Dream of the Dragon

Americans are funny about government.  I understand that we were once a people into frontiering and mountaineering and engineering and all sorts of eerings, but now we’re mostly into the sitting and the staring and the eating.  In the past we didn’t need so many things taken care of for us but now we do.  Civilization is also very complicated now.  You could treat your own bear-inflicted wound in 1810, but you’re not very well going to give yourself a heart bypass in 2010.  The health care debate has been bothering me, because I think it’s silly.  I hear something to the effect of “I want to make my own decisions about health care.”  Really?  Do you really?  Then it’s a good thing you have all that medical training and oh yes the finance and statistics knowledge that helps you to weigh costs against benefits.  It’s also a good thing that 300 million people can make uncoordinated, arbitrary and contrary decisions about health care and force the consequences into a single system that then doesn’t fail catastrophically.  Otherwise you’d need people with actual knowledge to administer the system. Read the rest of this entry »