Search This Blog

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Cargo Cult Modernity

Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog: Government Is Magic
Posted by Ilíon at 11/02/2013 10:15:00 AM
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

5 comments:

B. Prokop said...

The article asks, "If a government can't build a health care website, how is it going to actually run health care for an entire country?" Well, for his answer, all Mr. Greenfield has to do is check out Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Sweden... heck, any advanced Western nation other than the USA. So if that is "the obvious question that so many are asking," there's his answer.

Done, dusted, time to move along.

November 2, 2013 at 3:11 PM
Ilíon said...

You’re exhibiting the very “cargo cult” mentality he’s talking about – and his point is about far more than Obamacare.

Do you not pay attention to what is actually happening with respect to “health-care” in Canada and the UK (and, “heck, any advanced Western nation other than the USA”) – that is, do you carefully remain ignorant of how “free” “health-care” actually “works” (which would be implicit intellectual dishonesty)?

Or, do you know what is going on, but you just don’t care, because it’s *supposed* to work (‘cause it’s “the moral thing”) – that is, are you explicitly intellectually dishonest about this matter?

November 2, 2013 at 5:57 PM
B. Prokop said...

I know the health care programs of three of those countries intimately. I lived in the UK for several years, and used exclusively the National Health system the whole time - and it worked great! I got the care and the prescriptions I needed with no hassle whatsoever. In Germany, my wife got outstanding prenatal care for our second child. My older daughter worked as an employee of the French health care system in Paris for some time (she is weeks away from her doctorate in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University), and told me repeatedly how superior it was to the US system.

So I am indeed paying attention to what is actually happening - and not from second hand sources, but from personal experience! And yes, I do know what's going on, and I do care, because I've seen it work! (And it does.)

No intellectual dishonesty on this end... but perhaps on yours? After all, what first hand experience do you have of the British, German, and French health care systems. Or are you getting all your "information" via ideologically-filtered media, i.e., an alternate (un)reality.

November 2, 2013 at 7:37 PM
Ilíon said...

We already know that you don't give a damn about others' liberty. And, clearly, you don’t give a damn that “Obamacare” cannot work in the long-run (except to beggar the nation and to destroy individual freedoms), and probably not even in the short-run.

So, I take it you're fine with the Liverpool Care Pathway … which is only *one* of the horrible, yet inevitable and utterly predictable, results of socialized medicine (if we one may be excused for so abusing the term)?

November 3, 2013 at 2:58 AM
B. Prokop said...

Ilion,

Do you see what's happening here? You start by accusing me (with zero evidence) of "not pay[ing] attention to what is actually happening [in other Western nations]", of being "ignorant of how free health-care actually works", of not knowing or caring "what is going on", and then (the coup de grace) of being "intellectually dishonest about this matter".

When I counter with Actual Experience to demonstrate that I do know whereof I speak when it comes to this issue, it is you who can only respond, not with Facts on the Ground, but rather with ideologically loaded terms such as "others' liberty" and "individual freedoms".

So who now is "not pay[ing] attention to what is actually happening?" Or maybe even "you know what is going on, but you just don’t care, because it’s [not] *supposed* to work"???

I turn the accusation back upon you! Intellectual dishonesty!

November 3, 2013 at 3:05 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)