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Assorted links
1. Via Chris Masse, one account of life as a fashion model.
2. Countercyclical asset of the day: building sheds.
3. Me, on the future of libraries and related matters.
4. NeighborhoodEffects, a blog.
5. How much should blog writers disclose about their personal lives?
6. Old people are less interested in health care reform: the numbers.
7. Markets in everything: de-baptism, done with a hair dryer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I have been in Medicare for nearly 7 years.
One health reform I favor would ensure that
not only do patients get the treatment they
need but that they need the treatment they get.
In a system where doctors are paid a salary, as
at the renowned Cleveland and Mayo Clinics,both
are likely. Elsewhere I am not so sure. It can be
be argued of course that in the absence of an
incentive to increase one's income, doctors
won't innovate and do their best. But the
clinics I named seem to have surmounted this
problem.
Posted by: Candadai Tirumalai at Jul 22, 2009 10:44:49 AM
#5 and other entries from this same blog are must reads. Perhaps, the best writing on the web.
This is just great stuff:
"When I was a kid, there was money everywhere. My great grandpa was a lawyer for the Chicago mob in the 1920s, and today, my dad's generation is still living off that money. Sometimes I wonder if the key to being able to squash materialism is to have a lot of it as a kid. I'm not sure. But let me tell you this: I grew up with a laundress and a housekeeper and unlimited cash from a drawer in the dining room."
Posted by: Alan at Jul 22, 2009 11:12:16 AM
From the Sullivan link: "I can understand why some atheists would find this cathartic."
Sure, if they're the increasingly common religious atheists with deeper and more pervasive problems than just their dislike of Jebus. I've got no problem with someone turning on their religion, or never being religious, but come on. If you've decided there is no god, that's really all there is to it. That's all it took for me. It'd be one thing if they had been physically assaulted as a child and the ceremony gave them a representation of their passage out of that pain, but with a hairdryer named 'reason' that's clearly not the case.
Posted by: MPO at Jul 22, 2009 12:09:33 PM
Well, I for one cannot take seriously any blogger who does not lay out in
full intimate detail everything about their personal sex life!
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jul 22, 2009 12:45:24 PM
#7 is why I obfuscate the fact that I have no faith. Open mockery and the debasement of other's beliefs, just because you don't believe them yourself, is a classy move that's bound to engender acceptance.
Posted by: quecostique at Jul 22, 2009 12:57:24 PM
#7 is why I obfuscate the fact that I have no faith. Open mockery and the debasement of other's beliefs, just because you don't believe them yourself, is a classy move that's bound to engender acceptance.
Posted by: quecostique at Jul 22, 2009 12:57:38 PM
why should old people care about health care reform? medicare is the best plan in the country. And you think we can afford Mayo/Cleveland clinic standards of care you are crazy.
Posted by: charlie at Jul 22, 2009 1:41:59 PM
5. It's good that she's learned that kids are real and careers are bullshit.
Posted by: Andrew at Jul 22, 2009 1:58:27 PM
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/criminally-insane-cliff-asness-takes-on.html
Interesting take opposing universal healthcare...
Thoughts?
Posted by: Mark at Jul 22, 2009 3:30:27 PM
2. I thought it was going to be about building sheds, not building sheds. On the former, I've thought the "idle resources" argument was somewhat odd. People aren't sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. I built a shed. What is definitely idle are the skills that were useful in the bubble and not clear will be needed in the future.
As for the latter, I predict we will eventually have foot traffic underneath streets anyway. If I were building a city from scratch I'd put either people or cars underneath surface level.
Posted by: Andrew at Jul 22, 2009 5:08:49 PM
I dn't agree with Trunk. And yes, I grew up in a screwed-up family where some secrets shouldn't have stayed secrets. There is still an important distinction between covering up serious problems that need intervention, and blasting the details of ordinary ones. I'm glad she's able to use extreme openness as a mechanism to guard against extreme secrecy harming her again, and if it works for her, great, but that doesn't mean it's generally applicable. (For one, I can't imagine wanting to share the details of relationship issues, mostly because spreading the info around would get in the way of resolving the problems.)
Posted by: a loyal reader at Jul 22, 2009 9:22:06 PM
2. I thought it was going to be about building sheds, not building sheds. On the former, I've thought the "idle resources" argument was somewhat odd. People aren't sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. I built a shed. What is definitely idle are the skills that were useful in the bubble and not clear will be needed in the future.
As for the latter, I predict we will eventually have foot traffic underneath streets anyway. If I were building a city from scratch I'd put either people or cars underneath surface level.
Singapore has extensive tunnels under the heart of the city (the use of which is very disorienting to people without extensive experience in the city). Building them in cities like NY or Chicago which both have much worse traffic and lethal objects falling from buildings in winter seems like a better idea here than there.
Posted by: Careless at Jul 22, 2009 11:52:26 PM
#5 and other entries from this same blog are must reads. Perhaps, the best writing on the web.
This is just great stuff:
"When I was a kid, there was money everywhere. My great grandpa was a lawyer for the Chicago mob in the 1920s, and today, my dad's generation is still living off that money. Sometimes I wonder if the key to being able to squash materialism is to have a lot of it as a kid. I'm not sure. But let me tell you this: I grew up with a laundress and a housekeeper and unlimited cash from a drawer in the dining room."
She claims she can remember very little before her post-grad days (and she's in her early 30s, I think) in the linked-to post. In he post I'm quoting here, she speculates on something that anyone who knows a decent number of kids who grew up spoiled-rich knows isn't true. I'm not exactly impressed.
Posted by: Careless at Jul 23, 2009 1:04:54 AM
The fact that old folks aren't interested in health care reform is perhaps the best possible argument for health care reform imaginable -- since they already have what the various plans propose making available to everyone else.
Posted by: Punditus Maximus at Jul 23, 2009 4:31:40 AM
NeighborhoodEffects, a blog.
Tyler, you've been holding out on us....
Posted by: anon at Jul 23, 2009 7:25:08 AM
#5. How much should blog writers disclose about their personal lives?
Not as much as she did/does. It is a Jerry Springer blog.
Changing your name 4 times - as an adult - is most certainly a sign of maturity (if I change my name, my life will change). And all her "honesty" and "public therapy" will probably manifest itself in unpredictable ways in her children - one of them likely being extreme narcissism.
The good thing about it is I only have to read her once, and then never again. Just like watching Jerry Springer.
Not all of us want to be Jerry Springer "guests". Or fans. Or readers.
Posted by: anon at Jul 23, 2009 7:44:41 AM
re; the atheists getting de-baptized. They forget Pascal's wager on why he believed in god. I propose a variant of Pascal's wager. Do not believe in god, live an ethical life, and keep the baptism. In the unlikely event you are wrong and there is a god, you at least lived an ethical life and were baptized and thus are allowed in. Long odds, sure, but you are already baptized, so no harm done. Only benefits can come from it and if there is no god (as is highly likely), then so what.
Posted by: techreseller at Jul 23, 2009 4:41:15 PM
--But the clinics I named seem to have surmounted this
problem.
Except they can't afford it. Medicare patients are the bulk of their patients now, and they are losing money no matter how much they charge their foreign visitors and private insurance patients. The Time magazine article a few weeks back discussed this quite clearly. So if Mayo can't bend the cost curve with their "better care is less care", no one can.
Posted by: Allison at Jul 24, 2009 10:07:40 PM
