Free Enterprise fundamentalists

The Free Enterprise fundamentalists theorize that:

The Free Enterprise system optimizes a society's economic welfare and therefore any other economic system is sub-optimal and is less beneficial.

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I believe that there are a number of questions:


1) Which type of Free Enterprise system?

• Fe.0 - Anarchy - There is no government involvement in the economic system, i.e. no protection for private property or against violence with respect to property
  
  
  
• Fe.1 - Libertarian - The Government manages a court system that adjudicates contracts and natural law protection against theft and a legal enforcement system that enforces the judgements of the court.
  
  
• Fe.2 - Communal - The Government provides the "Essential" common services, e.g. Defense, Police, Fire, Local roads, And??? (Note: Services that can be reasonably provided by private agencies, either by voluntary individual funding with some regulation or subsidies will generally be reserved for Fe.3+?)
  
  
• Fe.3 - Regulatory - The Government passes laws that are meant to express the costs of dis-economies, market failures, and common understandings, and these are also judged and enforced.
  
  
• Fe.4 - Re-Distributional - The Government determines that the poorer are not getting essential services or their "fair" share of the GDP and thus Taxes the richer to either provide the services or income to the poorer
  
  
• Fe.5 - Planned - The Government determines future costs and benefits and Taxes and Subsidizes to decrease or increase activity in coordination with these determinations.

• Fe.6 - Socialist - The Government owns and runs the major industries.
  
  
• Fe.7 - Communist - The Government owns and runs the businesses and directs the employment of the citizens.
  

2) What is the definition of society's economic welfare?

1. GDP
2. Maximum median income/wealth
3. Maximum lower 1/10 income/wealth
   
4. Jobs -- NO
5. Size of Government -- NO

and of course what time period should be considered, tomorrow, 10 years, a generation


3) What other assumptions are required to prove the theory?

1. Homo Economist
1. Full information
2. Rational consideration of present value
3. etc?
2. Static, Monotonic, ?Gaussian? Supply and Demand functions
3. Lack of Chaotic system
4. Lack of monopolies and irrational nations
   

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Open Questions

1. Are there significant benefits to having small, diverse companies rather than large mega companies that man be balanced against some synergy?
   
   
2. Are there significant benefits to having continuing existence on companies that may be balanced against increased efficiency of newer companies

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Problems

1. Failure to "clear" labor market
   
   
2. Instability of markets and general economy
   
   
3. Lack of "sharing" of productivity growth, Income spread and median income does not increase
   
   
4. Dis-economies, Elimination of Commons
   
   
5. Insufficient investment and concern in the future

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Possible causes

1. Black swan
   
   
2. Fooled by Randomness
   
   
3. Missing and asymmetric information
   
   
4. Behavioral economics
1. Excessive value for present
   
   
5. Arrows impossibility theory
   

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Political Urban Legends

There are a number of political statements, Urban Legends, that are believed that seem to be unsupported by any facts.

Conservative Canards

The Chinese are drilling in the gulf of Mexico (PolitiFact 2010)

• GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue and (Mother Jones 2008)
• Cheney Admits Mistake in Claim of China Drilling Near Florida
  

Liberal Lies

___________________________

Also see:

• About political urban legends

Contribute any others that you run across

Subscription benefits

Many WEB sites and News sources are trying to find out how to balance the material that they should offer free and that which they should only offer to their subscribers.

My standard suggestion is that anyone should be able to link to your information, and add direct comments, but a subscriber should also be able to:

1) Go directly to the information without going through an Ad Wall.

2) Access past issues table of contents, their front page...

3) Search past articles by tag, Keyword...

4) Link their blog to any article with a headline of their choosing, with popularity ordering,, etc.

5) More TBD.

Paradoxes

The 20-th century was the "No you Can't" century in which there were a number of Paradoxes that were discovered that "proved" that not all things were possible.

Physics

. Relativity -- Large Physics

1. No material particle can be accelerated to the speed of light.
2. The Speed of light is a constant and is not observed to be changed no matter the speed of the observer.
3. There is no absolute space frame, e.g. one can not determine if one is stationary relative to any absolute space.

