Clean Your Room, Change the World

From FEE.org:

In a now-famous appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, psychologist Jordan B. Peterson pointed out how strange it is that many politically-engaged young people are preoccupied with reorganizing society and the economic system when they can’t even organize their own bedrooms. He said:

…don’t be fixing up the economy, 18-year-olds. You don’t know anything about the economy. It’s a massive complex machine beyond anyone’s understanding and you mess with at your peril. So can you even clean up your own room? No. Well you think about that. You should think about that, because if you can’t even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world

Indeed, as economic philosophers Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Leonard Read demonstrated, a market economy is so bafflingly complex that even an omniscient and perfectly virtuous central planner (presumably with an immaculate office) couldn’t hope to centrally plan it. So what kind of guidance can be expected from someone who can’t even centrally plan their own closet?

And yet, so many are ardent about “changing the world” while being profoundly neglectful of their own little corner of the world. This approach to life is a recipe for angst and depression. Dwelling on things you cannot change leads to feelings of frustration and impotence. And neglecting the things you can change leads to stagnation and crisis.

Dr. Peterson’s prescription for this life disorder is as follows:

My sense is that if you want to change the world, you start from yourself and work outward, because you build your competence that way.”  [read more]

The millennials think their parents should clean their rooms. And when they become Leftists they think the gov’t should clean up their messes. No personal responsibility.

The History of Fake News in the United States

From The Daily Signal.com:

Fake news isn’t suddenly ruining America, but putting government in charge of deciding what news is fake will.

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, numerous media outlets ran stories claiming that many websites had published false stories that helped Trump beat Hillary Clinton.

Since then, left-leaning opinion writers have called for a solution to this alleged epidemic. The New York Times reported last January that Silicon Valley giants Facebook and Google will team up with legacy media outlets to fact-check stories and curtail the proliferation of “fake news.”

However, intentionally misleading news has been around since before the invention of the printing press. In fact, our Founding Fathers grappled with this very issue when they created our system of government. They saw that while it was tempting to censor fake stories, ultimately, the truth was more likely to be abused by an all-powerful government arbiter than the filter of unimpeded popular debate. Attempts to weed out factually incorrect news reports can quickly morph into fact-checking and manipulating differences in opinion.

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The Founders and the Free Press

The Founding Fathers were well aware of the power of the press, for good or ill. After all, many of them, such as Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, were newspapermen and pamphleteers. The revolutionary ideas they disseminated throughout the colonies found eager readers, putting them high on King George III’s enemies list.

Three years after the Constitution was ratified, the American people amended it by adding the Bill of Rights, which included the First Amendment and its protections of the media. However, the Founders understood that a free press was not an entirely unqualified blessing; some had reservations.

Elbridge Gerry, who was present at the Constitutional Convention, lamented how con artists in his home state were manipulating the people. “The people do not [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots,” Gerry said at the convention. “In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by experience, that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions, by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.”

The Founders saw that while it was tempting to censor fake stories, ultimately the truth was more likely to be abused by an all-powerful government arbiter than the filter of unimpeded popular debate.

Franklin also warned about the power of the press, which the public must put so much trust in. In a short essay, Franklin explained how the press acted as the “court” of public opinion and wielded enormous unofficial power.

For an institution with so much influence, Franklin noted that the bar for entry into journalism is remarkably low, with no requirement regarding “Ability, Integrity, Knowledge.” He said the liberty of the press can easily turn into the “liberty of affronting, calumniating, and defaming one another.”

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The New York Times and the Fraud of the Century

Today, a 30-foot-long bronze wall stands in Northwest Washington, D.C., and on this wall is the simple image of a wheat field. It is a monument to the victims of the Holodomor, a monstrous genocide committed by one of the most ruthless and authoritarian regimes in human history.

In 1932, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, frustrated that he could not crush Ukrainian nationalism, ordered that grain quotas for Ukrainian fields be raised so high that the peasants working the fields would not be left with enough food to feed themselves. NKVD troops collected the grain and watched over the populace to prevent them from leaving to find nourishment elsewhere.

As a result of these policies, as many as 7 million Ukrainians died of starvation in 1932 and 1933.

But while Stalin was conducting an atrocity with few equals in human history, The New York Times was reporting on the regime’s triumphs of modernization.

Walter Duranty, the Times Moscow bureau chief, won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for his 1931 series of articles on the Soviet Union. Pulitzer in hand, he proceeded to perpetrate perhaps the worst incident of fake news in American media history at a time when Americans relied on the Times and a handful of other large media outlets to bring them news from around the world.

Duranty's motivation for covering up the crimes taking place in Ukraine has never been fully ascertained. However, it undoubtedly gave the Bolshevik sympathizer better access to Stalin’s regime, which routinely fed him propaganda. [read more]

Back then Russia was the Left’s friend, but since Russia has become less socialistic (not really) it has became an enemy.

