Reversal
Obamacare may be the ultimate symbol of both the president’s rise and fall. The claims made for it were manifestly implausible: an expansion of availability, the same or lower prices, no rationing or waiting lists, while those who were satisfied with their care would continue to receive it. Only an elevated social mood can account for the public’s acceptance of the plan (see “Illusion and Delusion,” May 28, 2013). Obamacare will run into the economic realty that demand cannot be increased for a good or service while price is kept constant without a commensurate increase in supply. Businesses are already reducing some workers’ hours to avoid having them classified as full time workers for whom they must provide medical insurance. They are also assessing the cost of penalties for not providing insurance and letting the government provide it.
Most people are only going to discover the particulars of the massive Obamacare law and the voluminous regulations that go with it when they start experiencing them. By then, social mood may well have flipped from positive to negative. When actual experiences are the opposite of what people were sold, the program will be regarded as a unworkable millstone rather than a progressive boon, an incendiary flashpoint against the government, Obama, and the Democratic party that rammed it through the legislative process without a single Republican vote.
Most people are only going to discover the particulars of the massive Obamacare law and the voluminous regulations that go with it when they start experiencing them. By then, social mood may well have flipped from positive to negative. When actual experiences are the opposite of what people were sold, the program will be regarded as a unworkable millstone rather than a progressive boon, an incendiary flashpoint against the government, Obama, and the Democratic party that rammed it through the legislative process without a single Republican vote.
You are the poster child for a martyr...what color is your hair shirt?
As I pointed out: the end result will not be any so-called public image of a perfect solution...they are tunnel visioned on just change. If they had any kind of inner perception, government (as we know it) would not need to exist.
Take our Revolution: half the colonists were Tories...but they were just verbal observers. The Founding Fathers took reign of the social climate, and we got here.
The Marxists were singularly isolated in the two major cities, and could count their true believers on several scorecards. BUT the social climate screamed to get out of WWI, and the Bolsheviks ran, didn't walk, to take advantage of that political bone. Russians didn't embrace Marxism, Marxists embraced the opportunity. All that the Russians were asking for was some sort of change....
Social climate is a political tool...the only thing that the screaming populace can take credit for is handing the bat to whoever steps up to the plate first..
As much as I love Rand, this quote doesn't make much profound sense to me:
"If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course . But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man's choice."
I can make as much sense with: 'If you understand my love for beef, you can predict what I will order at Beef O'Grady's. But my meat conviction is a matter open to my choice."
Other than that...we are 'fair' game!
P.S. I don't know who Mimi is, but she/he was wrong about you falling upon the Godwin Rule...you weren't trying to 'end' the argument with a taboo reference. You had your point, and it could have been extrapolated honorably.
See you somewhere else!
why did the colonies choose a free country and the soviets chose communism? look at the french revolution. Rand had it right. An Elliot Wave is a divination wand, witching stick-whatever you knew it growing up
my point.
straight always gives us the straight dope. can we agree to disagree?
It is a good op-ed that you posted, and deserves consideration in every current event that we are faced with. The possibilities are endless....
social mood is the RESULT of a factual situation. This is not a science. there is no testable hypothesis. you might be able to say something is likely to change. but we don't make decisions exclusively on any change. we make decisions on HOW things are to change if we have predictors.Mimi says if I bring up nazis now, I'll bring the discussion to a halt. I started with nazis. but I'll finish with Rand.
"If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course . But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man's choice."
xxoo
I submit that the social climate (mood) OPENS the door to change, but most often that change becomes the ideology of whomever is in the position to take advantage of the void. The people welcome any change for change's sake....
That explains so many of our past mistakes.
P.S. I give you a well deserved 'point' for holding your ground...and not being afraid to be wrong.
You admit that the social climate (mood) preceded our Revolution. The social mood also preceded the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. As well as the French Revolution...and so on.
Social climate is the catalyst for almost every change that we think worthy of noting...and that makes social mood as causative. To dismiss social climate as some sort of afterbirth to change, flies in the face of all reason (or most history).
Since the tennis match has us watching the ball cross the net until we are cross eyed, it is impossible to decide which came first: the impetus to the climate, or the climate before the impetus?
I studied Kant in college, and I can tell you that he was a pimple on Hitler's ass in relation to Nietzsche.
I tried to make it a swift Cliff's Note as to the events that gave Hitler his opportunity, but I can expand on any thing that you need.
The German economic disaster at the close of the Weimar Republic was deeper, and far more outreaching, than anything the rest of the world was experiencing. Their situation was unique, given their WWI capitulation.
The social mood at the end of the Weimar Republic was totally dismal: the Germans were spiritually, and economically, 'crushed' by the WWI Versailles treaty. Hyperinflation had waiters using the paper money to write down the food orders...real paper was worth more.
Fast forward to a despotic paper hanger preaching national salvation over cheap beer in the local beer hall. Hindenburg could not stave off the inevitable, given the social climate.
Hitler rebuilt the economy, and of more importance, returned national pride to the German mindset. Times were 'good', and whatever the Third Reich did next was overlooked in the light of the positive 'social mood'. This lasted until the closing years of WWII, when the social mood turned against the Third Reich, and Hitler's generals followed suit.
So: if the German population "had been optimistic" under the Weimar Republic, Hitler would still be bumming beers in the beer hall....
Inasmuch as ObamaCare never actually held a majority of support amongst informed individuals, it can be said that this hijacking of a huge chunk of the economy was enabled by an ill informed minority. This group will face reality in 2014, when the most damning mandates take effect.
Midterm elections hold out some hope of reversal, and that event may be the real 'winner' from the current scandal(s). The prospect of the IRS getting control of our health care system is finally sinking in, and when even the mainstream media are grasping for the handle of the caboose as the social mood train is leaving the Obama station, one has to be optimistic!
There is a body of economics which is almost as well est. as evolution. It does not have times sequence predictability-neither does evolution. See all the economic freedom indices. Economic freedom is consistent with human nature and the ability to live and produce.
Elliot waves: are not based on any sound scientific principles. If everyone wishes that gravity no longer applies or a totalitarian govt. would be great and we would all prosper under it, it will not change the facts. While I agree with many of your conclusions, social mood cannot be the driver (causal). If everyone in Germany had been optimistic, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of WWII.
In the end, it is not about mood, but about prevailing philosophy (causal). Why we have to get back to philosophy. It is why she wrote her books.