Don Boudreaux is Right

Don on Laissez Faire. The reasoning he gives is largely why I became a libertarian; not only do I not want others interfering in my life, but that same graciousness must be extended to others as well. I wrote a piece on it way back when, though not so well written as Don’s, here.

The more expansive is the scope of government authority, the more my life is subject to commands issued in part under the influence of people who read Usmagazine.

Scary.

Yes, scary indeed.

The Most Blatant Fear Mongering Infographic You’ll See Today

Here, in all its glory (Click to enlarge):

I would like to think that this is satire; unfortunately, I fear that it isn’t. But with lines like, “It’s clear that sitting is killing us: but how?”, how can it really be taken seriously?!

Perhaps the human body wasn’t meant to “sit for long periods of time”, as the graphic claims. But were we really so much better off 100 years ago? Yes, as a society we are much more obese, but we also had a far shorter life expectancy, 51 and 55 for male and female respectively in 1912. Compare that with 75.5 and 80.5 for male and female respectively in 2008. So it would appear that, despite the glory days when “we were all out toiling in the fields”, our quality of life has still improved dramatically, and this is focusing on only one factor (life expectancy) and completely ignoring other factors such as economic improvement, education improvement/access, etc. Also, we are able to sit so much because we are substantially wealthier than we we in 1912. In 1910, 31% of workers in the US were farmers.  In 2012, 1.2% were in agriculture. That can only happen because we’ve dramatically improved the efficiency, quality, and quantity of our crops, and freed up people that would otherwise be toiling in fields to do other things, like sit behind a desk in an air conditioned office. Given the choice between the two, which do you think the average person is going to choose?

Single Payer vs. ACA

I’ve been thinking for a while that even a single payer system would be better than the ACA, because at least everybody is guaranteed SOME level of care. Here in MA where we have lived under “RomneyCare” for several years now, even though 98% of the population have health insurance, some people can’t afford to use it. I can confirm, anecdotally, that this is true for many people. One of my co-workers, who gets his insurance through his wife’s work, is in this position. Myself, I am in this position as well, although I’m still rather young and healthy, so it’s not a huge problem for me (other than having to pay the extra thousands of dollars a year for far more coverage than I need).

Well, while stumbling around the internet recently I came across a blog post at Kids Prefer Cheese on this very subject, from someone far more learned than I: