Louis C.K. waxes comedic and philosophical about how nobody’s happy although everything’s awesome nowadays.

This blew my mind:

(This is in large part derived from my thoughts during an email discussion with the CLIMBfolk – primarily Jeff and Andrew)

I remember reading a story a while ago lamenting how a woman with some terminal illness (might have been lung cancer) couldn’t get reasonable health insurance.  I was astounded by how ridiculous it was to think that anyone would insure someone who was guaranteed to rack up medical costs.  Now, the problem in this particular case was that she had been forced to quit her job and she had health insurance from her job.  This obviously causes a problem, because now she’s uninsured and has what amounts to a previous medical condition which precludes her from getting insurance going forwards.

The solution, then, is to decouple health insurance from employers.  Make it so people can retain their health insurance even if they lose their jobs.  It’s well-established in economics that benefits come out of wages rather than profits; you decouple the two, wages will go up so employees can afford private health insurance.  If the government should do anything at all, it’s that they should disincentivize employer-provided health insurance.  It was FDR who got the ball rolling on this entire mess – back in 1942 he freezed wage increases at companies, but allowed benefits packages.  He also didn’t tax employee benefit packages.  So employers offered benefit packages instead of wages and they gradually became standard.

To repeat: employer-provided health insurance is bad for workers, because when they lose their job, they lose their insurance.  When they lose their job due to medical reasons, they’re screwed.  The ability to keep your health insurance should be independent of your health – that is precisely the point of insurance to begin with.  Instead, employer-provided health insurance screws you over when you truly need it.  It might have been fine for an era in which the treatment for severe illness was basically a coffin.  Now, it’s not.

To decouple employers and health insurance, all you have to do is tax employer-provided benefits, decrease the payroll tax, and you’re all set.   What will happen over time is that employers will start paying employees more and giving them less health benefits.  Then, these employees can go buy private plans which are not only better in terms of customization (because if you’re healthy, you don’t subsidize the unhealthy), but are also portable.

(Of course, this is what McCain was trying to do and he got killed for trying to ‘tax benefits’)

I haven’t really posted anything in a few weeks due to lack of internet, but I’m posting this from Gabor’s wireless card.

So, we have the Iranian election.  On the one hand we have Ahmadinejad, who plays as a populist demagogue, and on the other hand we have Mousavi who campaigned as a reformer despite having a long history within the Iranian governmental apparatus.  It’s pretty clear this election was stolen.  It remains to be seen what actually comes of this Green Revolution which is taking place on the streets of Tehran and the Twittersphere.  But I’m appalled by President Obama’s conduct in this entire affair.

I appreciate that American support could harm rather than help Mousavi within the anti-American elements of Iranian politics.  But Mousavi’s anti-American credentials are impeccable.  He helped overthrow the Shah.  He was a top adviser to Khatami, who – while a moderate reformer – was certainly not any sort of American puppet.  There is little risk to people thinking him an American proxy for the Middle East; certainly, students and shopkeepers flooding Tehran with protest will not imagine this to be some sort of American plot.

The belief that American support is some kind of albatross around the neck of reformers is patently ridiculous.  This belief stems from the same soft bigotry which has lead Realists to proclaim that some sorts of people can’t really have democracy.  The Iraqis didn’t have a vibrant middle class and were too ethnically divided.  The Iranians are too religious and too faithful to their Supreme Leader.  Look at what the stupid Venezuelans did by electing that madman Chavez.

