Re: David Cross on Health Care

On Oct 27, 2010, at 12:29 PM, nicholas a. evans wrote:
> "Institutions, like organisms, seek survival for themselves and their
> descendants...  Institutions aren’t simple tools. Organizations aren’t
> implements. And when a sufficient number of institutions coexist, they
> function like an ecosystem. They neither work nor do not work. They
> survive, reproduce, replace, predate, evolve, alter, consume, and
> grow. They are no more responsive to the individuals contained within
> than a person is to a single cell... So look. You have organizations
> that were constituted largely in secret for purposes that may, in
> fact, have little relationship to what Whitehousespokesperson or
> Undersecretaryofdefenseivewhatnot says they were, which, once
> constituted, proceeded quite heedless of what their ersatz original
> raisons d'être were, and which now constitute an ungovernable,
> boundless, self-sustaining, self-referring system of unimaginable
> complexity. " [0]

Great analogy.  I would only add that there is an economic factor at  
play.  All of that survival, reproducing, evolving, etc...all depend  
on the organization being fed the food of money.  If you can cutoff  
the funding, it will shrivel and die.  Likewise the secret purpose and  
direction of the organizations inevitably move toward the money  
source.  You have no further to look than the SEC and the Treasury  
Dept to see that.  He who controls the money, controls the  
organization.  You might think, hey, that is us, the taxpayers, but  
look closer.  Most of the money funding the government comes not from  
taxpayers, but from bonds and debt sold by the government to who?  The  
more the deficit grows, the more indebted to the banks the  
organization becomes, the more the money controls it.  They have found  
out they don't even need taxpayers anymore, they can just issue more  
debt.

> But, if we are going to be a "statist" society anyway, I'd prefer a
> larger proportion of our collective funds go towards creating value
> and steering away from market failures (e.g. health insurance) than
> towards destroying value (e.g. certain aspects and actions of our
> military).  In as much as we're stuck with a warfare-welfare state,
> I'd prefer it tilt a little bit more towards the latter.  In as much
> as I'd like to move towards a stateless society, I'd prefer to remove
> the state provided crutches first from those that don't need them, and
> continue to provide them to those who aren't (yet?) being provided
> them through stateless means.

Unfortunately, we are getting the opposite.  The vast majority of  
state "crutches" are being given to those that don't need them.  And  
both parties have chosen to ignore that.

regards,
-Lance



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