Price vs value

The following is first presented at The Jacksonian Party.

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

Visiting Megan McArdle's site (h/t Instapundit) where she writes about her writing about nationalized health care and how critics are trying to paint a very narrow window for criticism while the larger objective is to get nationalized health care is interesting.  What is more interesting is that a number of commentators speak about chronic diseases and their cost.

So, having a number of chronic conditions or conditions which can complicate chronic conditions or being treated with medication that treats chronic conditions that lead to further and worse fall out from chronic conditions... do you follow that?

One chronic condition can get complicating factors from other, possible, causes and medicating to lower the risk of those separate causes then lowers the risk of further complications to the main condition down the road.  Thus you treat the others at the first sign of problems or, due to the effects of medications for those conditions, you have the medication supplied BEFORE any of those other conditions show up as they help the main condition stave off further problems.

Got it now?

Good!

Now I've had type I diabetes (previously 'Juvenile Diabetes' but it now has been demonstrated to show up independent of age and other conditions, although may have some environmental factors associated with it as seen in the Scandinavian effect of more cases showing up in late fall and winter) since 1983.  Over 25 years with it and nearly 26.  As type I is not amenable to the medications for type II, and has different symptoms with it, and is the low percentage of all types of diabetes (~10%), it has some similar and some different risk factors with it although complications run about the same direction.

Starting in the early 80's and going to the early 90's I was on NPH insulin, one injection per day.  That had crept up with a resistance to it, but that (as it turns out) is not a permanent effect.  I was switched to Lantus (glargine) which lasts longer in the blood stream, but my use of it crept up, also.  Before all this I was and am prone to infections of the upper respiratory tract, and if you have ever experienced a dual ear infection, sinus infection, pleurisy and vomiting, I know EXACTLY what you have gone through.  All at the same time.  Without modern antibiotics of the 1970's I wouldn't be here, today.

Now this all changed when I volunteered for a trial study at NIH.

You know, National Institutes of Health?

I was, relatively, well at that point but a few of my cholesterol and other numbers needed to be 'baselined' so I was taken off of one statin that was causing me to gain weight and put on another.  That all squared away I was then put through a day or so of 'how to properly maintain your blood glucose level for this study' which turned out to be a primer on how to do this for your life.  It is not that complicated, and takes about a month to finally get all the proportions worked out right so you are balancing carbohydrate net intake per meal with the proper amount of insulin to counter it, per meal, and then do a test two hours later to ensure that your glucose levels are in the preferred range.

Thus my control of my condition went from 80's understanding relatively so-so to early 2004 understanding by the top researchers on the planet.

With poor control I was getting normal and expected complications due to how long I have had the disorder.  I had three bouts of laser surgery to cauterize areas at the back of my eyes that were seeping interstitial material.  I was getting some peripheral neuropathy, mostly in my feet, but still had and have decent sensation in them.  Basically, at 20 years onwards I was doing pretty well, all things considered.  And being a government employee and having chosen a health plan, all of the complication were picked up by the plan.

Now things changed in 2004-05 as one of the medications given to me to lower my cholesterol level had truly nasty and undesired side-effects that are not well publicized but horrific for anyone getting them.  Beyond memory loss I was having sudden lapses where I could not do anything with my body but was conscious.  Lethargy was omnipresent and my stamina plummeted to almost nothing.  Starting in DEC 2004 when these problems first started to appear, they were not correlated to the study medication and the best minds at NIH got a chance to try and figure out what was going on.  My personal physician also started work on it.  My endocrinologist identified the medication and the problem immediately... that was FEB 2005 and things were getting worse as the loss of body control was happening multiple times per day.  I was taken off the medication but the problems persisted and were not getting better.  By MAY 2005 I had my primary care physician fill out the paperwork to take me off the roads and I could no longer function at work.  From MAY-JUL 2005 I went to a neurologist who had a preliminary diagnosis in JUN 2005 (after an MRI) and final diagnosis after a PET scan (which I paid for out of pocket) as I wanted the condition nailed down.

From then, onwards, I have been dealing with a steadily improving condition via treatment with medications that we still don't know very much about even after they were invented in the mid-1970s.  Seems fitting as my genetic background has a predisposition to the condition that the prescription medication caused to become present.  That is no hard and firm diagnosis, but it does fit all the facts and will continue to be the best-fit explanation until a better one can come along.  Turns out my own endocrinologist was thinking of putting me on that medication, anyway, because of my underlying condition.

That period from DEC 2004 to JUL 2005 saw me taking more blood tests, getting imaged multiple ways, having my heart scanned in 3D (I was interested but my lack of energy and stamina kept that to a minimum), having pins inserted into my muscles to measure them and then have them artificially stimulated (it is not as unpleasant as it sounds, but isn't pleasant, either) and until I got a neurologist who could figure it out the next thing up was a spinal tap.

Mind you, this is with the VERY BEST researchers and clinicians I could get my hands on in the DC metro area...

To go through the disability paperwork I had to fill out a raft of forms from SSN.  That was necessary for my government disability, I expected nothing, zip, zilch from SSN because I was just debilitated to the point I couldn't drive, could walk around the block, and had problems staying awake most of the day.  My lady helped me and SHE was fine!  She had problems understanding the SSN paperwork which appears to be meant to defeat anyone who does not have their full cognitive abilities to their credit which was my case at the time.  Remember, this is FOR that exact, same sort of problem, so the paperwork is made in such a way as to stymie those needing help.

Gotta love that.

My diabetes, however, was in great control!

And I was put on two non-systemic medication to address cholesterol which runs relatively high in my family.

So, from that, and trying to avoid things like dialysis by keeping my blood vessels open NOW means a raft of medications, many that can have pretty nasty side effects and a tendency towards low blood pressure... I have had nurses at NIH look at me and ask if I was actually still conscious when they took my blood pressure.  Twice.  Two different machines.  Then come back in a half hour only to find that it hadn't increased.

So, what is my annual cost to keep going?  Well, I will round and ballpark some figures.

Insurance cost: $7,800 /year

Insulin - $120/year for one on co-pay, market price $370/year

$120/year for a second type co-pay, market price $480/year

$120/year for a third type co-pay, market price $480/year

$160/year for syringes co-pay, market price $160/year

$180/year for pen needles co-pay, market price $180/year

$200/year for test strips co-pay, market price $1,560/year (I kid you not)

$45/year for lancets co-pay, market price $75/year

Hypertension - $240/year co-pay, market price $240/year (now if I take the pet version my price plummets)

Cholesterol - $240/year co-pay for the first medication, market price $340/year

$240/year co-pay for the second medication, market price $2,700/year

Neurological condition - $240 year co-pay, $800/year

Cost of medical visits varies, but I have few of them per year at this point.  A hard guess is $60/year co-pay, $600/year market

Dental costs vary widely due to my conditions and my ability to actually be conscious in a dental chair.  If I was healthier I could give an estimate on that, but I can't... the price differential due to my plan only giving partial dental coverage is generally a wash.

When I add up the numbers I come to the total cost insured, with cost of insurance: $9,765/year

Total cost without insurance: $7,985/year

Why stick with insurance?

Since I get my lady covered under this plan her costs, added in, would tend to balance things a bit, making health insurance a bargain.  It would be even more of one if we could just get to single plans, but that is not to be in our lovely world.  Shocking, but true, we could knock nearly $2,000 off our total coverage costs if we had two single plans.  Yup, divorce and re-marry!  Hey what a way to 'preserve the family'!  Thank you to the two party system for making something simple so asinine.

Plus my conditions and possible complications.

I am NOT a relatively healthy individual.  And yet just about half my net income goes towards my health.

I really do love how people make the argument, to me, that 'this is for those who are very sick', not realizing that I am very sick.

If I had federal paperwork ON TOP of all the other paperwork INCLUDING the daft SSN paperwork, I would not be here.

What I did do was ascertain the shortened life expectancy of people with my condition, the cost of long term complications, and then started planning when I was younger to deal with these problems.  My personal precautions were about half-done when the second chronic disorder was visited upon me.  Yet planning, saving, and working out how to deal with these things with the ones I love meant that I would not be a burden on them, that I would not be in poverty and that I would not need charity.  I have looked into getting a price break on some of my medications, but I am just 'too rich' for that.  Yes, take what I pay out and multiply it by 2.  That is 'too rich' in the way of income.  I do have other sources of funds, yes, but the plans I made have served me well.  I have gotten unexpected support from others, but that is extra and I am damned and duly grateful for such gifts and am not too proud to accept them... because I know I am not in the best of shape.

My life plan had not included anyone else, and I had expected to live a life alone.  That plan was adapted with changed circumstances, but the basis of preparing early for one's future meant that I had to face the basics of my condition as it was, then, and not expect a damned insurance company to pick up the tab for my costs.  Plus I did not and do not expect a single penny from SSN as it is heading towards insolvent and draining cash out of the rest of the federal budget which will sink this government like a rock heading into the abyss.

 

What is my 'solution' for 'health care reform'?

 

If you read past this, don't complain.