The belief that cultural differences make it impossible for people to share in the common values of self-determination and popular sovereignty is laughably old.  In another time, this same logic was used to justify slavery and segregation in this country.  (It’s still used by people who eschew the notion of the melting pot in favor of a single homogenized set of values – as they continue to forget that democracy is great because people overcome their diversity.  E pluribus unum – out of many, one – can’t function without the pluribus)

The argument made by President Obama’s supporters suggests that were he to simply say “I join my counterparts in France and the Czech Republic in condemning the stolen electoin, violence against protesters, and usurpation of the popular will by the Iranian government”, the Iranian people would be simpleminded enough and stupid enough to immediately hate whatever Obama endorsed.  This raises two questions.  First, wouldn’t this ludicrous notion suggest that – in direct contradiction to Obama’s campaign suggestions – diplomacy would be completely ineffective with the Iranian people since their hatred of the US is strong enough to make them reject a candidate they’ve rallied, protested, and died in support of?  Second, didn’t the US elect Obama specifically so this wouldn’t happen?  That Obama would be able to stand up and say “I have a Muslim middle name – I feel your pain”? (or something to that effect).

Nor does stating our opinion infringe on the sovereignty of Iran.  First, a mere statement cannot infringe on a country’s sovereignty.  We have an opinion on literally everything else that Iran does, but on the issue of elections, we are silent?  It’s absurd.  Second, American principles state that sovereignty rests with the people.  The first revolution in Iran was borne of similar predilections.  This new revolution is the will of the people in opposition to a governmental tyranny that they cannot tolerate.  Supporting the Green Revolution means supporting Iranian sovereignty in the most proper sense of the word.

The ironic thing is that George W Bush would have – as President – immediately spoken out in favor of the Green Revolution.  Obama’s support – which could have far greater an impact than Bush’s – is not as forthcoming, mainly because he does not believe in the neoconservative principle of spreading Democracy.  But Obama – with his image as a change agent and reformer – could have a great effect on the Iranian political process by stating clearly and firmly the US’s support of the Green Revolution.  Remember, after September 11th, we were consoled by the sympathies not only of France and Britain, but also of Cuba and Libya.  We appreciate all support in our times of need.

Instead, he does nothing, promises to negotiate with Ahmadinejad if he succeeds in stealing the election, and looks weak on the world stage.  Obama has never indicated that he cares about the freedom of the Iranian people – George W Bush made it a regular talking point.  Obama wants – for better or for worse – to focus on domestic issues.  He wishes that this issue would just go away; it would be easier for him at a time that he’s making a big push on health care.  He just wants to work out a deal with the simplistic and despotic Ahmadinejad on the nuclear energy – it would be easier than dealing with a cagey, well-educated, and highly popular veteran politician in charge of Iran.  Many things would be easier than having to address what has the potential to either be the next Tienanmen Square or the next Velvet Revolution.

No, it is not easy to support the Green Revolution.  But it is the right thing to do.

title widely attributed to an Iranian twitter user

Ross Douthat criticizes Dan Brown’s writing as theologically dangerous:

In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

But Dan Brown peddles in modernity, not in theology.  Religions, to Brown, are not wonderful because they’re spiritual.  I doubt he’d like Echart Tolle and Deepak Chopra any more than John Paul II.  Instead, Brown think religions are wonderful because they can unite people for other purposes.  The idea is not to unite the world behind a spirituality that can enhance their lives, but rather to unite the world behind any banner that can create political change towards a international governance.  Dan Brown is, ultimately, hoping to mix church and state to this end.

As a Yalie, my views on Harold Koh are clearly influenced by the admiration and respect that he commands on campus.  I think there is a good case that Harold Koh’s stated views on foreign jurisprudence are significantly outside the mainstream so as to be concerning to conservatives.  I also think it really doesn’t matter.  He’s going to be a judicial activist, and to be honest, I’d prefer my judicial activists to base their decision upon concrete international laws and treaties than to vague penumbras and multipronged tests.

Koh is, right now, merely the symbol of the brewing fight between strict constructionists and liberal activist judges (here, I use “liberal activist” not as an epithet but merely to distinguish from the less common conservative activism – which is not implausible)

Today I took part in the Yale Adam’s Cup – I helped JE take first place last year and this year I broke to the semis and dropped there.  The resolution I ended up losing on was “Resolved: Even if effective, this house would never use torture“.  I was given the affirmative (“government”) position of supporting a complete ban on torture, even if it was guaranteed to be effective.