. Quantum Mechanics -- Small Physics

1. Many measurements are intermingled in that one can not measure both with infinite accuracy, e.g. Position and Momentum.
2. The state of a system often is indeterminate, with no hidden values, and only exists when an observation collapses the state.
3. Small particles (or waves) sometimes seem to be Particles, when their position is measures, and Waves when their path is measured.

Arrow's impossibility theorem (for voting) -- There is no voting system that is a fair way of determining group Public Good from individual preferences if the system is meant to satisfy: "

1. unrestricted domain, -- It should yield a unique and complete ranking of societal choices for any set of individual voter preferences.
2. non-dictatorship, -- It cannot simply mimic the preferences of a single voter.
3. independence of irrelevant alternatives -- Changes in individuals' rankings of irrelevant alternatives (ones outside the subset) should have no impact on the societal ranking of the relevant subset.
4. Pareto efficiency, -- If every individual prefers a certain option to another, then so must the resulting societal preference order. (note: monotonicity, non-imposition, and independence of irrelevant alternatives together imply Pareto efficiency)

Practical Paradoxes

the following seem to be paradoxes, but are not proven.

. Democratic Trilemma -- Fishkin -- No democratic system seems to satisfy the following three objectives.

1. Participation -- All qualified members of the society shall participate in the determination of the policies of the society.
2. Equality -- They shall be equally deterministic of the policies.
3. Deliberation -- They shall spend sufficient time to thoughtfully evaluate the values and implications of their decisions.

Competitive Democracy

I am taking a course in Models of Democracy and leading the session on Competitive Democracy. As part of this I wrote a set of Class notes via Google Docs, and posted it on the web. The problem is that they generate a long URL, so I thought it would help to put it in this Blog post to make it easy to get to. The notes are linked to the title of this post and also from the following:

Competitive Democracy Notes

Also see:

• Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy From WikiSummary

• "Schumpeter's Leadership Democracy" Mackie, Gerry, 2004. -- Joseph Schumpeter's theory of democracy is set forth, and criticized as both insufficiently normative and ultimately incoherent. {TBD}
  

Wingnuts

Wingnuts

A new book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Paperback) ~ John Avlon (Author)", describes the ideas and people that the author feels are "A wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum – professional partisans, unhinged activists, and paranoid conspiracy theorists". As this may be a subjective evalution, I am looking into a more objective measure of these catagories.

• Wingnut Idea: An idea that is supported/believed by 5 to 15% of the population. (Note: I define an idea that is supported by less than 5% as just crazy and by over 15% as just unpopular or not)
  
  
• Group Wingnut Idea: A Wingnut idea that is supported/believed by twice the percent of a specific group. (note: If the group is small, e.g. 1/nn-th of the overall population, then the percent should "nn" times as large.
  
  
• Wingnut: A person who supports/believes 50% of the wingnet ideas.
  
  
• Group (partisan) Wingnet: A person who supports/believes 50% of the wingnet ideas of one specific group.

{TBD}

Working across the Isle

In the spirit or working across the isle I note some suggestions that might be interesting.

• Schedule monthly 2 hour open, Televised, sessions between the president and the legislators in which they could discuss the issues and proposals that are important to them and the country. There is a first report, "John Cornyn: No thanks to President Obama Q & A" that it may be difficult to establish this.
  
  
• Bring the Medicare and the Social Security proposals of the Republican Budget to the floor to have them voted upon. As I understand it:
  
• 1. The proposal on Social Security is to move toward a Defined Contribution system, whose return might be based on stock market performance, rather than a system that pays a specific income, and if it is like the previous Bush plan, makes the Social Security system worse off for decades until the current generation dies off.
     