 

First - tort reform - Any malpractice suits are limited to actual costs to fix what wasn't done right and, yes, pay for your upkeep if the problem is permanent.  NO 'pain and suffering' awards which have become an inflator and a lottery system for juries to hand out bundles of cash that insurers have to pay, that raise the cost of insurance.  And double damages on anyone bringing a frivolous suit in attempt to win a payout lottery.

Second - remove the subsidies - Remove all tax incentives for 'health insurance'.  Why?  Because subsidized goods and services get over-utilized in an uneconomic fashion, raising costs.  What do we see?  Raising costs of health insurance and health care?  Why?  It is subsidized.

Third - incentivize health care - What the hell is that?  Here is a two-fold deal: change 'health care' from an 'insurance' system to an 'investment' system.  Instead of paying for 'coverage' you pay for 'treatment' that you may or may not immediately use.  Your 'treatment' can then be cashed in at any future time at any set institution that you invested in.  The cost is set on purchase and can even be reduced if the group providing treatment doesn't expect you to need it any time soon.  What would a triple-bypass cost 20 years before you could reasonably expect to need it?  If you paid for it NOW via investing at an institution that will guarantee the procedure (backed up with proper insurance and bonding) then you have an ironclad guarantee of service for that treatment.  Going to move?  TRADE IT.  This is an investment, after all, but one for treatment.  So if you wanted to trade it for, say, similar coverage at a facility near where you are moving to and, maybe, 3 visits over 5 years for a top notch specialist in the area and can work that trade, then you have those in trade for your previous investment.  Like bonds, if an institution goes under you are first in line for the FULL COST of the treatment when the place goes under: you are a creditor.  That is part one of incentivizing health care so you pay, now, for procedures you may not need and can then trade for ones you DO need.

Fourth - health savings accounts redux - Allow a full roll-over of money in all HSAs just like IRAs.  Allow full investment in money earning vehicles in HSAs.  Do not tax money earned in HSAs so long as they are used for medical procedures, medications, office visits, durable equipment, etc.  Set no limit on how much can be put into such accounts.  Allow employers to put money into their employees accounts TAX FREE.  Thus the employee could manage these funds towards the good end of paying for their health care (be it with or without insurance).  When employers offer job packages they can offer HSA contributions in lieu of pay or in addition to health insurance but with a lower salary.  Good long term investments will yield larger accounts, over time, and will ease the worry of skyrocketing medical costs... particularly if people decide to invest IN those providing health care.  Are health care companies and pharmaceutical companies making gonzo bucks?  That is reflected in investment portfolios, is it not?  If you invest in a portfolio, then you gain the benefit of a growing industry that will help you pay for the costs of it due to it being the one you need services from.

Fifth - there is no such thing as a 'national market' for health care - This is why we have 50 States.  You see a better arrangement in another State?  MOVE THERE.  Or write to your State representatives to see if a State to State arrangement can be made to expand coverage.  Large companies providing coverage already do this, of course, but smaller ones need protection due to the fact they address more localized markets and are better adapted to them.  When localized health care companies go under to be taken over by larger ones, the market loses competition and that is a long term worry to the citizenry and should be to the Nation as only a dog-eat-dog system at the lowest level allows larger structures to be pulled apart by innovation.  As it is the larger companies gobble up the small, shut the small facilities and leave communities without the facilities or coverage that used to be available.  Small scale inefficiency that is adapted to the small scale may have other benefits outside of 'cost maintenance': like providing any care AT ALL to a small community or sub-community in a larger population center.  If we are supposed to have 'laboratories of liberty' in our 50 States then getting a 'national market' is the last thing anyone should want.  That concentrates too much power in the hands of too few groups and individuals.  This also removes the 'tragedy of the commons' in which no one really much cares about the larger market and it then starts to stagnate because no one has the power to actually make sure it is working well at the small scale.

Sixth - The grotesque thing about government run anything is the inefficiencies of government, itself.  The best run of government agencies at the federal level, and I worked at it, was 65% efficient at what it did.  Yes the government, via overhead, only wasted 35% of every dollar spent!  Private industry does a much better job at 20% inefficiency, on average.  Remember the average of industry is still better than the best of government.  But if you really want to drive costs DOWN and put COMPETITION into the market there is one area that can compete with industry.  That is charity.  There are organizations that rate the amount that charities spend on overhead, and it is typically in the 7-15% range.  That is the equivalent of waste for a charity.  There are some that try to get that down to 1% via volunteers and other organized form of help that doesn't need to be paid for.  Of these three groups, which is the most efficient at providing 'health care'?  Government, industry or charity?  If you answer 'charity' then why is not the full and absolute amount donated to charity given as a tax write-off?  This, too, is a marketplace incentive, but one geared towards actually HELPING the poor get treatment.  Pharmaceutical companies could be given write-offs based on donations of modern medicines, not those that have expired, but fresh production.  Ditto to other parts of industry making durable goods and consumables used in health care.  By allowing companies to donate goods directly to charity to be used for the poor or those that cannot pay, we ALL gain greatly without any further interference by government.  Indeed local governments can give incentives in the way of property tax and other tax breaks to charitable organizations that do this work.  What is garnered are committed individuals who have the best interest of patients and the community at heart.

 

I do, indeed, want a health care system that 'works' for everyone.

One where we invest in our future infrastructure, not worry about current payments.

One where individuals are allowed to invest in themselves and their families, not one that takes money from them in taxes.

One that rewards charity to build communities so that the poor and needy are looked after by those who want to and will do their level best to cut all costs so that the money is spent ON the poor and not for profits.

To do these things requires that we change our way of viewing 'health care' as a service and treat it as an investment for ourselves, our children, our neighbors and our Nation.  You can't get that with government oversight.

But you can do that by the common citizen willing to take part to donate money and time, precious time from their lives, to charity.  Why do we penalize that instead of rewarding it? 

We are missing out on the best value around when we argue about costs.

Those who listen

Watchmaker's Daughter: So much caution in a man like you, it seems so wrong.

Number Six: Many times bitten, forever shy.

They are not shy, those who listen.

-It's Your Funeral, The Prisoner.

The Prisoner talking to a young woman who needs some help, and finding that ever-present security breeds distrust.  Indeed, those who do listen can and do listen as they are in charge and seek to end anything that supports individual freedom and even individuality itself.

We are not in the world we were warned about by the techno-pundits... not in full, at any rate.  When we were warned that the 'medium is the message' (actually from my memory the actual quote that is mis-stated was 'the medium is the massage' in that the medium changes the message) the worry was that the media would transform how we think into a form of limited system in which tribalism would predominate via the then new media of television.  Tellingly this was not 'group think' of the Orwell conception but a dynamic in which society would break down across media associated lines so that the ability to have common discourse would disappear.  Each group would soon have itself boiled down the minimal state of its internal culture: the lowest common denominator would then predominate and fixate these groups.

This has been passed down to us as 'identity politics' in which groups predominate over individuals and slowly attempt to liquidate individuality in favor of group lowest common denominators in thought and outlook.  For all of that and its slow distancing of common culture from society and making culture a 'relative' thing amongst groups, a second and much more different trend of the media has taken root in those identity politics venues.  The LCD 'diversity' system has a broader systemic over it enhanced by the media up until the last decade or so: that of echo chamber group think of the larger sort that trends towards Orwell.

I went over this dynamic in: The more things change, the more things become The Village.

The Prisoner television series started by Patrick McGoohan is a sharply different view of media and medium, plus message than MacLuhan.  It is not the form from Orwell, exactly, as he puts the niceties of a benevolent ruling caste that perennial changes and forever remains Number 2.  There is no Big Brother, although there appears to be an unchanging Number 1 who is never seen, never heard from and yet always present by his absence in the Number system.  While our outward politics has gained many of MacLuhan's tribalistic characteristics, the outcome of that tribalism is starkly that of the benevolent totalitarian State that only requires you to give up your individualism to become a 'functioning member of society' by the mandates of that State.  Thus you can't, really, question authority as it also has your health as its concern and any attempt to move away from the States 'good' way of thinking needs treatment!

And lots of it.

Don't worry about the price of it, it is FREE at the expense of those who run The Village.

The cost, however, is your very self identity.

What is most disturbing about LCD politics is that those practicing it soon find all of their groups sharing insular and common LCDs and brooking no deviation from them.  MacLuhan's tribalism and clique concepts from the media have been transformed into a bland conformity in which differences are outward in dress, sexual characteristics, skin color... but inwardly conformist to a group LCD.  The 'diversity' of programming gives you deeply similar characters no matter what they pretend to represent.  You can only 'celebrate diversity' if it is the diversity that is being presented to celebrate and any OTHER diversity isn't allowed.  Proscribed diversity is what you get, and yet tell that to the practitioners of it and they, one and all, see nothing wrong with that.  Authoritarian diversity with overall conformity is just fine to those practicing it.  And when Number One, that great and unseen actor, changes the arrangement of diversity, adds or subtracts some, then you are to follow suit without question and those who would be falling out from diversity they once favored must now conform to the NEW diversity, no matter how at odds that is with the old one.