It was a bit strange to  me.  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the tension between torture’s efficacy and the moral implications of it.  I think it’s much clearer to me after this debate that the torture question really comes down to a core question – is there room in government for extraordinaryism.  That is, can we say, “we won’t torture except in a ticking time bomb scenario?” or does that inevitably 1) corrupt the moral fabric of our nation and 2) lead to a slippery slope.

I was very happy from an intellectual standpoint – although a bit disappointed for the ground I had to cover on the resolution – that the resolution explicitly removed the question about the efficacy of torture.  In my opinion, it’s too often a trick of politics to argue the nonexistence of complicated ethical questions.

For instance, Obama announced at his inauguration that “We reject as false the choice between our safety and ideals”.  Mark Steyn calls the declaration of “false choice” as “one of [Obama's] favorite rhetorical tics”

There is genuine conflict between ideals when one must choose between a safe population and a free population.  Anarchy (a state of nature) not safe enough in the same way that trapping everyone safely in little glass bubbles is not free enough.  There is clearly a balancing point between freedom and safety, which indicates that there is naturally a real choice to be made between the two.

The ticking time-bomb scenario leads a serious thinker to a similar conclusion.  There is obviously something lost to society in the torture of anyone, even a terrorist.  But at the same time, torture CAN work.  There are some that claim torture has no utility to society; like Obama they seek to dismiss a legitimate debate as a “false choice”. After all, if torture doesn’t work, it should not be used.  But if it DOES work, there’s a much more complex debate to be had.  (On tax revenue, it’s the Republican Party’s turn to claim they can have and eat their cake.  With little evidence, they hold up the hypothetical Laffer Curve and proclaim there will be more revenue with lower rates.)

My ultimate conclusion, despite arguing to the contrary for a total of 12 minutes, was that although we can say that torture should never be allowed, in reality given the ticking-time bomb scenario, it is human instinct to save thousands or millions of lives at the expense of a bit of human dignity.  My feeling is that any government presented with the ticking time bomb scenario – even one led by Andrew Sullivan – would torture first and apologize later.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine has leaked online in unfinished form.

This brings up a good question about copyright and intellectual property.  Surely, even for those who seek to eliminate copyright laws and IP protection, it makes sense that artists should retain possession of their work until they deem it complete?

Ross Douthat has an post up on the problems that conservatives in America face when courting the so-called Black Vote.  Douthat argues that although conservatives should not compromise their core vision nor their criticism of liberalism’s stranglehold on the minority vote (as, he alleges, George W Bush did), conservatives should try to find innovative pragmatic policy solutions that can make a big difference to those on the ground while not compromising on conservatism itself.

I agree with this point on a policy level insofar that making people happier is generally a good thing.  But more broadly speaking, I think Douthat misses the meat of the political problem.  The rift between the black vote and conservatism cannot be solved by innovative conservative policy solutions, because conservatives wouldn’t get the credit for any progress on race issues.  That’s a bad thing from a strictly policy perspective, but it’s unfortunate from a political perspective.

A consequence of both ideological beliefs and partisan allegiance is that people are likely to read their own biases into their interpretation of causality.  In my more libertarian mind, the current economic crisis was based in large part on the government encouraging bad lending practices through legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act and the government encouraging bad spending practices through the social programs jump-started under Johnson’s Great Society.  In other words, there was too much government.  This crisis has strengthened my faith in conservatism.  In the minds of  my more paternalistic acquaintances, the current economic crisis was caused by a lack of government intervention and greedy bankers running amok.  This crisis has strengthened their faith in liberalism.

As long as Republicans are seen as “tough on crime”, liberals will perceive any police brutality, any perceived injustice in law enforcement, and any racial disparities in sentencing to be just the overzealous reach of  conservatism gone wrong.

“More New Math” defines a Ponzi Scheme.