|  |  |  | | | | | Dilbert.com Blog | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Suppose a healthcare insurance company in the United States offered a steeply discounted price with one big catch: Customers would need to maintain a healthy lifestyle and prove it on a regular basis. Would people sign up?
I'm assuming there are scientific ways to determine if a patient smokes cigarettes, abuses substances, or has a poor diet. (Blood tests?) And let's say there's a GPS tracking watch that customers could use to prove they were at their gyms three times a week, or biking, or playing tennis. Or perhaps there's a pedometer to track your running. And let's say you don't need to wear the tracking watch or the pedometer unless you are heading to your workout.
Let's not get bogged down in how we could monitor a healthy lifestyle. I think it's doable. The question is whether people would give up privacy in order to get direct cash benefits in lower healthcare costs. I think you could cut health insurance costs by a third or more for a group of people with proven healthy lifestyles.
Obviously the people who already have healthy lifestyles would sign up first. And when enough of the healthy people move to the discounted healthcare system it would drive up prices for the relatively unhealthy people who remain in other systems, thus increasing everyone's financial incentive to lead healthier lives.
As it stands now, the people who make healthy lifestyle choices are subsidizing the healthcare costs of the people who make unhealthy choices. You might think good health is enough of a reward to cause people to make healthy choices, but evidently it isn't. A good dose of financial incentive might help.
Obviously a system such as this would be too Big Brotherish if it were mandatory. But I'm assuming a disruptive small company could enter the health insurance field and specialize in insuring only the people who don't mind having their healthy lifestyles monitored. The free market would do the rest.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I'm wondering if supporters of a strict interpretation of States Rights in the U.S. are anti-science. In other words, if you believe a state can make better decisions for its residents than the federal government, what evidence do you have to support that view? Is it possible to compare the performance of a state against the performance of the federal government for the topics that are relevant to the issue of States Rights? Probably not. In that case, how does a rational person form an opinion on States Rights?
I understand the common sense argument in favor of States Rights. If a state is different from the rest of the country in a particular way, the state can design laws that fit its circumstances and desires without federal interference. It makes sense when I write it down, but where's the data to back up this assumed advantage of state decision-making? And is there no downside, such as a higher likelihood of corruption on the state level?
I live in California. If you put me in a room with one other resident of California and one resident from another state, both selected randomly, which one would I have more in common with? I have no idea.
And how well do people judge what is good for them? If most of the residents of one state want Plan A, and the residents of another state want Plan B, how do we know for sure that they wouldn't both be better off with one plan or the other? There's no objective way to know.
A lot has changed since the Constitution of the United States was written. A system that made sense when the union was brittle (see Civil War), and untested, and lightly populated, might not make sense in the age of the Internet.
It seems to me that the burden of proof is never on the people who are enjoying the status quo. The people who want change have the burden of demonstrating the advantage of their proposed plan. So let's do that today. If you have an argument supporting a stronger version of States Rights than we typically experience in the United States today, what is your argument?
And let's ignore for today the question of what the Founding Fathers intended, and what the Constitution actually says. I'm just asking what makes sense today.
Update: Here are a few comments about your comments:
1. The federal government is not prohibited from testing ideas in particular places before deciding on a wider roll out. We don't need fifty test labs for every topic, especially since many of the tests will fail. And left to their own devices, states will stick with their own failed systems for too long.
2. States would be better than the federal government in matching laws and budgets to the specific demands of its citizens, but what evidence do we have that people demand the right things? If one state has dumber voters than average, for example, are they better off getting what they ask for, or better off doing what the larger country decides makes sense?
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Did you hear about the dog that can tell if you have cancer by sniffing your breath? It's true. Apparently the dog can pick up a slight chemical signature for lung cancer.
This story made me sad because I spent years training my dog to detect bad breath by sniffing my ass. That stupid cancer dog makes my accomplishment seem less important. But detecting bad breath the way I trained Snickers to do it is a lot harder, so I still own that. And the good news is that according to Snickers, my breath is always minty fresh. Yours is okay too; that's how good she is.
I also taught Snickers to detect the Elephant Man disease. The "all clear" signal involves humping the patient's leg. Snickers checks out every visitor to the house. So far, knock on wood, everyone who has ever come to the house is clear. And that's good on two levels, because I taught Snickers to attack if she detects the disease. I'm not being cruel; I just didn't want Snickers' signal to be something subtle that I might miss, and I hate barking.