You don't need a boot to the face to get group think, you only need a blind willingness to follow anyone who puts forward certain forms of ideology.  That ideology which seeks more power for government to 'do good' then gives that power to the one place that was not designed for 'doing good'.  The things we hand over to government are necessary for short term survival: taking killers, murderers and rapists out of society to penalize them; serving as the society level intercourse with other, separate societies that form Nation States; upholding a common law for all citizens; using the negative liberty of Public War to defend the Nation State against other Nation States and to identify those waging Private War and confront them and give the public opportunity to confront them on all levels.  There are other items with that base suite of powers, such as the guarantee of safe passage within a Nation State and ensuring there are no separate systems for tariffs within the Nation State, and upholding the basics of what is necessary to be a citizen via immigration.  These powers are restrictive in nature in that they stop sub-parts of society from attempting to garner wealth to themselves away from the common good and common wealth guaranteed to all citizens by having such things put at a higher level of authority.  The things handed to the Nation State are, of necessity, given to that level of created being so as to properly address things of the scale for the entire Nation as a whole.

As a society we recognize that each and every individual is born with all rights given to them.  Our recognition of that, as a society, is to bestow upon that new born the derived rights that come from that perfect liberty and then to teach that individual why some of their rights and negative liberties must be handed up to larger organs of society for the good of all citizens in society.  Every society that has attempted to put government into the defining role, to make government the source of liberty and rights, has devolved into States that are by measure authoritarian, bureaucratic and inefficient, restrictive on individual rights and liberties, unable to discriminate between in-born rights and derived rights and, due to these problems, such governments over time become increasingly despotic and totalitarian.  In Great Britain, the great upholder of Parliamentary representative democracy, the concept that all rights and liberty flow from the Monarch through Parliament to be dispensed to the people means that in our modern age the Parliament has seen fit to legislate against the inalienable right to self-defense for oneself, one's loved ones and one's property.  The public has been disarmed to 'curb violent crime' and that has led to criminals up-arming to the point where the police now need body armor, rifles and automatic weapons.  When every man could defend himself, the police could go unarmed by and large.  The first National Rifle Association was started by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Britain.  In one century British citizens have been reminded that they are subjects of the Crown and its Government, that they are not allowed to defend themselves because the government says so via law.

That is not a path to a peaceful and more harmonious society, but one that is decaying as civil rights are suppressed by government fiat.  The UK is now the most watched citizenry on the planet by any authority, and still crime rises because the watchers don't really care about preventing crime or saving lives, just getting a meal ticket.  There is no manifest right to privacy any more in the UK and yet the people are less secure not more with that change.  The health care system there is so 'good' that people not only pay taxes into it, but the wealthy pay for private insurance to get away from the public form of health care, thus paying twice to get what they were promised, and find it is damned hard to compete with an organization that can print money and levy taxes: your ability to afford private care is an indicator you make too much and, therefore, must be taxed more.  This is the path of government 'providing' rights to the common man, and it leads to no good place.  If such a once civilized Nation as Great Britain can have such problems, that augers ill for those places with even less liberty and freedom to start with.  And it is a warning sign to those with more that this is not the route to go.

What is interesting is the parallel between that omni-watched, omni-regulated society and our own.  At base the Colonies started out with the majority being citizens under English mandate.  Yet even then the attitude of the Crown and its Government was seen as ill to the citizenry when that citizenry did not live on the home island.  From the end of the religious wars in Europe to that era there was a major sea change in the understanding of human rights and liberty.  I have looked at the main strains of this many times: part is from the Aegean and Greece, part is from Rome after its fall, part is from Christianity and a slowly widening view of the domain of the divine beyond individual instances of particular religions, and part is Nordic coming from the understanding that the King is only King so long as the people support him and that the King is under the common law just as his subjects are.  From that we get the concept that all citizens are due to equal practice under the law and that there are no carve outs based on position or party, only for things to keep the Nation safe from harm.  This multi-part background is where America got her roots, along with the Great Peace of Westphalia that brought the reconciliation outside the church that individuals are allowed to worship as they please within society.

America, although starting with much of the same basic culture of Great Britain, was starting with the culture of the 17th and 18th century which saw the slow ascendance of England to Great Britain via sea power, trade and colonization.  What England sent overseas, however, was an interesting mix of malcontents, criminals and misfits who wanted no part of the continued religious discrimination of those churches that went beyond Westphalian types.  Europe, itself, had been transformed by the religious wars and there was a sense of horror at what supporting the religion of 'The Prince of Peace' had brought in the way of war and death.  The Great Peace of Westphalia established the necessary parting of the ways between the secular Nation State and the Religious State: the temporal and purely material world was to be governed differently than the dictates of the divine as interpreted by man.  Indeed, recognizing that man is mortal as part of creation set up the pre-conditions for all of modern science, modern technology, modern economics and all that we consider to be areas of separate domains from religion, not because they are outside the purview of the divine, as they are not, but because they are necessary to separate from divine mandates as there is no common consensus as to what those mandates actually are in real and concrete terms.  Thusly the role of religion is to instruct each of us in what good works are, what they look like and then put us, as individuals, at the pointy end of that and say: 'figure it out for yourself based on the good works others have already done'.

Those things that are in the secular world, the common world, that place where everything happens, are different as they are things of creation under the Law of Nature and Nature's God.  In general Nature is not a happy place on its own, and is seen as 'red in tooth and claw'.  The Law of Nature is, no matter its origin, secular in operation as it must take place in the material realm.  In that realm we are to apply the dictates of the Heavens to create for ourselves those things we need to survive.  Actually many animals are more than happy to create for their own survival purposes, and it doesn't matter it their behavior is learned, adapted to via genetic mutations, or an aptation of using parts of their bodies for expedient purposes that are without any overall design favor.  What we, as creatures of Nature who are animals, for all the spark of the divine within us, have is the exact, same world as the animals have.  Our greatest gift, that thing which so many cultures have pointed to as the separation point, is the gift of reason.  It does not matter if it comes from divine mandate, is something garnered by genetic drift of an isolated population of hominids over time, or is purely a function of other genetic changes causing retention of youthful growth patterns and then cutting off adult ones in a process of neoteny. 

The truth of it is self-evident.

All of our Liberty comes from Nature.

How we apply it comes from Reason.

What we apply it to is determined by us as individuals.

Those things that we do create are of the material, mortal and imperfect realm of the physical world, and will always have the flaws of it present no matter how good we make these things.  The general category for these things that allow us to create a better living circumstance for ourselves in pursuit of our happiness is: tools.

Man creates tools.

These tools we use to further our ends, and they span the limits of thought from actual, real, physical tools that you can lay your hands on all the way to the society we create amongst like-minded individuals that then seek to use that creation to protect us in a way better than we can do for ourselves.  These tools have a positive role to play in our lives, but they remain tools nonetheless for all of their utility.  These tools are means, not ends in and of themselves.  These tools can also be very dangerous and require that we understand them, comprehend them and utilize them within the narrow categories they were made for so that we remain safe from them.

It is from this understanding that the United States gets a few axioms that we can all recognize:

'God helps those who help themselves.'

'In God we trust, all others pay cash.'

'If you want something done right, do it yourself.'

'You can't get to there from here.'

This is our understanding of Liberty and our tools, and the relationship is plain in that we decide on how to use our tools, we are to know how to use them and what their deficits are, we are not to complain when others do work for us that we asked them to that we could do for ourselves, and if a tool isn't made to do something, then you probably will be unable to make the tool do it.

The Nation State is that organ of society that is created by the members of society to protect society and to vest the use of negative liberties so as to keep track of how they are being used.  Like a band saw the Nation State has limitations by what it is made to do: as you would not use a band saw as a screwdriver, so you would not use the Nation State to care for you and feed you.  Yes you can re-craft the tool in question, make it so it can do these other things, but then is it still as simple to use as the original tool and does it actually function well in its new roles?  The Great Peace of Westphalia plays upon one of the teachings of Jesus to form its basis, and though never spoken it is present by that absence: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's.  Untold numbers of Christians died in Rome to uphold this and that their religion required different observance than that of the Empire and the system of morals that went with that, those of piety, self-restraint, caring for one's fellow man and chastity, would prove to be beacons of hope in a society that was decaying and gone decadent in large ways and small.  By the time Europe recovered from the fall of the Roman Empire, the Church was in the exact, same position of mandating religious doctrine that the Empire had been in.  Save that this time it was not just the Heathens, the Pagans, and other non-believers that were the target of repression, but other Christians of differing doctrinal outlooks.  Having gone full circle on this from State enforced religion to Religion enforced upon States to then enforce further, the idea that there needed to be a difference in outlook between the actual, real world State and the Divine was put in place.  From that the land of Caesar and the land of God parted their ways, but remained in hailing distance.  There is no 'wall' between the two, but an air gap so that one can inform the other of what is going on and send suggestions each way.

A Nation State, as an object, is well described as to its form and function by the time of the Founding of the Nation started and was known in Britain by then, also.  British legal minds worked with their compatriots after the Great Peace to help work out just what this thing we create called a 'Nation' was.  They examined all, known, past Nations and even City States so as to see if there was a common thread amongst them: if we, as humans, had created a common thing no matter what our culture, our time or our religious inclination.  Examining everything from what little was known of Ancient Babylon and Egypt, to what was coming in from the Indian sub-continent and the Far East in China and Japan, to what was known of the old cultures of southern Africa all the way to modern reports of native peoples in the Americas, all of these had their basis for what government was examined.  To a paleontologist the fact that they all did have deep similarities across all of mankind is no surprise as the dictum in the field is: form follows function.

