Friday, June 17, 2005
Cost/Benefit and the Horrors of Practical Reality
It’s ironic that the left’s historical standard bearer – Marx – was considered an economist. No matter what one may wish for in the human condition, economics will always be a wall of practical reality – a wall that everyone must, in some way, buy themselves through.
Everything has a cost. From the moment we rise in the morning, the decisions we make cannot be separated from calculations as to what benefits we will gain vs. what their costs will be. Give up 20 minutes of sleep and you're up and moving 20 minutes early. Don't watch TV, you get to catch up on reading -- cost/benefit; 'happens everywhere, all the time.
Everything we do requires a rallying of capacity and resolve to some degree, and within every penny we may spend lies the symbolism of a prior time’s effort. We allocate such expenditures in time, effort, and spirit assuming the receipt of some kind of benefit in exchange.
The left is okay with half of this equation. Benefits are fine, but costs, if any, should be “fair” -- what they find acceptable for everyone else. Everything from a chosen livelihood to self-esteem are seen as one’s just due, automatically guaranteed, whether earned or not.
“Some things are just too important to leave to the whims of the market [the ever-changing cumulative effect of millions of individual decisions]”… In reality, something the left has never been too comfortable with, most things are too important to leave to the whims – and compulsory edicts – of politicians, bureaucrats, and “philosophers.”
One hundred years ago, the chances of a loved one dying in an influenza epidemic were considerable, occasionally millions died.
How much would one have been willing to pay for a “miracle” to save the life of a loved one? As it turns out, today they needn’t pay much at all beyond a few days of missed work, but that’s not due to some state guarantee or redistribution of illness (although socialized medicine does ration and redistribute wait times for needed services like surgery).
Of course, some have more serious ailments (influenza was serious). Today when doctors or pharmaceutical companies are rewarded by “the market” (people) for their actions, the left’s response is not adulation for saving lives, it’s chastisement for “greed,” -- and lawsuits.
In this brief essay I’m not going to extrapolate on the time, effort, and risk that go into producing a new wonder drug or a degree in neurology. Suffice it to say that there are some rare and gifted people who have chosen a path that benefits many. Regardless of their motives or income, gratitude is the least we owe them. That “greedy” doctor who saves lives daily has the nerve to send his kid to a good college, or he or she owns a nice car and plays golf on days off? “How can we allow it?”
Some prefer the poor as role models and heroes. Lacking wealth makes a contribution appear more sincere (when a “contribution” is made at all). But new vaccines seldom arise from the efforts of poor people -- actually new anything tends to not come from the heroes of leftland. This is not to say that poor people are to automatically be shunned of sympathy or derided for what may be genuine misfortune, but creative, innovative, or wealthy people should hardly be disdained simply because poor people exist. Occupying a lower peg in job or income is not, “failing” in the market, it does not mean one has been pushed aside by competitive cruelty as the left would like us to believe. One’s providing a desired product or service may reward one with wealth, but it hardly removes wealth from another.
Practical reality is seen by some to be “mean,” or at least those of us who acknowledge its existence are seen to be. Through the eyes and standards of guile and envy this will no doubt always be so.
I would not like to be struck by lightening. Indeed, from my perspective, it “wouldn’t be fair” for me to be struck by lightening…or the flu, or cancer. Reality may have other plans. Maybe reality itself is “mean,” certainly suffering and death are unwanted fates to anyone. The left’s skewed perception of such unwanted events rests in the belief that there is some connection between being among the “haves” or “have-nots” – the “haves” made others “have not.” In reality, there is no objective basis for what is ultimately simple envy (and could actually be seen as a type of “greed” itself).
In the last couple of centuries – at least since the Age of Reason and its aftermath – we’ve reaped a whirlwind of benefits from the conscious decisions of many gifted minds yet, to experience any of these benefits there is still a cost.
To some, it costs too much to save a life or limb. Others will “accept” the cost but demand that someone else pay it.
I’m not specifically addressing the -- very complex -- issue of socialized medicine. An argument regarding “free” health care is just one among many for “free” something – or everything.
My main point here is that nothing is “free” -- there is no free lunch as the accurate cliché’ tells us.
Stealing the product, wealth, or mind of one to serve the needs or wants of another is a scam, not only a lie to those it would be fostered upon, but to the very reality of; reality.
