THE JEVONS PARADOX IN MEDICINE
Babies got cheaper this month. Twice. First, Belgian scientists announced that their new method has the potential to cut the costs of some in-vitro fertilization treatments from $7,500 to below $300. Their cut-price recipe requires little more than baking soda and lemon juice in place of purified carbon dioxide gas to maintain acidity when growing an embryo in a lab before implanting it. Second, a baby called Connor was born after 13 of his parents' embryos had their genomes analyzed using next-generation DNA-sequencing techniques in an Oxford laboratory. Only three of the embryos were found to have the right chromosome number, and one of these "normal" embryos was then implanted in his mother. This new approach, made possible by the rapidly falling cost of DNA sequencing, promises to cut the number of failures during IVF, reducing both cost and heartache. The two announcements are a reminder that cost reduction and productivity boosts are the purpose of most innovation. Medicine is no exception. Innovation is driving down the costs of medical interventions all the time, and the falls may be about to accelerate, thanks to biotechnology and information technology. Whence, then, the relentless rise in the costs of healthcare? Part of the answer is known as the Jevons paradox after the Victorian economist Stanley Jevons.
CHINA’S GDP CRUMBLES
China is sliding towards a deflation trap and may be in outright recession already if data are measured accurately, with serious knock-on risks for the global economy. "It is too late to avoid a hard-landing," said Patrick Chovanec from Silvercrest Asset Management and a former professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University. "To keep growth going they have to push extremely high levels of investment to even more extreme levels, and that is becoming very hard to do and very hard to finance." "The economic return on credit is rapidly declining. They increased loans by $1 trillion in the first quarter, but growth slid anyway and is now below levels seen in early 2009 after the Lehman crisis. It is no longer out of the question that GDP will actually fall," he said. Diana Choyleva, from Lombard Street, said the official Chinese figures show that the economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter, rather than growing 1.7% (7.5% year-on-year) as claimed by the government.
HOW TO MAKE THE GOVERNMENT BEHAVE
Most people who work in government have no problem giving their real names and telling you what they do, but there are exceptions. Those who are engaged in real undercover work for government intelligence agencies or certain law enforcement agencies have a legitimate need to keep their identities secret, but they are a tiny fraction of all the people who work for government. However, what we are seeing is that too many other people in government, notably at the IRS, use pseudonyms when dealing with the public. The claim is that they need to do this to protect themselves from irate taxpayers. In reality, IRS personnel are no more in danger than many others in both the public and private sectors who have to deliver bad news (including economic columnists). All too often, the main reason for not giving the taxpayer a real name is for IRS officials to avoid taking responsibility and to cover for a lack of knowledge about the case and/or the tax law and regulations.
DETROIT RUNS OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY
ALTRUISM OR SELFISHNESS?
Ayn Rand famously titled one of her non-fiction books, "The Virtue of Selfishness." This was a combative and provocative title, which reflects her own personality as well as the intellectual environment in which she lived. The problem with this title, though, is that it creates a polarity in many people's minds between owning and honoring one's own life, dreams, and actions, and the kind of loving, compassionate, and empathic human connection which is central to a good and happy life. That polarity need not exist; there is no contradiction - most of the time - between caring for others and honoring your own life. They are deeply interconnected. There are moments in life when you have to choose whether to take care of your own needs or to give up those needs for the good of others, but they are not all that common, and such circumstances have their own unique dynamics. Let's talk about how this works in real life.
HOME SCHOOL YOUR KIDS
The best educated children in America don't go to school. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, compared home schoolers and public school students on the results of three standardized tests -- the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test -- for the 2007-2008 academic year. With public school students at the 50th percentile, home schoolers were at the 89th percentile in reading, the 86th percentile in science, the 84th percentile in language, math, and social studies. The explosive growth in home schooling has been fueled by dissatisfaction with public schools. That dissatisfaction is huegely justified.