  2. The proposal for Medicare is to provide vouchers for un-regulated insurance purchases and these vouchers are to increase at 50% the rate of the cost of health care. Thus, if one assumes that the administrative cost of private insurance is 25% or so, and that Medicare is paying say 70% of the cost of medical treatment, then at year 1, this will reduce the amount of health care for the Medicare Patient by roughly half and then reduce it more as time proceed

Also see:

• Republican Solutions (January 29, 2010)
• Liberal analysis of Republican 2010 Budget
• Dems Push Election-Year Resolution Against Privatizing Social Security

The government is not working

Often I say, and hear "The Government is not Working" and was challenged at to what I meant and how to improve it.

The easy definition, with I will reject, is that "The Government is not doing what I want it to do". This Subjective definition just leads to saying that one doesn't like the results, in general does not like some specific action.

The definition that I'd like to explore is based on the assumption that America is supposed to be a Representative Democracy, and thus that "The Government is Enacting, or Not, laws that a large majority prefers". This definition is closer to an Objective one that might be tested and perhaps improved by changing the system in a non-ideological way rather working within a "broken" system.

• Evidence

(tbd)

• Proposal

• Any candidate, President, Congress person, commit to supporting any bill that polls over 67% support or to opposing any bill that polls under 33% in a properly defined poll.

The poll would have to be

1. Directly funded by the bills supporters or opposors, and be
2. Sufficiently deep, say 5,000 respondents.
3. Responsibly accurate, say only 3% Non Americans, etc???
4. Reasonably thoughtful, say delayed 60 days after it is announced to give the respondents a chance to become educated on its proposal.

Details

Rational, Natural

The terms "Rational" and {Super}Natural have been brought up in a discussion, and I realize that often there are diferent understandings.

Rational == Logical and Verifiable

• Logical = There are a set of understood first principals, e.g. Axioms that are, at least for discussion assumed. and then conclusions are derived from them by applying standard FORMAL logic, Math, etc.
  
  
• Verifiable = The conclusions are clear enough so that they lead to predictions of the state of the observable world that can either be the basis of experiments or general obervations that are either fulfilled, i.e. or not, i.e. falsiable, and if the conclusions are not "true" then the original Axioms or derivations must be abandomed or adjusted.

Note: A good Scientiest/Rationalist should attampt to
derive conclusions that are improbable so that
they are probably false rather than ones that
are probable, e.g. they should try to DISPROVE
their "Rational" theory rather than to support it.


Supernational == ???

iPhone world factbook, atlas

iPhone world factbook, atlas

• 2010 World Factbook $0.99 (4.5/5) -- geographies, economies, populations, and militaries of more than 250 nations and territories spanning the globe. -- Maps, Facts, Ranks (w - Fuzzy Peach LLC [tbd])
• The World Factbook 2010 $0.99 (w - jDictionary)

iPhone Sound Meters

Sound Meters

• Sonic Scan $0.99, rate:3.0 -- Displays sound pressure level [decibel] and frequency [Hertz] of sound in your environment. Features: Graph Sound Level, Frequency == Zero Crossings.
• Digital Sound Meter $0.99, rate:2.5 -- Display of the average and peak levels with a bargraph and with a numeric LCD display.
• dBMeter Pro $2.99, rate:3.0 -- General This application can be used to measure ambient noise in Decibels.
  Features: Graph, Meter, eMail Results.

Knowledge Space

It seems to me that it is convenient to categorize human knowledge in a 2-d space rather than along a 1-d line or a 0-d choice, This is inspired by Rumsfield quote:

• "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know."

The two dimentions that I see are the the Quality of the Theories and the Quality of the Results.

• Known, Knowns -- Example: Classical Physics -- The theory is clear and it leads to exact fully reproducible predictions.
• Knows, UnKnows -- Example: Evolution -- The theory is clear but leads to statistical or trend predictions.
• UnKnown, Knows -- Examples: Heurictics -- The theory is ad-hock but leads to tendencies.
• UnKnown, UnKnowns -- Example: Religion -- The theory is disconnected from the real world and leads to no predictions.

On the other hand, others are moe comfortable with a 1-d classification or a 0-d Judgement.

