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A rare lucid moment for The Atlantic. It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissio

A rare lucid moment for The Atlantic. It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions, doing only the basic necessities to stay alive as long as possible, regardless of how horrible a life that creates. This is exactly why technocracy doesn't work, technocrats only know how to optimize within the confines of their narrow speciality. Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live.

smt88 3y ago
This seems tangential to the article, but I'll engage with it anyway. > It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions This group is so small, it essentially doesn't exist. Nearly 100% of people are not extremists on either of these issues. > regardless of how horrible a life that creates Reasonable precautions from disease and reducing carbon emissions don't create a horrible life. The pandemic was a less-than-once-in-a-generation exception, not a common occurrence. > Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live As long as people want fellow citizens to give them a safety net for their mistakes, their fellow citizens should get to impose harm-reduction measures on them. For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. I'm all for letting people choose how to live, as long as they give up the privileges that come with it. For health, that would mean: - no Medicare/Medicaid - no emergency medical care until it's determined that they can pay for it - no publicly-funded investigation of their death if/when they die - no usage of public wheelchair ramps or other accommodations for people with disabilities I'm missing things, but you get the point. If people want to opt out of public health and safety, they should have to opt all the way out. "Libertarians" want to have the freedom to shoot themselves in the foot and have other people subsidize the surgery.
- zer8k 3y ago
  > For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. As a long time rider and have lost friends and other riders I can tell you one thing: not wearing a helmet is the easiest way to save everyone money. You're guaranteed to die in all but the least serious of accidents (dropping your bike at a stop), clean up fees are cheap, funerals can be made cheap, the only variable is the cost of therapy for the person who has to mop you up. Of all the people I know who've survived accidents their gear was the reason they were able to pay for a doctor's kid's schooling (and probably a bonus ferrari).You'd think we'd encourage no-helmet laws! I know you're making a larger point here and I am being sarcastic. I just think it's funny you chose this example when it's likely the cheapest way a motorcyclist can die.
  - version_five 3y ago
    I know there are similar findings about e.g. smoking - you die younger and more quickly and so spare socialized healthcare lots of spending. Probably true for obesity, drinking, drug use, etc. From a purely economic standpoint, living to be 100 with various chronic conditions of the kind that come with age (plus drawing social security) is probably the most draining way to live. I don't mean to say it's bad, just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is. If that was really what we cared about the government should be encouraging us all to live fast and die young. But it's about control, not anything else.
    - smt88 3y ago
      This comment is just so ignorant of actual public health that it doesn't feel worthwhile to respond to. When people die young, they don't pay back the enormous amounts of money that was spent on raising and educating them. Smoking is an absolutely perfect example of something that costs society absolutely staggering amounts of money. Do you know how much it costs to treat someone who gets cancer from smoking? Or to treat someone with diabetes who was obese? Or to send someone to rehab for drug use? Any one of these things can easily cost society (government, insurance company, family, the individual themselves) millions of dollars. And the majority of the cost is almost never borne by the individual. If you give yourself cancer and have health insurance, all the other people with health insurance pay for your treatment. > just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is Instead of saying it's dumb, how about you actually explain it or provide examples? There is nothing anywhere that will tell you that letting people smoke would save society money. That's so unbelievably backwards that I can't believe I even read it.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  There was a good Italian Science-Fiction story, written more than 50 years ago, about a future society in which the most powerful entity was a company of medical insurance. The inspectors of the medical insurance company were ubiquitous and they were watching day and night what everybody was doing and they prevented doing absolutely anything that could have the slightliest risk of a negative effect upon health, under the menace of becoming uninsured. While in theory the medical insurance was optional, if someone chose to no longer be insured, in order to enjoy life or to no longer pay a major part of their income to the tyrannic medical insurance company, then they became some kind of pariah and there was no longer any way for them to access even the simplest kind of medical service. As a consequence, there was a very high likelihood for them to die after even minor accidents.
gnicholas 3y ago
> Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live. I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present (and even then, it's a balancing act). But I think it's great when researchers figure out what the impact is of various common behaviors, so people can decide whether they wish to do those things. This article is just another iteration on that discussion. I welcome Dr. Oster's perspective on this subject because she is generally good at keeping her biases from poisoning her research, she has no conflicts of interest regarding this research, and she is thorough in her analyses. However, I am mindful that she is an economist, not a medical doctor, and I would tend to put more stock in an unbiased MD than econ PhD (even though I majored in econ and generally think the field is useful).
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present Everything can, and often is, argued to be an externality.
  - comte7092 3y ago
    That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Your actions have impacts on other that need to be taken into consideration and there’s a give and take that comes with that. It’s totally reasonable to object to rule by the “experts”, but Americas libertarian streak verges on childish more often than not.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Well, that was my point. It's pointless to say people should be allowed to do what they like unless there are externalities, and then, classify everything as an externality. It's just a more wordy way of saying that people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want.
rendaw 3y ago
I don't drink, and I avoid red and preserved meat. It's not that bad.

