I'm Not As Good As I Used To Be (At Taking Pictures)

I haven't uploaded any pictures to Flickr in a long time. Looking at these old gems makes me jealous of my former self. I cannot produce what I used to.



I recently went on a vacation with family to Colorado, and took a lot of pictures there, so I'm kind of getting back into it. Hopefully there will be more updates here soon on my picture-taking progress.

Desiging A Budget

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I've been thinking about budgeting lately, because the Michigan legislature can't seem to figure out a good way to do it. Every year, they think they have to argue about what to cut, but I think there's a better way.

People and dollars are leaving Michigan, so obviously revenue is shrinking as well. This means that we have to spend less money. It's not partisanship, it's not politics - it's math. I won't even factor in the growing structural deficit that haunts Michigan (it's going to come back to bite us soon).

Yet there seems to be no political will to cut anything. You hear the same line, over and over again: "we've already made sacrifices." Even so, you can't really blame them for being upset. Everyone has their own corner of the universe, and they are more concerned about that than the bigger picture. It's hard to trust someone who is taking away resources from you that "it's really in your best interest." If you add legislators and politicians who have little courage into the mix, you have a recipe for gridlock.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think we're going to have to reinvent the way Michigan budgets. There are other states who have solutions that we should at least be discussing and experimenting with.

One good example is Washington. They have an initiative called "priorities of government" that I think is a pretty innovative way to move towards a more common-sense budgeting process. Instead of taking years past and specific departments of the bureaucracy as a given, they simply start with the priority outcomes that the government is expected to produce.

The process goes something like this:

• Determine what the priorities are
• Figure out how much money you have to work with
• Assemble a team of experts, citizens, and government staff for each priority area
• Give each team a certain amount of money to spend to achieve their priority
• Have an open market of people who make offers to solve part of each priority area
• The teams choose the most effective way to spend money

I should point out that this isn't how Washington makes the real budget. They just use this exercise as a way to give out recommendations that eventually make their way into the real budget.

I would be interested to see what a state could achieve if it actually switched to pure outcomes based budgeting.

Design is the Future of Conservatism

Here's a scenario we can all relate to:

You're trying to learn how to use a new computer program. The box seemed cool, and promised all sorts of awesome features that you knew you couldn't live without. You install the thing, boot it up, and all of a sudden it dawns on you:

The program sucks. Nothing works like it is supposed to, it has buttons and levers all over the place, and you have no clue what any of them do. The whole thing is a big overwhelming mess. To make matters worse, you can't just walk away and use something else, you have no choice in the matter, you have to use this terrible program (for your job or something, I don't know, just go with it for the sake of the metaphor).

If you're like me (or any other human being) this provokes rage and frustration. The thing is just supposed to work. You want it to work and get out of the way.

Funnily enough, I have the same feelings about the DMV. But I don't think it's just a coincidence. I think it's a fundamental truth that we've lost touch with.

No, I don't think Windows Vista and the DMV both sucking are fundamental truths - I think the principles of good design are fundamental truths, and I think good design can make government better just like it could have made Windows Vista better.

I won't explain why this is conservative yet. I think you'll see what I'm talking about as I flesh this idea out. Just remember - less is more.

• Unity refers to a sense that everything in the artwork belongs there, and makes a whole piece. In the context of a nation, this means so many different things at once. Examples include: some common political culture and beliefs, common units of currency, common structural elements of programs (you want it to be flexible and the different parts of government to be able to work with each other, if everyone is using different standards then a lot gets lost in translation), and much more.

• Variety refers to the use of dissimilar elements, which creates interest. Think capitalist division of labor. Think democratic separation of powers. Think diversity - multiple perspectives that help us figure out what ultimately works for everyone.

• Balance refers to a sense that dominant focal points are balanced and don't give a feeling of being pulled too much to any part of the artwork. If you've read the Federalist papers, you already understand what this means for government. Wisdom means finding balance.

• Harmony is achieved through the sensitive balance of variety and unity. Harmony is what emerges from the system when it works right. Harmony is interesting because it's not a concrete thing. Think about it in terms of music - you have multiple notes that are different but are similar enough to work together to make something beautiful. The harmony is somewhere in between. Harmony is the real goal of society.

Those are the crucial principles of design - the absolute basics. Here's the wikipedia page that lists those, and many others that you might enjoy pondering over.

Admittedly, liberalism also takes much inspiration from the principles of design. But I believe in fundamentally sticking to the principles, which is a conservative attitude to have. If you want more examples of conservative design principles, consider these concepts, and reflect on how they apply to government: worse is better, feature creep, mission creep, second-system effect, code bloat, over-engineering, KISS principle, accidental complexity, Pareto principle, Occam's razor, etc

Notice how all those things kind of said the same thing? I think they're all getting at something important. It's better to just keep it simple. But we also should remember Thoreau's advice:

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

Best. Commercial. Ever.

Three reasons this commercial is amazing:

1. It is the best use of kinetic text I've ever seen
2. It doesn't sell a product, it sells a movement
3. It's just true.

Watch it, and let me know if you agree.

