Re: American health care best? No...Most expensive? Yes...Ranked 12th

From: Steve Harris sbharris_at_ROMAN9.netcom.com (sbharris_at_ix.netcom.com)
Date: 07/05/04 

Date: 4 Jul 2004 18:34:31 -0700

> "Dr. Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD" <andrew@heartmdphd.com> wrote in message news:<40E698A8.3554@heartmdphd.com>...
> >
> > Christ's second commandment would be more effective.
>
> What, you think these gang bangers haven't heard it?
>

Chung:
Christ is more effective than either you or I in our white coats and
stethoscopes. What do you think?

COMMENT:

I'll tell you what I think. I think Santa Claus is more effective than
Christ, because I've seen kids do things for him that they'll never do
for Christ.

The problem with Christ is that he's just basically Santa for adults.
By rumor, he's making a list and checking it twice, gunna find out
who's naughty and nice, and one day he's coming to town. `Cept until
then he's awfully scarce, you notice? Has an unlisted phone number and
email and even mail (hell, Santa can be reached at North Pole, Alaska,
not far from Fairbanks-- I've been there and he seemed nice enough).
Christ doesn't seem to have my email address, even though he should.
And he never visits me (come on, he doesn't need a chimney). And he
must be really shy about photos, because although other people SAY he
visits them, they never seem to have a handshake picture, like they do
with the President. And I'll bet they'd pay money for it, too. "Me and
Jesus the Christ. Taken in St. Peter's square, 7/1/01. Glowing
autograph. $479.95. Less than airfare to Rome!"

You know, I think the Christ is actually a made-up person, just like
Santa and the Tooth Fairy. What do you think? Like the Loch Ness
Monster, Bigfoot, and those little gray aliens with bug eyes, the
living Jesus is never around when you really need him to show up to
settle an argument. That's really fishy. If he'd just hold a telephone
ike Howard Hughes once did, or better yet video, he could do a lot of
scotch those rumors that he's actually been dead for some time. And if
Jesus is still alive, I'll bet he looks better than Hughes, and isn't
addicted to codeine, so it could be fun. We could bring in Dan Rather,
some loaves and fishes, and have a better audience percentage than the
last superbowl.

CHung:
>I agree there is more confusion when you blur the distinction between
>economic systems with political systems.

>It is one thing to let people know that you have a better mousetrap
to >sell more mousetraps.

>It is another thing to come up with a catchy jingle or ad campaign to
>sell more inferior product.

COMMENT:

Is it the jingle and ad campaign you object to, or the inferior
product?

I suppose you don't object to ad campaigns like your website, where
you claim to have an "edge" due to "preventive cardiac techniques
exclusive and proprietary to my practice?" Yeah? Well, an edge over
who? Other cardiologists who don't have these exclusive techniques?
Well, it wouldn't be an edge at all unless you were claiming your
"proprietary" and "exclusive" techniques were better than everyone
else's, now would it? If somebody else's techniques are better, then
you're engaged in false advertising. If your own are better than
anybody else's, how come you don't have the Nobel Prize? And failing
that, WHERE'S YOUR PROOF? I must've missed your last authoritative
survey in Circulation or the NEJM.

The problem here is you're hoist with your own petard. You object to
people advertising any but the best product, but you've done it
yourself, right here. You have no evidence. Which means you're full of
baloney. I think that's all logical.

> Or at least, they all try to. None of
> them are perfectly effective. I see no point in you even making the
> comment, when it applies not only to capitalism but also to socialism
> and Communism.
>
> You bring up "free markets" out of the air. Who said anything about
> "free markets." ??

>Most people associate advertising with free markets. Are you now
>claiming that you did not bring up advertising,
>Dr. Harris?

COMMENT:

COMMENT
I brought up advertising. We have to have a word for what we're
talking about when you talk about "making people want things." People
may associate advertising with free markets—-I don't know. They may
associate smoke with coal locomotives. So what? When you have a coal
locomotive you usually have smoke. The reverse isn't usually true.

> You bring up the term as though it was synonymous
> with capitalism. It's not.
>I bring it up because it is associated with advertising.

COMMENT:
And smoke is associated with coal locomotives. It doesn't not follow
that where there's smoke there's a coal locomotive.

Harris
> Free market implies a market in which
> trades are supervised by some kind of governing trade authority, which
> prevents open theft and also adjudicates and guarantees fairness and
> nonviolent conflict resolution in the case of trade disagreements.

Chung;

>Would suggest you stick with the definition:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=free+market

Main Entry: free market
Function: noun
an economic market operating by free competition

COMMENT:

Would suggest you don't post definitions too brief to be meaningful.
The one above is too abbreviated to be very useful, and just re-uses,
without comment, one of the words in the phrase to be defined. That's
not very helpful. It assumes you know the prerequisites and
requirements of "free competition." I merely listed them out. They
apply to everything from pro-football to the Olympics to a flea market
or bazaar.

Chung:
> > Though it [advertising/marketing] does not define it, you have to admit that it is a feature of
> > American-style capitalism.

Harris;
> It's a feature of every kind of political system. They show goods and
> services in newspapers and on TV. I guarantee you they do it in Cuba
> and Sweden, and they did it in the old USSR. My point is: so what?
>

Chung:
You started with the view that "capitalism gives people what they
want" and I countered with capitalism using advertising/marketing to
convince people to buy (or eat) what they don't need (creating markets
where none previously existed).

COMMENT:

You haven't been paying attention. First of all, the distinction
between what people merely want and what they really need, is
meaningless. It's a matter of individual taste. I've seen people die
rather than violate their values, and indeed I've seen them die rather
than violate their standard of what kind of life is the best to live.
There's no arguing with any of this, so long as they don't use force
to makes me or somebody else go along.

Second, although capitalism may be good at giving people what they
want, the idea that capitalism is somehow specially gifted at creating
wants where none existed before, is hogwash. Most non-casual
interactions between animals and animals, between animals and humans,
and between humans and humans, and which don't involve the use of
force, instead involve some kind of advertising. That's often how
people finally know what they want, and how to get what they want. And
yet most human interaction (counting both public and private) is not
economic, even in a capitalist society. You want to get married? You'd
better create a market for yourself where none existed before (very
few people carry perfect police-sketches of the mate they're looking
for around with them, until one they finally, by total luck stumble
upon the suspect). You even want to get your kids to go to bed without
threat of violence? Then you'd better figure out how to shape
pre-existing child-wants into YOUR wants. This is not capitalism.
Capitalism isn't responsible for most of this kind of thing in the
world. Capitalism didn't make the anglerfish's lure, nor the pea***'s
tail.

Send me your address, Dr. Chung. I'll have the Mormon missionaries
come out and convince you that a Book of Mormon is just what you need,
and therefore should be just what you want. And right now there are
Christian missionaries trying to do the same to Hindus and to Russian
atheists.

Capitalism doesn't run the world, Dr. Chung. The need for dominance,
power, control, and successful reproduction run the world. Capitalism
is merely one of the minor techniques we humans have for accomplishing
these goals. But it's not the most important one, by far.

SBH