If Snickers ever detects Elephant Man disease, it will be sad because there's no cure. But if a patient decides to travel somewhere for plastic surgery, the least I can do is offer to help pack his trunk. Seriously, that's literally the least I can do. Just above that is not being a douche bag, and I can't always pull that off.
Meanwhile, my cat has trained me to detect obesity in cats. The signal is that my spine separates in four places when I try to lift her off the couch. If I lose sensation below the waist, I'll know I have at least one spinal gap. I'm not entirely sure how I'll know if I have the other three. I might have to rethink the whole system. But I refuse to sniff her ass. That's just one of the reasons I could never be a veterinarian.
You might not respect all of my choices, but I don't care because I'm comfortable in my own skin. And that's good news for my neighbor who is about my size and doesn't get many visitors. Perhaps I've said too much.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I was in San Francisco the other day and it reminded me of the eight years I lived there after college. It also reminded me how frickin' ugly that place is. It is grey on grey, punctuated with street people, traffic, and urine-colored light. Yeah, yeah, it has a few nice parts, mostly when you're looking away from the city itself, toward the bay or the ocean. But in general, it's an ugly, ugly place, especially if you're not in one of the expensive neighborhoods.
Ooh, look at the Victorian house! I'll admit those are interesting to look at, sort of like a hooker's foot after a pedicure. And the Transamerica Pyramid does evoke the deep emotional connection of "Hey, it's a tall thing." But that's as far as it goes, unless it rains, in which case the city is ugly and miserable at the same time.
I have many memories of San Francisco. There was the time I got mugged by a bum wielding a butcher knife and I used my hypnosis training to get away. And there was the time I got mugged by a guy with a handgun and I used hypnosis to convince him to take only two dollars. And there was the time a guy put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger just to see my reaction. (It wasn't loaded. My reaction was "priceless.") There was the time I came home to find my apartment door unlocked and everything valuable missing. There was the time I got robbed at gunpoint at my job in the city as a bank teller, and the other time I got robbed the same way. There was the time my car stereo got stolen, and the other time it was stolen, and the other time it was stolen. And so on.
Eventually I got a job in the beautiful East Bay town of San Ramon, at the phone company's headquarters. I drove there before sunrise each weekday morning and spent the entire day in a grey, fabric-covered box. The only visual stimulation, if you can call it that, was middle-aged employees who weren't entirely sure if they were alive or already in Hell. Then I'd drive home to San Francisco in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
My point is that for years I experienced a beauty-free existence. You learn to live without beauty, and you usually don't miss it in any given moment. But I think it grinds on you over time. I assume humans are hardwired by evolution to appreciate beauty, presumably because beauty is a marker for where the food is, and where the good hiding places are, and who the healthiest mates might be.
All of this made me wonder if there's a beauty analogy to music. Music is to the ears as beauty is to the eyes. We have iPods and other music devices to fill our ears with wonderful music. Could we invent a system to give us our daily beauty fix? It's an untapped market.
My idea is to create a website that is nothing but a slideshow of beautiful images. Over time, a user could train the site to deliver more of the images he prefers and fewer of the ones he doesn't. The Internet is adding more beautiful images every day, and most are available to search engines. I would assume you could automate the process of finding new images to add to the slideshow. The bad choices would be quickly deselected by users.
How much would it boost your mood if you could view high definition images of beauty for twenty minutes every day, at your computer or even your smartphone? Would it have a measurable impact on your health? I think it would.
The impact of a beauty fix might be more subtle than the immediate buzz you get from music, and I assume that's why the idea hasn't already become ubiquitous. We already have websites that have slideshows of cute animals, or expensive real estate, and so on. But I think the big win is mixing images from lots of different topics to keep your brain engaged. We have the notes of beauty but not the arrangements and songs.
This is the part where you tell me someone already did it.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone’s beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content. ----------------------
Is it my imagination, or has the liberal wing of the media's attacks on conservatives turned into a bunch of cheap gotchas involving nitpicked analogies and quotes taken out of context? Perhaps it has always been this way and I never noticed until this year. Or maybe I'm spending too much time reading The Huffington Post. Maybe you can help me sort this out.
Before I continue, I should note that my own views don't map closely to either the liberal or conservative camps. So I don't have a poodle in the fight. I'm just observing a trend.
