks of capitalism feel it is much more important that a shitload of people are kept unemployed (and even more underpayed) than risk any loss of value on the elite’s wealth…
I always read the first three or four paragraphs looking for the punchline. Then I realize " Oh, this is serious" And settle in to appreciating it from that POV.
Non-responsive comment: seeing Thrasher use the phrase "writing pens", I wondered if his native dialect is one of those where "pen" and "pin" have the same vowel, so that when necessary they need to be distinguished as either "writin[g] pens" or "stickin[g] pens". His parents (according to Wikipedia) are native Nebraskans (which fits what little I think I know about the geographical distribution of that dialect) and he was raised in Ventura and Oxnard CA (which is at least consistent with ditto).
I'm glad to see austerity called out here, it goes far beyond the simple scaling-back or even elimination of public services, it becomes an all-encompassing world view when people are told, decade after decade, "No, you can't have that", "We can't afford that", "Sorry, there isn't enough for everyone, so take what you can get and shut up about it."
You can see this best, I think, in the response to immigration. A million people wanting to live in your country (people, I should mention, who have shown the gumption to cross the Darien Gap and all of Mexico to come here) isn't seen as a gift and an opportunity, it's a "Crisis". No, the materially-richest country in the world can't handle a 0.3% increase in its population. Certain people - depending on their race, of course - are always seen as a debit on the national balance sheet, and never an asset. And, as we've all been told a million times before, we're broke, we just can't afford it.
Read the comments (if you have the stomach) to see the austerity mindset in action. Of course we can't afford to provide any help to migrants, but when they help themselves by getting a job (or two or three) we can't afford that either. We can't even afford the homeless shelter where the migrant lives while he works his two jobs.
Some people love austerity because they’re cruel and greedy and they think it benefits them (never mind how it corrodes and destabilizes society as a whole). Some otherwise decent people—neoliberals and other Sensible types—love austerity because it lets them signal how superior they are, how they made the right choices and won’t feel the effects of austerity. More importantly it gives them that rush of power when they’re the stern parent telling the foolish children, “No. We can’t afford that.”
Yea, absolutely. And perversely, austerity can also play on our altruism, the sacrifices we're asked to make today are for the good of "future generations." Of course, when the future generations get here, it's austerity for them too. Like the Red Queen said to Alice, we have jam every other day, jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.
Of course of all the examples of privacy and bodily autonomy Thrasher cites, only abortion has no impact on the health and welfare of other citizens. So, category error. Any discussion of the ethics and morality around pregnancy must start with the acknowledgment that there is no other condition that is analogous; it must be approached with respect for how unique it is and not conflated with anything else.
Not sure this is true. We don't vote on whether someone gets an appendectomy or an ACL repair either. (Well, we do, indirectly, when our votes support this shitty health system, but ideally we don't.)
Denying abortion--forced birth--has a public health effect, in increasing poverty, the number of people in unsafe conditions, food deserts, etc., the number of people with inadequate health coverage, etc., -- a very small effect taken one at a time, but it adds up. As well as the economic effect of pulling women out of the labor pool when they don't want that. Having the abortion leaves a mother with more resources to take care of kids she already has, or for young girls her family.
I don't like the example, because I don't think we should see a conflict between a woman's bodily autonomy and those public health reasons.
Maybe it would be better to see it as a question of women's full citizenship (I think that's kind of what RBG was getting at in her dislike of the Roe decision)--a vaccine mandate applies to all citizens as well as promoting public health, an abortion ban discriminates on the basis of sex as well as injuring public health.
I think abortion rights has a huge effect on the health and welfare of everyone in the woman’s social and professional circle. If she is forced to bear and raise an unwanted child, or if she dies due to complications from pregnancy, that’s definitely going to affect the health and welfare of her other children, spouse, parents, family, and friends. It even affects her employer to an extent, having her removed from the workplace temporarily or permanently.