• 1-d -- a Theory, area of knowledge, is Generally righter or wronger.
• 0-d -- a Theory ..., is either Right or Wrong.
  

Note: This is similar to the way the the Advocates for Self Goverment suggest that we catagorize political leanings. See: 10 question quiz.

iphone apps

There are a number of sites, (services) that allow one to get access to the applications for the iPhone/iTouch. This list started from the Winter 2010 issue of iPhoneLife magazine (Weekly Update Newsletter).

Apple Services

• On iPhone, iPhoneLive app -- WEB Browser // Plus // Add to Home Screen (or Bookmarks)
• On iPhone, iPhone genius -- App store, // Featured // Genius
  
• Apps for Everything -- Once you discover the App Store, you’ll see how applications can make your iPhone do just about anything.

Web Sites

• MacWorld Application Reviews: iPod touch & iPhone app reviews from our editors—and you!
• Apptism -- Check out the current Top Paid iPhone Apps and Top Free iPhone Apps!
• AppReview -- There are 123,438 total applications available from the Apple Store. AppReview has reviewed 37,633 (as of 12/22/2009).
• 148 Apps -- In addition to the reviews and news, we keep track of what’s selling, what’s new and what prices are dropping in the iTunes App Store.
• App Space -- an intelligent recommendation engine designed to find the apps relevant to you.
• App Classics -- From the front page users can see the top app classics across all categories, or search deeper into individual categories through the drop down menu.
• Info World -- interactive catalog of iPhone apps designed for businesses, professionals, and IT staff

Social sites

Free Enterprise theory

The conditions for a market/economy to be a Free Enterprise Economy that can be proven to be "Efficient" are:

1. There are many competing suppliers (consumers) such that none of them can effectively individually, or do conspire to set prices in the market.
   
2. There are no Economies of Scale, e.g. the Incremental cost of production does not decrease as the number produced increases. (I think that it must also be assumed that there are no Economies of Consumption e.g. that the value to the consumer for additional units consumed also does not increase as the number consumed increases [Q.1: Economies of Scale and interdependance])

If a market satisfies these conditions then it can be proven, the General Equiblirum Theory, that the market is efficient, as defined as follows, that (page 50):

1. Market clearing prices exist, one for each product.
2. Supply and Demand will be equal at these prices, i.e.,
3. Resources will be fully used.
4. Inputs will be used in the most productive way, e.g. there is no way to produce more by re-arranging the inputs, [Q.2: what is more]
5. The result are Pareto-efficient, i.e. it is not possible to improve anyone's situation except by degrading another's (or by obtaining more researces) e.g. [Q.3: Pareto-Efficient:] (page 54)
   

Note 1: The term "Free Enterprise"
(markets) will often be used as a synonym for:

• Competitive Economy
• Lessez-faire
• Capitalism

Note 2: I am not really sure what the exact assumptions for the Free enterprise system are. e.g. I don't see the mathemetical model.

1. What is the original wealth of individuals? (if it matters)
2. How do individual's wages get determined?
3. How do individual's values get determined? (though this may be irrelevant)
4. Re: 2, is is required that the Demand:Value curves are decreasing and Supply and Demand curves are all fixed and independant?

Note 3: Though it may be 'efficient'
there are a number of other possible problems:

1. 
   

Question:

• Q.1: Economies of Scale and interdependance: Do the conclusions depend on there being no economies of scale for consumption, e.g. that the utility of consuming decreases as more is consumed, and does it depend on their being no cross value, e.g. that each product's worth or cost is independent of any other product. e.g. Gas is worth $2.00/gal whether or not one has a car?
  
• Q.2: What is more: Is this 'more' as valued by the Quantity*Clearing_Price, or is this a Pareto more, e.g. No more except at the cost of Less?
• Q.3: Pareto-Efficient: Is it even true that Pareto-efficiency exists based on the studies in Behavioral Economy that seem to indicate that increasing the Richness of the Wealthy, even if there is not reduction in the Poorer, decrease the happyness of the poorer.

