Irreni, Socialism, and Large Numbers

Irreni, Socialism, and Large Numbers

08/01/2018

Hi! Happy Wednesday!

Is Irreni socialism?

Just as a reminder, this blog is about solutions and not punditry. The solution here is to illustrate the dysfunction of today's propaganda and then demonstrate how Irreni World Scale solves this.

In this week's news it has been reported that Bernie Sander's "Medicare for All" will cost some $32 trillion dollars. Well, at least according to two independent think tanks. How much it really costs would depend on the final implementation.

I wanted to post about this particular topic though as a vehicle to point out a few things:

1. People do not inherently understand large numbers like $32 trillion.
2. Socialism is used as a pejorative first-and-foremost and not used as it is defined.
3. Health-care as an idea can stand alone not tethered to ideology.

$32 Trillion! Large Number! Boo!

There are 300 million people in the United States. If 300 million people spend $10 that results in $3 billion in spending. A trillion is one-thousand billion. If 300 million people spend $10 * 1,000, or $10,000, then that is $3 trillion dollars.

In a very real sense the number $32 trillion is being used to scare people. This is called fear-mongering.

Should $32 trillion be scary?

As they say, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. If Medicare for all is adopted then we won't pay for health insurance, that's kinda the point. I currently pay $10,000/year in health insurance, and to add insult to injury I also have to pay a further $5,000 deductible along with a co-pay. The lie of the $32 trillion dollars is that somehow this increase in Federal spending is *in addition* to any health insurance you currently pay. No. If you have Medicare you may choose not to buy insurance. Further fear-mongering is involved because the number $32 trillion is over 10 years and is $3.2 trillion per year.

I currently pay $10,000/year with the lowest bracket of health insurance available to me, i.e. my plan has a $5,000 deductible. Let us assume of the 300 million Americans then only 100 million people pay for health insurance in the US. Further assume each person pays $10,000/year for health insurance with a $5,000 deductible. Instead of paying $3.2 trillion in extra tax then I'm offsetting $1 trillion of private insurance cost with taxes of $1 trillion. If we assume everyone pays the $5,000 deductible then there is also an offset of 0.5$ trillion of health care expenses and we are now at $1.5 trillion of health-care offset cost each year, or $15 trillion over 10 years. That $15 trillion is not factored into the $32 trillion number used to scare you.

Of the $3.2 trillion annually required to pay for Medicare for all then I have accounted for $1.5 trillion annually without anyone paying any extra money out-of-pocket given my assumptions.

The $32 trillion number is straight up fear-mongering. There was no honest attempt to explain that the increase in taxes would be offset by not paying private health insurance costs and so on.

Socialism

Socialism is an ideology that calls for state ownership. Medicare is government insurance. If Medicare for all were socialism then the government would own the hospitals and all the doctors and nurses would be Federal employs. Is that what Medicare for all does? Does Medicare for all convert all hospitals to government property and convert all doctors and nurses to Federal employees? No.

If you want actual socialism then one would need something more like the U.S. Military where the government does own all the hospitals and employees all the doctors. Even further the US Military will pay for a doctor's education. Now that's socialism. Yet somehow we don't hear conservatives crying for privatization of the US Military medical system?

After military personnel leave the military then they can then use socialist medicine in the form of VA hospitals. If the U.S. truly wanted to socialize medicine then we would provide VA services for all and not Medicare for all. A VA medical system for all would require the Federal government to build enough hospitals and hire enough doctors for all Americans. That would socialism.

Medicare for all is not socialism. Well, unless one redefines the word socialism or one is just using socialism as pejorative.

Medicare for all is not socialism even with respect to health care insurance. That's because there is no plan to prevent private health insurance to exist. In fact, if Medicare for all happens then you may even see private insurance companies do the unthinkable and provide better services for a less price than Medicare for all. That's not socialism, that's capitalism.

To whit, government regulation is not socialism.

Health-care as an idea.

Health-care, like all political ideas in 2018, is tied to a political party's ideology. Why? Why can't ideas stand on their own?

It is a common ideology within Democratic circles that certain ideas do not lend themselves to the profit motive. The set of such ideas include health-care, education and infrastructure such as roads. But does this ideology of  "ideas do not lend themselves to the profit motive" mean common ground for common solutions?

To answer this question then one needs to look at the underlying reasons why and idea does not lend itself to the profit motive:

1. health-care: patient illness compromises good judgment.
2. education: Democracy requires an educated electorate to vote.
3. infrastructure: private price barriers negatively impacts the poor.

If the underlying reasons are different then should these ideas be lumped together just as non-profit motive ideas? If the underlying reasons are satisfied by law for something like health-care then can a profit industry co-exist in what remains and be valuable?

Is a profit / non-profit bucket so gross as to be meaningless when defining policy? I would argue absolutely.

In 1990 I went to an education conference. The keynote speaker one evening was Joan Fedor. The Berlin Wall had just fallen, signifying the end of the cold war. What threats did America now face? Joan Fedor's answer was, "The biggest threat to Democracy today is oversimplifying solutions to complicated problems."

This is a fundamental problem with any ideology. Ideologies lump all problems into over-simplified ideological buckets like "for profit" and "non-profit".

Irreni World Scale Solution

The Irreni World Scale solution to all the above mentioned problems is two-fold:

1. Ideas stand on their own. There are no political ideologies with Irreni.
2. Ideas must scale. Experiments are proven to work from a small scale with larger graduations to some final large scale of people.

Irreni means "innovation replaces revolution, engineering not ideology".

Something like Medicare for all is a revolution in that it represents a change for everyone. Revolution is highly susceptible to fear-mongering using large numbers like $32 trillion. Ideology further lends itself to fear-mongering as multifaceted problems are reduced to a single dimension. In this case Medicare for all can only be called socialism by a single dimension: private enterprise is being replaced by a government program. This is not the definition of socialism but in a capitalist versus socialist ideology, single difference definition of government sponsored Medicare must be socialism because it is not capitalism.

With Irreni World Scale it is not possible to roll out any new program at the largest scale on day one. All ideas must be proven out at a smaller scale and then gradually scaled up over time to finally become as large of scale as needed after having been proven successful at multiple lesser scales.

Truth be told, though, human nature is not one-size-fits-all. Irreni World Scale fits a different narrative: different communities can implement different solutions and large scale programs such as Medicare for all will be uncommon if they exist at all.

US Democracy has run its course. Our Democracy is broken beyond recovery. Irreni World Scale is a two-hundred-year long program to gradually supplant US Democracy with loosely aligned limited governments of much smaller sizes. During those two-hundred years US Democracy will wind down.

The time has come to admit the US Constitution is failed, completely. Further we need to admit that revolution is devastating: revolution such as Medicare for all upends our existing government and cause too much destruction and misery: a gradual replacement such as Irreni World Scale calls for is the desired approach to improving public policy.


Freedom!

Party On!

Let's get cracking!

Voluntarily Reject Demagoguery!

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!