Dear iTunes, butt out!

Dear iTunes, I am just a mild mannered old former scientist but you managed to arouse my ire today. Here's how.

Being elderly and tired, I decided to start one of my iTunes playlists and lie down on my bed to rest awhile. It didn't work - for the first time. It seems that the first three tunes in my list, which had been there for a couple of years, now decided to balk and returned the message, "This computer is not authorized to play (name of song). Would you like to authorize it?" This was followed by a request for my wife's password.

Because this had never happened before, I conclude that it was caused by the latest iTunes software "upgrade." Now, I have no recollection of ever authorizing YOU to put such intrusive, Nanny style software into my computer. My computer is my property and what I do with it is a private matter and none of your business. This software is intrusive and it violates my right to privacy. If you want to put such crap into my computer, you have the obligation to explicitly notify me and to ask my permission. Naturally, that would not be granted.

I suppose that some genius with a college degree thought this up as a means of defending someone's intellectual property rights. On the other hand, things like this have caused endless annoyance to multitudes of people who use software responsibly but who would like to be allowed use their computers without being forced to jump through hoops to do it. In this case, I was asked to enter a password I had long forgotten while my wife, who is not well, was sleeping.

There are a number of things you can do for me. One of these is to remove the objectionable part of the software. If not that, please instruct me how to remove the tunes in question from my computer and cancel any account that I may have established with the iTunes store.

Drifters

Ego, Ideology, Acquisitiveness, and Science

The New York Times Book Reviews of November 1, 2009 (tomorrow at the time of this post) offers three very revealing reviews that deal with the general theme of economic theory and practice. If you care to think about such things these reviews will make for good reading.

There is one about the life of Ayn Rand, whose comic book ideology and powerful ego served to capture the fancy of many a naive but intelligent youth, including one as distinguished as Alan Greenspan - the one who, in recent years, managed to play a role in royally screwing up the American economy.

Ayn Rand

The second one is about the professional career and successful acquisitiveness of Jamie Dimon who helped to build that monstrous corporate entity called "Citigroup" and who currently is at the helm of JP Morgan Chase bank.

Jamie Dimon

The third is a review of two books about the life and the contributions of John Maynard Keynes to economic theory and practice. He is the economist to turn to when your favorite ideology again fails.

Keynes

Draw your own conclusions. Mine are particularly simple and it astounds me that I had to become an octogenarian before I could clearly express them. I cannot explain that except to concede that I am a slow learner. Perhaps you can do better.

Ego is probably ubiquitous in humans, at least in the ones I know anything about. Mine now takes the form of simply wanting to understand things as well as I can, but it can take many forms - even in scientists. However, while ego can motivate science ego cannot replace science and it needs to be carefully restrained.

Acquisitiveness is to be found in varying degrees but it is a widely distributed trait that has not spared the subspecies called "bankers." The book about Jamie Dimon, a very successful banker, may to some extent explain why bankers should not be the final arbiters of financial regulation.

Ideology is for the simple minded and for manipulators and exploiters of the simple minded. By confining their ideas to one small ideological box it spares them the arduous labor of thought and gets in the way of real progress. It is much to his credit that "Keynes’s political views were dominated by a pragmatism similar to what Clarke describes, where the best is the enemy of the good. Keynes was no socialist, but also no free-market ideologue. He was interested in what worked."

Corruption, Inc.

Corruption is ubiquitous in this world, even in the USA, even in the Congress. If you doubt that you might just as well stop reading this now, because you are on the wrong planet. As one intelligent limo driver put it, "money makes the monkey jump." Of course, the monkey is us.

There are some folks who are unalterably opposed to corruption and, just occasionally, they have their way. We need more of them and they need our help. There are at least three ways to stamp out corruption:

1) Genetic engineering of the human psyche (maybe doable but not in this century),

2) Cultural evolution (I believe this to be possible and that the process is underway but that it will take at least a couple of generations),

3) Rigorous regulation and vigorous enforcement. We can begin immediately.

The implementation of effective regulation and enforcement will not be easy while money still makes the monkey jump. It is not enough to have the president on your side. Observe that the Fed and the Treasury Department are currently under the leadership of two high level banksters. They are good men but there is a lot of cultural conditioning and old boy values to be overcome.

old boys

Goldman

Moodys

If you really want justice you will have to loudly and persistently demand it. Use the Internet, the media, public forums, and use the streets. Say NO to weak regulations, to loopholes, to toothless regulators. Write to the president, to your congressperson, to your senators, to Barney Frank, to Chris Dodd. Put a strong wind into their sails.

What goes for financial regulation also goes for health insurance regulation.

I have a dream that an effective bill for health insurance regulation falls short of the 60 votes needed for cloture in the Senate and that the president finally draws a line in the sand.

"My fellow Americans, as you know, the health insurance reform act has fallen short of the 60 votes needed to bring it to a vote and the Republicans are threatening to filibuster. While they speak, large numbers of Americans will be losing their coverage or will be denied benefits, will be going into bankruptcy, will be dying for lack of good health care.

"The time has come to end the culture of corruption which is willing to pauperize or kill decent Americans in trying to sustain the unsustainable profits of a few insurance giants.

"Therefore, we shall continue to demand cloture, week after week, until the elections of November 2010 if necessary. In that case, the American people will be in a position to act decisively one way or the other.