Consider Rick Perry. He called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme." As analogies go, that's a good one. I believe I have used it myself. It's a colorful way of saying the math doesn't work well when the population of retired people greatly increases and the number of workers funding Social Security does not. Literally no one on Earth disagrees with the central point of Perry's analogy. But I keep seeing Perry's Ponzi scheme quote reported as if it were some sort of idiot misunderstanding or conspiracy theory or foreshadowing of evil. WTF?
I've never seen more vicious, cheap attacks on a candidate than I've seen leveled at Michelle Bachmann. Recently she made a glancing reference to a well-known joke/parable about God using natural disasters to get the attention of humans. When I read Bachmann's quote, I understood her generic point that politicians need to open their eyes to both the problems and the solutions in front of them. The liberal media reported the quote as if a crazy street person was yelling that God sent floods as a message.
I think it's entirely fair to question candidates' beliefs in heaven, and magic, and their abilities to interpret the mind of God. Perry and Bachmann have religious views that overlap with the majority of Americans. But is it really news when a Christian uses a creative God reference in a speech?
Consider conservative Ben Stein. He famously argued that the rape allegations against Strauss-Kahn were worthy of doubt based on the profile of the accused, and that the presumption of innocence was appropriate. No one, including the police and prosecutors, disagrees with Stein's point that Strauss-Kahn doesn't fit the profile of a LIKELY hotel maid rapist. And no one disagrees with the principle that accused people should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, as hard as that sometimes is. But the liberal media distorted Stein's point about statistical likelihood (which is arguably within Stein's field of expertise: economics) into the ridiculous idea that economists never rape. Then the media crucified Stein for being, by their own distorted implication, a crazy supporter of rich people who rape hotel maids. WTF?
For the record, I am totally opposed to rich people raping hotel maids. But only two people in the world know for sure what happened in the Strauss-Kahn case. The rest of us are just guessing based on our impressions of likelihood. Stein's article might have gone over better if he had acknowledged that, generally speaking, false accusations of rape are far less common than genuine ones, and that too has to figure into the statistical mix. But is it a gotcha when someone fails to mention the obvious?
Consider Mitt Romney's quote in the context of taxes that corporations are people too. That quote was reported as if Romney is so out of touch with ordinary humans that he doesn't know the difference between an artificial legal structure and a living person. Only a robot could say such a thing! But of course his point is one that 100% of real humans agree with: Corporate profits flow into the pockets of employees and shareholders. I remember a time when a gaffe meant you were wrong. But apparently being 100% right isn't a defense if you're also a conservative.
Yeah, yeah, I know: Conservatives have been saying vicious and untrue things about liberals forever. And perhaps conservatives are still way ahead in that game. My only point is that it seems to me the liberal wing of the media has ratcheted up their fake gotcha game on conservatives to a new level. Am I wrong about that?
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Update at bottom.
I'm trying to contact my 84-year old Dad who lives in Windham NY, the town apparently hit hardest by Irene's flooding. The Main Street is described as "wiped out." This is the town in which I grew up.
My father lives alone on a hill above where the flooding is, so he wouldn't be in immediate danger from the high water. But my mother passed away a few months ago and he's living alone. Phones are out and my sister can't reach him by car. If you know anyone who knows anyone on dry land above Windham, and you can check on Paul Adams (his location is universally known -- small town) I would appreciate that. Please let me know by email to dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com. I'll be checking regularly.
Thank you.
[Update: My Dad is confirmed to be okay and in his house. An old classmate of mine saw this post and asked her parents to check on him. Another classmate was less lucky. His childhood home, with his mother in it, got swept away by the flood, and she is still missing.]
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I have a rule of thumb when it comes to conspiracy theories. If the theory involves aliens or government competence - such as keeping a secret for years - I don't believe the story. But if the conspiracy involves money, I generally believe it.
Here I'm using the term "conspiracy" loosely. For example, I don't think phone companies had meetings with their competitors in which they all agreed to be part of a confusopoly to avoid competing on price. I think everyone simply understands that price wars are bad for business, and they act rationally to avoid them. It's a conspiracy in effect, without the secret meetings.
This brings me to the question of banks. When I was a kid, we could put our money in savings accounts and earn 5% a year. That's how average citizens saved. Today, with interest rates so low, your bank doesn't really pay you anything. You simply give them your money and they use it to make more money for themselves. Arguably, they aren't even keeping your money especially safe, given the risk of bank default.