A Great Summary Of Healthcare

I had an extended conversation with a friend of mine about the current healthcare debate. He seemed to believe that healthcare was too important to think about economics or profit motives. I think economics is in everything, and healthcare is too important to try to ignore economics, because if you do, the whole thing will mess up. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at articulating my point to him. Luckily, I found a great blog post explaining the economics of the thing in terms anyone can understand.

From Planet Utah:

The last time we had a serious debate about U.S. health care was 1993. At that time, the GOP took a "just say no" approach and prevailed.

This time, though, I see and hear prominent Republicans embracing universal coverage as an important element of any major reform. That's a big change, and a welcome one as far as I'm concerned. I welcome it not just because I'd like to see the U.S. have universal coverage, but because if conservatives/Republicans excuse themselves from this discussion, we're more likely to get some version of Kennedycare than a more sensible reform.

Footnote: If anyone told you that we were going to make sure everyone in America had a house of their own, and at the same time that we were going to control the growth of housing prices, you would say, "Cool. And when you're done, can you send a fat-free pizza and an invisible chocolate unicorn to my affordable new house?"

It just doesn't make sense that you can dramatically increase the demand for something and not expect the price of that something to go up. That's why you are correct to be skeptical about the Obama administration's claims that it will achieve universal health care coverage while at the same time keeping costs in check.

The Obama people would undoubtedly tell you, "But there are all sorts of steps we can take to hold the line on prices: making medical records electronic, emphasizing preventive care, researching and disseminating knowledge on the most effective treatments..." Truth is, though, no one knows whether, or to what extent, these things will work to restrain prices. But you gotta say something about how you're going to restrain prices, and it looks like this is the something the Obama administration is going to say.

And if it doesn't work? Well, that's someone else's problem. Obama still gets credit for bringing us universal health care. (Analogy: George W. Bush gets credit for knocking off the Taliban in Afghanistan; Barack Obama has to deal with the very messy aftermath.)

Anklenote: But if the government is such a big player in healthcare--and poised to get even bigger--can't it dictate prices?

Sure, and it already does that to a certain extent. It pays a lot less for services provided under Medicare, for example, than private insurers pay for those same services.

But government can't suspend the laws of physics, or economics. If you squeeze a balloon on one end, the other end gets fatter. And if you constrain payments in a massive public program like Medicare, doctors, hospitals, and other providers simply raise them elsewhere--most notably, in the fees they charge to insurers and (especially) the uninsured.

Shin-note: Okay, well, if that's the problem, then what if there were no private insurers, because government decided to pay all the bills, and what if there were no uninsured, because as the one paying all the bills, government decided to pay the bills for the previously uninsured, too? Wouldn't that solve the problem of cost-shifting?

Sure, that's what single-payer systems are all about. Government is the only game in town as far as paying for services, so when government sets a price, that's the price that gets paid. Problem solved, right?

Not so fast. When government starts setting prices--and, inevitably, setting them substantially lower than the market would set them, just because it can--you have a lot of smart, ambitious, disciplined people who otherwise would have gone into medicine saying, "You know, that's not nearly as attractive a career as it used to be. I think I'll be a shrimp boat captain instead." And you have a lot of entrepreneurial individuals and companies who otherwise would have operated hospitals and other treatment centers saying, "You know, that's not nearly as attractive a business as it used to be. I think I'll start an ostrich ranch instead." And then you start getting serious shortages of medical goods and services. You also get a decline in the quality of those goods and services, as the people providing them are not as smart, ambitious, or disciplined as the people that used to provide them.

Knee-note: Okay, well, if that's the problem, then why not just have government set prices at a level high enough not to create these disincentives? Won't that solve the problem?

Yes, but only in theory. As you might imagine, running things this way is HUGELY expensive. I mean, you're talking about taking all of the medical bills being paid today by individuals and insurers, and all of the medical fees that providers don't charge in the first place or never collect, and giving government an invoice for ALL of it.

It's a gigantic bill. Government won't want to pay it, and won't be able to without massive borrowing, massive tax increases, or massive spending cuts.

When confronted with options like this, politicians typically choose "none of the above." Specifically, they pick a number--let's say it's 65% of the total bill--and say, "This is how much we can afford to pay. Take it or leave it."

Providers will take it, but they'll also say, "If you're only going to pay 65% of the bill, we're only going to provide 65% of the service."

In practical terms, this means that if 100 people need a kidney transplant, only 65 people are going to get their kidney. Call that what you want, but most people call it health care rationing. It's a fact of life, and death, under single-payer systems. It's the reason you hear about Canadians crossing the border into the U.S. to get health care. It may be crazy-expensive here, but at least you can get it...

Punch-line: To paraphrase C. Everett Koop for about the millionth time in my blogging life, "We all agree that we want first-rate health care, universal coverage, and cost containment. Well, we can't have all three. So, let's pick two and make the best of it."

Again, though, politicians hate having to make choices like that, so they usually convince themselves that they don't have to.

I think that clears up a lot of things.

PS - Interesting fact - Utah recently achieved a bipartisan healthcare reform that most agree is a pretty monumental achievement.