Cancer breakthrough: Potential cure could be ready as early as next year

From Express.co.uk (Nov. 24):

A POTENTIAL cure for cancer could be ready to test on patients as early as next year.

British scientists are developing an immune therapy based on blood cells from patients who have made “miracle” recoveries from the disease.

They believe they have found a way to extract the cancer-killing immune cells from donor blood and then multiply them by the million.

The team at King’s College London say they are excited by early results of lab tests.

It could signal not only better treatment for cancer but also one day a possible cure.

Cancer research bodies in the UK described the breakthrough last night as “very promising”.

The therapy involves neutrophil cells, which form part of the body’s first line of defense against foreign invaders.

Such cells are believed to be a key reason why some lucky individuals spontaneously and inexplicably shrug off lethal cancers, giving rise to “miracle recovery” headlines. [read more]

That is good news.

Creativity and Competition Are the Heart of Capitalism

From FEE.org:

Market competition is at the heart of the capitalist system. It serves as the driving force for creative innovation, the mechanism by which supply and demand are brought into coordinated balance for multitudes of goods, and as the institutional setting where individuals freely find their place to best earn a living in society. 

Yet, listening to the critics of capitalism, competition is made out to be a cruel and dehumanizing process that feeds unnecessary wants and desires, or has a tendency to evolve into anti-competitive monopolies that are contrary to the “public interest.” Competition fosters a “selfish” disregard for the “common good” and misdirects resources from their most important socially-valuable uses.

Competition Through Political Means

As long as resources are scarce and social positions are too limited to satisfy everyone’s desire for status, competition will exist. The crucial questions concern: how will it be decided what gets produced and for whom, and how shall social positions in society be determined and filled?

For almost all of human history these questions were determined by conquest and coercion. Those with greater physical strength or manipulative guile used these superior abilities and skills to gain the goods they wanted and the status they desired over others.

In a competition between the physically “strong” and the “weak,” it was often the case that “might made right.” Pillage and plunder enabled some to seize goods and to then subjugate and enslave those they conquered to work for them and accept their conquerors as their legitimate masters.

Most, if not all, forms of competition were battles for political power and position. Closeness to the throne and having favor with the king or prince gave one control over land and people, and therefore possession of material wealth in the forms in which they existed in those earlier times. The mythologies of the aristocratic nobility – the lords of the manor – asserted that they were the repository of grace, charm, and culture, the carriers of civilized manners and the benefactors of civilization. This hid the fact that their leisure time for and attention to the “higher things” of life were only made possible – to the extent that any of them were actually concerned with anything other than their personal pleasures and pastimes – due to their success in gaining legitimized authority over the productions of others.

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Market Competition Liberated People and Provided Opportunities

The slow liberation of men and production from these restraints and the opening of both labor and manufacturing to greater market-based competition freed a growing number of people from a life of oppression and wretched poverty. Competition meant that a man could leave behind the legal tethers that had tied him to the land and obligatory work for the aristocracy. Now, an individual could more freely find work more to his own liking where it might be offered in towns far away from where he had been born, and earn a far greater income than he ever had in the rural areas, however modest those incomes may seem by today’s standards.

Competition meant that a resourceful individual with a willingness to bear risk could found his own business, make a product of his own choice, and market it to those with whom he increasingly freely negotiations and contracts. He could experiment with new manufacturing methods and techniques, he could hire based on mutually agreed upon terms of work and wages, and he could retain the profits he may have earned to not only live better himself but to plow a good part of those profits back into his business to expand production in new and better ways.

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Competition as a Discovery Procedure

To this may be added Friedrich A. Hayek’s (1899-1992) focus on “Competition as a Discovery Procedure” (1969). Competition is useful and, indeed, essential to the creative processes of the market. As Hayek pointed out, if in, say, a foot race we already knew ahead of time who would come in first, second, third, etc., along with each runner’s relative times, what would be the point of running the race?

It is only through competition that we can find out how a race will end. Only through the competitive process can we discover the abilities of each individual relative to others. It is also true that each individual cannot know for sure what he or she is capable of in a particular setting unless they try to find out what they can accomplish by challenging themselves.  [read more]

Other articles about capitalism from FEE.org:

• Capitalism Makes Us Free to Be You and Me
• 4 Common Capitalism Myths Debunked
• Thanks Capitalism, Refrigerators Are Awesome!

Kim Komando’s Take on Net Neutrality

From Komando.com (Dec. 15):

As you are no doubt aware, the FCC voted 3-2 on Thursday, to repeal the 2 1/2-year-old Net Neutrality rules. I’ll admit that the coined phrase, “Net Neutrality” certainly sounded good.

The words invoked images of a perfect world. You know, where there's a fair and free market and open internet. Where there's a neutral level playing field so that anyone anywhere could cook up an idea and run with it and no one could put up any barriers to get in their way.