Economic Theorists

• Adam Smith -FE- 1723-1790 (page 26): The Wealth of Nations - 1776
  
• John Stuart Mill -FE - (page 33): Principals of Political Economy - 1848
• Ludwig van Mises -FE- (page 29): Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis - 1922
• John Maynard Kaynes -WE-: Theory of Money - 1930, General theory of Employment, Interest and Money - 1936
  
• Friedrich Hayek -FE- (page 29): Prices and Production - 1931 (Recessions were a way of restoring the balance between savings and investment (page 38)) Economics and Knowledge - 1937 (market prices are primarly a way of collaring and communicating information) (page 14))
  
• Joseph Schumpeter -FE-: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy - 1942
  

Note:

• -FE- A Free Enterpirse theorist
• -WE- A Welfair theorist
  
  
• LSE: London School of Economics
  

Free Market Capitalism (def)

A Free market, Competitive economy, is one in which there are a number of suppliers, and consumers, each of which can not, does not, signifficantly set the price for the "thing".

• Adam Smith (1776) - theorized that specialization lead to efficiency and that Free Markets could coordinate the supply of goods to allow specialization of function., thus raising living standards (page 28)
  
• The theory was that Free Markets would lead to a price close to the cost of producting the products, Raw Materials, Labor, and Capital.
• The purpose of Government was to provide for the National Defense, Ensure that Laws, contracts and property rights were properly enforced. e.g Laissez-faire, (but Smith also mentioned and somehow preventing swindles and speculative panics (page 35), erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public instutions(page 34))
  
• The ultimate goal of an economic policy was maximizing a countries wealth, ... the gross domestic product. (page 31)
  

Note (Smith understood that:):

• some Un-regulated markets are unstable, not self correcting.
  
  
• some Public works and instutions would be beneficial.
  

Market (def)

A Market is simply [a real or virtual set of 1] somewhere[s] [physical, virtual, or other conceptual 2] things are bought [traded 3] and sold. (page 26),

• 1] Assumed, the somewhere can be also virtual and can consist of a set of interrelated single markets.
  
  
• 2] Things can be generalized to other than physical objects such as intelectual property, songs, software...
  
  
• 3] Similarly bought and sold can be generalized to situations where the more conventional "money" transfer is replaced by some "payment" in kind.

There are at least 3 different markets:

1. Goods Market -- Note: one can perhaps subdivide this into Consumables, Investment, and Tools, and probably others depending on how the good is "used", e.g. for "pleasure"..., for future wealth, or to permit production.
   
2. Labor Market -- Again this may be divided into the purpose of the labor to the buyer, e.g. is it for immediate consumption or for producing goods.
   
3. Financial Market --
   
   

Notes:

• 0: My comments are generally normal or italic text where as the original author's are BOLD.
  
  
• 1: One can "narrow" a market to dealing with a specific product or set at a specific location..., but it is important to remember that since money is fungible and since products are shareable, conplementary, and competative, the Market, for example, for food corn in Chicago is effected by the markets in New York, for Sugar and for Ethenal.

From:

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

~ John Cassidy 2009

• [D]escribes the rising influence of what he calls utopian economics—thinking that is blind to how real people act and that denies the many ways an unregulated free market can produce disastrous unintended consequences. He then looks to the leading edge of economic theory, including behavioral economics, to offer a new understanding of the economy—one that casts aside the old assumption that people and firms make decisions purely on the basis of rational self-interest.

Also see:

• Reviews of “How Markets Fail” Posted by John Cassidy -- November 16, 2009
• John Cassidy's New Yorker bio and Columns
  

Economic charts/graphs and discussions

The following are some sites
that generate
Charts/Graphs, on , or discuss
the Economic situation.
12/07/2009

Charts and Graphics

• Dshort.com gives me {Doug Short. a retired first wave boomer with a Ph.D. in English from Duke. } a chance to combine several interests — economics, web design, and pro-bono financial counseling. I'm also a contributor to the Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement subscription service.
  
  
• Visualizing Economics is an economics web site started in 2006 by Catherine Mulbrandon. I believe design can contribute to public debates by creating information-rich, easy-to-understand graphics revealing the meaning of data without hiding its complexity.

Blogs

• Economix: (New York Times) will analyze the news and use economics as a framework for thinking about the world.
• Rational Irrationality: (New Yorker): on economics, money, and more. by John Cassidy
  
  

Articles

• Rational Irrationality: The real reason that capitalism is so crash-prone. by John Cassidy
  

Books

• How Markets Fail: by John Cassidy
• The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters ~ Diane Coyle (Author)
  

Political Interaction sites

There are a growing number of sites that allow use, the citizens to "help" interact with our political leaders. The following is a list of these,

Set priorities of the Adminstration

• White House 2 lets you set your own priorities for the United States

Develop you own bills

• Open Government -- This online brainstorming session, open from May 21st to 28th, 2009, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government.
• WikiGov (TBD)

Allocate the National Budget

• Budget hero seeks to provide a values- and fiscal-based lens for citizens to examine policy debates during this election year.
  

HealthCareUS-3

1) VOUCHERS -- Each person gets a yearly voucher to pay for the actuarial cost of their basic Health Care that can be used to purchase Health Insurance from any conforming health care insurance vendor.

• The actuarial cost = The median cost based on the risk factors, e.g. Age, Weight, Gender... for the person and the area in which the person lives, to provide the health care for that individual
  
  
• A conforming vendor = An insurance company who will accept all people and provide full payment for the covered treatments.
  
  
• Note: The Government, e.g. Medicare will be the default vendor but the vouchers will be augmented, primerally by having the goverment provide centrallized billing, payment, approval free, so that the other insurers will be able to make a reasonable profit from just providing equivalent service and can increase their profit by providing extras such as:
  

• Additional insurance -- Coverage for additional services can be offered at additional charges.
  
• Reduced medical treatment costs -- Any savings will be shared 50% 50% by the patient and the insurance company, see 2)
  
• Wellness support -- Any improvement in the patients risk factors will lead to a 50% - 50% savings for the first 5 years to the insurance company and the patient, and after that 50% to the patient.
  
• etc.
  

2) SAVINGS -- Any savings in treatment costs will be shared 50/50 by the patient and the insurance company.

• The patient and the insurance company can negotiate with the medical provider to obtain less expensive (equivalent) treatment,
  
  
• Such negotiation may be done with medical providers within the area, or by getting the treatment in other less costly areas throughout the world from certified facilities.
  
  
• Any savings will be shared by the patient and the insurance company so that both have "skin in the game", while still assuring that no one is denied treatment.
  
  
• Similarly: The insurance company can pay for wellness services, e.g. Weight Reduction, Cholesterol Drugs... and any reduction in risks will be shared for 5 years even if the patient enrolees in another plan. After 5 years the patient continues to be rebated 50% of the risk savings.
  

3) ADMINSTRATION -- The Government will offer to do all the Record Keeping, Billing, Paying, Results collection, etc. at no charge.

• This will be a mechanical process which will, in no way determine the HealthCareUS policies
  
  
• This is estimated to currently cost the insurance companies 10-30% of their costs and thus will be a "hidden" subside to the independent insurers.
  
  
• Obviously, if the insurance company has negotiated a different rate, they can get a rebate from the medical provider to be shared with the patient.
  
  
• Any rebates will be reported to the government to be used to adjust the median costs for next year's vouchers.
  
  
• This will centralize the Doctors billing and approval for the HealthCareUS procedures so that the Doctors paper load is decreased.
  
  
• The results of the procedures will also be reported to the government so that the Cost/Benefit for various procedures can be computed by them or other interested parties.
  
  
• This will also allow the quality of medical care can be made available to the insurers and the patients so that they can determine which providers to support.
  
  
• If an insurance company is accepting HealthCareUS vouchers then it must at least report the costs and results of their services.
  

4) COVERAGE -- The procedures covered by the HelthCareUS will be determined as those that have highest benefit within the amount of money allocated by the government/tax payer.

