Words about science and hiking
High contagion in a world of low trust The death of Dr. Li Wenliang was not just a human tragedy. The man was a genuine hero, a doctor felled by a disease contracted from a patient. The practice of medicine can be overly transactional, more focused on the acquisition of wealth than the relief of suffering. Read More …
Innovations created in developed economies do not deprive less-developed economies of anything. More to the point, less-developed economies eventually get access to these innovations, and get them at prices that are cheaper than the prevailing prices in developed economies. Drugs are a good example of this dynamic. Many of us consider new drug prices to Read More …
None of the above. It’s Goldman Sachs. Or the Supreme Court. Take your pick. These parents weren’t buying their kids the best possible education, nor were they denying one to anyone else. The Ivies are great schools, but we have a lot of great universities in this country. The education you might get at Harvard Read More …
At a high level, we would become more like other English-speaking countries that have universal healthcare and higher taxes (ie., all of them): the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Except we would have more guns and violence. In other words, not much would change in terms of national character. But there are a few specific Read More …
On October 10th, President Trump issued a ringing denunciation (which he totally wrote himself) of socialism in general and socialized health care in particular: “Virtually everywhere it has been tried, socialism has brought suffering, misery and decay.” Socialism’s latest threat? To destroy socialized medicine for seniors in the US. If given the chance, socialists will “…give Read More …
It is a generally accepted precept that corporations are obligated to maximize shareholder returns. Resources thus should be directed only to efforts that have the highest expected return. Diseases of poverty, like TB and malaria, by definition afflict those least able to pay, and thus are least likely to generate satisfactory returns on investment for pharmas. Read More …
It’s not immediately obvious why fundamentalists so despise Darwinism. I mean, yeah, they advocate a literal interpretation of the Bible, and creation through evolution does not map perfectly on to the Genesis story. But the fundys have little problem ignoring other inconvenient teachings (that eating shellfish is an abomination, that rich men cannot get to Read More …
The federal RTT legislation, which you can read here, makes no reference to payments of any kind, except to state that a referring physician can not be compensated directly by the drug manufacturer. Indirect is just fine. I wonder if drug companies could possibly figure out ways to pay doctors indirectly? [1] Payments are not forbidden, Read More …
The first and most fundamental change is to give up the idea that free market economics are always and everywhere optimal. This faith – and it is a faith, with its own Holy Ghost (the Invisible Hand) – has cleaned out the wallets of Americans with an efficiency that would excite the envy of a TV preacher. Those Read More …
A better (I think) question is “should we play the anthem at sporting events?”. After all what does kicking or hitting a ball or throwing it through a hoop have to do with love of country? Not to mention smacking one’s fellow citizens around and scrambling their brains. The only remotely plausible answer is that Read More …