And so the average citizen has looked around in recent years for a better deal. Thanks to falling real estate values, discount stock brokers, and company 401K plans, the average person waded into the stock market. That allowed the titans of the investment world to grab the little investor by his ankles and shake until his pockets were half empty. How did they do that?
The conspiracy theory is that most of the market-wide gyrations we've seen in recent years are engineered by powerful investors. Stocks run up 10%, and the little investors pile in, buying stocks at high prices from the market movers who are getting out at the top. At that point, the titans of the finance world engineer a 10-20% drop in the market, thus giving the rich another buying opportunity. Repeat.
Here again, the conspiracy doesn't require anyone to hold secret meetings and decide who will do what. All you need for this system to work is for the big guys to be able to execute their trades faster than small investors, which we know is the case, and for the big investors to have faster communication with each other than small investors have with any other investors, which I assume is also the case. In other words, JPMorgan Chase knows what Goldman Sachs is doing, and vice versa, before CNBC reports it to you.
Some big investors also have the advantage of illegal insider information, and better/faster information about the business world in general, but that's not what I'm talking about here. That sort of information helps forecast legitimate moves in stock prices. I'm talking about the totally artificial gyrations we have seen all summer. I believe those are mostly the result of a system rigged against small investors.
And don't forget the financial advisors and brokers who take commissions from the small investors and benefit from the churn. And don't forget the media that needs to fan small fires into bigger ones to attract eyeballs. The entire system is designed to create small and continuous scares along with the occasional fear of missing out on big moves to the upside.
Let me put this to you another way: If the giants of finance thought they were personally better off with a stock market that didn't gyrate wildly, they would figure out a way to calm it down. Do you doubt that?
Notice also that small investors have moved away from investing in individual companies and toward ETFs and index funds. That means big investors need to manipulate entire markets to scare investors as opposed to manipulating individual companies. That's consistent with what we're seeing.
I think the rich were safe when the average citizen had a clear path to upward mobility. He could get a nice job with a pension, buy a home that appreciated, put some cash in a savings account and wait for compound interest to do its thing. The little guy didn't hate the rich so much when he thought he had a chance of joining the club, or at least moving in that direction. That all changed. Today, there's even a debate about whether it makes financial sense to go to college.
Notice that the rich have cleverly shifted the blame to Congress. The problem, they hope you believe, is all of the danged government spending and taxing! Focus on that hand, not the one that's holding you by the ankle and shaking.
If you want to screw the rich, buy stocks in the broad market indexes and just hold them forever. They hate that.
[Warning: It's a good idea to ignore financial, medical, and legal advice from cartoonists.]
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Reader Henrikaavik points us to a new Estonian-built anti-corruption app that is very much what I described in my previous post. Check it out at http://www.bribespot.com/. Can it change the world? Maybe.
Citizens are rising up against their governments in an interesting variety of ways. We're seeing everything from armed rebellions to hunger strikes to anti-corruption apps. Prior to our last U.S. presidential election, I personally funded and published online a survey of economists on the question of tax policy. That was a job our government should have been doing. In California, citizen groups put a lot of "propositions" on the ballot every election because our government isn't capable of making laws that satisfy the public. Everywhere we look, citizens are chipping away at the power of government. And behind much of it is the Internet.
I'm still waiting for the Holy Grail of citizen power in the form of a website that collects all of the best expert opinions on every subject, organizes them into point-counter-point debates, and keeps a rolling citizen opinion poll on each topic. That sort of system would, in time, become the real government, with our elected officials beholden to the majority opinions as they formed online. Interestingly, the key to making that sort of system work is the design of the user interface. The Thomas Jefferson of 2012 will be a user interface designer.
You might think revolutions are only happening in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. I think we're in the midst of a worldwide rebellion, but it's not obvious because so much of it is non-violent and it takes so many different forms. In fifty years, only the most backward countries will have traditional governments of the sort we see today. By then, the job of President of the United States will be a ceremonial position. Power will be more directly in the hands of citizens, informed by expert advice. Our elected officials will simply execute the will of the people. And school children will learn that once upon a time there was an irrational belief in something called "leadership," and it got us in a lot of trouble.
[Update: And another corruption tracking app: http://www.corruptiontracker.org/]
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