On the one hand, you make arguments of the form "X is a bad idea." On the other, you make arguments of the form, "People don't like Y, so it will never happen." I think it would be best to stick to one form of argument or the other. Are we armchair policymakers who get to dictate how an imaginary world works, or are we arguing about what's going to happen? I prefer the former. I guess we could do both, but it's important not to conflate the two. I find this is a very common problem in political arguments; I suppose I'm not immune.
Energy: We currently give large subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Even the elimination of these subsidies would have the effect of promoting research into alternative energy sources. Perhaps we can at least agree to the elimination of these current subsidies, in our armchair world? Back in the real "what will happen" world, as far as invisible and deadly, people are accepting things like GMO and irradiation. I won't be surprised if they come around to pebble reactors.
Medical: I was going to argue again for a single-payer system, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am what a reasonable solution is. Fundamentally, my intuition is that as a society, we are rich enough that we ought to provide a substantial level of healthcare to all, including the poor. Clearly, it is not feasible to extend this to arbitrarily expensive procedures to slightly prolong the lives of the elderly, clearly we need to emphasize relatively inexpensive ideas like education and prevention, and clearly we need to do cost/benefit analysis to pick the most valuable procedures inside the budget we have. Maybe we means-test the benefit, although of course income taxes are already a form of means-testing, and we already do have some healthcare for the poor in the US. Do you disagree with my basic conception of what is reasonable? What's your concept? How would you achieve it, assuming you could set the policies how you wanted?
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 03:57 pm (UTC)Energy: We currently give large subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Even the elimination of these subsidies would have the effect of promoting research into alternative energy sources. Perhaps we can at least agree to the elimination of these current subsidies, in our armchair world? Back in the real "what will happen" world, as far as invisible and deadly, people are accepting things like GMO and irradiation. I won't be surprised if they come around to pebble reactors.
Medical: I was going to argue again for a single-payer system, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am what a reasonable solution is. Fundamentally, my intuition is that as a society, we are rich enough that we ought to provide a substantial level of healthcare to all, including the poor. Clearly, it is not feasible to extend this to arbitrarily expensive procedures to slightly prolong the lives of the elderly, clearly we need to emphasize relatively inexpensive ideas like education and prevention, and clearly we need to do cost/benefit analysis to pick the most valuable procedures inside the budget we have. Maybe we means-test the benefit, although of course income taxes are already a form of means-testing, and we already do have some healthcare for the poor in the US. Do you disagree with my basic conception of what is reasonable? What's your concept? How would you achieve it, assuming you could set the policies how you wanted?