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/19/13
Jack Wheeler is hidden away in the Hidden Alps, so I'll be filling in for him on the HFR for a couple of weeks. Most discussed by the news media was an event that happened last week, in which Americans had only "modest" interest. That's usually a sign of a slow news week. But appearances can be deceiving. There was a lot going on the Bigfoot Media didn't want to talk about: A "bombshell" was dropped in the House Oversight Committee's investigation of IRS targeting of conservative groups... ...More evidence emerged of a coverup of what happened at our consulate in Benghazi on 9/11/2012. Special Operations Speaks, co-founded by former Navy SEAL and TTPer Larry Bailey, will hold a rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol this coming Tuesday to urge House Speaker John Boehner to form a Select Committee to investigate Benghazi... ...Three of the most powerful labor bosses blasted Obamacare in an "unusually harsh" letter to Senate and House Democratic leaders. The House passed a bill to make legal the delay in the employer mandate the administration announced last week, and another to delay the individual mandate too. President Obama threatened to veto both... ...Both Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee told those running the Surveillance State to clean up their act, or the Patriot Act won't be renewed. For details, and lots more, read on...
THE POLITICS OF HUMAN SACRIFICE
"What the liberal-left really wants is not for justice to be done and seen to be done, but rather for a sacrificial victim to be immolated on the pyre of racial grievance, resentment, and entitlement. Very few of those out on the streets protesting are worried in the slightest about whether or not Zimmerman is genuinely guilty of a crime. The symbolism is all that matters: Zimmerman was white; Trayvon was black." -James Delingpole, London Telegraph This is because the Left practices the politics of human sacrifice. The term "human sacrifice" brings up images of primitive tribes, like that so graphically and accurately depicted in the movie Apocalypto. The culture of the Left is also based on primitive sacrifice. The sacrifice the Left is demanding for Zimmerman - that he be "immolated on the pyre of racial grievance" - is not metaphorical. The Left wants him physically killed - either by vigilante lynching or in a prison's electric chair. We think our culture has "evolved" far beyond the primitive practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and however recently, slavery. But it has not - not as far as the Left is concerned. We make fun or sadly shake our heads in pity of illiterates like Rachel "I've got a 3.0" Jeantel, or rioting "I am Trayvon" inner city morons - but the truth is that the real jungle bunnies with bones through their noses are the white "intellectuals" of the Left. who teach in Ivy League Universities and write editorials in the New York Times. Although they consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought, their belief system is atavistic, a regression to a primitive tribal belief in Black Magic.
WILL OUR RACIST ATTORNEY GENERAL PLEASE GO AWAY?
Get out of here. Please. Yesterday will do fine. Your command at Justice became intolerable in your first big public statement four and a half years ago (February 2009), the one in which you laid out your hateful view of American society:
"...in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."You were telling us that you intended to inflame political racial conflict in the United States. And so you have. But here's the truth: Surveys invariably show that we are the least racist society in the world. The society you're talking about is not American, it's Asian, or North African, or Arab. We're the best in the world. You should know that and say it proudly. But that's not what you're about. No one could possibly characterize your race-driven proclivities better than you did, when you said, "I am the black U.S. attorney... there's a common cause that bonds the black U.S. attorney with the black criminal..."
THE EXTREME WEATHER SCAM EXPOSED
When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about "extreme weather." Those who made their living from alarm switched tactics to jump on any unusual weather event -- whether it was a storm, a drought, a blizzard or a flood -- and blame it on man-made carbon dioxide emissions. This proved a rewarding tactic, because people -- egged on by journalists -- have an inexhaustible appetite for believing in the vindictiveness of the weather gods. The fossil fuel industry was inserted in the place of Zeus as the scapegoat of choice, with scientists as the weather gods' priests. The fact that people have short memories about weather events is what enables this game to be played. Even here in mild England, people are always saying, "I have never known it so cold/hot/mild/windy/wet/dry/changeable as it is this year." One Christmas I noticed the seasons had been pretty average all year, neither too dry nor too wet nor too cold nor too warm. "I have never known it so average," I said to somebody. I got a baffled look. Nobody ever calls the weather normal.