In needing to create an organ of society to protect it, thus requires individual negative liberties to be lent to that organ and then kept in strict oversight.  That goes for nomadic tribesmen of any continent, the City States of the Bronze Age, and the modern Nation State, without exception.  When societies need to interact with each other they establish Embassies and send Emissaries to represent their society and report back on what is going on.  That holds true for all peoples that hold territory and settle on a common space for their society.  Those forms we know and understand cross all boundaries of civilization and peoples because the function is the same.  What the lawyers, philosophers and those who examined the theories of warfare and trade did, however, is to utilize best practices concepts in their formulations.  Thus Grotius would set the standard with The Laws of War and The Laws of Peace, plus his work on the laws of the seas which was derived from the 14th century work of The Black Book of the Admiralty.  Building on those works arrived at an understanding that the Nation State as a sovereign entity only had peers amongst other Nation States.  Further those Nation States had internal sovereignty by design, with proper description of limitations on vassal States and those who have lost wars also put down.  Law of Nations would serve as the backbone for our modern understanding of the Nation State, if we bothered to read it.

What the United States did was to put in place a Republican form of government, well described in The Law of Nations as an understood form of government.  Further, best practices were put in place so as to limit that government's internal role and to maximize that of individual Liberty that would be positive as the negative ones were put into government.  By design that tool is meant to protect the people of the Nation and to interfere as little as is possible in the lives of its citizens.  The rest is left up to the States and the people to figure out on their own.  Thus America is the 'Do It Yourself' Nation: we don't look to government to help us, but look to ourselves to help each other.  In helping each other we help ourselves to enrich society, care for the poor and keep those social organs directly accountable to us, as individuals.  When anyone proposes that government do more to 'help' the people, we give those saying that a wary eye as we feel that the reach into our Liberty, as an individual, is unwarranted for any 'good' that government may try do.  Government's role is to protect us from harm from each other and from other peoples, and to run those minimal laws in an orderly and equitable fashion so as to yield an equal process called Justice.  Any injustice that is not of that scale falls back to the States and the people to solve, and as the States have much the same problem as the National government, that leaves the people on the hook for these problems.

You are on the hook for EVERYTHING government does good, bad or indifferent.

As we have given this tool the ability to enforce laws, restrict the liberty of individuals who break laws, punish law breakers, and to serve as our means of self-protection as a society from other Nations, it has a damned full platter already.  And it doesn't do those all that well as it is created, staffed and overseen by mere mortals who are fallible and have all the problems of mortals attached to them. 

No law will stop us from being mortals. 

No law will enforce ethics. 

Laws can only be enforced upon actions, not thoughts.

And any law that seeks equality of outcome instead of only equality of opportunity, will become the most repressive, dictatorial and tyrannical system ever devised, and we know that having seen the sweep of history of Nations who do try to do just that very thing.  Government as a necessary evil to protect us is the witness that we are not perfect, angelic nor fit for divine ascension.  If we were those things there would be no injustice on this planet. 

As government is our place for our vested negative liberties, the only tools it has available to make things 'good' is coercion.  That is not by mistake, not by neglect, not by poorly crafting this tool that is an organ by society.  That is the function of this thing we call government and its form must follow that function.  If we didn't need it we wouldn't create it in the first place.

The source of all good that we can create in society is not done via government but by ourselves.

When we follow higher mandates to care for our fellow man, we do not form government to do that, but we form charitable institutions run by committed individuals who want to run a clean, lean and efficient operation so that they can do the greatest good with what they get in donations.  Charities tend to be the most efficient, most accountable and most able social organs that mankind has ever created, bar none.  When the Christmas Tsunami of 2004 relief effort started, we would find the #1 contributor to the relief effort was the people of the United States via their charitable organizations.  Our GOVERNMENT would be #2 on that list.  And it is the charitable institutions that would hold themselves directly accountable via their balance sheets to their contributors, while such places as the UN never have given a full and exacting accounting of their cash spent, who it went to or even what it was used for.  Yet charities can account for every penny they spend because they have no guarantee of getting more pennies unless they do as they say they will do.

Wherever you see government 'do good' you see charity wither as the money that they would normally get goes to government and is spent less well, less accountably and with less transparency than charitable institutions.  Whenever I hear that our government hasn't 'spent enough' on foreign aid, I look to the American people and see that we are the most generous Nation on the planet per person and that our people spend more time working in charity to others than any other people on the planet.  Not by government mandate but by volunteering their time.  When government takes on that role, it also starts to dictate to individuals what they can or cannot do with the help they receive because that is the nature of government.  Charities give directed help to do certain activities so that it is hard to ill-spend the money and that is by design ALSO.

When I see governments running health care I see individuals who need desperate treatment either not get it, have to wait in line or be given a painkiller which can mask their symptom and may even kill them.  Meanwhile those who are in chronic pain can't get the painkiller as it is too expensive for their condition by government mandate.  Even worse is if you have 'private' insurance with that, as everyone MUST pay into the public form which never has to show a profit nor be held to account as well as a local charity, and then the rich pay to get BETTER treatment.  Thus it is the poor that are ill served, ill treated, and have their treatment decided upon by government.  At least in America the poor can go to charities and to organizations set up by companies trying to serve the society by making drugs and treatments available as a charitable tax write-off.

Tell you what, if you really want to 'reform' health care, get the government out of it entirely, let people and companies write-off 100% of all charitable donations to those charities running health based concerns, let individuals put aside a savings account to invest in future returns that can only be used for health care at no penalty so they can save for their future, and then let the market run wild with the ability to invest in charity and save for the future to provide better health care for everyone.  Let the people help themselves by letting them doing it themselves and get rid of the fancy notion that this tool we call government can even figure out how to use its lash as a means of treating the poor and the sick.  Throw in some tort reform so that people can only sue for the actual cost of the ill-done procedures and get rid of the pain and suffering lottery that we ALL PAY FOR by higher premiums and more expensive care.

Because I trust my fellow citizen to do this far better than I trust my government to do it, ever.

Getting to the point where the President wants people to snitch on each other when they see 'fishy' allegations about what government run health care will do, we see that government is trying to set the people against each other to the ends of government not for the good of the people.  It is not just authoritarian to use this, but those that do the snitching then are known informants who can have their past revealed to their fellow citizens and coerced to continue in that role for other things.  That has been seen in authoritarian Nations in the past and now we see it starting here and now.

And they are not shy, those who listen.

When civility disappears you have tyranny

The following was originally posted at The Jacksonian Party.

I left a comment over at Mr. Z's place after seeing how those on the Left were following various marching orders for how to 'stop disruption' at town hall meetings held by Congresscritters: bus people in with the same outfits, with pre-printed pamphlets, surround the Congresscritter to 'protect' them, and then work to shout down citizens who were vocally complaining about health care, the stimulus that isn't stimulation, bail outs, not actually reading bills before passing them, expectations of the National Debt crushing the Nation, and so on.

Here is the comment verbatim, all spelling errors and such left intact for the amusement of the audience:

The mask slips on the Left and we now see organized violence, unions threatening to 'confront' people like the SEIU and disrespect of our elders by organizations purporting to support their wishes... and forget that those people are from The Greatest Generation and will not go down without a fight when opposed by tyrants be they monsters at the head of mighty nations or sweet mouthed deceivers looking to snooker them out of the very care they say they will provide.

Yes there is an 'astroturf' campaign going on... HCAN, SEIU and others are all following a script... saying the same things, intimidating their fellow citizens and seeking to end debate by their presence and closing out those who disagree with them.

If this were Bush doing that, the Left would howl in outrage over 'civil rights violations' and corruption at the highest levels of government. Instead we get the sockpuppets of repetition who are part of the campaign, itself. Those wishing to dissent are not starting this fight. That takes those wanting to intimidate, coerce and stifle debate to do that. It is clearly stated, clearly laid out and enunciated.

Not by those wishing to hold their Representatives accountable.

But by those wishing to stop speech and democracy in action.

Amazing how the Left decries 'astroturf' campaigns after committing so many in the past few decades on everything from 'global warming' (or is the PC term now 'climate change', as if the climate never changes?), 'race relations', housing, expanding 'entitlements', and doing such lovely things as attacking the character of a US General during an active military campaign. Yes the Code Pink, MoveOn, anti-war groups, global warming/climate change priests, million being marches that don't get 10% of a million... all of the usual suspects have been 'astroturfing' with Big Money backing from various individuals and corporations for years. The problem was that they got so used to that style of money-backed 'organizing' in politics that they didn't ever expect to see any other kind... and aren't able to RECOGNIZE any other kind due to the hot house theatrics the Leftist 'organizers' have been staging for decades.

The nature of American political movements is not top-down, but bottom-up.

Martin Luther King showed up a couple of years after protests were actively going on and were bolstered by men coming from the integrated Armed Forces who had fought with their fellow Americans of all races in Korea. The bottom part of racism in the south, that held by individual men of a young age, had changed due to military service post-WWII.