Your point is correct, however it specifically refers to a woman being unable by law to exercise her right to bodily autonomy. In a setting where she is free to choose, her decision doesn't expose others to harms, unlike the other examples given. One can argue that pregnancy, abortion, the availability of contraception, or even the possibility of pregnancy can affect others in the woman's social and professional circle, but none of those impacts are equal to the physical, emotional and practical effects of the pregnancy on the woman herself. Anti-abortion activists often conflate the effect of a woman not bearing a child with the effect of a person refusing to pay taxes (like for public education), or other examples in the book, but none of those involve the intimate personal consequences of pregnancy (and abortion) for the woman. There is much more moral and ethical support for the position that women should be able to freely choose whether to carry a pregnancy or not than, for example, a claim that everyone should pay taxes, even if they disagree with the purpose of those taxes. In my opinion, that is where the pro-choice argument is strongest. (Discussions of "when life begins" or "fetal rights" are important, especially since anti-choice arguments are commonly based on gross mis-statements about embryology and theology, but should take second place to acknowledging how unique pregnancy is from a moral and ethical standpoint.)
"it’s obvious that absolution from that [social] responsibility is the opposite of what’s needed"
One thought I keep coming back to is that a country of rugged individuals can't be a country. A country requires a population willing to abide by a social contract; rugged individuals sneer at any such thing. They can always ride off into the sunset into something better, or so they think. It takes a big dose of denial to pretty up an epidemic that kills a million people into a personal choice about masking or vaxxing but here we are.
Michael Lewis in his book Premonition points out where the CDC began to fail: its response to the looming specter of the swine flu epidemic in the 70's.
With a prospective pandemic, he points out, the director has to make a call-- do nothing by taking the chance that it's going to fizzle out or go full bore with mass distribution of the vaccine. In the former case, you either have a nothing burger or hundreds of thousands dead; in the latter, you risk deaths from reaction to the inoculation.
In the case of the swine flu vaccine, the CDC director decided to take the activist approach-- but swine flu didn't spread, and 27 Americans died from the vaccination.
Because the media could make more hay (Lewis doesn't say this), they went full-bore with eh 27 dead rather than weighing that risk against the risk of mass mortality. That CDC director stepped down and his replacement was the first of all the political appointees we've had ever since. No more would a director arise from the staff of the CDC-- and we've been paying for it ever since.
Add to that what Steve Bannon and John Bolton did in dismantling its emergency preparedness function (according to Lewis), and you get what you vote for.
Killer post, no pun intended. The majority of arguments I have with the 'freedom fighters' whose physical sovereignty and political autonomy (read: refusal to engage because it *all* sucks; fuck that dress-wearing Aristotle guy) can not be sacrificed usually boils down to their basic "misunderstanding of what public health is for — and, when it comes down to it, what government is for, and what society is" as you state with great clarity. I also find these folks cherry-picking from 'gubmint' programs when it suits them, i.e., letting the State pay their rent for a year + during Covid, then crowing about how they're getting something for free from a system they abhor and don't believe in, while refusing to admit this puts them in the same boat as the disposables they regularly discriminate against.
Thanks for this post, Roy. Absolutely an informative and insightful review of this book. I’m reminded of two things: Frank Wilhoit’s dictum re: whom the law binds and protects, and Samuel Butler’s novel “Erewhon,” which describes a society where the lucky are rewarded and the unlucky are punished. The title is “nowhere” spelled backwards, of course, implying that this principle is everywhere, and not an aberration from the norm, and quite the opposite, hiding in plain sight.
A few decades ago Terry Gross interviewed Clint Eastwood about his career. She asked him about developing the famous squint he unveiled in the pasta westerns. Eastwood replied "Terry, it was really bright out there!"
A very insightful and interesting review. Speaking of profit and health care, get a gander at statements like these:
"...we are working to drive meaningful, diversified revenue that extends beyond our current footprint. Our team will generate long-term value through targeted strategic and synergistic investments..."
