Healthcare Link

Interesting post on health care over at The Atlantic's business section.

It's pretty much where I was heading with my posts but the ambitious folk who are actually paid to blog for a living have got there before I did.

Rest assured, the rest of my promised healthcare musings will be forthcoming regardless. The Atlantic, for the most part, doesn't have my insouciant way with words, so I can add that, at the very least...

Links...

Some interesting links:

- Sports Illustrated on pro-players going broke


Eye-opening stats from the first page:

• By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.
• Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

- Former IMF'er writes on the U.S. as suffering from a classic "emerging market" financial disaster.

Best part? Due to our "advantages" we're less likely to actually take the hard steps to quickly confront the problems and more likely to pussyfoot around and let things get worse and worse.

Misc. Links!

Couple of quick links to things I'm reading and enjoying.

1) This article(fn1) on the rise and fall of Culture11 is interesting thus far. It makes me wish I'd paid more attention to Culture11 when it was around(fn2). The opening few paragraphs also make me want to read more Tom Wolfe(fn3). I leave you with just this one quote from James Poulos, who was apparently the Political Editor for Culture11:

"The right has a lot to learn from people who are completely outside of it," he explained later. If they did that, they "might actually win some latecomers, people who have lived unhappy or unsatisfying lives. And if they show up at the door of the right and say, ‘Gosh, my super-transgressive life is sort of unrewarding, maybe I’ve exhausted this mine of self-indulgence and personal freedom and saying ‘fuck the man,’ and the right is completely disinterested in engaging those people, I think they’re missing out."

I feel that this expresses something significant about the approach to conservatism that I and many of my friends take. If I ever sit down and think constructively about my philosophy, understanding those elements will certainly be a part of it.(fn4)

2) That quote put me in mind of this excellent speech (the link is to the transcript) delivered by Charles Murray at the recent AEI something or other. I'll let him lay out the topic:

"I have two points to make. First, I will argue that the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish--it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness. Second, I will argue that twenty-first-century science will prove me right.

I haven't finished reading it through, just yet, but I find it intriguing. More the first bit than the second.(fn5)

fn1: Which I came across from the link in this post on the excellent Marginal Revolutions blog. Seriously, it's excellent, you should check it out.

fn2: I did find my way over there quite a bit, but not in any organized kind of way.

fn3: As does, interestingly, reading Tom Wolfe. Oh for more time...

fn4: Which is not at all to say that any of us have lived -- or even wanted to live -- "super-transgressive" lives, just that I have a respect for people who do but also a kind of distrust of the mindset that says we should throw out civilization b/c I want to grow beyond it. If you throw it out, how will you be able to justify your journey as going "beyond"? In other words, without standards, how can you boldly disregard standards? I'm going on too long, but it's something that I wrestle with from time to time. (fn6)

fn5: Came across the Murray speech on The Corner, National Review's blog that is usually fairly lively and interesting.

fn6:The phrase I always remember when thinking along these lines is "if you see through everything, you don't see everything, you see nothing." Kind of the zen way of pointing out that life without rules isn't ultimate freedom, it's ultimately meaningless.