The Washington name game

Like most legislation coming out of Washington, the name didn't really reflect what the law would have done. Here’s a case in point: Ask yourself, “Where was the internet 25 years ago in 1992?” For the most part, it did not exist!

OK, then ask yourself how in the world did it become the all-pervasive, everywhere at once, information, education, communications, entertainment, shopping and commerce giant that it is today? Was it because of early so-called Net Neutrality? Well, of course not. In fact, most agree that the internet is what it is precisely because the government did NOT interfere.

It did not regulate, oversee, act as traffic cop or playground teacher. For the government, it was strictly, HANDS OFF. And we created the freest and fair marketplace in history, allowing consumers to choose the winners and losers in a competitive marketplace.

This resulted in the best ideas, products and services rising to the top. The internet thrived, business competition soared. New business opportunities became possible, think eBay, VRBO, Amazon, the list is endless. Everyone benefitted because the playing field was level. Anyone could come. And everyone DID come.

The internet became a place where anyone could do virtually anything and make money. Free speech abounded. Every viewpoint was clamoring to be heard. Suddenly, people of both sides of the political fence began coming up with ways and ideas to silence those on the OTHER side of the fence. Lots of ideas were floated including an internet “use tax” or licensing websites the same way they license radio and TV stations.

What's the "Net Neutrality" fight really about?

A few years ago, someone cooked up a coined phrase “Net Neutrality.” Who couldn’t be for a neutral internet? It played especially well with recent college graduates, ahhh the Millennials, who were not around for the beginning of the internet to be firsthand witnesses of how its level playing field grew from nothing.

The fight over net neutrality was never about a level digital playing field, although that’s what its advocates continue to claim. Its real purpose was to prohibit something called “paid prioritization.” Paid prioritization is the technical term used to describe an agreement between a content provider and a network owner to allow the provider’s data to travel on less-congested routes in exchange for an agreed-upon fee.

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You get what you pay for

If they choose to do so, content companies like Hulu and Netflix can choose to pay ISPs a little bit extra to have their content bits delivered to consumers faster than some other company, such as Amazon. Very NOT neutral, but necessary.

To prohibit it harms consumers in the name of helping them. Lost in the translation is this inconvenient fact: We’ve always had to pay for faster service! If you wanted faster service, you had to buy more bandwidth. Net Neutrality’s real name was FCC 15-24, a radical departure from the market-oriented policies that have served us so well for the last two decades.

Did we have evidence that the internet is not open? No. Did we discover some problem with our prior interpretation of the law? No. What happened was that despite 25 years of working just fine, the former FCC wanted to help large content providers like Amazon, Google, Twitter and Netflix gain leverage against traditional cable companies. So-called net neutrality would have prevented upgrading for better service.

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“Net Neutrality” would have given the Federal Government and big tech the power to choose winners and losers online, in an egregiously partisan manner. “Net Neutrality” said nothing about neutrality and everything about governmental control and nepotistic picking of favorites, which is the very opposite of neutrality.  [read more]

I agree. It’s about controlling free speech online which I believe is against the First Amendment. And of course, control.

Here’s some FEE.org articles on Net Neutrality:

• Net Neutrality Isn't Neutral At All
• Net Neutrality Is about Government Control of the Internet
• Net Neutrality Kills Free Internet

And other articles about Net Neutrality:

• Debunking the Left’s Myths on Net Neutrality
• Understanding Millennial Leftists and Net Neutrality
• Thank Goodness Apple's iPhone Violated 'Net Neutrality' in 2007

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS KILLING THE UNCANNY VALLEY AND OUR GRASP ON REALITY

From Wired.com (Dec. 16):

There’s a revolution afoot, and you will know it by the stripes.

Earlier this year, a group of Berkeley researchers released a pair of videos. In one, a horse trots behind a chain link fence. In the second video, the horse is suddenly sporting a zebra’s black-and-white pattern. The execution isn’t flawless, but the stripes fit the horse so neatly that it throws the equine family tree into chaos.

Turning a horse into a zebra is a nice stunt, but that’s not all it is. It is also a sign of the growing power of machine learning algorithms to rewrite reality. Other tinkerers, for example, have used the zebrafication tool to turn shots of black bears into believable photos of pandas, apples into oranges, and cats into dogs. A Redditor used a different machine learning algorithm to edit porn videos to feature the faces of celebrities. At a new startup called Lyrebird, machine learning experts are synthesizing convincing audio from one-minute samples of a person’s voice. And the engineers developing Adobe’s artificial intelligence platform, called Sensei, are infusing machine learning into a variety of groundbreaking video, photo, and audio editing tools. These projects are wildly different in origin and intent, yet they have one thing in common: They are producing artificial scenes and sounds that look stunningly close to actual footage of the physical world. Unlike earlier experiments with AI-generated media, these look and sound real.