"The question at hand is a fundamental one. Will the government of the United States be a government of the people, by the people and for the people or will it become a corporate state: of the lobbyists, by the venal politicians and for the big corporations.

'May God bless you with understanding and may God bless America."

Sure, it's only a dream.

Dr. John

Health Care Insurance, Inc.

Let's skip a torrent of detail and go to the heart of the matter. The health care insurance for-profit companies exist to earn as much profit as they can for their executives and stockholders. Normally, if you are ideologically in favor of entrepreneurial, free market capitalism you would consider this to be a normal and correct activity but there are several giant problems in this situation.

1) The companies earn their money by rejecting applicants for coverage who seem to be poor risks. These people remain uninsured. They also refuse payment for legitimate medical treatments whenever they can legally do so, mostly on the grounds of preexisting conditions or because the recommended treatments are "experimental." They also raise premiums and co-pays for all the traffic can bear. A consequence of this is that large numbers of Americans are dying for lack of treatment or going into bankruptcy for lack of the money to pay for it.

2) A lot of money that could be spent on health care is diverted into overhead costs and profits.

3) Doctors and their assistants spend time that could be used to treat patients in dealing with the insurance companies.

4) Some of the companies' cash flow is utilized in massive lobbying because their profitability is highly dependent upon legislation, particularly, legislation that enables them to avoid competition. The companies have a huge stake in avoiding competition, either with each other or with a governmental entity. This intense lobbying has a very corrosive effect upon the integrity of government.

When the insurance companies win, you lose.

The National Asylum: a note to Alexander Cockburn

I refer, of course, to your column in The Nation: "Welcome to the National Asylum" which is a delightful instance of your incisive wit.

Nuttiness is a side effect of the allegedly "intelligent design" of the human mind, to which full rationality is an acquired taste rarely achieved. This gives you ample opportunity to torment and to crack the nuts in all political directions with gay abandon. So far so good.

When the giggles fade, it is time to consider things more soberly. Let me focus on just your final dart: about the president "trying to pass off as 'healthcare reform' a gift to the insurance industry of 30 million new customers, to be required by law to pony up insurance premiums and then be cheated."

If this is what he is really trying to do I shall join you on the barricades but, to be fair, the law has not yet been decided. Let's look at the circumstances.

There are a few sectors of commercial activity in which corporate fingers are squeezing the main arteries of the American economy. Surely, banking and insurance are among them. These same interests also have enormous clout in the Congress of the United States. The task of loosening their grip needs to be undertaken delicately unless one has truly dictatorial power. It seems that Obama does not have that kind of power and he is trying to achieve an incremental reform that can eliminate the worst abuses.

Does Obama have the skill and the spine to succeed at this? Only time will tell. I do not envy him the task. My preference would be for no bill and a good fight in the primaries and in the year 2010 elections rather than a bad bill.

fishing banks: making a withdrawal

What has happened to us?

Decrying "socialism"?

As in a number of previous heated debates, the current debate on health care reform has raised the cry of "socialism" from the opposition. This is demagoguery!

It is not that I favor socialism in all its aspects. I am not an ideologue for either side. What I want is a government that works for the people, which has not been possible in a social order that entertains a suborned Congress. We really need change.

For those with a purely capitalist ideology, I acknowledge that an environment of regulated competition might be very effective. How could that be achieved? Well, first of all, we would need a considerable number of health insurance companies competing in a national market. Secondly, we would need to provide consumer protections of the sorts that are contemplated in the Democratic bills, and which many Republicans have endorsed. We would also need close scrutiny to prevent the companies from forming an anti-competitive cartel and we would need some tax incentives to encourage companies to join in the national market and to compensate those companies whose benefits might attract the least healthy applicants. In order to make such improved insurance affordable, it would have to be universal and it woud be necessary to deliver health care more efficiently and more effectively than at present.

This is doable but not yet within reach. Why? Because those who inveigh against socialism most loudly also have a huge financial stake in avoiding serious competition and because their congressional stooges would find excuses for deregulating. That's what they did for the banks, remember?

The best opportunity for reform at at this time lies with the Obama proposals, which should be supported.

The Gambler

Health Care and Social Behavior

There is a form of social behavior which crops up now and then that strikes me as a distant relative of old fashioned lynching. It is the mob action of depriving a person or persons of their civil right of free speech by shouting them down whenever they try to speak. It has been employed at both ends of the political spectrum, for example, (on the Left?) at universities when possibly racist conclusions were being derived from IQ testing and very recently in the severe disruption of town hall meetings on health care (on the right?) throughout the country.

I'm sure this is a very old tactic and it has probably been employed by a wide variety of thuggish political causes whenever they thought it would pay. My concern is not with the specifics of the causes but with the employment of this tactic. Whether the cause is a commonly accepted element of the local culture, as was the case in lynchings, or a more special interest, as in the case of preventing the reform of health care, which is a matter of really BIG bucks, it strikes me as very anti-democratic and profoundly un-American in character.

Such things happen but I did not serve in WWII to just sit back let such things happen in my own country without protest. I regard such behavior as certainly a form of disorderly conduct but also mob action to deprive our fellow citizens of their civil rights, and, if they are shown to be organized, a conspiracy to do so.

I confess that I am just a centrist, not a Republican. I would like to hear more from the right on this matter.