• Note: Any additional procedure can be covered by additional insurance or by direct payment for the patient, as is done now
  
  
• Note: Any plan must determine which procedures they will cover, so does HealthCareUS, but in this case, those procedures are determined by the amount of money that we democratically determine to spend and then by the procedures that are most cost effective, rather than by some bureaucrat or CEO.

5) GRANDFATHERING -- Any current plan will be "grandfathered" in except that the tax benefit will be limited to the Voucher amount and any tax benefit over 50% of the voucher will be available only if the current plan provides at least the coverage of the HealthCareUP plan.

Also see:

• Is Health Care Special? By UWE E. REINHARDT (NYT, Economix) 8/6/2010
• Toward a 21st-Century Health Care System: Recommendations for Health Care Reform, Arrow...
• Why markets can’t cure healthcare - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
  
• Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care - Kenneth Arrow
  
• Vote: YES or NO , results , poll comments (please use the WeMatter area)
  
• HealthCareUS (12/08/2008),
  
• HealthCare goals (08/09/2007)
• A Comprehensive Cure: Universal Health Care Vouchers, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, R. Fuchs, - The Brookings Institution 07/01/2009
  
• Signing On to an Obama 'Dream'." - WSJ 05/12/2009
  

National Sunshine

Promote national sunshine (Preliminary) 0.1

Resolved: Until all Bills, Amendments, and Laws are posted days before they are discussed, voted on, or signed, I will contribute $4.00 a month to the opposition.

Background: The current national administration and representatives had committed that they would not take action on laws until they were posted 2-5 days on the internet. This commitment has been violated. This is important is it gives "We the People" a chance to understand the details of these potential laws and comment on them to our representative BEFORE they become law. Obviously not all bills will be read and understood by each of us, but the Internet allows them to be analyzed by the internet crowd and thus giving us a chance to see the implications of these bills.

Action: In order to give us this power, each Bill, Amendment, and Law must be available in FINAL form, on the internet, early enough so that it can be analyzed. I would prefer that they be available 7 days before they are officially discussed, voted on, or signed, thought the administration has proposed 2-5 days. Since they committed to post the bills and have not, I will contribute $1.00 to the opposition of the President and each of my Representatives, $4.00 in all, each month until there is a BINDING rule and the rule is followed. I suggest that others also follow this policy to show how important we feel it is that we can see what is being passed in our name soon enough that can have some effect on the laws.

Reference: For further information please see:

Petition site {TBD}
Pledge site {TBD}

HealthCareUS

Health care

1) - Vouchers -- Provide Health Care insurance vouchers for every American, roughly $5,000 to allow them to purchase a basic coverage.

1) Details -- The vouchers will be set at a level so that they will pay for the cost of providing treatment at median costs for all the procedures that are authorized. Of course this coverage is for basic treatment and does not cover all possible procedures, luxuaries (private rooms, etc.) which can be covered out of pocket or by extra cost insurance. By default the vouchers will be handled by the government, USHC e.g. Medicare, but can be transfered to aemployer or insurance company who offers similar or improved insurance.

2) - Opt-in -- Requre that all insurance companies, hospitals, Doctors, etc. either Opt-in to covering all and accepting the coverage for the defined treatments or accept no vouchers or payment under the systems and post a notice that they are not in the USHC system.

2) Details -- The insurance company can opt-in to compete with the USHC system if they feel they can offer the same or better service to all patients due to their added efficenty, better nogotiating skills, perhaps better pro-active care, etc. Note: Any insurance company can pay for pro-active care and will collect 100% of the estimated savings if the patient goes to another provider. Similarly the Doctor can either offer to treat the covered procedures at the median level of payment, or opt-out and have these procedures paid for by the patient or by insureance that is not accepting vouchers.

3) - Shared Savings -- If the patient can get the treatment for less from a certified provider, then they and the insurance company splits the savings.

