Comments on: Bloggingheads TV with Joseph Heath on Filthy Lucre

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By: ravm

ravm — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:36:26 +0000

I'm not sure the government should take over insurance functions. Disability insurance companies are worthy trustees of our mutual interest as our invested money goes toward covering our society. By society, I mean anyone who's invested in the disability insurance.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:28:24 +0000

Congrats for building an enduring civil society on that basis.. Good job..It sounds good to hear that a proper and regular argument to be made for using taxation to redistribute money to poor people i mean who are in more risk..
anal fissures

By: Barry Stocker

Barry Stocker — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:57:11 +0000

I've just looked at the webcast. Great stuff. Very happy to have recently discovered Will Wilkinson and Jospeh Heath who both have views in line with my own intuitions. The point I'd like to make is that Francois Ewald, the writer on the history of insurance mentioned at the end, is a major figure in the study of social risk, and was closely associated with Michel Foucualt and Daniel Defert (Foucault's lover). Foucault in most people's minds is associated with post-Marxist left social/cultural theory and anti-capitalism, whether people find such a position negative and positive. Many have suggested that Foucault's later texts (from about 1976 until his death in 1984), at least, present views which at the very least compatible with Classical Liberal ways of thinking, though Foucault never explictly took on such views and always remained a man of the left. The association with Ewald certainly confirms that view, that even as 'leftist' Foucault moved into territory maybe overlaps with classical liberal/libertarian thinking, and even Foucault's earlier texts have a libertarian spirit not easy to reconcile with statist leftism.

By: Insiderman

Insiderman — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:11:03 +0000

Coase's theory on the function of states has numerous flaws. One I'll point out here is that the state does not provide a more efficient method of delivering a service; it provides a more efficient method of getting non-interest parties to PAY for a service that they don't want or need.

Evidence welfare.

That's a big difference and does not invalidate the right's thinking on government.

By: Maggie's Farm

Maggie's Farm — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:57:24 +0000

Mammon…

“Capitalism is nothing but a false religion, with Mammon as its god and Adam Smith as its high priest.”
If that is true, how come the Marxists and Socialists all want my money - the fruits of my labor and my saving and investing? …

By: Insiderman

Insiderman — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:54:45 +0000

Life insurance is 100% predictable where other types of insurance subject the insurer to catastrophic unpredictable loss. Even a six sigma event of a person dying the next day after purchasing life insurance will not bankrupt the company. Those little clauses like war and such preventing payout further limit catastrophic loss.

Not so with P&C or CDS (credit default swaps) losses occur in waves and a six sigma event will be catastrophic.

By: Paul_G_Brown

Paul_G_Brown — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:23:13 +0000

The difference between rent and medical insurance is that demand for medical services by people with genetic pre-dispositions to certain diseases is fixed. Unlike renters — who can move elsewhere — or smokers — who can quit — or young adult drivers — who will grow older and wiser — there is no way someone with can affect demand, regardless of the “price signal”.

Got a family history of Huntington's? Or a bunch of bald maternal uncles? You're gonna need Tetrabenazine or Hair Club for Men.

The point being — the market for medical insurance is a bit of an oddity. What Uncle Milton wrote about rent control, or Brother Hayek wrote about market information, doesn't quite apply in the same way.

By: Topics about Toronto » Blog Archive » Bloggingheads TV with Joseph Heath on Filthy Lucre

Tue, 05 May 2009 06:37:20 +0000

[...] Donna Magazine created an interesting post today on Bloggingheads TV with Joseph Heath on Filthy LucreHere’s a short outlineI chat with University of Toronto philosopher Joeseph Heath about his new book (only in Canada!) Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate… [...]

By: Jacob Wintersmith

Jacob Wintersmith — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:20:52 +0000

Upon further reflection, there is not as much difference as I had at first thought between handing out money to the unfortunate and having the state provide a broad system of social insurance.

…not quite sure what I think about this issue now.

By: Jacob Wintersmith

Jacob Wintersmith — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:25:13 +0000

As tempting as it is to argue the semantics of “risk” or respond to your moral posturing, I won't, because none of it is really relevant to the question at hand.

As I stated previously, if you want to help the unfortunate, just give them money. Screwing with insurance markets is hideously inefficient.

By: GilM

GilM — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:37:05 +0000

Paul, I understood your observation. It was Alphie's I was asking about.

I hoped he meant something deeper than to point out an uninstructive correlation.

His follow-up comment disabused me of that hope.

By: Paul_G_Brown

Paul_G_Brown — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:59:51 +0000

Only that the quality of a book is not expressed in it's Amazon ranking.

The relative positions of The Bible and Heath's book on the Amazon rankings are evidence of the strained grip on reality maintained by the book buying public, and the testify to their illusions and delusions.

By: Paul_G_Brown

Paul_G_Brown — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:54:00 +0000

The question of what that word 'risk' means – it's instructive here.

Risk is about the uncertainty of outcomes, implicitly attached to choices. From the point of view of a private insurance company, the outcome is (highly simplified) “cancer or no”? And the choice the company has is “insure this individual or not?”

From the individual's point of view, the outcome is the same – “cancer or no?” But for some individuals (Class A above) there is no question of a choice. Their genes predispose them, in some way. The imbalance pivots on the way the insurance company has a choice the individual does not have.

One way to respond to the plight of such individuals is to say – “Tough banana. Get Darwin up yer!”. Good luck building an enduring civil society on that basis. Its emotional and psychological appeal is limited to people with little regard for the feelings or welfare of others, an attitude that might be encapsulated as “they [people unfortunate enough to posses genes that increase their risks of various diseases] are perfectly free to not buy insurance if they think it makes them worse off”

Successful insurance is all about pricing risk accurately. The point is that the same technical mechanisms by which a private medical insurance company can screen out individuals with a class A. risk can also be applied to population studies. We can — collectively — “price” type A risks with much more precision than we can price type B risks, precisely because type B. risks involve individual choices in a way type A risks do not.

By: Pithlord

Pithlord — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:37:48 +0000

Sadly, she is very influential. The alternat universe where Joe Heath is the most famous lefty Canadian Gen X pundit on these issues would be a lovely place, and I'm sure alternate-universe Will would talk less about her.