Thing is, everyone I’ve talked with about this does the same.

Now, take this confusion and multiply it by everything on your grocery list. Think of all the healthy eating fads America has seen come and go. Eat carbs, don’t eat carbs, drink wine, eat only grapefruit… These are the basic tools by which Americans transmit information about product choices. That’s a lot of information, and most of it is either bad or misinformed or half transmitted. But researching every item that goes into your grocery basket is time consuming and boring. The FDA would yank anything harmful from the shelves, so the hippocratic oath we make to ourselves won’t be violated.

I can’t even imagine researching the factory of every product I put into my body, and then suing if the company is lying about what they’re producing. It sounds like a boring sort of job I’m more than willing to pay someone else to do.

There is a political philosophy that holds life I’ve just described as the highest, freest, ideal. They have a child-like belief that the market’s ability to perfectly transmit information is so stupendous that simply by lifting all government oversight, producers wouldn’t dare lie to, cheat, or steal from their customers. After all– Firestone tires was destroyed after they (knowingly!) killed scores of people. They certainly didn’t change their name and move on.

Of course– of course!– government oversight isn’t perfect. Regulatory capture happens, sometimes government regulators simply aren’t up to doing their jobs, etc. That’s why we have other forms of protection, like the aforementioned lawsuits. Libertarianism is the only political philosophy I’ve ever heard of to agree with Hobbes that life is “Nasty, Brutish, and Short”, but then turn around and say that we should keep fighting anyway. Cooperation for mutual benefit is a sucker’s game.

Naturally I found out about this on a blog, the Chronicle won’t be publishing it’s next issue until tomorrow morning sometime…

*The third option is to fuck the union

I don’t. The basic problem (for the newspapers) is that I’ve got a magic box on my desk from which I can: Chat with my friends, Order books, Buy Other Stuff, Watch movies, Listen to music, Surf for Porn, and Make grammatical Mistakes like Capitalizing improperly.

In addition to sitting on my desk, the box comes in convenient “lap” and “phone” size.

If news is going to reach me, it’s going to have to do so this way. I’m pretty well served for International news: Her Majesty’s Secret News Source does a great job. So does Turner’s Folly. As does Microsoft’s only non-crashing program. And others.

The claim that quality punditry can only come from new newspaper is so laughable that not even the Dead Tree’s most ardent defenders are making it.

Local news, I’m told. There are no quality local news outlets. This is demonstrably false.

Newspapers aren’t timely: they take up to 24 whole hours to report on basic things like traffic, fires, earthquakes, and other events. And if your local newspaper decides not to cover the world’s largest pillow fight, it’s pretty useless.

Newspapers do a ton of original reporting, it’s true. Like the time the New York Times declined, for 14 months, to tell America that we were being spied on by our own government.

For that sin, if nothing else. Let ‘em burn like the useless paper they are.

The Palestinians are terrified that the Israelis want to slaughter them all and steal their land. Their fears are inflamed by the fact that, well, they used to own all of what is now Israel, parts of what are now Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

Naturally, there is going to be tension. The awful, tragic, asinine, terrible thing is that since both sides are terrified of extinction, leaders cannot gain prominence unless they are willing to spill blood. A failure to respond in kind to the “aggression” of the “other side” is an unacceptable weakness.

And so within a few weeks we’ll see a ceasefire. And 6 months or a year from now, the whole sorry cycle will start up again. Where are the underlying conflicts, and how can they be solved? Until we answer those questions– until one side understands why the other side is terrified– we’re going to keep seeing death.

Bah. Happy Friday, everyone.

The thing about healthcare is that there are many, many ways of doing it. Ours is about the worst. I mean, maybe not the worst possible, but certainly the worst we’re likely to see and still have a whole ton of very competent doctors. (In order to get worse, you pretty much have to be Cuba.)

How do we improve? Well, you’d want minimum care standards. And a dedicated funding stream. The idea is that it should be paid for by the government so that it’s not paid for by an employer– and so that you don’t lose care if you lose your job. After all, in this country, cancer is the number on cause of bankruptcy.

What would make the system perfect? Well, I’m not wild about the idea of the government running the health care system– I do like the idea of private actors competing for customers. Ezra Klein has more: part 1, part 2, and part 3

Maniakes: I’d love to get your take on this…

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