John Holbo, Crooked Timber:
Rationing again: For all ponies, there is some pony, such that you won’t get that pony
If you're at all interested in this "issue" as it pertains to health care reform, have a look -- it's a good article, both sarcastic …
Let’s look at this article from “First Things” that has impressed McArdle with its bold willingness to speak truth (in contrast to the shameful reticence of reformers, re: rationing): “Come, let us speak of unpleasant things. How is health care to be rationed? Who gets the short end of the stick?”
The idea, basically, is that the invisible hand of the market is better than the visible hand of government. Because you can always see what the invisible hand is doing, because it’s visible. And you can’t see what the visible hand of government is doing, because it’s invisible.
No, seriously.
… and serious. (And it will make clear why I used scare quotes around "issue.")
Also, as you may have observed, the piece takes some swipes at Megan McArdle, which is always worth clicking a link for in my book.
And speaking of which, here is Thomas Levenson on an even worse assemblage of McMeganry -- her "thoughts" on wingnuts bringing guns to protests at town-hall meetings:
Another Reason Why My Doctor Tells Me The Nation Shouldn’t Read Megan McArdle…
…the necessary blood pressure medication on its own would bankrupt our soon-to-be-reformed health care system.
Though perhaps, pieces like this actually evoke more of a sense of wonder than anything else — not merely at the banality and evil so neatly conjoined in its content, but at the astonishing reality that anyone who routinely writes such…how to put this…bonecrushingly stupid; water-her-twice-a day dumb;* the wheel is spinning but the hamster’s dead** material, still has a job, much less an apparently appreciative audience.***
Actually, I think I have to credit McArdle with some cleverness here. Her post is so full of different instances of nonsense, bad faith argument, sheer failure to understand what she seems to think she is talking about that she achieves a certain effect: by seeding her post with so much to be debunked, she increases the odds that one whack-a-mole notion or another will slip past the defenses of rationality and real-world experience.
Life is, of course, too short to club every mechanical rodent that pops its head above the blissfully sunlit interior of McArdle’s mind, so what follows is an attempt at bullet-point fisking, a move towards a kind of blog-brevity that I have never executed successfully. So let’s see, why don’t we:****
I'd've copied over the footnotes, too, because that is what a nice guy I (usually) am, but you really should go read the whole thing.
P.S. I think "water-her-twice-a day dumb" is as fine a thing as I've read since someone posed online as Lemuel Pitkin.
