A Modest Proposal

What is the culture's biggest problem? Not financial. Not military. Our biggest problem is the disintegration of the family, particularly the abnegation of parental leadership and responsibility. The one social structure commented on in the New Testament over and over again is divorce and this country, a professed christian nation, has a divorce rate over 50%. I once asked a basketball coach who coached a private grade school team and an inner city team what the difference between the two jobs was. He said in the private school he put the kids on the floor and watched them for quickness, vision, enthusiasm and coachability. With the inner city team he started each practice by asking who had eaten that day and first took the rest to lunch.
This is clearly a serious problem. The New Orleans disaster shows there are simply a lot of people out there who need help managing their lives. Should they be having children in this difficult life of theirs as well?
Too tough? Yet we are able to ask very hard questions of the elderly now; those end of life equations are serious, regardless of how they are diminished. Why not pair bonding and reproduction questions? Clearly a lot of people need help and we have a sacred private sector model: Harmony.com. Imagine how we could increase the information available with the government's huge reach. Why not a National Mating Service?

On the Road to Erineus

I am unsure where all of this is leading. Certainly the federal control of health care stems from one thing: their unfunded liability to the Medicare commitment. It is over 37 trillion dollars right now if they cut it dead. It is strange to see an organization that has failed in its initial project respond by trying to absorb the rest of the medical system but I suppose the logic is they can control the part if it is within the whole. Moreover they will not have to admit failure. I have not heard a single concern over the unfunded liability; only the uninsured, or small business burden or the rising costs of health care. This is the reason: http://www.usdebtclock.org/. So, to hide their previous failure-- ill conceived, poorly administered and gigantic--they will take over the rest of the medical system.
What will be created is any one's guess. I suppose it will be a distorted cobbled monster with the usual disastrous unintended consequences. Certainly the main activity will be contraction: To fix the price to the available budget. That will have no influence on the cost however and the distortions will follow. Resources will be reallocated to the politically connected and the symbolically secure. The medical profession, now a utilitarian organ of a cost and graft obsessed power, will be destroyed. The overall objective, the Medicare obligation, will be achieved economically if not morally.
Then we can turn to the next failed promise: Social Security.

The Enemy of Good

One should wonder about the impulse to lead. It is obvious in warfare, in fires--- at moments demanding a next step. But in politics it is less obvious because usually the politician begins without anything at stake. The guy in the burning building must get out; he likely will try to the best of his ability (and the limits of his safety) to help lead another out. But the politician is under no such pressure or demand; as his commitment to leadership grows, his risk grows. It is reminiscent of the problems with physics: Big physics solutions can not be applied to small physics questions. So the dynamics of the individual and his leadership does not seem to translate to leadership in the tribe or state.
What is it that these politicians want? Is there something we can do preemptive to satisfy them so they will leave us alone? For the same disjunction that separates the realms of physics, separates us. Their theories for their perceived problems never work for our individual concerns. And sooner or later force must be applied to make their square physics solutions fit our round physics lives; if the solution hasn't worked, it must be we haven't tried hard enough. They start Medicare and forty years later have to take the entire medical system over to blend Medicare in.
Aside from the desire to tinker, there is a true intolerance of the imperfect that plagues societies. It is a type of puritanism, an arrogant certainty of how things should be and the certainty that the would-be leader alone knows the truth. It is a search for The Good. A phrase so often heard in the operating room is "The Enemy of Good". What is the enemy of good? Better.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=334189274826317

Oil

A diversion from the health crisis.
50% of U.S. energy requirements are met by oil, 25% by natural gas. $1600 is spent per person for food per year in this country. In 1970, the U.S. produced 10 million barrels of oil per day; we now produce 5 million. We now import 10 million barrels a day. That is the equivalent of 750 nuclear plants (we have 104 and they take 20 years to build), or 2000 times our current solar capacity. The net energy returned from oil investment (energy out/energy in) for oil was 100/1 in 1930. It was 25/1 in 1970. Now it is 3/1. The ratio for ethanol is 2%, for tar sand and shale 3/1, for wind and solar 25/1 (but the electricity is not liquid so it can't power mobile units.) There has not been a major oil field find since 1970. All the other finds are miles under the ocean which have huge "energy in" numbers. As countries expand, they will have greater oil demands and will compete with us for those barrels. There is also more domestic demand for domestic production so their exports drop. (Mexico, a top exporter of oil to the U.S. has seen domestic demand cut into their exports and may become a net importer in the next several years.)
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/it-wont-be-so-bad-a-qa-with-the-author-of-20-per-gallon/