He’s one of the smartest people I’ve read, but I had no idea about his past. It’s a very interesting story, and worth your time.
It all started with “gender”
Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright says his cancel culture critics have derailed his career because he refuses to stop saying this: “Male and female are not social constructs, but are real biological categories that do not fall on a spectrum.”
We planted the seeds for this confusion a few decades ago when we started substituting “gender” for “sex.”
Gender is a social construct to some degree. What it means to be a man, or a woman, or gay, or trans, or whatever — varies from culture to culture.
Sex is not a social construct. Sex is a fundamental biological reality.
As with all things in nature, there are weird outliers — e.g., where somebody is XXY. But that doesn’t change the reality of male and female.
“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but ….”
Have you seen posts, tweets, memes, etc. with that intro? It seems to be more common recently.
If you think about it for a while, the sense of the intro is that there’s some piece of data — an event, a fact, a quote, etc. — that the poster believes will support a position that the poster holds. However, the poster knows there are people out there, minding their own business and not even talking about that issue, who don’t agree with the poster’s position. The poster feels it is his responsibility to educate them.
Okay, fair enough. If I believe there are a bunch of people “out there” who believe government control of the means of production and distribution is a good idea, I might want to give them a thought or two to turn them against that notion.
In that particular case, I might say “for all you socialists out there.” But in the case of the “I don’t know who needs to hear this” post, no group is mentioned. It’s just “whatever ignoramuses might be within the range of my social media posts, ….”
It rubs me the wrong way, and I’m not exactly sure why.
Medicare for all?
P&C drink and review Crowhill’s mild ale, then discuss whether we should extend medicare to everyone.
What’s good or bad about that? Should everyone be covered by Medicare, or some other single-payer plan?
Before addressing that specific question, they go through Crowhill’s list of general health care principles.
- a free market is the best way we know to ration scarce resources
- profit incentive is the best way we know to get people to invent and invest in cool new stuff
- insurance distorts prices
- we need price transparency when choosing medical services, so people can shop around
- we need a way to know which doctors are good and which are bad, and a way to judge risks
- health care / insurance should have nothing to do with your employment
- people should not go bankrupt because of their or their dependents’ illness
- there will always be haves and have nots, no matter what system we put in place
After reviewing these broad principles, they discuss how those principles relate to Medicare for all.
Just for fun
I liked this, except for his repetitive use of “coming in at ….”