"We bring specialized resources to each portfolio investment and use economies of scale to support growth and create value for our partners. With proven successes and a mindset for growth, we are actively seeking investment and partnership opportunities of all kinds. We also continue to develop a diversified portfolio of growth-oriented businesses that help innovate health care..."
The above comes from the portfolio web page of the not-for-profit Bon Secours Mercy Health, a Catholic system recently exposed by the Times for its abominable exploitation of poor hospitals in order to harvest millions in revenue (which has been growing at around 20%/yr lately for them).
It would seem that not-for-profit health care is just as fucked up as everything else these days.
Well, our whole health care system sure had quite a bit of "growth" in the past couple of years. Business was so good, the customers were dying to get in!
But it is an indictment of that portion and indeed all of the economy as trumpeted by the Masters of the Universe that ANYTHING that generates an invoice shall be counted as a portion of GDP, no matter how much it costs. So yeah, paying for services needed always goes on the plus side, even if the issue that triggered the need was an innocent or even planned tragedy costing hundreds/thousands/millions of unnecessary illness or injury or life and the resultant costs to the economy (and to humanity) that adhere.
I'm gonna go lie down for a bit. That sentence took a lot outta me...
The vileness of the organization aside, this kind of writing is self-parody. You could rearrange the buzz words like refrigerator magnets and no one would notice, e.g., "We bring portfolio economies to each mindset and create scale to support our partners."
Exactly. It reads like every other private equity firm's boilerplated mission statement (or almost any modern corporation), and yet it's a health system formerly rooted in Catholic charity. Kind of a microcosm of everything wrong with everything.
Trigger warning: Borderline coherence -- or worse -- ahead.
Much as I like this post, there's a flaw both in it and, apparently, Thrasher's book: That the state is *that* powerful. Yes and no, but the ancient rule is that we get the state that the Powers That Be, that the elite (a word I hate in this context) allow. The US elite and, I suppose, the western/capitalist elite want an extractive economy, a plutocratic, anti-democratic, theocratic state (the last for keeping the little people compliant and in their places).
With that is the core of Objectivism, what Objectivism sort of parodies (unintentionally, of course): that poorer people -- that is ~95% of the population -- are worth only of what and how they benefit the elite.
And the state that the Powers That Be finance and buy and corrupt aren't paid to give as much of a shit about the little people as any functional state should and does. As always, see the shit show that was our national response to Covid before SCOTUS made that a few magnitudes harder by way of a ruling based on bullshit and, yes, sociopathy.
So, you know, touching on sad over state ineptitude or failure to act without going deep on why it does really weakens the thesis and, indeed, does a disservice.
I would say, though, the prescription -- that it's on us to help ourselves because until we mange to change the power structure (if we can or will) -- is the way to go.
OTOH, I'm a dotard so what do I know?
Maybe I erred in not mentioning the big role corporations -- pharmas especially, and private prisons etc -- play in the paradigm of the book. Of course they're the dog that wags the tail. But government is where we meet the power, and I recall a time when it could smack the dog.
You only erred if the book mentioned it and you passed over it. If the issue wasn't discussed in the book, you ha a choice. But I find it dangerous to overestimate the power of the state when said power is ever more limited -- yet again, too weak to have a nationwide response to a pandemic or to protect the power of the vote among numerous other failings.
We children grew up during a time of a relatively strong, beneficial state so overestimating the power of the state is understandable. Ditto failing to clearly see the decline of state and nation since the late 70s specially since the MSM has done a fine job of ignoring it.
When you get a minute, take a gander at the list below. For developed countries government spending is somewhere between 40% and 60% of the whole economy. The U.S. is firmly in the middle at 46%, China is near the bottom at 36%.
