Life

I woke up this morning to NPR doing a report on how some health insurance companies deny coverage to people once they file a claim. They went a step further and said that some of these people were denied present and future coverage even though they abided by all of the rules. NPR was trying to vilify this action, as they should since it is shady, but they are on a streak of trying to make the current health care system look so horrible that we the population will be clamouring for government-run healthcare. Nice try NPR, but you’ll have to try harder than that.

NPR even cited the number of people who this happens to and it’s just under 10,000 people in the entire country. Let’s do some math. There is an estimated 310,000,000 people in the country. If we take very conservative numbers and say that half of those people are adults who currently work, and then subtract 40,000,000 for the “uninsured,” we get 105,000,000 insured working adults. If we take 10,000 and divide that by 105,000,000, we get 0.000095238, or 0.0095% of the working population. NPR wants reform for 105,000,000 people based on shady practices to 0.0095%! There are more people that die from the common flu each year and yet we don’t talk about throwing out the current healthcare system so that 20,000 flu victims don’t die. Life is full of risks and the government is worse at eliminating risks than are a free and prosperous people independent of the government. This is why I call it idiocracy, NPR is no better than Fox News for sensationalism.

For all of you who think that universal healthcare is a utopia, don’t come crying to me when you can’t get the immediate care that you need because there are too many other people in line ahead of you. Economics is about the rationing of scarce goods in the most fair and balanced way. Politicians are not better at this than a market system where people, not politicians, place the value of goods and services like scarce healthcare resources. To anyone that thinks otherwise, I invite you to start a debate in the comments to this post.

On a related subject of government run healthcare, I submit this article as some more food for thought. The moral of the article, how are we going to afford government-run healthcare when we already have a national debt of $11 trillion and up to $50 trillion of unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Medicaid. How exactly is government-run healthcare more cost effective?

Economics, Political healthcare, idiocracy., NPR, rationing

I’m all updated to iPhone OS 3.0. Time to check the new features out. Will post my overall impressions of the upgrade in the near future.

Uncategorized 3.0, Apple, iPhone

So I’m going through some pre-pre-marital (we’re not engaged, so it’s counseling to see if we should move forward in marriage) counseling with Stacey, and I need to reflect on things I do want to bring to a potential future family from mine that I grew up in, and things that I do not.

Do bring:

• I really liked that we ate as a family at least one meal per day (typically dinner). It gave us an opportunity to talk, to catch up on each others lives, and to generally be a family together instead of just beings living in the same house. I would like to do a similar thing but also try and add a little bit more dynamic to it making sure that one person doesn’t dominate the conversation only.
• I really liked how my parents made it a top priority to send my brother and sister and I to private schools almost our entire lives. This almost single handedly formed me into the person that I am today, one who enjoys continually learning new and challenging things. I believe there are decent public schools out there, though few and far between, on principle of government not running my life I must take a stand against public schools for my future children.

Don’t bring:

• Wherever possible, I do not want to bring guilt and shame into my future family. Not that my family was really bad in this area, but there were times where I really felt guilty and I’ve only recently gotten over a lot of these constant guilt feelings. What is the point to ever feeling guilty at the hand of someone else? We as humans are inherently amazing at putting on self-guilt.
• I do not want to bring constant busyness into my future family. We do not need to be doing something all of the time, especially home projects. There are times to be productive in getting things done, but there are also times when one needs to claim enough and relax and let life slow down a bit.

Personal family, reflection

Yay, just a quickie…my home email server based on Ubuntu Linux, Postfix and Dovecot, is back! It’s all nice and secure in that it only use transports via TLS…no clear text allowed. It’s great to have it back up. Next thing to investigate is how to setup graylisting with Postfix to help Spam Assassin get even better. I’ve been getting a lot of spam email.

Linux Dovecot, email, Linux, Postfix, Ubuntu

This is the coolest idea since sliced bread. I kid not. I am referring to the concept of seasteading. The idea behind this is to create a moveable, self-sustaining and floating platform large enough to one day create a sovereign nation, or two, or many. This will bring the opportunity to rapidly and more fluidly experiment with different forms of government and to quickly make a decision to “fork”, just like in open source software, if one or a group of people don’t like the government of a platform.

http://seasteading.org/

Economics, Political government, seasteading

This individual from George Mason University, Robin Hanson, is absolutely fascinating. I first heard of him yesterday listening to the latest episode of EconTalk. It truly has been a long time since I’ve seen anything so original and so fascinating as some of the ideas that Robin has. He is truly the definition of a skeptic (in a positive light). I can only hope that I can someday be as intellectually curious and honest as Robin…that’s how good this guy is in my opinion!

Economics, Political George Mason University, intellectualism, Robin Hanson, skeptic

This article is a must read by Karen Kwiatkowski. She discusses whether the U.S. population has a cognitive dissonance to promoting liberty. Her conclusion, no we [the citizens] do not, the state does.

Check it out on lewrockwell.com and post a comment to get a discussion going!

Political cognitive dissonance, Karen Kwiatkowski, lewrockwell.com, liberty

Interesting, costly and I think well intended, but woefully misguided. It’s Obama’s proposal for a stimulus package for 2009 and Cato’s analysis of it. Check it out.

Economics, Political 2009, obama, stimulus

Econ Talk is one of my new favorite podcasts. I can’t get enough of it. For an excellent treatise in the world of Austrian economics, debate of Keynsian economics, etc, you must take a listen! I give it 5 stars.

Economics Austrian economics, Econ Talk, Economics

I have been enlightened today! Today is the day that I found how to make my life easier by managing my finances with the very slick Mint service at www.mint.com. I had Mint suck in my credit card account and it tooks seconds to analyze my spending pattern over the past month. Very insightful indeed! When I get some more time, I plan on linking all of my other accounts which contain my assets. This might be the first tool that I use that will actually help me (as opposed to Quicken) implement a sane (read: useful) budget!

Financial, Personal enlightenment, Mint