I recently read someone defending socialism on the ground that socialism has the same root as does society. Well, I don't object to society. And I venture to guess that she doesn't object to fathers, yet I go further to guess that she does object to what's called patriarchy. One mustn't over-reach with etymology, with dear old dad, nor with society.

I've previous explained the economic calculation problem of socialism: Rational allocation of resources requires trade-off signals that reflect as much relevant information as practicable. Most of the relevant information is highly decentralized, and some of it (such as the expectations and preferences of participants) is intrinsically so. A market brings that information into play by way of prices (trade-off signals) developed by the give-and-take of would-be consumers and of would-be sellers. Socialists haven't developed an alternative; they correct the market only at the cost of over-all misallocations with their own costs in human welfare.

This point is as true in the delivery of health care as anywhere else. Almost everyone agrees that American health-care delivery is in appalling shape, but there are those who ignore that the problems have grown as state interventions have increased. Commentators frequently note that costs have exploded in the last fourteen years, but then most of these commentators are silent on the fact that the period followed upon the last round of reforms. Of course, the period before those reforms wasn't itself some sort of golden age; the reforms were effected because many things were seen to be worse than once they were, and getting worse still. But, again, due attention was not paid to the rôle of prior state intervention in effecting that worsening. This routine of blaming what remains of a market for the mounting problems of an increasingly state-controlled system began well before I was born.

Many people, even defenders of socialized medicine for the United States, admit that the socialized systems elsewhere have some dramatic flaws. The belief of the defenders is that the United States can develop a better system, perhaps in part by learning from the problems of other states. But the deep problem is, again, that of trade-off signals. And one of the seldom-recognized implications of that is that greater state control here has led and will lead to a worsening of systems elsewhere. A state-controlled system can somewhat compensate for its own inability to formulate rational trade-off signals by being guided (directly or indirectly) by prices generated elsewhere. (This solution is imperfect because the prices of one region cannot be expected to be ideal for another; and, if they were, using them fully would generate exactly the same out-comes as would be effected by a free market, rendering the socialism absurd.) Implicitly, production and distribution of health care in the industrialized nations with more socialized medicine has been significantly guided by the choices made in the United States. To the extent that our prices as well continue to become the guesses of bureaucrats rather that the outcomes of interaction between free consumers and free producers, socialized medicine everywhere will be shooting in an ever-growing darkness.

Even assuming that morality can somehow ignore such practical problems, the morality of the claims for socialized medicine strikes me as utterly bogus. Many people declare health care to be a fundamental right, but that's plainly incoherent as one could exercise any fundamental right without the presence and assistance of other people. There have been very few attempts to build ground-up cases for a moral entitlement to health care — identifying some actual fundamental right from which a right to health care is derived in a social context — and every one with which I'm familiar has been exploded on logical grounds. Mostly people just confuse the appealing proposition that it would be a very fine thing if no one was denied health care for simple lack of resources with there being a right to health care. There are a great many hypotheticals that would be very fine things. I know people such that it would be a very fine thing if they had the companionship of someone of the desired sex, and such that they would like that even more than access to medical care; I hardly think that we should force someone else to provide that companionship though.

Some very fine things become very vile things when delivered by virtue of confiscations, regardless of whether we imagine that the confiscation is effected by society, or recognize that it is by a state or by a gang or by a mob.

In predicting response to the speech yester-day of President Obama, I certainly did not anticipate the outburst by Joe Wilson.

Pericles once noted that the choices of a leader should be informed by the fact that he would not always be the leader.

Our two major political parties need to remember, when in opposition, that their presumption is that they will not always be in opposition. Their behaviors when in opposition set precedents that will be followed by each other party when it is forced into opposition. The next time that we have a Republican President speaking before Congress, there will be less to prevent a Democrat from heckling him or her.

On 9 September, President Obama is to address Congress on health care reform. Here is what I predict to follow:

• The main-stream media will declare the speech to be a sort of triumph.
• In all likelihood, the President's approval ratings will blip back up over the next few days, and the main-stream media will treat this increase as a trend.
• The approval ratings will begin again to decline, but the main-stream media will ignore the decline until his ratings are at or below the previous low.
• When the main-stream media admit to the lack of an upward trend, it will be to declare the approval ratings to be volatile, as if they are merely oscillating, rather than trending downwards.
• When it can no longer be denied that the President is generally unpopular, main-stream media analysis will largely be of a supposed inability of the American public to be happy with any President, as opposed to an honest examination of the differences between what had been hoped and expected (reasonably and unreasonably) of Mr Obama in particular, and what has actually come under his Administration.

