[p2p-research] Rhetoric of Rationing Health Care Overlooks Reality - NYTimes.com

[Nathan Cravens]

Health care and swine flu, what a bunch of stupid bunkity that will leave
the discussion once that mass media business says something else. This is
not to speak poorly of those (dammit Paul!!) discussing these issues, but
discussing these avoids the underlying causes of these issues: lack of
material independence: <<< in a phrase. I'm becoming all irate just thinking
about as such! WTF! ;p
Okay, now I'm back to looking around at things and hand waving like any
reasonably good propagandist!

Nathan


On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:26 AM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?_r=2&hp
> """
> The r-word has become a rejoinder to anyone who says that this country must
> reduce its runaway health spending, especially anyone who favors cutting
> back on treatments that don’t have scientific evidence behind them. You can
> expect to hear a lot more about rationing as health care becomes the
> dominant issue in Washington this summer. Today, I want to try to explain
> why the case against rationing isn’t really a substantive argument. It’s a
> clever set of buzzwords that tries to hide the fact that societies must make
> choices.
> """
>
> In the long term I don't think we will need to ration what we now consider
> most of the basics on an individual level (food, water, healthcare, toys,
> shelter, communications, transport, etc.; see Voyage from Yesteryear by
> James P. Hogan for an example), but currently we are doing that, and this
> article talks about how to do it better in the USA for healthcare.
>
> In general, Iain banks said: "Money is a sign of poverty". One meaning of
> that is, if you have to ration day-to-day things for individuals, you don't
> have enough of them because your technology is not very good. So, if you
> have 3D printers that can print solar panels and more 3D printers just from
> inputs of dirt, water, and air, and previously printed things (recycling)
> then why would you need money very much day-to-day? Maybe for allocating
> land you might need some sort of rationing, but that is such a different
> thing from the day-to-day rationing we see in our current system revolving
> around spending money at stores.
>
> I've repeatedly called dollars "ration units" to help make clear that our
> current economic system is more about rationing than optimum wealth
> creation.
>
> Anyway, one deep issue of p2p is really, how would p2p change the types of
> rationing we do in our society? And how would p2p change how we do each type
> of rationing?
>
> I've been looking more at the "Venus Project" and I think this is an issue
> it glosses over (from what I have seen so far). Jacque Fresco and Roxanne
> Meadows may intuitively understand that with good engineering rationing the
> basics won't be a big deal anymore. They reference "cybernetics" as a way to
> approach this, and I agree that's a good idea (like Cybersyn) as long as you
> have something of a command economy or even market economy (gift economies
> and subsistence economies may work differently with less formal planning).
> But, the details still have to be worked out (unless they have in the Venus
> Project and I have just not found them yet as I continue to learn about
> that):
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-based_economy
>
>
> Even in a "resource base" economy", the society collectively makes
> decisions about how to invest and deploy and distribute resources. Now,
> those rationing decisions may be a lot easier the more resources we have,
> especially once humans can easily live in seasteads and space habitats built
> from local materials. But, even then, they will still be made. So, a big
> question is, how to make them well? And well for whom? (Who pays the costs
> and who gets the benefits?) And how do we get there from here?
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
> (I walked 0.24 miles while writing this as part of my health care plan. :-)
>
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