smt88 3y ago

This seems tangential to the article, but I'll engage with it anyway. > It feels like there's a group that wants humanity to be living matrix style in pods for fear of disease and carbon emissions This group is so small, it essentially doesn't exist. Nearly 100% of people are not extremists on either of these issues. > regardless of how horrible a life that creates Reasonable precautions from disease and reducing carbon emissions don't create a horrible life. The pandemic was a less-than-once-in-a-generation exception, not a common occurrence. > Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live As long as people want fellow citizens to give them a safety net for their mistakes, their fellow citizens should get to impose harm-reduction measures on them. For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. I'm all for letting people choose how to live, as long as they give up the privileges that come with it. For health, that would mean: - no Medicare/Medicaid - no emergency medical care until it's determined that they can pay for it - no publicly-funded investigation of their death if/when they die - no usage of public wheelchair ramps or other accommodations for people with disabilities I'm missing things, but you get the point. If people want to opt out of public health and safety, they should have to opt all the way out. "Libertarians" want to have the freedom to shoot themselves in the foot and have other people subsidize the surgery.

zer8k 3y ago
> For example, if someone on a motorcycle chooses not to wear a helmet and not to have health insurance, they could incur millions of dollars of costs that their other people have to pay for. It's reasonable, then, to force people to wear motorcycle helmets. As a long time rider and have lost friends and other riders I can tell you one thing: not wearing a helmet is the easiest way to save everyone money. You're guaranteed to die in all but the least serious of accidents (dropping your bike at a stop), clean up fees are cheap, funerals can be made cheap, the only variable is the cost of therapy for the person who has to mop you up. Of all the people I know who've survived accidents their gear was the reason they were able to pay for a doctor's kid's schooling (and probably a bonus ferrari).You'd think we'd encourage no-helmet laws! I know you're making a larger point here and I am being sarcastic. I just think it's funny you chose this example when it's likely the cheapest way a motorcyclist can die.
- version_five 3y ago
  I know there are similar findings about e.g. smoking - you die younger and more quickly and so spare socialized healthcare lots of spending. Probably true for obesity, drinking, drug use, etc. From a purely economic standpoint, living to be 100 with various chronic conditions of the kind that come with age (plus drawing social security) is probably the most draining way to live. I don't mean to say it's bad, just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is. If that was really what we cared about the government should be encouraging us all to live fast and die young. But it's about control, not anything else.
  - smt88 3y ago
    This comment is just so ignorant of actual public health that it doesn't feel worthwhile to respond to. When people die young, they don't pay back the enormous amounts of money that was spent on raising and educating them. Smoking is an absolutely perfect example of something that costs society absolutely staggering amounts of money. Do you know how much it costs to treat someone who gets cancer from smoking? Or to treat someone with diabetes who was obese? Or to send someone to rehab for drug use? Any one of these things can easily cost society (government, insurance company, family, the individual themselves) millions of dollars. And the majority of the cost is almost never borne by the individual. If you give yourself cancer and have health insurance, all the other people with health insurance pay for your treatment. > just that it shows how dumb the thinly veiled telling people how to live in the name of their burden on the healthcare system argument is Instead of saying it's dumb, how about you actually explain it or provide examples? There is nothing anywhere that will tell you that letting people smoke would save society money. That's so unbelievably backwards that I can't believe I even read it.
adrian_b 3y ago
There was a good Italian Science-Fiction story, written more than 50 years ago, about a future society in which the most powerful entity was a company of medical insurance. The inspectors of the medical insurance company were ubiquitous and they were watching day and night what everybody was doing and they prevented doing absolutely anything that could have the slightliest risk of a negative effect upon health, under the menace of becoming uninsured. While in theory the medical insurance was optional, if someone chose to no longer be insured, in order to enjoy life or to no longer pay a major part of their income to the tyrannic medical insurance company, then they became some kind of pariah and there was no longer any way for them to access even the simplest kind of medical service. As a consequence, there was a very high likelihood for them to die after even minor accidents.

gnicholas 3y ago

> Health officials should have no say over how people choose to live. I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present (and even then, it's a balancing act). But I think it's great when researchers figure out what the impact is of various common behaviors, so people can decide whether they wish to do those things. This article is just another iteration on that discussion. I welcome Dr. Oster's perspective on this subject because she is generally good at keeping her biases from poisoning her research, she has no conflicts of interest regarding this research, and she is thorough in her analyses. However, I am mindful that she is an economist, not a medical doctor, and I would tend to put more stock in an unbiased MD than econ PhD (even though I majored in econ and generally think the field is useful).

lelanthran 3y ago
> I'd agree that health officials shouldn't be able to dictate how people live their lives, except when externalities are present Everything can, and often is, argued to be an externality.
- comte7092 3y ago
  That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Your actions have impacts on other that need to be taken into consideration and there’s a give and take that comes with that. It’s totally reasonable to object to rule by the “experts”, but Americas libertarian streak verges on childish more often than not.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > That’s just another way of saying that we live in a society, not in a social vacuum. Well, that was my point. It's pointless to say people should be allowed to do what they like unless there are externalities, and then, classify everything as an externality. It's just a more wordy way of saying that people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want.

rendaw 3y ago

I don't drink, and I avoid red and preserved meat. It's not that bad.