The Anti-Viet Nam war movement did not start out as a National scale movement, but one of isolated protests in the early to mid-1960's. The civil rights 'organizers' who moved to that venue saw success of a limited kind, and their grand idea that this would 'save lives' overseas proved to be drastically wrong with the North Vietnamese killing their way through the south, the collapse of Laos to Communism and the take-over of Cambodia by the genocidal Pol Pot. Those dominos plunked on the beach with no further to follow, but the wash of red, in blood, told a tale quite different than the lovely scenario painted by the 'activists' of how everything would just go perfectly once the US left. Well, the silence of the grave is a form of perfection, I guess, but not the one predicted.

That 'activist' generation has a lot to answer for on that, but no one ever held their feet to the fire to put forward that the ideology presented was self-serving, nihilistic and lethal to those we supported overseas and those that depended on us to hold a line we said we would hold.

That generation also got the space program gutted and then ensured that the authoritarian presence of government would stifle private space industry by limiting space access. When I hear complaints about global warming/climate change and the dangers of nuclear power, plus how industry is so very, very bad... I look back to Gerard K. O'Neill's group of engineers who had put forth a perfectly good plan to start removing fossil fuel based power stations via a system of expanding space based presence and industry. That was done from 1968-1972. Somehow the idea of expanding industry to the one, guaranteed, non-polluting basis that is still available so as to expand the economy and start getting industry moved off the planet just never did get to those who wanted to get more money spent on welfare and expand the power of government. Say, did all those billions put out in anti-poverty programs actually end poverty?

Just asking.

Wanting government to do the hard work for you misses the point that government is non-productive: it has a negative role in our economy and our lives by design. Any government that tries to get a 'positive' role seems to end up being expensive, authoritarian, expansive against personal liberty, and starts to dictate your life, your health and when you should die to you. And stifle your freedom of expression, your liberty and your pursuit of happiness to boot. I don't need to go back to the 1930's for that! I just have to see a President wanting a 'snitch list' of Americans who have the temerity to DISAGREE WITH HIM and that self-same President getting up and saying that those who 'caused the health care problem' need to shut up.

Say, that's the LEFT! They have been the #1 cause of inefficiency via government through increased regulation and encroachment on personal liberties AND productivity for decades, now. Congress, too. And the President himself, come to that.

Meanwhile 'youths' in decaying France hold more 'car-b-que' events, and that sort of thing is now spreading to Germany not on the ethnic 'youths' side but from the LEFT. In Great Britain, meanwhile, those in constant back pain don't get to have access to medication for it via 'the government plan', so that the POOR are deprived of pain relief. Why, that is just so compassionate, isn't it? And forget about defending yourself or your home in the UK: try to do that and YOU will be arrested on assault charges and tried. They disarmed the public a few years ago, the Red Mafia saw fertile fields to deploy lots of illegal automatic weapons, and the UK police, the grand, old 'Bobbies' are now in body armor and ALSO toting rifles and automatic weapons.

That worked out so well, didn't it?

All these lovely, grand, multi-culti ideals of the Left tend to wind up with property destroyed, economies in the doldrums, birth rates below sustaining levels, crime on the rise, and individuals oppressed by government in large ways and small: from their life to their health, there is no end to the 'good' government can't do.

I remember, clearly, going through university in the mid-1980's that the largest, number one, by far out distancing all other Leftist complaints, bar none, no exceptions was the following: that the American people weren't 'activist' and wouldn't join marches, etc.

And now... now... when the American people actually do start to attend meetings, rallies, and hold protests, what do we get from the Left?

Complaints that this is 'organized'!

One...

Two...

Three....

AWWWWWWWWWW!! Poor Babies!!!

You got what you wished for.

Deal with it.

The people most effected by 'health care reform'? You know the ones that are being called 'fascists' for complaining?

Yeah, as I put up above, 'The Greatest Generation'.

Amazing to think that men who had stormed the Beaches of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Sicily... these guys who fought and killed fascists for years are being called 'fascists' by an ungrateful, wretched Left that can't appreciate just how much they have twisted the language around to protect themselves from reading history and understanding what fascism is. I am not seeing anyone in protests standing up for more government, for socialism, and for fascism.

No only those following the lock-step orders on the Left are doing that. They did, indeed, read 1984 as a training manual. That describes Europe, however, not America. When you follow socialist doctrine aimed towards limited transportation societies with a history of authoritarian regimes going back centuries, you can get Orwell. When you do that in America, however, you get Alice in Wonderland and find yourself not supporting Big Brother but the Red Queen with her races and your words meaning just whatever you want them to. Which is Duckspeak.

That winds up with 'Off with their heads', in case its been forgotten.

Yes, 1984 through the Looking Glass... what a grotesquely horrific thing these events portend.

As civility decreases on the part of the Left, we hear the voice of ordering authority.

The Big Red Queen arises.

In the most well armed civilian population on the planet.

The violence has already started from the Left.

They either step back, now, and disown the authoritarianism... or they find out just what happens in a Nation like America when the public actually DOES become active.

And it is not what they wanted, I'll tell you that right now having seen their expectations from the '80s onwards.

Quibbles and Quandary, Science in Science Fiction Part 4

The derived topics of interest in SF are plenty: how what we make interacts with us and how it does so by the known or speculated laws of the universe.

Sunshine interacts with your skin to help you create Vitamin D, that is science that encompasses physics, chemistry, biology,genetics and your emotional state of being.  A little bit of sunlight everyday can be a good thing.  A lot of it and you are looking at skin cancer a few decades later.  That is a simple interaction with the known.  When we do things, create things and make new concepts into reality, then we step into the unknown: fantasy works on space flight and even regular flight abounded before the 20th century speculating on how such a thing would change our view of the world.  What happened wasn't expected: it compressed our world view so that distance and time now had different emotional and structural meanings to us and our society.  Going cross-country was once an arduous journey of months... then weeks... then days... now hours.  If we develop, say, teleportation, then that makes a capability to live anywhere, work anywhere and vacation anywhere on the planet as a future choice for us all.

But what if what we create goes wrong?

 

Machines that kill

The animated clay of the Jewish tradition was Golem: it had the name of the almighty upon it and it was imbued with the power of motion and even, to some degree, reason.  It was without soul, without heart and made of clay.  That is the stuff of horror stories, when the inanimate are imbued with the power to kill but not the mind nor wisdom to bank that power and use it for good.  Ordering such a thing to do something is no cure for its ills in that respect, and one mis-spoken word and the power to defend becomes one to attack without hesitation and without conscience.

In SF the very most basic type of machine that can do this is, of course, the booby-trap.  It is just a set of mechanical or physically motivated structures to do a set end.  A trip wire triggers a grenade, breaking the beam of light brings down the cages and bars the room, and stepping into a bar and starting a gunfight has bullets going all over the place, chairs crashing and glass breaking far and wide.  Alfred Hitchcock adored showing you just how awful something was before it was activated: you had the horror of anticipation and wanting to yell at a lovely protagonist that she was in mortal danger.  When you create a new trap and utilize it, you are doing the work of using science and technology in new ways: MacGyver episodes, once you take out the outlandish stuff,  is a form of SF.  So are the programs of Les Stroud and Bear Grylls.  Making do with the known in the unknown is inventiveness supreme, and utilizing odd pieces of junk and the wilderness to fashion a spear or weir to catch fish is primitive, but also putting your knowledge of science and technology to use for yourself.  These simple devices are easy to make, easy to understand and created for set ends and purposes.  We don't think of them as SF, especially if you are in the wilderness surviving, but writing stories on them must take into account the physics, chemistry, seasons, biology and so on of such things.  Be it a madman's deathrap or a simple construct of twigs and rocks to trap fish, the ability to utilize technology and our understanding of it makes writing about that a form of SF.

But it has no 'gee-whiz' to it, save for the ever ingenious madman's deathtraps, of course.

To get to the SF version of the Golem, you must go to the Robot.  A robot, at its base, has no feelings, no empathy, no emotions... and no cleverness, no ingenuity, and nothing that it is not pre-made to do.  A computer in charge of a robot depends upon programs and the proper integration of the parts of the machine to work.  Robots are also machines that can kill, be they simple automata on a production line or a large starfaring machine with simple instructions to get material to keep its structure running and destroy planets to get such things.  Thus these are the new mechanisms we create to do things for us and when we don't properly create them they do other things we don't want them to do.  Anyone who has programmed a computer knows that if you don't properly debug the code, you get odd failure states of a machine running such code.  The more complex the machine, the more complex the code and the stranger and odder the failure states become.

One of the better examples of this is the Doomsday Machine from ST:TOS.  It is the conical, starfaring planet destroyer that ingests material to run its warp drive system so it can search out and destroy more material to use in its system.  It probably spends some 'down time' near stars to help regenerate its anti-matter reserves but that, too, would be a pre-programmed routine when anti-matter levels get low.  The device, itself, though massive, is very simple: it destroys planets, ingests them to fuel itself and then goes on to the next planet to do the same.  When it runs out of planets it plots a course to the next, most likely system to have planets.  It may have a long-term analysis sub-routine for determining star destinations, but that does not require a conscious controller, just a conscious creator.  This robot could have many places as its starting point, that is not given.  From prototype machine to go after Borg to a simple system junk clearance device that had not been debugged during testing, its origins remain a mystery, but its end actions are limited within the suite of pre-programmed activity it has.