Seek a benefit, pay a cost…then complain that practical reality is something called the market or “capitalism” and that the special saints above it all should be exempt from the very nature of existence -- to the same degree that they're exempt from common sense.
Everything has a cost. From the moment we rise in the morning, the decisions we make cannot be separated from calculations as to what benefits we will gain vs. what their costs will be. Give up 20 minutes of sleep and you're up and moving 20 minutes early. Don't watch TV, you get to catch up on reading -- cost/benefit; 'happens everywhere, all the time.
Everything we do requires a rallying of capacity and resolve to some degree, and within every penny we may spend lies the symbolism of a prior time’s effort. We allocate such expenditures in time, effort, and spirit assuming the receipt of some kind of benefit in exchange.
The left is okay with half of this equation. Benefits are fine, but costs, if any, should be “fair” -- what they find acceptable for everyone else. Everything from a chosen livelihood to self-esteem are seen as one’s just due, automatically guaranteed, whether earned or not.
“Some things are just too important to leave to the whims of the market [the ever-changing cumulative effect of millions of individual decisions]”… In reality, something the left has never been too comfortable with, most things are too important to leave to the whims – and compulsory edicts – of politicians, bureaucrats, and “philosophers.”
One hundred years ago, the chances of a loved one dying in an influenza epidemic were considerable, occasionally millions died.
How much would one have been willing to pay for a “miracle” to save the life of a loved one? As it turns out, today they needn’t pay much at all beyond a few days of missed work, but that’s not due to some state guarantee or redistribution of illness (although socialized medicine does ration and redistribute wait times for needed services like surgery).
Of course, some have more serious ailments (influenza was serious). Today when doctors or pharmaceutical companies are rewarded by “the market” (people) for their actions, the left’s response is not adulation for saving lives, it’s chastisement for “greed,” -- and lawsuits.
In this brief essay I’m not going to extrapolate on the time, effort, and risk that go into producing a new wonder drug or a degree in neurology. Suffice it to say that there are some rare and gifted people who have chosen a path that benefits many. Regardless of their motives or income, gratitude is the least we owe them. That “greedy” doctor who saves lives daily has the nerve to send his kid to a good college, or he or she owns a nice car and plays golf on days off? “How can we allow it?”
Some prefer the poor as role models and heroes. Lacking wealth makes a contribution appear more sincere (when a “contribution” is made at all). But new vaccines seldom arise from the efforts of poor people -- actually new anything tends to not come from the heroes of leftland. This is not to say that poor people are to automatically be shunned of sympathy or derided for what may be genuine misfortune, but creative, innovative, or wealthy people should hardly be disdained simply because poor people exist. Occupying a lower peg in job or income is not, “failing” in the market, it does not mean one has been pushed aside by competitive cruelty as the left would like us to believe. One’s providing a desired product or service may reward one with wealth, but it hardly removes wealth from another.
Practical reality is seen by some to be “mean,” or at least those of us who acknowledge its existence are seen to be. Through the eyes and standards of guile and envy this will no doubt always be so.
I would not like to be struck by lightening. Indeed, from my perspective, it “wouldn’t be fair” for me to be struck by lightening…or the flu, or cancer. Reality may have other plans. Maybe reality itself is “mean,” certainly suffering and death are unwanted fates to anyone. The left’s skewed perception of such unwanted events rests in the belief that there is some connection between being among the “haves” or “have-nots” – the “haves” made others “have not.” In reality, there is no objective basis for what is ultimately simple envy (and could actually be seen as a type of “greed” itself).
In the last couple of centuries – at least since the Age of Reason and its aftermath – we’ve reaped a whirlwind of benefits from the conscious decisions of many gifted minds yet, to experience any of these benefits there is still a cost.
To some, it costs too much to save a life or limb. Others will “accept” the cost but demand that someone else pay it.
I’m not specifically addressing the -- very complex -- issue of socialized medicine. An argument regarding “free” health care is just one among many for “free” something – or everything.
My main point here is that nothing is “free” -- there is no free lunch as the accurate cliché’ tells us.
Stealing the product, wealth, or mind of one to serve the needs or wants of another is a scam, not only a lie to those it would be fostered upon, but to the very reality of; reality.
Seek a benefit, pay a cost…then complain that practical reality is something called the market or “capitalism” and that the special saints above it all should be exempt from the very nature of existence -- to the same degree that they're exempt from common sense.
