Gyroscopic Investing

From CNN today:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/29/news/ec ... ?iid=s_mpm

First, "transitional fee"....yeah right.  Bets on whether it really will phase out in 3 years?  And under the heading of "did they REALLY have to do this and what were they smoking at the time?????", the winner is probably item #2 on the list, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute fee.

A colleague and I looked into applying for a PCORI grant, since new grant sources are always welcome.  We discovered that it's a boondoggle of ridiculous proportions.  While starving the NIH of money, they created this new agency that is basically a duplicate of the NIH, with all the attendant waste of resources that implies.  Note that the stated purpose of "giving patients a better understanding of the prevention, treatment and care options available" is already part of the goals of the NIH.

The new grant application structure is unspeakably onerous (worse even than a DoD grant), and the application website is so severely broken that they tell you up front it will only work on Chrome or Safari (except that it doesn't).  And then there's this notion that in order to accomplish the stated goal, "patients should be involved in the research".  Never mind that if we actually did that, we'd be nailed to the wall for HIPAA violations.  What it adds up to is that PCORI will be funding stuff that sounds happy-making to patients, but that has little to do with real medical science.  Our research question is definitely important and of very high interest to patients with the particular condition that we specialize in, but we're going to NIH with it instead because we just can't stomach the idea of playing this game.

I still think there are elements of Obamacare that are valuable, namely the elimination of pre-existing conditions and the creation of insurance exchanges to effectively give individuals more bargaining power in shopping for insurance, but the rest of it is in desperate need of a hatchet.

what a mess this is turning into.

dualstow wrote: what a mess this is turning into.

Fixed it for you.

A mess is all it's ever been.

Fair enough.

It's quite obvious that Nancy Pelosi did not make a misstatement when she said "We'll have to pass the bill to find out what's in it".

Whatever the title of legislation is, assume it will do the exact opposite.

It seems to me that the legislative process itself is such that no intelligent solution can ever be passed to any issue. Whether it be taxes, healthcare, or immigration it seems that the most logical thing to do would be to scrap everything, call in a respected team of experts, discuss and debate a system among them, and then submit that exact plan to congress to be voted on. Instead, we have this feeble process where myriad lobbyists and special interests write legislation and then it gets battered around congress where pork gets stuffed in left and right until finally some god awful bill passes that doesn't eliminate any of the previous crap in the system, but just adds another more complicated layer to an already incomprehensible and bloated system. Maybe I'm starting to agree with Ad Orientem that a monarchy is the way to go, or maybe Plate has the right idea to get a group of philosopher kings to run things.

Simonjester wrote:+1 best doodle post yet.
  i might even have to give philosopher kings some consideration...

I still like the Heinlein approach:  Two-thirds to pass a law, one-third to repeal.  Simple majority rule sucks.

Technocracy has its appeal. The problem of course is how you can manage to get people who are 1) subject matter experts and 2) not power hungry psychos. Rule by our betters only works if the rulers really are better.

Then again, Democracy seems to tend toward rule by ignorant power hungry dullards, so maybe it wouldn't be much worse.

Simonjester wrote: the problem is if you want philosopher kings or wise democratically elected leaders or the ability to hire a true expert and avoid a psycho hidden in a cloak of expertise..  you need a nation of wise philosopher citizens who are expert at identifying experts.

if our culture and education system produced a majority of citizens who could be plucked up and dropped into a position of power and do a good job with out becoming corrupt, we would have a population that could pick good leaders, select experts, provide a large group of qualified people to choose them from, and probably even make a democracy work,

My preferred solution is to use a lottery to select representatives, who would then actually be representative, on average. Assuming the lottery is fair, of course.

Libertarian666 wrote: My preferred solution is to use a lottery to select representatives, who would then actually be representative, on average. Assuming the lottery is fair, of course.

I've made the same suggestion before and most people think I'm joking but I'm not. It would be kind of like what they called "casting lots" in the Bible - the idea being to led God do the choosing rather than men.

Libertarian666 wrote: My preferred solution is to use a lottery to select representatives, who would then actually be representative, on average. Assuming the lottery is fair, of course.

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." William F. Buckley, Jr.

Yup.  Because the list of ramdom people would be less likely indoctrinated with silly ideas which don't work in the real world.

Benko wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: My preferred solution is to use a lottery to select representatives, who would then actually be representative, on average. Assuming the lottery is fair, of course.

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." William F. Buckley, Jr.

Yup.  Because the list of ramdom people would be less likely indoctrinated with silly ideas which don't work in the real world.

We have also tried entrusting the financial health of the world primarily to people who have worked for one company. That hasn't been working out too well either.

Simonjester wrote: the problem is if you want philosopher kings or wise democratically elected leaders or the ability to hire a true expert and avoid a psycho hidden in a cloak of expertise..  you need a nation of wise philosopher citizens who are expert at identifying experts.

if our culture and education system produced a majority of citizens who could be plucked up and dropped into a position of power and do a good job with out becoming corrupt, we would have a population that could pick good leaders, select experts, provide a large group of qualified people to choose them from, and probably even make a democracy work,

Wait a second, I hope that's not some kind of backhanded way of saying that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho isn't going to be an outstanding future President.

The Man:



The Legend:

I feel like Idiocracy is fast approaching