To Hell with NFL Commissioner Goodell and his utterly bogus indefinite suspension of Vick, which was only in effect when Vick couldn't play anyway; to Hell with the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles; and to Hell with anyone who would now buy tickets to their games.

When you read or hear some writer or speaker — especially a journalist or a politician — asserting

Economists say X.

ask yourself two questions:

• Is this all economists or most economists or just some economists?
• Why has this writer or speaker chosen not to specify whether it is some, most, or all?

The same point applies to other areas of expertise. A bald climatologists or scientists or health experts or historians or philosophers should get one to ask the analogous questions. But, right now, I am provoked by yet another article about what economists say.

The Woman of Interest draws my attention to

That's right, folks. The US Federal government, which eats so much of the economy, wouldn't bother to expose this group; the state is too busy using its power to get more power. Instead, a relatively small private firm identified the perps in seven weeks.

Let's walk through what it would mean if insurers could not deny coverage to any applicant and could not charge higher premiums on the basis of preëxisting medical conditions.

The out-lays of insurers would of course increase, so the they will do one and likely both of two things:

• Increase premiums for all subscribers: Those without preëxisting conditions would pay more than previously, to off-set the out-lays for those with preëxisting conditions.
• Reduce coverage for all subscribers: The contractual liabilities of insurance companies would be reduced in the case of conditions that could be preëxisting, so that subscribers who developed such conditions after subscription would receive less treatment or face greater out-of-pocket expense.

So the buck-per-bang price of insurance (and probably the absolute price) would increase. This would occur regardless of whether subscription were mandatory, but I think that the consequent increase in price would be greater were coverage not mandatory.

In the absence of requiring people to purchase coverage, fewer people would buy insurance voluntarily. Those most likely to reduce their demand for insurance would be the less affluent and those who perceived themselves as relatively healthy. A significant share of the latter would indeed be relatively healthy, and their departure would mean that the average out-lay per subscriber would increase, which would push-up costs. The departure of the less affluent would tend to push-down out-lays, as the less affluent tend to lead less healthy life-styles, but it would be unreasonable to expect the less affluent to depart in sufficient numbers to restore the lower price, and I'm not aware of anyone advocating a strategy of pricing the poor out of the insurance market.

In fact, without compulsory subscription, it becomes less reasonable to subscribe until one actually needs treatment. Coverage would no longer function as insurance because it needn't be purchased on a precautionary basis. Instead, subscription would simply be a buy-in for some programme of medical care. When the expected cost of needed medical care were less than the buy-in price, one should not purchase a subscription; when the expected cost of needed care were greater, one should buy a subscription.

The proposal is to make subscription compulsory, in which case it's not clear why insurance companies should continue to be involved at all. Insurance premiums would have been replaced with a tax (regardless of whether it were called a tax or called a user fee or called a premium), and the insurance companies would be functioning as extensions of the state. Possibly a bona fide insurance could be offered to supplement coverage provided under the proposal, but it remains none-the-less unclear what legitimate reason there might be for using insurance companies to collecting a tax or to reïmburse those who provided state-mandated coverage. I'm inclined to interpret the intent in part to be to buy-off the insurance companies, giving them what will seem a guaranteed source of revenue, and in part to give a private-sector façade to a state monopsony.

Returning to the issue of the increase in buck-per-bang price, a consequence is going to be that most people who would insure in the absence of the proposed measures are going to have less coverage in their presence, unless they are required to have as much or more coverage than before, at the greater prices implied by not imposing higher fees on those with preëxisting conditions.

Ms Bachmann is reading the relevant law just fine, and Ms Lowe is engaged in treason.

The United States Constitution is the supreme legislation; no part of it can be annulled by an ordinary act of Congress. The Constitution provides for a census, but the Fifth Amendment protects us from having to offer more information than the identities of those in our households.

In the last two Censuses, all that I have provided was that information. In the first of these, I received a telephone call from the Bureau of the Census about my failure to provide more information, and I stated my refusal firmly. They dropped the matter, because they know that the legal code will not pass constitutional muster; it is a bluff.