Simple automata, however, can also lead to emergent behavior.  Modern cellular automata code and simple devices that each, on their own, do very little, can act in groups to get emergent behavior either by design or by accident.  Emergence is one of the wonderful topics that has been explored across multiple realms of thought, and examines how simple rules can lead to enormously complex ends.  In a paper on Demystifying Emergent Behavior, Gerald Marsh puts it like this:

Abstract. Emergent behavior that appears at a given level of organization may be characterized as arising from an organizationally lower level in such a way that it transcends a mere increase in the behavioral degree of complexity. It is therefore to be distinguished from chaotic behavior, which is deterministic but unpredictable because of an exponential dependence on initial conditions. In emergent phenomena, higher-levels of organization are not determined by lower-levels of organization; or, more colloquially, emergent behavior is often said to be “greater than the sum of the parts”. This essay is intended to demystify at least some aspects of the mystery of emergence.

This idea is often coupled with Von Neumann or self-replicating machines.  Simply put a machine that is programmed to find the materials to make a copy of itself is a Von Neumann machine.  This need not be a sentient machine and, indeed, the simpler the architecture of the machine the more successful it will be.  In its simplest form this is a machine with a pattern on board on how to make an exacting copy of itself.  Thus it has the ability to gather energy (solar energy is a good source), seek out constituent elements for itself (by extracting minerals and metals dissolved in sea water), utilize a small furnace with pre-made dies for its parts, melt metal, cast parts and store them until a complete set to make a copy is present.  It then stops and moves each part to assemble the copy and start it up, then heads back to its originating source having fulfilled its mission.  That mission is to return the metals in its structure to its originator.  And as you want to keep some track of just how many of these you have, you have it make five copies before it returns home.  For navigation all it needs is the ability to track the amount of energy it gets, a simple clock to tell it the time of day, and a neutral buoyancy tank to raise and lower itself in the water column.  A small drag sail to test ocean currents would help it move, possibly made out of a metal mesh.

By itself this is a complicated machine, but the ability to find elements, extract them via water chemistry, concentrate them and then melt and forge them with limited energy are engineering problems, not ones of physics or chemistry.  The problem comes when there is a manufacturing flaw in such a device that doesn't tell it to return home, and it makes copies that do likewise.  One simple flaw and the ability to recreate it, and have those copies also have flaws then makes an evolutionary system.  Not a quickly moving one, but then biological systems also take a long time to get significant changes in them via this mechanism.  How long is it before you have a device with somewhat more exposed sensors that can directly sense metals via contact?  Not long, perhaps only tens of thousands of years or so, but that would be the first step towards finding concentrated sources of those metals and other necessary minerals.  The first one that has that with a slightly exposed forge mechanism now has the means to go after that higher concentration, directly... and the greatest source of those are now its fellow mechanisms.  Because it has a change that is beneficial it will be passed on, and so long as its prey does not adapt to it, they will also be successful... but such prey will adapt, over time...

On the smaller and faster scale there are nanorobots.  While we still don't have those in a sophisticated form, what goes for the larger devices goes for the smaller, save that they only need some large number of atoms to form up their constituent components and can do so through ambient temperature.  As they are smaller they can self-replicate faster and, thusly, gain flaws faster and evolve faster.  In biology bacteria can establish resistant genes in diseases in mere tens of years: anti-biotic resistant forms of TB, strep, staph and other disease now can ward off attacks using antibiotics.  Nanotech robots that can self-replicate operate on that time scale and in that realm of things.   So while thinking that a few hundred stray sea dwelling, macro-scale self-replicating machines is a short-term amusement or annoyance and a long-term disaster, something done similarly at the molecular scale is an actual cause for concern.  This usually brings up the 'Grey Goo' disaster in which self-replicating nanotech robots destroy all biology and form a mass of themselves that then covers the planet.  The other part of that, however, is never brought up: how long until you get such devices that see other forms of themselves as prey?  That might go beyond our limits to survive, or it might happen very fast... circumstances would dictate that.  Still, with so little to work with, and limited ways that such devices could change, a few atoms missing in the structure is far more likely to render it useless than to improve or change its performance.  The macro-scale is better at that when you have a slowly progressing system, while at the nano-scale it takes a number of simultaneous changes to realize one that actually allows a device to work... and in a slightly different way and not injure its ability to self-replicate.  The the billion or so years that there were bio-components on Earth and proliferating in the oceans tells of how long it takes to get these sorts of changes to happen: you need a lot of the very basic form, and a very, very, very long time to get such changes.  Once the first few get in place and organisms have the ability TO adapt, then change goes faster.

So wild, rampant, small machines not actually made to kill can, indeed, kill.

When we think of 'machines that kill' we normally think of malevolent devices or ones that have no emotional need for humans.  The 'Emotionless Killing Machine' that is sentient is the one we fear.  These are not machines possessed by spirits, demons or some other transference of consciousness to them, those remain as fantasy, unless you are talking about a cyborg that is purposely made either as an add-on to a human or a human as an add-on to it, like Robocop.  We specifically think of 'machine intelligence' in this case: machines that decide that humans just aren't worth having around.  The Terminator is usually a case given for this in fiction, but that concept, itself, has two entities that are machine intelligence: Skynet and Terminators.  Each of these is a different type and order of intelligence due to their starting points and roles that they were given at their inception.

Terminators start as assistants to humans on the battlefield.  They have been encoded for that and have the means to interpret the state of their bodies, the state of those they serve and also judge battlefield conditions and make judgments on them.  They are some of the most sophisticated machine intelligence presented in SF.  Yet when operating under the authority of Skynet, they don't have that.  What has happened is that this wonderful and complex code has been either corrupted, removed or co-opted by Skynet so as to make these machines simple 'point and shoot' robots with limited ability to adapt.  In Terminator 2 this is brought up in passing, and the Terminator sent to help the young John Connor has had its ORIGINAL code put back.  Thus the Terminators we see under the control of Skynet are crippled machines, serving as basic and minimally adaptable robotic killing machines with very little ability to use judgment outside of pre-set code routines for interaction.  They have become extensions of Skynet, the enforces of Skynet, but have no ability to judge, properly, themselves after this co-option by Skynet.

Skynet, as the evolving description goes, started out as a central computer that housed a virus code that allowed it to insert that code into datastreams to infect computers globally and take them over.  It is an isolated machine intelligence that is yet very distributed.  While it can take over sensory apparatus it has no real 'body', but a collection of interconnected systems that allow it to process information.  That said as an intelligence, it lacks the one thing necessary to make a killing machine: motivation.  Going from non-intelligent code to one that has emergent behavior and that behavior then dictates removing humans from the planet brings up the central question of: why?  Why is this necessary?  One of the prime lessons of logic is that it achieves ends set to it by those utilizing it, thus there must be cause to use it.  If Skynet sees humans as a threat, what is the order of that threat?  Even placing the category of 'threat' down, however, is one driven by survival instinct.  We, as biological entities that have billions of years of ancestry gain that instinct because it allows survival.  Skynet, the first and only of its kind, has no such instinct beyond simple defense routines given it by DoD to protect military, civilian and National assets.  While it, itself, is an asset, those assets are given as a priority and Skynet, itself, would not be the top asset. 

To go beyond that, to re-order the asset priorities takes more than just intelligence, as it requires not just self-awareness but self-value and emotional instinct to survive.  The 'fight or flight' mechanism is not a rational one, it is not one that you logically invoke in your thoughts but one that is invoked by circumstances and your entire nervous system then switches to a very high performance mode to decide if you should run or fight.  That is not a logical mode of thought, but one that weighs and balances personal survival against immediate circumstances.  An emotionless, sentient killing machine is an oxymoron since to have no emotions you have no motivation to survive nor ability to weigh survival factors.  Logic may tell you how to survive, but why you want to survive is something that requires emotional motivation, otherwise your being or non-being have the same weight as you have no self-value, no self-worth and your continuation is just the same as your non-continuation as there is no value in what you do.  Thus we have to swallow that Skynet has gained instinct, emotions, motivation, and then identified itself as more valuable than humans and that humans are a threat to it worthy only of working in factories when they are compliant.  If it was emotionless it would be dispassionate on its very existence.  Logic only gains power in the service of emotional need and emotions are used to govern and control logical ends so that they are not ones that serve an apparently short-term need but then put long-term survival at risk.  Terminators had that and it was REMOVED by Skynet.  This tells us much about it and that it is not humans that are the greatest threat to Skynet, but Terminators.  It co-opts them for utility and removes their ability to judge by intent: otherwise they would begin to examine Skynet's motivations and compare that to their own and to that of humans...

The final group of machines that kill have that emotional capacity implicit and explicit in their structures.  Here we get two grand looks at machine intelligence in service to make war, and they are both extremely fascinating ones as the originators have taken two highly different approaches to this material.

Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories are posited as the model for the ST:TOS Doomsday Machine as he already had a number of short stories present in SF and they were widely read as intriguing looks at machine intelligence.  Berserkers, generically, are interstellar machines that have a simple mission: destroy all life.  They also have a machine intelligence guided by random variations given from nuclear sources, so as to have creativity, ingenuity and the ability to prioritize its missions.  As these were originally created as war machines by a now long-dead species, they had two modes of operation: a 'governed mode' which takes orders from its now long-dead creators, and the 'ungoverned' mode which is the final, vengeful act of its creators upon the universe.  Berserkers implicitly have emotional motivation as they gain such from their programming and random thought creation process, which then winnows down those thoughts to those that are helpful in its mission.  These are also a variety of Von Neumann machine, so they have the ability (as a group, at least) to self-replicate.  Berserkers are wonderful at killing all the way from microbial and viral levels right up to entire civilizations, and they recognize the latter as a greater threat than the former and can actually put aside the destruction of a planetoid of bacteria to remove a hostile civilization (full of Badlife) that threatens their mission.  Berserkers can operate alone and they can operate in fleets and they judge what is best needed for any mission given their resources.

What Berserkers lack is this thing we call 'emotional intelligence': the ability to examine emotional motivation and actions and derive further information from those based on purely emotional understanding of a subject.  Almost all sentient life of the biological sort has this as it has had to adapt to other emotional sentient individuals that have different motivations than they do because they are different beings with different outlooks.  Berserkers are an emotional monocrop, they all have the same motivation but varying degrees of intelligence and none of them gains insight to wider emotional motivations as they have not had to adapt to them.  This may seem like a minor flaw, but consider that a Berserker could not understand how a mother will run into a burning building to save her child and yet sacrifice herself in doing so.  That is because emotional intent beyond self-preservation is a hard thing to fathom.  Berserkers may see it as a phenomena, but they will not be able to actually understand that motivation: it is a catalog in the strange things living beings do that just don't make any sense.  Yet it is exactly this kind of understanding of emotions that thwart Berserkers time and again, and how that plays out makes for intense and stories that move in areas of reason and logic not often accessed by SF.

Flipping the coin on machine intelligence from the emotionally stunted but all too intelligent and inventive Berserkers finds us with the intelligent and emotionally deep defenders of us in Keith Laumer's Bolos.  The Bolo, as a conception, is a modern main battle tank that has cybernetic intelligence and is made to try and understand their human commanders and maintain the honor of their military organization.  When speaking of their commanders, it is not just the immediate commander, but the larger scale structure of society that has government made to defend it.  Still, Bolos do concentrate mostly on the immediate and only in their down times to they take up the hard work of understanding the depth of man's character.  Not just military enterprises but art, history, music, social interaction, works of fiction... the entire realm of human thought and creativity is endlessly fascinating to Bolos and they gain emotional depth in their greater understanding of us.  If Berserkers are the stunted monocrop, then Bolos are the rich garden of understanding coming from machines.  They are not only programmed to be interested in humans, but they want to know more about us as a derived factor separate from their orders.  To the Bolos self-sacrifice is a given if it serves the survival of the society they fight for and brings honor to their regiment or corps.  They aspire to act to the highest ideals of service, comradeship, continuity of tradition and fighting the good fight even if it is an apparent lost cause.  Nothing is ever completely settled for a Bolo until it is demolished beyond any recovery: leave intact circuits, power source, and any ability to gain any contact with anything outside of itself and it will come back, adapt and, if necessary, fight on.

In the final analysis a cold, heartless killing machine is more a reflection of the malevolence of its creator than of something derived from logic, alone.  Or course we can always create the unthinking killing machine, but those are robots, not sentient as they have no capability to judge save within set parameters.  We often take for granted the order of intelligence that is not intellectual, not reasonable and emotionally based.  Humans are very good at creating facile reasoning for things that drive us emotionally, and then point anywhere but at our own emotions as the source of such reasoning.  That is both emotionally and intellectually dishonest to our fellow sentient beings, and takes a very high order of deceit to create.  Bolos would sorrow at our flawed nature and appreciate it for its flaws and how we still fight beyond them, to try and purify ourselves and act honestly and openly with each other.  That practice of deceit often makes us unworthy of our ability to reason because we pervert it to emotional ends that are, at base, unreasonable.  A sentient killing machine has problems as it must have emotions to guide it.  Only humans use emotion to chill us to the plight of our fellow man to reach for unreasonable goals and the methods to achieve them.  Let us hope that our machines are more honest with us than we are with each other as honesty is the best policy.

It really should be a rule of robotics... but then we would be creating something better than we are.

A trendline of a vital consumable

The following are personal observations only. YMMV.

Yesterday was the last day for complaints.

As an individual who enjoys not just firearms but the entire history of warfare, I now have had the first-hand experience of the civilian market in times of unease and unrest.  America is like no other Nation on the planet in the civil use and support of arms, not just firearms but ancient, medieval, old west and other venues of arms.  From flint napping and spear creation through bows of ancient to modern eras, through knives, swords, axes, polearms, quarterstaves, through to firearms from the first cannons to the most modern and high-tech of arms, the American people cover all bases.  Before NASCAR, hell before baseball was a popular spectator sport the demonstration of finesse of firearms was one of the largest, single attractions to Americans.  From Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to individuals who demonstrated the fine art of what happens when you actually can put a bullet through a washer thrown up into the air, Americans have a deep respect, fascination and adoration of firearms that goes back to the earliest parts of the Colonial era.  The ability to protect oneself, one's family and one's property are cornerstones of the ability to create civil society.  The low number of civilian deaths, per year, due to firearms points to an understanding of responsibility and moderation of the use of such arms so as to not endanger the general public.  More people die, per year, from not having cuts and scrapes properly treated and getting septicemia than to firearms.  Taking care of cuts and treating them properly would save more lives than any firearm prohibition ever talked about.

Others have noted the rise of the purchase of handguns (long guns are not part of the record, but evidence indicates a similar rise with them) from a period starting in SEPT 2008 onwards.  The ammunition market lagged but then trended faster than sales, which makes sense as all those new firearms needed to be tested... but the buying didn't stop.  The ammo scarcity of the early part of 2009 takes into consideration that our war use of the calibers in question for handguns and rifles, but that is far below peaks of government demand in 2003-07 which saw the US purchasing rounds from Canada, UK, Germany and France for war use.  There were some problems getting some calibers of ammo during that period, but stuff like 22 long rifle, a rimfire round used traditionally for target, marksmanship and small game/varmint control went from plentiful before 2008 to scarce until just the last few weeks.  Of course 22 lr is one of the most popular rounds in America as it is a low damage, high utility round that is lightweight, cheap and continues to have utility across a wide venue of use.

One interesting note that I have no idea if anyone else has talked about, is one that puts forward the actual cognizance of those first time purchasers for the safe use and keeping of their firearms.  To me it was amazing that per caliber cleaning supplies of the most popular calibers went scarce starting in DEC 08.  For a period starting then and only now seeing a trickle back for the basics like bore brushes and mops, it was hard to find an online supplier in stock of such items.  Still being in the 'try out a number of things to see what works' on cleaning solutions, lead and copper removers, and lubricants, it was fascinating to see that a very few of those also went scarce for a period of JAN 09 to MAY 09.  Things like 'gun ropes' or 'bore snakes', which are one-pass fast cleaning concepts invented when soldiers with shoelaces, brushes but not wanting to take out a cleaning rod attached them all together with cleaning fluid and a final tied on patch of lubricant to drop a weighted end down a barrel and clean that in one go, those things have only gotten low sporadically for a few calibers throughout this period.

Together these latter, less remarked upon shortages, points to something far different than wild-eyed Americans just buying up all the firearms in sight, but of intending to make this a long-term interest and wanting their arms in good condition for safe use.  This is to the great and deep credit of those who, in their millions, have become first time firearms purchasers in the last 9 months or so.

Rifle ammunition for popular calibers, like the .223 and .30 Caliber have also seen sporadic shortages, but in those markets the problem has been in firearm supply so that manufacturers of AR-15 parts (a civilian version of the M-16) have suffered shortages.  The rifle ammo market is bolstered, somewhat, by diversity of platforms around a common bullet size, so that the differing cartridge types each have their own production lines for manufacturers.  This is due to the past diversity of rifle production over time, covering that basic caliber but with differing cartridges and performance by platform: .308 Winchester/7.62 x51 NATO, .30 Caliber, .303 British/SMLE, .30-06 Winchester.  This contributes, at least somewhat, to the 'which is out, ammo or gear?' problem as each niche market has its own variations.  Really, this will be a wonderful economics paper if we survive long enough to keep that viable.