Seems to me that neither the left or the right knows how to come to terms with this fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP
I’m not sure that that factoid is, by itself, relevant to anything. For example, a highly atypical amount of our government spending goes to national security so, given the actual value of that spending, the 46% is an even “softener” number.
Of course, I may be missing something. Feel free to tell me what I’m missing. OTOH, this nation was founded to have the weakest possible central government and were now being returned to that state.
Well, let's start with the right-wing fantasy of "drown the government in a bathtub." It's half our economy, and it always gets bigger, never smaller, through all administrations, Republican or Democrat. I'd bet a good part of the free-floating rage that exists among rank-and-file Republicans stems from this fact, that they've been sold a fantasy, they see every day that it's not being realized, and they'll never understand why not. You'd think this would be a common talking point among right-wing politicians: "My God, the government is now HALF OF OUR ECONOMY". And yet it isn't, possibly because they don't want to remind their own voters how completely they've failed.
On the left, it's the mistaken belief that the right is being successful in its efforts to shrink the government.
Shrink the gummint ONLY if you expand the consultancy.
I think you need to be a little more specific here. The right wants to drown the parts of the government that exist to help people, primarily the poor, in a bathtub. The parts that help the rich they are fine with. That last includes defense. It should also be noted that business profits are to a first approximation equal to government deficits. The right doesn't want to kill this, they want more control over which businesses get the profits.
Also, you need to consider whether areas of the government are growing faster than population growth. Also, too, the parts of the government designed to help people have always been underfunded, then they were block granted so that Brett Favre and Tater Reeves could plunder the money for themselves
Gotta be me but I still don’t see how a number without context or, in this case, what that 46%. Part of that is defense/national security budgets that percentage-wise are much bigger than other nations’. The flip side is that nations with smaller government spending on a percentage basis do more for its people.
("Shrink the government" = "stop those n****** from spending my tax money")
I once made up a whole speech in front of a bunch of moralizing cons – they labeled me an adlibtard...
Thanks, boss.
I've modified my "Punch up, not down" credo.
"Punch up, lend a hand down"
because no matter how successful one might be at changing those people and organizations above, they'll never be lending hands downward. It is not in their portfolio nor their interest nor their nature.
Related - Loomis's grave post this morning is about Ayn Rand and her toxic "philosophy"..
Toxic due to how poorly written? Because, yeah, I almost killed myself reading her.
READING her? Don't you know there's a movie version?
If it depicts anything other than a VERY slow-motion train wreck then it would not be true to the text.
Link, please!
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/09/erik-visits-an-american-grave-part-1206
(Periodic reminder that Rand, like Hayek, was a refugee from a collapsed, right-wing, post-World War I monarchy.)
I don't have much to add here, except to say that capitalism is ruthlessly efficient at marginalizing and eliminating the people it doesn't want or need, intentionally or otherwise. However, I'd like to mention the part about "a system no one really believes in", because it brings up a pet theory of mine.
I'm sure there are quite a few people at the very top who strongly believe in capitalism because the system has benefited them, albeit at everyone else's expense. For example, hedge fund managers. Or Sean Hannity, who went from a nobody who got kicked off local college radio to a rich, famous presidential advisor, just by being the loudmouthed, bigoted asshole he naturally is. Why shouldn't such people support the system that has rewarded them so handsomely?
We are many -- they are few.
Hearted out of hope. But I'm 68 years old and I've been fooled before...
Word.
Hard to kick hope.
And it doesn’t help that the high muckity-mucks of capitalism feel it is much more important that a shitload of people are kept unemployed (and even more underpayed) than risk any loss of value on the elite’s wealth…
I really like Serious Subject Mondays!
I always read the first three or four paragraphs looking for the punchline. Then I realize " Oh, this is serious" And settle in to appreciating it from that POV.
" Aphoristic" is a pretty great word.
Doing my due diligence I came across this review by Adam Gopnik
On a book about aphorisms.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/22/the-art-of-aphorism
Between this and Roy's original article I feel smart AF for a Monday morning.
