[ExI] Am I the only one freaked out by this?

Wed Jan 25 21:51:31 UTC 2017

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2017 1:20 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Am I the only one freaked out by this?

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 12:16 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net <mailto:spike66 at att.net> > wrote:

> >…Regarding gun rights, a civil war in the US cannot break out over that issue: one side has too big an advantage.  Thanks second amendment.

>…In a confrontation between the NRA and the US Army I very much doubt the NRA will win, and even if they do it the body count will be enormous…

The Army and the NRA are on the same side (ours.)  Any speculation on how that would turn out?  The second amendment maintains peace.  Thanks second amendment.

> >…Our current culture war has not even a single clear issue on which people split left and right.  Can you think of one? 

No because the entire left vs right dichotomy is obsolete, the new one is 8 people vs 3.2 Billion…

So you say.  It would seem we would know the names of those 8 people.  I don’t.

>>…Looking at how acrimonious was our last major election, can you see any major issue in which the candidates differed significantly? 

>…If I try real hard I might be able to think of a few areas… 

John looking at your list, I found only one thing on there which would qualify as a debate issue:

>… Junking Obamacare…

This was a clear party-level disagreement rather than some weird personality quirk by one of the candidates.  The rest of it, not clear, but let’s run with it, shall we?  

It appears Obamacare junked itself.  Reason: it was dependent on young healthy men buying in.  They didn’t.  The whole scheme failed because of that.  But was that so very hard to foresee?  The government was really taking over the insurance business, for it dictated to the companies who wished to participate who they must insure and what they may charge.  For an insurance industry to have some value added, they must be able to do one or the other themselves.  If a price structure is dictated to them, they must be free to choose who they are willing to bet will stay healthy.  If they are compelled to take everyone, it defeats the underlying concept of insurance, for it enables anyone to wait until they get sick to buy insurance (picture a guy climbing out of a Maserati wrapped around a telephone pole, on the phone “Hello, All State?  I want to insure my car…”)

ObamaCare defeated itself, as was clearly explained (and later retracted) by Dr. Jonathan Gruber.  The whole scheme as written depended on young healthy men to buy insurance.  Most of them did not; rather they chose to pay the tax.  The tax money thus collected could not be used to subsidize the others, for the O-Care law specifically prohibited taxpayer funds from being used to bail out insurers.  It wasn’t those mean old congressmen refused to fund it: the law itself specifically disallowed it.  

The whole notion failed by design.

>… with nothing to replace it… 

On the contrary, every state can set up something like RomneyCare.  Once the ObamaCare debris is cleared away, the Fed stands down, states step up.

>> It strains the imagination to think anyone would be willing to take up arms against countrymen in order to allow unchecked immigration or buy foreign manufactured goods cheaply.  Anything else?

>…I think cancelling or annulling the results of the 2020 presidential election could cause some people to take up arms…

This is widely misunderstood.  The Electoral College reports to congress who won the election, who validates the result and advises the Supreme Court, who swears in the next POTUS, regardless of what the former POTUS declares.  Unless the former POTUS can arrange a military coup, which I consider highly unlikely, whoever the SCOTUS swears in is POTUS.

>…How about cancelling the first amendment?

The government cannot legally cancel the first amendment.

>…How about NOT cancelling the accelerating wealth gap?  John K Clark 

The government cannot legally cancel the accelerating wealth gap.

The constitution was carefully designed to prevent runaway power.  It has worked, it works now and will continue to work.

Now wasn’t that simple?

spike

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