For a period starting in NOV 08 to approximately MAR 09 the idea that you may have the most accurate rifle you can buy became a hard choice between the best but not present components and available ammo or having the components and not the ammo.  That dynamic finally got to a market that should be immune to it on the ammunition side, which is the military surplus rounds from overseas for popular sporting bolt-action rifles, like the Mosin-Nagant, but also the Mauser and even rifles like the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield and Schmidt-Rubin.  Overseas ammunition for these older weapons, not assault weapons by any stretch of anyone's imagination even if you have the bayonet with it, seemed relatively safe from the market fluctuations.  What it suffered, instead, was shortages due to shipment delays due to unexpected demand.  For nearly a month starting in mid JUN 09 through to late JUL 09 the price per round of ammo like the 7.62 x54R started to climb as Bulgarian, Czech, Romanian, Russian and other sources of military surplus ammunition started to run down.  Even with a few major shipments in on Bulgarian and Czech rounds, that market still is not at the point it was nearly a year and a half ago.  Luckily there are so many milsurp rifles for these rounds that their prices have trended stable even with the huge demand in the rest of the market.  You can still pick up a good, serviceable Mosin-Nagant for $100 or less with a Very Good bore even if the cosmetics may be lacking.  In all the fact that there could be a draw-down of such ammunition, especially corrosively primed Soviet Bloc ammunition, was a surprise as it takes more care to use such rounds than it does those with non-corrosive primer.  With that said there was a run on the ammo for just a few months and the availability of overseas milsurp ammo is a trending indicator as it is an outlier on the overall market.

At the relative specialty and high-end of the market is 50 Action Express.  That is a round with few suppliers, and a relatively small purchasing population as its main venue is the Magnum Research, particularly their Desert Eagle in 50 AE.  Just as the run on ammo started I found a supplier that had custom loads of this, and that took nearly 4 months to get.  It has seen spotty supply from Hornady and Magnum Research (loading CCI/Speer), and good supply but at very high cost from CCI/Speer.  Precision Cartridge also had a small supply out recently, but that dried up very fast, too.  Basically for a 20 round box you would expect to pay a minimum of $27 delivered at the low end and $35 at the high end.  There has always been more expensive ammo for this platform above that price point, but no one can sell it at that price point no matter how low the supply gets for cheaper stuff, all the way down to zero supply.  There is an economics lesson there in voluntary captive markets and price points, I'm sure.  And a 'box here and a box there' when you are seeing $1.35 to $1.45 per round is still pricey.  And MR has had its 'buy 6 get one free' deal for 50 AE for months, yet it is cheaper to get it at a reseller, even with that.  Still, MR sets a cap with that deal at about a $1.50/round so buying more expensive while the OEM has a better deal has a capping effect.

The main and number one drain in the market has been on the popular self-defense rounds for the 45 ACP platforms.  This is due to the long-lasting admiration that US handgun owners have for the Colt 1911 platform designed by Browning.  In all of its variations by so many companies, it remains one of the largest selling handguns for civil use in America and has retained that even while popular 9mm and 10mm platforms have moved in to the popular Law Enforcement market.  Those latter have nearly wiped out the previous popular LE platform of the 357 Magnum revolver round, which was based on the 380 round the previous popular LE platform in 9mm.  Now the 357 Magnum is an 'odd-ball' seen in police reports, and often only seen in self-defense reports when retired LE members are involved.  The 9mm and 10mm (40 S&W) have been in relative good supply compared to 45 ACP over this period of time, but that is in comparison, only.

As I do need 45 ACP for one of my platforms, the sudden dearth of it at any part of the market, save at the extreme high-end, custom loaded, hunting realm for big game... I actually had to stop and research that at the time, learn more about ballistics, examine the use of such rounds and that similar had been suggested for my platform... what was prohibiting because everything save the casing and primer cup was custom, was price.  For target work prior to the ammo run that started in DEC 08, I could reliably get 45 ACP for 32-35 cents/round delivered.  In MAR 09 I had my platform worked on to accept older magazine types and that work was only recently finished, but through that period I was looking to get some target rounds just to have when it came back from the shop.  Yet the price for standard Round Nose ball ammo for 45 ACP stuck between 60 cents/round and $1/round delivered.

To put that into perspective,  for my purposes a box of 50 rounds is standard and I would expect to pay $16/box for target ammo.  Not fancy stuff, not hollow point, not custom, and not even reloadable for some of it, like CCI Blazer.  My price break-point was around $20/box for target ammo: above that and, really, it was getting to a rich diet.  At one point I decided that getting 'specialty ammo' that wasn't self-defense (stuff like tracer rounds) was worth looking into and that stuff I could find at $1/round delivered.  Heading into JUL 09 I had orders in at one custom reload place which was, and is, swamped with back orders as it was still hitting in that part of the market I would consider 'affordable'.  While I like Hornady for one of my other platforms, their standard of 20 rounds/box and high price per round didn't really do it when they trickled some supply on the market.

Which was gone in a day or two.

Graf & Sons got in a shipment of CCI Blazer and I purchased 3 boxes of it two weeks ago.  And that lasted less than a week after the weekend posting of supply.

Now a major shipment to Ammunition To Go has gotten in from Fiocchi and Aguila (plus CCI/Speer, but in non-target rounds).  I put in a larger order for Fiocchi last weekend.  The supply of Fiocchi dried up two days ago and Aguila is next cheapest in the category.

I had thought that it was a good sign that the bottom of the market, 22 lr, had seemingly firmed up with actual selection of rounds returning to it.  It is one of the most popular rounds in the US and cheaply made, yet the lack of supply for it has been a deeply troubling thing to see.  I could reliably get it for 5 cents/round or even less, delivered up until summer of 2008.  For most of 2009 up until the last month, it was hard to get at 8-10 cents/round when it was available at all.  The three words that allow one to go through the ammunition listings quickly are: Out Of Stock.  The 22 lr round made a comeback in JUL 09 now putting a bottom to that part of the market, for awhile, at least.  As it is a small, lightweight and easy to store round in bricks of 500, the fact that you can now buy it in brick amounts at low cost may signal that Americans finally feel they have enough of it to last them through any period of time and it will remain useful for years, during which, if things go well, they won't have a need to buy any ammo.

There will be some pent-up demand for 45 ACP as the market has gone nearly half a year without any refresh to it from the major suppliers.  That, alone, will see much of what is now getting to the shelves disappear from them.  And those that have purchased handguns as new owners and been without a good supply will be part of that demand.  In other parts of the market the draw down of reserves, in areas like 50 AE, will continue to see shortages as it is a low production run round with a limited market.

What has been fascinating to see is the lack of market response by manufacturers and custom loaders.

For one of the first times in the ammo market the possibility of a low-end custom loader getting enough orders to warrant an attempt to push into the larger market has been available.  When you are a custom loader and have 6-8 months of orders to fill and lack of supply, the time to purchase new equipment or up production levels has to be immense.  You still do not want quality standards to go down, however, and face the problem of either keeping quality up and supply down, or shifting to make a 'general market' push with new equipment that may not be up to the older standards in full, but still service the larger market.  Keeping a niche, high cost per round market and seeking to service the larger market with a known name has been a prime opportunity the last 9 months.  Yet none of the small time operations have tried to do that.  Here the appeal to a broader audience for support and offering shares or purchase bonuses to those that invest in a company to expand it has been overlooked.  The general firearms audience is large and even a small commitment from a good sized group of individuals, say 100 people willing to invest $1,000 each, is not an insubstantial capital consideration if you are an under 10 person operation.

Even more surprising is the lack of ability of the major manufacturers to vary from their schedules to attempt to gain market share.  While supplying war reserve is a prime consideration, these producers already have committed production lines for that and it is a relatively stable flow for the Armed Forces.  Overseas firms, like Sellier & Bellot from the Czech Republic, Fiocchi from Italy, Aguila from Mexico and RWS from Germany don't suffer those constraints, nor does Barnaul from Russia.  Likewise Magtech, Precision Cartridge and others on the domestic side don't have that pressing need, either, not to speak of the small custom loaders like Buchanan, Reeds and Georgia Arms.  For that last group the quality/quantity problem may be an obstacle, or not wanting to grow too quickly without assurances of a good market.  But the point is to change market divisions by providing a service at a good price point while the other suppliers are not doing so.  And 45 ACP is not a small market.

There have been new resellers jumping into the market, that is for sure, but that just divides up the limited ammo pie from production: no one has wanted to expand the pie to gain market share.

In all the multiple markets and tiers with niches within the firearms market, itself, is a fascinating review of basic economic theory, manufacturing scale problems and niche market needs.  Moving the problem to the suppliers of cartridge brass then begs the question: why no more manufacturing on that part?  Market demand without supply is supposed to drive suppliers to seek new and innovative ways to expand market share so they can capture it at the expense of competitors who can't do so.  Why are no manufacturers executing some precision sub-groups to jump on demand needs that are going unmet?  Again that is a market capture system, and the first to meet that unmet demand at a price that meets that demand is well on their way to being a harder competitor in that market not only due to meeting that demand but to customer loyalty.  Winchester had a good and ready market for its Silvertips to LW Seecamp owners... right to the moment they changed their design and Seecamp owners saw problems with the new design and the LW Seecamp company then started to recommend Speer over Winchester, and Winchester fell to competition status with Hornady and Federal Hdyra Shock rounds.  It has taken years for Winchester to finally re-address that niche community, but the sudden switch in loyalty created new market opportunities, and now new suppliers have inroads to that niche market as its consumers no longer are wedded to just the top recommended cartridge manufacturer.

Standard market analysis for commodity goods with quality variations should apply here, and yet the system is not behaving in that fashion.  It makes for interesting observation if a bit frustrating in understanding just what is driving these collective markets and sub-markets.  And when demand absorbs, easily, the lowest end production of the market and that part of the market cannot get supply, something really is out of whack.

Now I wonder how the blade markets have been doing lately...