The technologies underlying this shift will soon push us into new creative realms, amplifying the capabilities of today’s artists and elevating amateurs to the level of seasoned pros. We will search for new definitions of creativity that extend the umbrella to the output of machines. But this boom will have a dark side, too. Some AI-generated content will be used to deceive, kicking off fears of an avalanche of algorithmic fake news. Old debates about whether an image was doctored will give way to new ones about the pedigree of all kinds of content, including text. You’ll find yourself wondering, if you haven’t yet: What role did humans play, if any, in the creation of that album/TV series/clickbait article?

A world awash in AI-generated content is a classic case of a utopia that is also a dystopia. It’s messy, it’s beautiful, and it’s already here.

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Now the algorithms powering style transfer are gaining precision, signalling the end of the Uncanny Valley—the sense of unease that realistic computer-generated humans typically elicit. [read more]

Or how about this: An algorithm that takes phonemes of an book author’s voice and uses it to read a book he/she wrote. Book publishers wouldn’t need to hire people to read an author’s book for an audiobook if the author doesn’t want to do it the publisher could just run a voice-bot if you will.

Don’t like that example? How about this: A similar algorithm imitates a dead singer’s voice to sing songs. Of course you would need another algorithm to write the songs in the style of the singer. Think of an Elvis-bot, or John Lennon-bot. The world could have a virtual Beatles group. Who knows. Welcome to the brave new world.

This Explains Man's Fatal Attraction to Communism

From FEE.org (Dec. 4):

“Dan hears the screaming, rushes in, wrestles Alex into the bathtub, and seemingly drowns her. She suddenly emerges from the water, swinging the knife.” (Wikipedia summary of the 1987 movie, Fatal Attraction)

Marxism is like Alex in the movie Fatal Attraction. We thought it was dead as an ideology, but it keeps returning, swinging its hammer and sickle.

Bernie Sanders ran as a socialist and got much of the Democratic vote. A 2016 Harvard Youth Poll found that 51 percent of millennials rejected capitalism. A 2016 poll by YouGov found that favorable views of capitalism were 47 percent among Generation Z; 42 percent among Millennials; and 45 percent among Generation X.

Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, the center of American capitalism, has recently complained that “private property rights” limit his ability to plan for New York. Yet he has just won a second term.

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Try. Fail. Repeat.

Communism’s failures are legion and well known. In the 20th century, Communist regimes killed about 100 million people: 20 million in Russia, 65 million in China, and the rest from a miscellany of countries including Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea and others. North Korea is a failed country; South Korea is rich and prosperous. Similarly, East Germany was poor, and West Germany highly economically successful. Cuba is still poor. China’s economy has been growing as the Marxist influence has declined.

But young people do not know this or ignore it. After all, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. For those born after about 1985, this is all ancient history. North Korea remains a failure, but that is nothing new if it is even known. The Cold War is before millennials’ time, and the fall of the Wall is something in a history book.

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Folk Economics

Why do so many advocate a system which has failed whenever it has been tried? Communism is based on primitive economic thinking, what has been called “folk economics.” That is, Marxism appeals to those untrained in economics because it is consistent with our primitive beliefs about economics. This is ironic because Marx called his system “scientific socialism,” when in fact it is consistent with a pre-scientific view of the economy.

Our intuitions about economics evolved in the long period called the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness when our ancestors were largely hunter-gatherers. During this period, societies were small, approximately 200 people or fewer; there was virtually no technological progress or economic growth, and the world was zero-sum. Because societies were mobile, there was little capital investment. This entire set of beliefs is exactly consistent with Marxism and its child, socialism.

One of the tenets of folk economics is that the world is largely zero-sum – economic values do not change in response to changes in prices. I have come to believe that this issue – zero-sum thinking – is responsible for most of the major fallacies in economic policy, such as tariffs and immigration restriction. One of the fundamental policies of Marxism is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Both halves of this proposal are based on zero-sum thinking. They ignore that output depends on incentives as well as ability and needs depend on prices as well as desires.

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Another pillar of folk economics is that labor is the only source of value. This was true when our minds were evolving and there was relatively little capital but certainly is not true now. But the labor theory of value is part of communism. Folk economics does not understand invisible hand theories of social organization, and so communism requires central planning.

While these primitive views are part of our evolved mental structure, it is certainly possible to learn that they are false. But the modern view of economics is not a natural way of thinking. Think of flat earth thinking: our intuition is that the earth is flat, but we can learn that it is not. [read more]

Communism like socialism is regressive not progressive. The far-Left believes the later of course.

Here is another article about communism from Walter E. Williams: Fascism and Communism.

5 Myths About Tax Reform, and Why They’re Wrong

From The Daily Signal.com (Dec. 14):

The bottom line is that taxpayers across America can expect a tax cut. The bill would lower tax rates for individuals and businesses, double the standard deduction, and significantly increase the child tax credit.

The bill is also pro-growth and pro-American worker. The economy could grow to be almost 3 percent larger at the end of 10 years. That translates to more than $4,000 dollars per household, per year. American families could finally get a real raise.