3) Details -- This allows the patient to get treatment fully covered, or negotiate with the provider, in the area, in some other state, or even abroad, and get less expensive treatment and split the savings with the instrance providor. Thus the patient has some "skin in the game" giving him a reason for controlling the price of the treatments. Similarly the insurance company is encurraged to point the patient to less expensive treatment, while still allowing the patient full freedom to choose their own doctor. Note: This will allow competation not only within the local area, but also between other areas in the country and the world, if they can offer equivalent treatments.


Obliously, all the technical improvements that lead to more cost effective treatment and better patient information will be included.

Firefox Add-on (1)

Social & Comminications

• StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sies on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for finding and sharing great sites.
  
• iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the entire macro will run at the click of a button!
• Email This! will send your recipient the link, title, & highlighted text of the page you are viewing using GMail, Google Apps GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail and Stand-Alone Mail Clients like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, & More
• Fleck allows you to add Notes and Bullets to websites. You can then share these annotated pages with other people.

Browse Feeds, News & Blogging

• Rovr fetches posts from your favorite blogs about whatever you're browsing, showing summaries you can open in-place to read posts right on the page they’re about. Blogrovr also suggests popular items AND lets you Twitter about any site you're on too.
• Trailfire allows you to mark pages that you find interesting by leaving notes right there on page. These notes are linked together into trails that you organize any way you want that can be shared with others. -- June 25, 2007 — 12 KB
• Tags everywhere: shows related Del.icio.us tags on top of plain sites.
  In some cases extension shows related tags clouds below every item of sites list of some popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN-Live.com) and web2.0 news (Digg and Reddit).
• In the News: Highlight text in Firefox, right-click to see the latest related news stories. Mouse over any of the headlines to see a brief summary of the story. Click on any of the stories to have it open up in a new tab.— September 29, 2006 — 3 KB

Browse Photos, Music & Videos

• DownloadHelper: downloads the video directly on your file system from YouTube, MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.

Browse Alerts & Updates

• Sparky is a free FireFox browser plugin built by Alexa,
  * Website Traffic Trend information -
  * traffic information including Reach and Rank -
  * Related Links for each page— July 18, 2007 — 46 KB

Search tools

• deliGoo: searches on the sites, indicated in your del.icio.us bookmarks. With its help you can find the necessary page according to any phrase or word, which it contains, deliGoo can create on your demand custom search engines on any del.icio.us tag.— September 15, 2007 — 14 KB
• SearchWords: (*) Assign keywords to your search engines for quick and easy access to all of your search engines without using the search bar and without having to switch from your current search engine.
  

UI tools

• MileWideBack: (*) back in the browser history by clicking on the left border of the window,forward by right-clicking , middle-click to close the current tab, or rotate the mouse-wheel to cycle through your current tabs. (For optimal usability, please make sure that your window in maximized.) — October 21, 2006 — 3 KB

Rss readers (Bookmarks)

• Brief makes reading RSS feeds as easy as it gets
  

HealthCare

Objectives of a Health Care system (HCS)

1. Universal "critical" treatment -- There are a number of deseases/treatments that we, as a society do not want to have un-treated, either because not treating them is not compasient or because not treating them will probably harm society. The HCS should ensure that these are treated.
   
2. Take advantage of Market for Pricing and Selection -- The Free Enterprise market is effective at ensuring that the cost of services is related to their benefits and thus any HSC system should allow the Market to encurrage people to reduce their "over utilization" of the system by charging them for the services and rewarding them for choosing the more inexpensive ways of getting the service that they need. Conversely the market shoulld be used to encurrage the service delivorers to be economical in their practice while also permitting them to offer a verity of services and convieniences as their end customers will pay for them.
3. Encurage preventive care and healthy behavior --
   
4. Information Technology application -- Computers, the Internet, etc. probably can be effectively used to reduce the costs, medical errors, and increase the job satisfaction by, say: 10%. The HCS system should have a program for a reasonably funded prject to develop the 'best of class medical IT techniques, an environment for profitizing their use, and ensuring that the barriors to their implication are eliminated.
   

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