Comments on: The Myth Has No Clothes

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:32:00 +0000

I learned a long time ago, a degree offers the most superficial understanding of the world. On the other hand, as a former government healthcare auditor, a CPA, an MBA and holder of three professional insurance designations, I can tell you I’ve yet to use a differential equation of any order to understand healthcare finance.

There is, in the words of NN Taleb, a difference between computing and thinking.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:32:00 +0000

There is, in the words of NN Taleb, a difference between computing and thinking.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:25:00 +0000

My own personal experience doesn’t fit with your argument.

I’ve spent the last year without insurance and I’ve questioned my doctor on the cost of everything she’s proposed.

The problem is, she doesn’t know the cost of any of it. Can you imagine this occurring in any other market? Imagine going into Best Buy and asking a salesperson how much something cost and they replied, “I don’t know.”

Why doesn’t she know? Because her customers don’t ask. Why don’t her customers ask? Because they aren’t paying for it.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:58:00 +0000

Originally you didn’t mention government, you just said “absolute capital power corrupts absolutely”. You’re arguing against yourself because in your comments above you had to bring in corrupt government in order to complete the picture. You need to state the full case up front. What a waste of time.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:36:00 +0000

You confuse markets, which should always be free to be entered by anyone, including the so-called natural monopolies like electricity, gas etc. with the concentration of power both political and economic when capital is concentrated in few hands. As to the evil I wish to see stopped is the conduct by Goldman Sachs, Citibank, BankAmerica and the other “too big to fail” financial institutions whose accumulation of capital allowed them to buy many Congressmen, place their lieutenants in all of the regulatory agencies, and nearly brought the United States to its knees. What I would promote is a set of regulations that even the playing field, keep corporate money out of Congressional coffers, separate commercial banking from insurance and both from investment banking. Further I would argue that the dissolution of a corporation that commits the kind of fraud that Enron, abetted by Citibank, Global Crossings, Goldman Sachs with its selling and touting worthless securities while buying credit default swaps that bet on their lack of value should be mandatory. Any assets could then be sold on the open market to lawful businesses. The actual facts of history demonstrates that any time capital is concentrated into too few hands, the corruption of power held by both the capital accumulators and the governments that supposedly regulate them leads to disaster for all counterparties, and the citizenry in general.
Tulips, government bonds, Oil Domes, silver market capture, residential real estate,1978, 1982-5, 1987-91, 2003-2008, now commercial real estate coupled with trillions of dollars in derivative trades, a large part of which were bets against residential real estate based securities.
Finally, I would not regulate the accumulation of wealth, but the uses to which it could be put. Just as I conclude that the Second Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from prohibiting the possession of small arms, I also assert that use of such weapons to assault, maim, kill or terrorize can be strictly prohibited and punished with drastic penalties, the same applies to money, automobiles, forged checks or hamers.