Americans deserve to know the truth about the proposed tax reform packages. There are several myths going around about what the proposed plan would do.

Here are a few of them, and why they’re wrong.

Myth 1: This is just a tax cut for the rich, and it will actually raise taxes for everyone else.

The truth is in fact the opposite. The Senate tax bill increases the amount of taxes paid by the rich and, according to the liberal Tax Policy Center, 93 percent of taxpayers would see a tax cut or no change in 2019. It found similar results for the House bill.

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Myth 2: Repealing the individual mandate will raise taxes on the poor, raise insurance premiums, and kill 10,000 people a year.

Only in Washington can removing a tax penalty be considered a tax increase.

Tax reform will likely repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, which imposes a tax penalty anywhere from $695 to upward of $10,000 for not purchasing the type of health insurance mandated by the federal government.

Depending on income and available health insurance options, the federally mandated health insurance comes with subsidies paid to the insurance company that can range from no more than a few dollars to over $12,000 a year per individual, and upward of $20,000 per year for families.

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Myth 3: Corporations and their rich owners will receive a huge windfall.

Politicians who don’t want tax reform claim that cutting taxes for business will only help the rich.

Despite the name—“corporate” tax reform—the burden of the corporate income tax falls almost entirely on workers in the form of lower wages. Americans are undoubtedly skeptical about this claim, but the realities on the ground are actually quite simple.

When business taxes go down, workers’ wages go up.

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Myth 4: Tax reform will be bad for seniors.

Retirees may be the most concerned about what tax reform will mean for them, as most rely on relatively fixed incomes.

But, the proposed reforms are good news for retirees. For the most part, they would be less affected than other Americans, as the proposed reforms would not change the way Social Security and investment income are taxed.

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Myth 5: Tax reform won’t grow the economy, it will only add to the debt.

Congress rightly allowed the tax reform bill to decrease revenues over 10 years by $1.5 trillion—about 3.5 percent of projected revenue. But such “static” budget scores provide zero useful information about how the reform will actually affect the deficit.

Properly designed tax reform will lead to a larger economy and higher wages. Each of these economic benefits can result in more tax revenue. [read more]

Good analysis. The tax bill is probably not the best bill, but it is not the worse either. Any tax cut is better than no tax cut. The Dems would say otherwise. To them cutting taxes and regulations is the end of days.

Other articles on tax cuts from FEE.org:

• Why Cutting the US Corporate Tax Rate Is Good Foreign Policy
• No, Tax Cuts Don't Kill People

What Should Trump's National Security Strategy Look Like?

From National Interest.org (December 10, 2017):

In that respect, the strategy will be a valuable document. There is a “serious” Trump. The president gets really serious when making big decisions that affect the freedom, security and prosperity of Americans. The expectation is that Trump would not sign off on the strategy unless it comports exactly with how he intends to use the instruments of national power. Given that expectation, this is not a document to ignore.

Here is what the strategy won’t be. It won’t be just a laundry list of aspirational wants. That’s not Trump. He wants tangible deliverables. On the other hand, don’t expect a step-by-step list of everything the administration plans to do everywhere. That’s not Trump either. He doesn’t like telegraphing every move.

Further, the Trumpian approach to strategy doesn’t appear linear. The administration knows where it wants to go. It makes opening moves and then keeps its options open—while trying to steer action and policies in the same general direction.

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Here are five elements to look for when trying to determine if the National Security Strategy is suitable, feasible, and pointing American security policy in the right direction.

1 - Focus on the big three—Asia, Middle East, and Europe. The rage today is all North Korea and Iran, but proliferation issues are a reflection of the larger strategic competitions driving geopolitics.

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2 - Forward presence. America can’t lead leaning back on its heels. Today’s bad boy list hasn’t changed much since the eras of George W. Bush or Barack Obama. It’s still topped with North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, transnational Islamist terrorism and the transnational criminal networks (destabilizing Latin America and elsewhere).

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3 - Peace through strength. A strong national security strategy is a useless piece of paper unless the administration can build and sustain a military force that global power needs to be a global power. The administration needs to do that by squaring the circle—growing defense funding and the economy at the same time without driving the country deeper into debt.

4 - Friends and Allies. The White House has already said many times that “America First” doesn’t mean “America alone.” Indeed, bringing regional stability to key parts of the world requires friends and allies more than ever. The strategy has to reflect that priority—and direct that the policy be put into practice.

5 - The Fifth Dimension. No doubt the strategy will have something to say about how evolving technologies—from artificial intelligence to digital social networks—are reshaping the national security environment. But what is really key is not the technologies themselves but how they impact our most critical endeavors. America’s most critical advantage is its capacity to navigate freely across all the commons—land, sea, space, air and cyberspace. They are the pathways of economic development, the public square of freedom, and territory critical to our security. As technologies evolve, America and its friends and allies must retain the freedom and surety to operate in these commons. [read more]

Is Health Care a Human Right?