Easy there, bo - there's a whole week to go before the next 'un...
Synchronistically, I just came across this:
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/10/03/some-really-wilde-epigrams/
wherein epigrams are purported to be superior to aphorisms (and pretty much all linguistic isms)
Great review.
Non-responsive comment: seeing Thrasher use the phrase "writing pens", I wondered if his native dialect is one of those where "pen" and "pin" have the same vowel, so that when necessary they need to be distinguished as either "writin[g] pens" or "stickin[g] pens". His parents (according to Wikipedia) are native Nebraskans (which fits what little I think I know about the geographical distribution of that dialect) and he was raised in Ventura and Oxnard CA (which is at least consistent with ditto).
Maybe I read it wrong? Will look later
Just go to Lawyers, Guns and Money.
I'm glad to see austerity called out here, it goes far beyond the simple scaling-back or even elimination of public services, it becomes an all-encompassing world view when people are told, decade after decade, "No, you can't have that", "We can't afford that", "Sorry, there isn't enough for everyone, so take what you can get and shut up about it."
You can see this best, I think, in the response to immigration. A million people wanting to live in your country (people, I should mention, who have shown the gumption to cross the Darien Gap and all of Mexico to come here) isn't seen as a gift and an opportunity, it's a "Crisis". No, the materially-richest country in the world can't handle a 0.3% increase in its population. Certain people - depending on their race, of course - are always seen as a debit on the national balance sheet, and never an asset. And, as we've all been told a million times before, we're broke, we just can't afford it.
Read the comments (if you have the stomach) to see the austerity mindset in action. Of course we can't afford to provide any help to migrants, but when they help themselves by getting a job (or two or three) we can't afford that either. We can't even afford the homeless shelter where the migrant lives while he works his two jobs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/us/texas-migrants-bus-rides.html
Some people love austerity because they’re cruel and greedy and they think it benefits them (never mind how it corrodes and destabilizes society as a whole). Some otherwise decent people—neoliberals and other Sensible types—love austerity because it lets them signal how superior they are, how they made the right choices and won’t feel the effects of austerity. More importantly it gives them that rush of power when they’re the stern parent telling the foolish children, “No. We can’t afford that.”
Yea, absolutely. And perversely, austerity can also play on our altruism, the sacrifices we're asked to make today are for the good of "future generations." Of course, when the future generations get here, it's austerity for them too. Like the Red Queen said to Alice, we have jam every other day, jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.
And just one more reason Pa has fer why Ma cain't have them nice gingham curtains she's been hankerin' after...
And not every woman can find a husband with an income of £10,000 a year, that's Jane Austerity.
OOF!
Of course of all the examples of privacy and bodily autonomy Thrasher cites, only abortion has no impact on the health and welfare of other citizens. So, category error. Any discussion of the ethics and morality around pregnancy must start with the acknowledgment that there is no other condition that is analogous; it must be approached with respect for how unique it is and not conflated with anything else.
Many thanks for pointing this out.
Not sure this is true. We don't vote on whether someone gets an appendectomy or an ACL repair either. (Well, we do, indirectly, when our votes support this shitty health system, but ideally we don't.)
Denying abortion--forced birth--has a public health effect, in increasing poverty, the number of people in unsafe conditions, food deserts, etc., the number of people with inadequate health coverage, etc., -- a very small effect taken one at a time, but it adds up. As well as the economic effect of pulling women out of the labor pool when they don't want that. Having the abortion leaves a mother with more resources to take care of kids she already has, or for young girls her family.
I don't like the example, because I don't think we should see a conflict between a woman's bodily autonomy and those public health reasons.
Maybe it would be better to see it as a question of women's full citizenship (I think that's kind of what RBG was getting at in her dislike of the Roe decision)--a vaccine mandate applies to all citizens as well as promoting public health, an abortion ban discriminates on the basis of sex as well as injuring public health.
