Good and bad bets

5-10 August 2010 – Packed the car and left for Rick and Dad’s place. Long days in the car, traveling interstate highways, smoking more than my usual allotment of cigars –I have found they ensure I stay alert against the constant threat of drowsiness. Spent one night in New Mexico. Saturday I stayed with my cousins Jim and Carole. We had dinner at a local eclectic Asian restaurant. The pad Thai noodles were delicious. We spent the evening catching up on family. Their dog Riley loved me. The following day I traveled across the plains to Ames where I stayed with Phil and Rose. They had been in Denver the same day as I and arrived home just an hour before I got there. Since the Maid Rite stand was no longer there I had a cheese crisp at Taco John’s before going up to their home. We passed an enjoyable evening catching up and I met their dog Sammy who also loved me. Dogs show their love by licking you. Riley likes to lick the ears and Sammy likes to give the full facial. The following morning I traveled across Iowa and Wisconsin, via Dubuque, but somehow got off my path in southeastern Wisconsin and spent the better part of an hour traveling back roads. I could have stopped, turned on the computer and googled my way back on path, but that takes both the pain and the fun out. Driving across the country reduces life to basic needs for me – notwithstanding interesting interludes with friends and family – I need to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, shower, drive, and smoke cigars. Still I made three observations on the state of the country, and Iowa has all four of the phenomena I noticed. First, they are building wind turbine -- very big wind turbine – farms in Iowa. When I see them I wonder if they exist because of mandates and tax-based incentives, or are they there because they are a free-market solution to a heralded energy shortfall. Second, more numerous than wind turbine farms are casinos. They line the Interstates everywhere I traveled except Colorado and Nebraska. I know these exist where they do because they make significant contributions to state tax coffers. They are definitely not there to give money to the poor and needy, nor to provide productive and fulfilling jobs. I admit I like to gamble, but this seems like bad tax policy to me. Third, and most amazing to me, are the corn and soybean crops of Iowa. Not that the seemly unending fields of these crops are in Iowa -- after living in Iowa for four years (many years ago) I already knew that his was so. The amazing thing was that every stalk of corn in every field was essentially the same height as every other stalk. Unlike 40 years ago there was no individual variation among the plants. I could have concluded that this was just a corn phenomenon, but the exact same thing is true of the soybean fields. When I first noticed this I kept looking at fields as I drove along. Surely there was some variation somewhere. It never happened. Then in a flash my twisted mind saw an analogy, namely that our health-care behaviors are going to become more and more homogenized if the federal government is permitted to the sole and final arbiter of “medical standards”. This is not a rant against Obamacare. It is a warning about the ultimate effects of bureaucratic standard setting. To paraphrase something Churchill once said about democracy: As bad as a libertarian world might be (because there is none today), the world of the caring, bureaucratic state is much worse.

Thought for the day: Remember in an insurance bet (life, health, accident) we are always taking the adverse side of the bet. Only accident insurance is named correctly. To reflect our side of the bet life insurance should be death insurance and health insurance should be illness insurance.