Rearden Metal
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Smash the National Health System!
I open my Times today and find a double-page-spread advert from a group calling itself Doctors For Reform. The page is mainly covered with the names and titles of hundreds of doctors. The heading is We all work in the NHS. We are committed to its values. But we believe the time has come to consider a new way to deliver healthcare in Britain.
There follows a rather formulaic paragraph bobbing and curtseying to the usual idols ("welcome the substantial increases in resources for the NHS committed by the government" ... "necessary standards of care" ... "greater choice" ... "empower" ... "disadvantaged" ... "must be universally and equitably available").
What do they really want? Actually they don't want to abolish this absurd organisation, which in its waste, inefficiency and self-satisfaction resembles a British version of the Soviet Union. No. They want compulsory health insurance.
Let's smash the NHS. Everything that is provided by private companies is cheaper and better, and people have more choices. If NHS stood for 'National Holiday Service' do you think there would be such a thing as cheap foreign holidays? If there was a National Food Service what sort of muck would we be eating?
If the government insists on funding people's health care they should give them the money to pay for it via a simple subsidy or tax rebate. Even under that system there is no reason for the government to own hospitals or employ doctors.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Consider the garlic
A very unintentionally amusing comment on 'View from the Right', posted by Edwin Vogt, explains the argument from design for the existence of God thus:
"Look at nature. Conside the garlic. Were it created whole we would take a bite and throw the rest awat. But, no. God made it in segmented form to be reserved for later! Each clove in its own paper jacjet. Look at the fruit of the tree on the bough. See how it fits in the hollow of your hand. If it were made too heavy, the fruit would weigh down. But, no. He knew the exact number and weight for each tree. Look at the horse. Its neck reaches the ground from a standing position. Supposen its elongation was too short. The animal would be forced to stoop to eat. Who put the wax on the watermelon to keep it from bursting from the heat of the sun? Who placed th sun exactly in the universe so that if it were five miles closer, the degree of farenheit would change to our discomfort. We exoerience a median average of 70 degrees around the globe. Atheism is a room without lights!"
Hmmm... maybe I was wrong about everything? And all those poor folk in the south of France who cook entire heads of garlic whole are totally wrong, obviously. Actually when you roast it like that it ends up mild and creamy and you can scoop it out with a spoon and garnish whatever else you are eating.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Book review: Clear and simple as the truth
One of my favourite web logs, which has more meat in it any week than most paid-for magazines, is 2Blowhards. A while ago they recommended a book on writing style called Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner.
I have now bought my copy and almost finished it. If you want to improve your writing, read this book. This is the book I have been waiting for. For many years I have tried to write clearly and informatively, at least when I wasn't tempted into pretention, and to somehow combine this simplicity with a lack of dullness, but I needed some guidance. I didn't even know where to start. This book explains that there is an attitude and an intellectual stance behind classic prose; it's not just a case of putting the commas in the right place. A good writer just writes: as they point out, you can't both write and talk about writing, and too many writers swaddle their prose with hedgings and reservations about their own biases, whether it is possible to know anything, and even whether it is possible to communicate anything.
It partly seems to be about good manners: a writer of classic prose - and there are other legitimate styles and registers - assumes that he and his reader are of equal status and equally interested in the subject. Therefore he doesn't apologise about his choice of subject. He also assumes that whatever he is asserting is part of a world of truth 'out there' to which the reader will readily assent if he is provided with the right information.
The authors quote a lot of French examples from the great age of French literature, in French and in translation. At least one of them is obviously at home with, and in love with, this era and language, and that is no bad thing. But I think the authors' style, though a tour de force of their own ideas, is very slightly arid, and there might have been more examples originally written in English. As a software man I propose both Donald Knuth and Alan Turing as exponents of the classic style. In fact they are both brilliant writers of English prose.
The book is out of print but easily and cheaply obtained on the internet.
Thursday, February 05, 2004
A modest proposal for NZ: abolish race laws
Don Brash, leader of New Zealand's National Party, has modestly proposed that Maoris should have no more rights than anyone else - on other words, NZ's relatively mild 'Nuremberg Decrees' should be abolished: "We intend to remove divisive race-based features from legislation" ... "In this country, it should not matter what colour you are, or what your ethnic origin might be".
Why has his speech been condemned so harshly? (And why have 'protesters' thrown mud at him?) It is carefully argued, carefully researched, and mild in tone, but hard-hitting in its conclusions. I believe that it is precisely because of its reasonableness that it has been attacked. The modern barbarians - the PC intelligentsia - prefer a little more frothing at the mouth on the part of their enemies, who they like to describe as rabid.
Another more obvious reason is that Maoris, and especially their leaders and the people who work for state-funded organisations associated with them, are rent seekers - that is, they have sucessfully persuaded government to transfer unearned money and benefits to them and don't want this stopped or even discussed. (Here is a definition of rent seeking).