From FEE.org (Nov. 22):

Is there a right to health care? Most libertarians and classical liberals would say “no,” and most progressives are shocked by that answer. For progressives, nothing could be more obvious than that everyone deserves access to health care regardless of their ability to pay. Distributing medical care based on wealth is for dystopian science fiction stories, where the underclass gets back-alley doctors and the ruling class gets sleek, modern hospitals. It doesn’t belong in a civilized society.

Thus progressives ask, how can libertarians be so heartless as to not believe in a right to health care?

In this essay, I will try to answer that question. While I might not convince you that there isn’t a right to health care, I hope to at least convey that, whatever a “right” to health care is, it is something fundamentally different from the sort of thing we usually call a “right”—so different, in fact, that we probably shouldn’t be using the same word.

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What We Mean When We Say, "Rights"

In October 2017, the National Health Service, Great Britain’s single-payer, socialized healthcare provider, announced that smokers and the obese would be banned from non-urgent surgery indefinitely. According to the Telegraph:

[T]he new rules, drawn up by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Hertfordshire, say that obese patients “will not get non-urgent surgery until they reduce their weight”…unless the circumstances are exceptional.

The criteria also mean smokers will only be referred for operations if they have stopped smoking for at least eight weeks, with such patients breathalysed before referral.

The policy change understandably received significant criticism and brings to the fore the true meaning of “right” to health care.

What is a right? Even though “rights talk” permeates our political conversations, most people have never tried to define a right. Sometimes the term is used as a synonym for “important”—thus we hear about a right to clean water, shelter, education, and healthcare, all of which are undoubtedly important.

Yet having a “right” to something means more than that. Saying something is a “right” describes a relationship between individuals. It makes us think about our obligations to each other and the government’s obligations to its citizens. Rather than focusing on what we have rights to, I’d like to focus on the relationships that a “right” creates and the distinction between positive and negative rights.

Rights describe a relationship between at least two people: a rightholder and a duty-holder. If someone has a right, others have a corollary duty. They’re inextricably linked; two sides of the same coin.

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The nature of the corollary duty is what distinguishes positive rights from negative ones. For negative rights, the corollary duty is an omission—that is, duty-holders are required to refrain from doing something, e.g. don’t steal, don’t punch people, don’t kill. For a positive right, the corollary duty is a duty of action—that is, duty-holders are required to affirmatively act, e.g. provide food, provide health care, or provide resources for such things. Understanding this technical, but crucial, difference between positive and negative rights can help us identify four qualities that make them categorically different.

Negative Rights are Absolute; Positive Rights Are Not

Negative rights can be enjoyed absolutely in a way positive rights cannot. Assuming no one is killing you (I hope), currently, you, the reader, are fully and absolutely enjoying your negative right to life. Similarly, if no one is stealing from you, assaulting you, or otherwise violating your body or your property then you are absolutely enjoying your negative rights to not be stolen from, assaulted, etc., and everyone else is absolutely fulfilling their negative duties.

Can positive rights can be enjoyed absolutely? It’s difficult to imagine how. If there is a positive right to health care, how much health care does that entail? When has the positive duty been fulfilled? If even one person enjoyed an absolute, positive right to health care, then, at least theoretically, every duty-holder would have to devote all of their time and resources to keep the rightholder alive for even one extra day. But that’s ridiculous, and no one is claiming that. If not, however, then what are they claiming? [read more]

The author of the article continues with the other three differences between negative and positive rights:

• Negative Rights are Scalable; Positive Rights Are Not
• Negative Rights Can Easily Exist Together; Positive Rights Cannot
• Negative Duties are Universally Shared; Positive Duties are Not

In a way the Ten Commandments are negative rights.

Google's AI Built Its Own AI That Outperforms Any Made by Humans

From Futurism.com (Dec. 1):

In May 2017, researchers at Google Brain announced the creation of AutoML, an artificial intelligence (AI) that’s capable of generating its own AIs. More recently, they decided to present AutoML with its biggest challenge to date, and the AI that can build AI created a “child” that outperformed all of its human-made counterparts.

The Google researchers automated the design of machine learning models using an approach called reinforcement learning. AutoML acts as a controller neural network that develops a child AI network for a specific task. For this particular child AI, which the researchers called NASNet, the task was recognizing objects — people, cars, traffic lights, handbags, backpacks, etc. — in a video in real-time.

AutoML would evaluate NASNet’s performance and use that information to improve its child AI, repeating the process thousands of times. When tested on the ImageNet image classification and COCO object detection data sets, which the Google researchers call “two of the most respected large-scale academic data sets in computer vision,” NASNet outperformed all other computer vision systems.  [read more]

AI “breeding” other AIs? Not sure about that. Isn’t that how the Terminator movie started? Or was it the Matrix movie? Hmmm.

