An interesting data point in the electronic medical records discussion.
Those (admittedly few) primary care practices which choose not to interact with the insurance companies, and operate on a cash basis, also happen to be the ones who are pushing through higher efficiencies through technology. Hello Health (https://www.hellohealth.com/), in Brooklyn, uses and develops a medical web platform through its software arm, Myca. Qliance (http://qliance.com/), in Seattle, has been using an electronic records system from the start, which was described to me as "just a glorified CMS".
It does seem strange that paper is the word of the insurance world, and I don't know the industry well enough to explain the problem, but it seems the problem may have something to do with the doctor-insurer dynamic.
What's the meeaning of the word "monopoly" in a situation where breaking the monopoly means switching to another library? A library which, by the way, won't exist unless someone sees significant enough failings in the existing one to create an alternative, from scratch or through a fork.
Barrier to entry is the property which enables abusive monopolies, and in the open source world, is there such a thing?
Monopoly is probably the wrong word, but open source projects often do hit a local maxima which is far from optimal.
Consider emacs, for instance. Elisp sucks in many ways, and we could probably build a better emacs if we started from scratch. But it will be very tough to get from here to there.
This is the kind of pigeon-holing which prevents one from actually considering an idea on its merits.
For example, what did OP say that suggests they don't allow themselves to think broadly? It's a baseless assumption rooted in your own personal biases, and has nothing to do with the idea at hand.
Which is not to say that I'm particularly enthusiastic about sea-steading. Who's to say though, that its time won't come?
> it's very hard to make macro economic calculations like this. There are so many more factors that haven't been mentioned and surely there are some of those unknown unknowns lurking somewhere as well :-)
Right, in which case we should evaluate it some other way. I think a good analogy can be illuminating.
Say we have an island population which consumes umbrellas (for shade) and coconuts (for food). If there's a bubble in umbrellas, that means the island society built too many of them, falsely thinking it would be worthwhile to do so. Since there's a glut of umbrellas, all the builder takes a loss, and probably lays off some or all of his newly-hired umbrella-building workforce.
But the umbrellas don't disappear, so it's not all bad, right? Over time, the umbrellas will wear out and those in storage can be used. That seems to be the gist of the article.
But this argument falls apart if you realize that the goal of any economic system, and particularly the free market system, is the efficient allocation of capital. The most efficient arrangement on our hypothetical island would have been to make only umbrellas as are needed, when they're needed, built by a consistent, maintainable workforce, and leaving others free to do as they will.
This is true of infrastructure as well; businesses and societies flourish when the find the most efficient ways of doing things, and businesses found out a long time ago that holding excess stock is wasteful (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_in_time_manufacturing). We should accept this and not try to paint a pretty face on waste.
They say that:
> Luxury riverside developments that now dot the banks of the Thames in London may be empty for the moment but will find occupiers eventually
but they fail to mention that by over-allocating goods and labor to large, luxury apartments they've reduced access to other things. For example, more modest, economically sustainable apartments could have been built in the place of these, which would have meant more efficient, denser land-use.
Anyway, IMO this is all hogwash. Of course it's not all for naught, but that doesn't means it's any good.
I see your point and I agree that inefficient resource allocation doesn't suddenly turn into a benefit just because not everything that has come out of a bubble is completely worthless. It's less efficient than it could have been.
But the question is whether some of the good things that are created inefficiently in a bubble would have been created at all without a bubble. Some things might never have happened without bubbles because only competely reckless behaviour could lead to the kind of massive momentum needed for some kinds of changes.
Would web applications be mainstream today without the .com bubble? Or would we have this debate inside Microsoft Outlook?
What about revolutions in general? Can every revolution be replaced by evolution?
Another interesting development is primary care for cash, or "direct primary care". Somewhere between retail health clinics at the low end and concierge medicine at the high end, these are doctors you subscribe with for something on the order of $50 a month for a personal relationship with a primary care doctor.
Because of the compensation model, they've embraced conveniences like e-mail, phone calls and text messaging for communication, as well as once-common house calls.
They're also able to better-compensate their doctors and provide longer, more immediate appointments because they don't have nearly the overhead of an insurance-financed medical practice. This could help stem the tide of doctors leaving primary care practice (http://www.entrepreneurialmd.com/index/2008/11/18/angry-prim...), a trend which does not bode well for the future state of preventative medical care.
I would love to have primary care for cash here in Canada. Given the current system, you can't receive a given medical treatment unless you can convince a doctor to authorize it. Even if you are willing to pay out of pocket, you are out of luck unless you can find a doctor who is on the same page as you.