Brash doesn't attack Maoris (or 'Maori' - it is another creeping tentacle of PC to drop the English plural on borrowed words, ever since trendy mountaineers started referring to 'the Himalaya'). He attacks irrationality:
"It is bizarre that, in a society where the Prime Minister refuses to allow grace to be said at a state banquet, because, she says, we are an increasingly secular society, we fly Maori elders around the world to lift tapu and expel evil spirits from New Zealand embassies; we allow courts to become entangled in hearings about the risks to taniwha of a new road or building; we refuse to undertake potentially life-saving earthworks on Mount Ruapehu lest we interfere with the spirit of the mountain; and we allow our environment law to be turned into an opportunistic farce by allowing metaphysical and spiritual considerations to be taken into account in the decision process. It is a farce that could all too quickly turn to tragedy."
Sadly, Brash goes on to throw a bone to the dogs by claiming that "Spiritual beliefs are important in any society. They should be respected. They should never be mocked."
Why the hell not? If spiritual beliefs can never be mocked, then fools and knaves have a wonderful get-out-of-jail-free card. My beliefs are spiritual - how dare you question them? Perhaps we should not mock fools too severely, but let us laugh their beliefs to scorn.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Why Rearden Metal?
A friend asked me that, and I was rather surprised that the reference wasn't obvious. I answered:
Rearden metal was a wonderful new alloy, stronger than steel, invented by Hank Rearden in Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'. The government soon steals his invention and his rightful profits.
I chose Rearden Metal as a name for my web log because it is something that is both beautiful - it is an attractive blue-green colour - and useful, and the product of applied science and free enterprise. Which is what I do.
Multiply that by the fact that Ayn Rand was my first and greatest political and moral influence, and there you have it.
When a struldbrug dies, it's always a case of murder
When transhumanists and other over-excited neophiliacs like myself talk about the extension of the human lifespan we generally end up saying that even if we became very long-lived or immortal, most people would die from accidents; and one might suppose that if the average human natural lifespan was 1000 years people would take great care of themselves and thus only die, if they didn't reach their natural spans, from increasingly bizarre accidents resulting from strange chains of coincidences or improbable events like being hit by a meteor.
Of course, if you talk about real immortality, some people would die when all the air molecules randomly moved away from them for long enough for oxygen starvation to set in. But I'm just talking about extremely long lifespans.
However, it struck me that the reasoning behind this was faulty. Long lifespans would indeed cause people to take more care; and better technology would routinely eliminate risks that seem normal to us now. For example, over the last 40 years myriads of people's lives have been saved by simply wearing seatbelts in cars, but up to about 1960, so I hear, it was thought a normal and unavoidable risk to be thrown through a windscreen and die of a broken neck on impact with the road. And women don't die of puerperal (childbirth) fever any more. So - imagine a citizen of the year 3000, born in 2500 and now 500 years old. No accident can touch him. Even if he seeks out risk - extreme sports, etc. - and falls off a mountain or something, implanted devices in his body will stabilise his condition - even if he is by our standards mortally wounded - and notify automated emergency services of his position, and a helicopter or something (what a helicopter of 3000 AD will be like I can't imagine) will arrive and take him to hospital where nanotech robots will repair the damage - even including brain damage. It will be very difficult to die accidentally without physically fragmenting your body, or, better, vaporising it. Jumping into a volcano might do it, but after another millennium of safety madness, who will be allowed to approach a volcano?
I'm led to the conclusion that the most important cause of death will not be accidents but intelligent agency. Only careful thought and planning will be able to get round all the safety devices. People will die, unless they reach their natural span, by murder, suicide, or - more chillingly - they will be indirectly murdered by computerised devices that are part of their everyday life but have been tampered with by a future generation of malicious hackers and virus-mongers.
A brilliant article about the abolition of slavery - but sullied by PC
A brilliant article, well-written and moving, and showing great historical learning and insight into the 'feel' of the times. But sullied - slightly - by an unquestioning political correctness that tells us, for example:
'They bought copies of a pro-slavery book for distribution "particularly at Cambridge" (college towns leaned left even then)'
as if the noble opposition to slavery of the time, and the present support by 'college towns' of tyranny, censorship and ever more state intervention, are both part and parcel of something called the 'left', when in fact they are diametrically opposed.
And at the end we are invited to
'Look at the problems that confront the world today: global warming; the vast gap between rich and poor nations; the relentless spread of nuclear weapons; the poisoning of the earth's soil, air, and water; the habit of war.'
Here is a list implying solutions that many opponents of slavery, and supporters of freedom, would disagree with. In particular, those who stress the 'gap between rich and poor nations' and believe that there is such a thing as global warming, and mankind is at fault, generally have solutions readily to hand that decrease the amount of freedom in the world.
I would have liked the article better if these jarring and discordant comments had been excised; which wouldn't actually have made much difference to the article as a whole; and the story of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire does in fact speak for itself.