H/T: Science Alert.com.

Cult leaders like Charles Manson exploit this basic psychological need

From Lou Manza on PopSci.com (Nov. 21):

Charles Manson, who died November 19, famously attracted a coterie of men and women to do his bidding, which included committing a string of murders in the late-1960s.

Manson is undoubtedly a fascinating figure with a complicated life story. But as someone who studies human cognition, I’m more interested in the members of the Manson “family” like Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel, and how they become drawn to leaders of cult-like organizations in the first place.

The illusion of comfort

Emotional comfort is central to the allure of cults.

California Institute of Technology psychologist Jon-Patrik Pedersen, in attempting to explain why people are drawn to cults, has argued that the human longing for comfort leads us to seek out people or things that can soothe our fears and anxieties.

In and of itself, the urge to quiet internal demons is not a negative trait. I’d argue that, to the contrary, it’s an effective adaptation that allows us to cope with the stressors, big and small, that bombard us on a regular basis.

However, cult leaders meet this need by making promises that are virtually unattainable—and not typically found anywhere else in society. This, according Pedersen, could include “complete financial security, constant peace of mind, perfect health, and eternal life.”

Beyond exploiting human desire for emotional comfort, cult leaders don’t always have the best intentions when it comes to the mental health of their followers.

Psychiatrist Mark Banschick has pointed out that cult leaders employ mind and behavioral control techniques that are focused on severing followers’ connections to the outside world.

These methods can actually deepen members’ existing emotional insecurities, while encouraging them to become completely reliant on their cult for all their physical and emotional needs.

Physical and psychological isolation can result, which actually exacerbate many of the problems, like anxiety and depression, that attract people to the cult in the first place.

The anxiety and depression can become so overwhelming and feel so insurmountable that the followers feel trapped. [read more]

A lot of dictators would like to be cult leaders. Hitler was close to being one. Socialism also gives the illusion of comfort too. Big Gov will take care of you. So, don’t worry.

5 Reasons Why We Need Principles, Not Policies

From James Walpole on FEE.org (Nov. 21):

In part one of this argument, I explored how the methodology of political policy-making – cost/benefit analysis – fails to work at large scale. TLDR? Societies are much too complex for it to be easy or even possible to know the true costs and benefits of a rule.

Policy comes from limited individuals with limited information. Policy mandates large, complex solutions to large, complex problems. The problem lies in that mismatch.

There is a large margin of error with policy, precisely because it hits or misses on the basis of a small, time-bound data set. The more specific the policy recommendations, the more things can go wrong.

Countering the Knowledge Problem

Principles counter the knowledge problem of policymaking. They are short, pithy ground rules for engaging with a wide variety of situations. They do not suggest specific actions, but they do suggest specific kinds of actions.

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Let me break down some of these reasons principles win as starting points and guideposts in solving a problem like health care provision.

1. Principles Are Clear

Principles like “do no harm” or “protect life” are pretty straightforward. It’s not obvious exactly how to best implement them (more on that later). But as starting points and intentions, they’re hard to mistake for anything else.

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2. Principles Are Usually Subtractions, Not Additions

Removing negative courses of action is usually much easier than finding the exact right way to act. Fortunately, principles typically tell you not what to do, but what not to do.

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3. Principles Are Pluralistic

Principles are broad. They can allow for different interpretations without conflicting interpretations.

“It’s good for humans to be healthy and alive” does require real thinking and work about how to provide better healthcare. But unlike a policy recommendation, it allows for an unlimited number of ways to reach that goal. Think we need a chain of small drive-through pharmacies? Cool. Go start it. Think we need more insurance options with fewer insurance oligopolies? Por que no las dos?

4. Principles Distill Collective Wisdom

Principles like “don’t use violence” distill the collected experiences, memories, and insights of hundreds of generations of human beings. Principles are deliberately simple because they retain the core insight from all of those memories, experiences, and insights. Time and repeated use are very good at shaving off the bullshit from principles. Fresh policy recommendations typically have little collective wisdom behind them.

5. Principles Are Stable

You can trust that principles aren’t going anywhere. They’re very simple observations that have taken humans a very long time to learn. They describe human nature, not the human situation of the moment, not the news, and not the political hysteria of the day.

This argument still needs some fleshing out. I get it. But I think it’s clear that if we’re going to say anything at all about a society as complex as ours, we have to start at principles long before we touch policy.

Principles will never give us the final answers, or the one-size-fits-all answers that policymaker types love. But they will help us avoid the simple mistakes of arrogance, short-term thinking, or contradictory rulemaking.  [read more]

Principles also define a person—which is helpful when voting for a candidate. If a person doesn’t have principles be weary of him/her and it’s not a good idea to put him/her in power.

Physicists Just Quantum Entangled Two Silicon Chips That Can Share Information

From Science Alert.com (Nov. 18):

In the science of quantum communication, the challenge has always been prolonging the entangled state that the particles are in.