Right now, I'm trying to get a blood test for Vitamin D, but all the doctors I've gone to see are ignorant of the latest Vitamin D research, and don't see the value of doing the test. If I can't find a doctor who will authorize it in the next year or so, then I'm probably going to drive down to the US and pay cash using Direct Labs (http://www.directlabs.com/) or the Life Extension Foundation (http://www.lef.org/). It's terribly inefficient but I don't see any way around it.
I'm curious as to what research you're referencing. I started taking a vitamin D supplement a few weeks ago at the encouragement of my father, and it seems to be making a difference in my sense of well-being, but I'd welcome a few pointers if you have any handy. (Don't mean to impose, though.)
There is also a lot of information about vitamin D research at the Vitamin D Council website (http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/).
That being said, I don't know if taking a vitamin D supplement would have any noticeable effect on your sense of well-being. I think it's probably a good idea to take one even if you don't notice a difference.
The fallacy is that you don't know, can't know, what our economy would have been after that period, absent WWII. What if we were on the cusp of recovery anyway and we had spent 5 years building railroad and machinery rather than tanks and bombs? The end result would have been a more efficient application of industry over time, resulting in a more abundant society, right?
But I can't say that was the case, would have been the case, any more than you can say the opposite, because we don't know what would have happened if we had tweaked x or y, and can't test it. That's why economics is a social science, not a science. That's why economists are still arguing over what caused the great depression, as well as what ended it.
It's not a fallacy because I specifically pointed that out. You can, however, point to all of the various technologies and cultural shifts that impacted our economy, and the 50+ year period of unrivaled prosperity that occurred afterward and say it most likely was for the best.
Very few nations ever achieve a period like America did from that point to probably about 9/11/01. If we had to make the decision again from a purely economic standpoint, given the benefit of hindsight, we'd make it the same way.
You did state rather unequivocally that WWII fixed the economy:
> It didn't suffer through it at all, it got fixed by it.
And now, you're attempting to declare post hoc, ergo propter hoc? The whole point of what I'm saying is that there are thousands or millions of changes in policy, technology, demographics, sentiment, which had an impact on the economy, we don't know which did what.
I could just as easily explain the post-war years by saying that it's natural that any country which does not get bombed to smithereens will experience relative prosperity, whether or not it participated in bombing other countries, as we did in WWII. Perhaps it was only that advantage which overwhelmed the tax of war spending.
Again, I can't say for sure, but neither can you. I'm inclined to think you're wrong though, from the simple perspective the the allocation of resources over time.
Ex-Freddie-Mac-Now-Cato-Economist Arnold Kling claims (in this interview: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/14744) that Fannie basically had to lower their requirements in order to meet the HUD requirements mentioned at the end of this article. So a well-intentioned but unaccountable leader makes a decision with unintended consequences, but because that decision reverberates through the market power of enormous governmental structures, it leaves a much larger mark than would be otherwise possible or likely.
If you have enough karma, there's a 'flag' link to the right of a submission. (I'm not sure how much karma that requires. probably 20 or so). But generally spam doesn't stay around here for long.
* when using the categories on the left to narrow a search, clicking a category always adds it to the end of the search, even when it's already included, even when it doesn't have any effect.
* likewise, while you can "drill down" by selecting additional narrower categories, you can't back out by selecting a parent category or de-selecting a category.
* the numbers here are off a bit. "Floor Care" gives 97 results, but the category on the left claims 71
These little details can lead to frustration for the user.
Visual Design / Branding
* Particularly considering your target market here, you guys desperately need a visual designer to create an attractive look for your site, and to give your site a feeling. Look for example at http://www.projectwedding.com/. They do a great job of design, where every element of the page is intended to evoke an emotion or association in the mind of the viewer, from their logo to the color scheme, to the (I assume) hand-picked lead imagery for the front page. Of course yours will be different, because your target market is different, but you can get a general idea from them.
* For example, you should not just have text examples, but show the thing that your buyer wants, so they can more easily make the association, and even make the leap to thinking what their home would look like if only they had those drapes &c.
* You also need a name and logo which can mean something to the user. Even non-sense brand names are chosen specifically to evoke an idea or emotion, to make some association. You should pick a name which really communicates what your site is, though not necessarily in direct terms.
I agree with others though, that the site looks promising. Good luck!
Those (admittedly few) primary care practices which choose not to interact with the insurance companies, and operate on a cash basis, also happen to be the ones who are pushing through higher efficiencies through technology. Hello Health (https://www.hellohealth.com/), in Brooklyn, uses and develops a medical web platform through its software arm, Myca. Qliance (http://qliance.com/), in Seattle, has been using an electronic records system from the start, which was described to me as "just a glorified CMS".
It does seem strange that paper is the word of the insurance world, and I don't know the industry well enough to explain the problem, but it seems the problem may have something to do with the doctor-insurer dynamic.