Yup.
I think abortion rights has a huge effect on the health and welfare of everyone in the woman’s social and professional circle. If she is forced to bear and raise an unwanted child, or if she dies due to complications from pregnancy, that’s definitely going to affect the health and welfare of her other children, spouse, parents, family, and friends. It even affects her employer to an extent, having her removed from the workplace temporarily or permanently.
Your point is correct, however it specifically refers to a woman being unable by law to exercise her right to bodily autonomy. In a setting where she is free to choose, her decision doesn't expose others to harms, unlike the other examples given. One can argue that pregnancy, abortion, the availability of contraception, or even the possibility of pregnancy can affect others in the woman's social and professional circle, but none of those impacts are equal to the physical, emotional and practical effects of the pregnancy on the woman herself. Anti-abortion activists often conflate the effect of a woman not bearing a child with the effect of a person refusing to pay taxes (like for public education), or other examples in the book, but none of those involve the intimate personal consequences of pregnancy (and abortion) for the woman. There is much more moral and ethical support for the position that women should be able to freely choose whether to carry a pregnancy or not than, for example, a claim that everyone should pay taxes, even if they disagree with the purpose of those taxes. In my opinion, that is where the pro-choice argument is strongest. (Discussions of "when life begins" or "fetal rights" are important, especially since anti-choice arguments are commonly based on gross mis-statements about embryology and theology, but should take second place to acknowledging how unique pregnancy is from a moral and ethical standpoint.)
Well, to be fair, science has nailed down the beginning of life to somewhere within the last 3.7 billion years or so...
So I heard from George Carlin...
"it’s obvious that absolution from that [social] responsibility is the opposite of what’s needed"
One thought I keep coming back to is that a country of rugged individuals can't be a country. A country requires a population willing to abide by a social contract; rugged individuals sneer at any such thing. They can always ride off into the sunset into something better, or so they think. It takes a big dose of denial to pretty up an epidemic that kills a million people into a personal choice about masking or vaxxing but here we are.
Seems pretty clear that the lessons learned were:
Never, ever shut down the schools
Never, ever tell anyone to do anything they don't want to do
When the next one hits (and it won't be a hundred years between pandemics like this time) it's going to be a wild ride.
The only nit I'd pick is the individuals are getting more ragged than rugged...
Michael Lewis in his book Premonition points out where the CDC began to fail: its response to the looming specter of the swine flu epidemic in the 70's.
With a prospective pandemic, he points out, the director has to make a call-- do nothing by taking the chance that it's going to fizzle out or go full bore with mass distribution of the vaccine. In the former case, you either have a nothing burger or hundreds of thousands dead; in the latter, you risk deaths from reaction to the inoculation.
In the case of the swine flu vaccine, the CDC director decided to take the activist approach-- but swine flu didn't spread, and 27 Americans died from the vaccination.
Because the media could make more hay (Lewis doesn't say this), they went full-bore with eh 27 dead rather than weighing that risk against the risk of mass mortality. That CDC director stepped down and his replacement was the first of all the political appointees we've had ever since. No more would a director arise from the staff of the CDC-- and we've been paying for it ever since.
Add to that what Steve Bannon and John Bolton did in dismantling its emergency preparedness function (according to Lewis), and you get what you vote for.
Can’t bitch about state failure without discussing why a state fails. Reporting without context is per sé shitty reporting or worse.
Some serious eloquence, Roy. Thank you.
Killer post, no pun intended. The majority of arguments I have with the 'freedom fighters' whose physical sovereignty and political autonomy (read: refusal to engage because it *all* sucks; fuck that dress-wearing Aristotle guy) can not be sacrificed usually boils down to their basic "misunderstanding of what public health is for — and, when it comes down to it, what government is for, and what society is" as you state with great clarity. I also find these folks cherry-picking from 'gubmint' programs when it suits them, i.e., letting the State pay their rent for a year + during Covid, then crowing about how they're getting something for free from a system they abhor and don't believe in, while refusing to admit this puts them in the same boat as the disposables they regularly discriminate against.