As quantum information is carried by these entangled particles, the length of time the entanglement is sustained affects the distance that the information can travel.

Quantum communication systems do this using direct optical-fiber connections, which are rather limited because the way that fibers absorb light can disrupt the entanglement needed to carry quantum information.

Building a quantum internet, which is essentially a network of quantum entangled routers linked by fiber that can store quantum information, requires a function of routers that can store and send entangled particles.

A team of researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria, led by Ralf Riedinger, supposedly built such a router.

This device is a nanomachine capable of receiving and storing quantum information sent through ordinary fiber optic cables. [read more]

Cool!

6 Key Elements in Understanding the Tangled Uranium One Scandal

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 16):

Two House committees are investigating the tangled deal involving Russia, its acquiring of U.S. uranium, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. But the multiple layers that lawmakers, and potentially a special counsel, will explore take some unpacking.

The probe addresses unanswered questions about the Uranium One mining company’s ties to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit founded by the former president, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

In a 2010 deal approved by a committee including Hillary Clinton and eight other members of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, a Kremlin-connected entity obtained 20 percent of America’s uranium production by acquiring Canada-based Uranium One.

Although a joint investigation by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is just getting under way, many congressional Republicans already are calling for a special counsel to look into the facts.

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Here are six major elements to the scandal now known as Uranium One.

1. What Is the Deal, and Who Approved It?

Uranium One announced in June 2010 it was selling a majority of the mining company to ARMZ, part of Rosatom, a Russian-owned nuclear energy company. Promoters of the Russian company were involved in a $500,000 speaking engagement for Bill Clinton in Moscow.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a panel charged with approving any merger where national security questions emerge, approved the deal in October 2010.

National security came up in this case because uranium is the primary fuel for nuclear energy and can be used either to make weapons or produce electricity.

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Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by ranking member Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, warned against the sale in an October 2010 letter to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, arguing:

The transaction could give Moscow control of up to 20 percent of the U.S. national uranium extraction capability and a controlling interest in one of the country’s largest uranium mining sites. … Russia’s record of transferring dangerous materials and technologies to rogue regimes, such as those in Iran and Syria, is very troubling.

2. What’s All This About Racketeering?

Most recently, The Hill news organization reported the foreign investment panel of Obama administration officials charged with approving the Russia-backed purchase of U.S. uranium resources was not made aware of an in-depth FBI criminal investigation related to Uranium One.

“I would hope the board and decisionmakers are as aware as possible of all factors, so they would know what they are voting on,” Ron Hosko, a former assistant director at the FBI, told The Daily Signal this week in a phone interview.

The FBI investigation appeared to be quite broad, The Hill reported that it found “substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering designed to grow [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”

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3. How Is the Clinton Foundation Involved?

Conservative author Peter Schweizer’s 2016 book “Clinton Cash,” as well as The New York Times, reported in April 2015 that the Clinton Foundation got millions from investors in Uranium One both before and after the government approved the deal, and the foundation didn’t disclose those donations.

The Clinton Foundation is a 20-year-old nonprofit charitable organization run by the former president along with his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea.

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4. What’s the Case for a Special Counsel Probe?

Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee during testimony Tuesday that the Justice Department is reviewing requests from Congress to name a special counsel to investigate Uranium One and other legal questions surrounding Hillary Clinton.

However, the attorney general insisted a legal process exists to determine whether an independent investigator is needed.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for one, is losing patience.

“I have been calling for three and a half months for an investigation on Uranium One and the Obama-Clinton era scandals, and have now reached the point that I am done with the DOJ’s smoke and mirrors,” Gaetz said in a written statement Thursday. “The time has come for Jeff Sessions to name a special counsel and get answers for the American people, or step down from his position as the attorney general.”

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5. Does a National Security Threat Exist?

Uranium, as a nuclear fuel, could be weaponized. However, under the rules of the deal, the Uranium One merger with the Kremlin-backed company Rosatom may not pose a national security threat, based on what the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stated.

At the time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said of two Uranium One facilities in Wyoming that “no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.”

In June 2015, the nuclear commission determined that Uranium One could export uranium from the Wyoming sites to Canada. The agency explained that Canada, where the mining company is headquartered, must obtain U.S. government approval to ship U.S. uranium to any country other than the United States.

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6. What About the Congressional Probes?

In late October, the two House committees announced plans to investigate.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the inquiry would focus on:

… regulatory approvals related to the U.S. uranium industry, foreign donations seeking to curry favor and influence with U.S. officials, whether a federal nuclear bribery probe developed evidence of wrongdoing connected to the Uranium One mining company, and Department of Justice criminal and counterintelligence investigations into bribery, extortion, and other related matters connected to Russian acquisition of U.S. uranium.

The two committees sent letters Tuesday to the FBI, the Treasury Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department.  [read more]

This is your real collusion.