[1] http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-1229-pac-12-big-ten-20111229,0,4803434.story

New topic: Next Saturday Wisconsin vs Nebraska. Go Badgers!

I don’t know of a valid arguments that leads from highways to death camps, but your argument that eugenics and death panels leads to death camps isn’t valid, either

To answer your questions

1. The rhetoric used does not concern me much. We can call it the eco-friendly women’s choice, family planning, and economic sustainability initiative for all I care.

2. As Administration is the function of the bureaucracy, which is a relatively small percentage of the work force, few will be in administration

3. See answer for #1.

4. See answer for #2.

I’d love to see a valid argument that leads from interstate highways to death camps.

I think maybe you are just bomb throwing here to get my gander up. You called for eugenics and death panels, but you have made no real defense of that.

So, four questions:

1) Do you support the USGOV implementing explicit eugenics programs?

2) Do you think that a guy from South Dakota or a guy from Wisconsin neither of whom went to the “correct” Ivy league schools will be on the receiving end or administrating end of a USGOV eugenics program?

3) Do you support the USGOV implementing explicit Death Panels?

4) Do you think that a guy from South Dakota or a guy from Wisconsin neither of whom went to the “correct” Ivy league schools will be on the receiving end or administrating end of Death Panels?

In order to distribute resources, we could use a number of different techniques

1) We might have a functioning price system
2) We might have a rational allocation that uses some system of prioritization
3) We might have an irrational allocation in which prioritization is not used

The first would be the best. Wrt health care, the second would amount to ‘death panels.’ The third is what we have now.

I do not have faith in a government to, say, rationally allocate research dollars between AIDS and cancer research, say. But that is not the level of precision we are talking about. We are in a system where afor no clear reason certain types of procedures are funded regardless of any concept of payback — any at all. We have a system that encourages morbidity by always (or nearly always) paying great amounts for increasing morbidity in order to decrease mortality.

The question is not the amount of faith we have in “small groups of unelected bureaucrats” in a vacuum. It is a question of comparing resource allocation in such a system to what we have now. There is no hope of a functioning price system in health care developing except on top of or apart from the current system.

“I look at current gov run central planning and see failures and unexpected outcomes. I look at history and gov death-panels and eugenics panels and I see totalitarianism, war, death camps, and mass graves.”

An identical argument could have been made against the interstate highway system. Reductio ad Hitlerum doesn’t impress me.

I am stunned that any rational person who is also pro-freedom would not have the same reaction.

I have no idea why you might think that this sort of central planning can have good outcomes (except by low-probability random chance).

You clearly have much more faith in small groups of unelected bureaucrats making such decisions.

I look at current gov run central planning and see failures and unexpected outcomes. I look at history and gov death-panels and eugenics panels and I see totalitarianism, war, death camps, and mass graves.

To answer your q, though, yes, I am in support of both death panels and eugenics, though these are seperate issues.

Here are some posts on this blog on the subjects:

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/02/01/quality-control-of-children.html
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/08/31/taxing-the-young-to-pay-for-the-old-to-dwell-in-sickness.html

“I’ve said before on this blog the best parts of Obamacare are that it does more to hurry along the creation of death panels and eugenics than anything else in US politics for a century.”

I don’t know how to even respond to that.

Could you clarify: Are you pro-USGOV Death Panels/Eugenics?