Hearted 'cause once I followed that sentence all the way thru the second time I figured, yeah, heart this.
What can I say, I'm a born entertainer.
I've always said that the only reason I'm not a star comedian (or musician or poet) is because I've never found my audience...
Thanks for this post, Roy. Absolutely an informative and insightful review of this book. I’m reminded of two things: Frank Wilhoit’s dictum re: whom the law binds and protects, and Samuel Butler’s novel “Erewhon,” which describes a society where the lucky are rewarded and the unlucky are punished. The title is “nowhere” spelled backwards, of course, implying that this principle is everywhere, and not an aberration from the norm, and quite the opposite, hiding in plain sight.
“nowhere” spelled backwards
almost
You gotta squint a little bit. But that was the author’s intent.
A few decades ago Terry Gross interviewed Clint Eastwood about his career. She asked him about developing the famous squint he unveiled in the pasta westerns. Eastwood replied "Terry, it was really bright out there!"
Scrutinize for show, squint for dough.
"Wh" is a consonant cluster, technically - so more or less one sound.
Also, how can it be "Nowhere" when we live there right now?
“How can you be two places at once, when you’re not anywhere at all?” Firesign Theater
A very insightful and interesting review. Speaking of profit and health care, get a gander at statements like these:
"...we are working to drive meaningful, diversified revenue that extends beyond our current footprint. Our team will generate long-term value through targeted strategic and synergistic investments..."
"We bring specialized resources to each portfolio investment and use economies of scale to support growth and create value for our partners. With proven successes and a mindset for growth, we are actively seeking investment and partnership opportunities of all kinds. We also continue to develop a diversified portfolio of growth-oriented businesses that help innovate health care..."
The above comes from the portfolio web page of the not-for-profit Bon Secours Mercy Health, a Catholic system recently exposed by the Times for its abominable exploitation of poor hospitals in order to harvest millions in revenue (which has been growing at around 20%/yr lately for them).
It would seem that not-for-profit health care is just as fucked up as everything else these days.
Well, our whole health care system sure had quite a bit of "growth" in the past couple of years. Business was so good, the customers were dying to get in!
Oof.
But it is an indictment of that portion and indeed all of the economy as trumpeted by the Masters of the Universe that ANYTHING that generates an invoice shall be counted as a portion of GDP, no matter how much it costs. So yeah, paying for services needed always goes on the plus side, even if the issue that triggered the need was an innocent or even planned tragedy costing hundreds/thousands/millions of unnecessary illness or injury or life and the resultant costs to the economy (and to humanity) that adhere.
I'm gonna go lie down for a bit. That sentence took a lot outta me...
Every major oil spill is a boon to our GDP. Just think of all the bird-washer jobs created!
And every oil spill causes a run on Dove! Unilever stock goes thru the stratosphere, injuring birds all the way up!
Likely you know of this, but it bears repetition:
R.F.K. on G.D.P.: https://bit.ly/3Cd7ucg
It was worth it, though!
The vileness of the organization aside, this kind of writing is self-parody. You could rearrange the buzz words like refrigerator magnets and no one would notice, e.g., "We bring portfolio economies to each mindset and create scale to support our partners."
"You could rearrange the buzz words like refrigerator magnets..."
So true. An honest description, "We fuck over the poor to get rich" doesn't have this useful property.
Shh! Talk about saying the quiet (/inaudible) part out loud...
I know, right? My refrigerator would demagnetize from embarrassment...
Exactly. It reads like every other private equity firm's boilerplated mission statement (or almost any modern corporation), and yet it's a health system formerly rooted in Catholic charity. Kind of a microcosm of everything wrong with everything.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/health/bon-secours-mercy-health-profit-poor-neighborhood.html