Musicology sucks (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Hatty]

[TelMiles]

I bought it, read it, thought it was boring and threw it away. I also don't believe in the Big Bang.
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Against all Gods.

[DPCrisp]

And that despite Hawking's best efforts. "Preaching to the converted" must be Rule 0 of Applied Epistemology, the general lie of the land: a mountain of the unconvertible, a narrow plain of the already converted and a small scree slope of the potentially convertible that might be clawed away from the mountain to join the plain.

[Mick Harper]

So they're all facing the same way...how can we get them to start fighting amongst themselves?

[Rocky]

I was reading this article by a British journalist who interviewed Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is the guy who wrote The Tipping Point and Outliers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/26/malcolm-gladwell-tipping-point-blink

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

I object bitterly to the use of cliches such as "across the pond" polluting this sacred grove but nonetheless, on this occasion, I shall answer your question. Mrs Thatcher, as a right-radical, was when she uttered this phrase (at a Tory Party conference in the eighties, I seem to remember) advocating a policy (I forget which, but it doesn't matter, it applies to all of them) that emphasised personal -- or at any rate, familial -- responsiblity. She pointed out something, which everybody over the age of six who is not a left-wing twat also knows, which is that for various purposes there is no such thing as society.

This phrase was picked up out of context by left-wing people whenever discussing something which does require society, and which everybody over the age of six who is not a right-wing prat knows too, in order to make cheap political capital by lampooning the hapless iron lady. But it is also to a degree true because of course Mrs Thatcher is, inter alia, a right-wing prat and believes in her heart of hearts there is no such thing as society. Just as left-wing twats believe everything is driven by society.

AE-ists, and only AE-ists, say that the key to political wisdom lies in not defining such terms as 'society' because the concept is built into our genes as social animals, and is therefore beyond the ken of our intellects to comprehend. We just take every policy that comes along and say, "Right-oh, that one requires society... that one doesn't...at the moment, it might in the future etc etc".

PS This debate is being exercised currently in the USA re health policy. It is fascinating watching both sides engaging in matters that the rest of the civilised world worked out years ago.

[Ishmael]

Yes. The civilized world where people die waiting for their number to come up on a waiting list.

Seriously Mick. I've lived in Canada and in the U.S. I know what system works better.

[Mick Harper]

Yes, but you are a right-wing prat, and since all right-wing prats believe as you do (wherther they have your advantage of having lived in both systems or not), how do you know you're not merely speaking as a right-wing prat?

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

In a further and, as you say, unavailing attempt to show you the light, I will express some arguments in terms of society. First, it should be pointed out that health is mostly a personal and familial matter, not a societal one. However it is not, on the whole, a matter of personal and familial responsiblity ie one becomes ill or has an accident not because of your own actions but by happenstance. Therefore there is no direct causal link between action and consequence, which is the mainspring of 'personal responsibility' policies.

Furthermore, ill health is a relatively catastrophic consequence ie something which all human beings dread all the time. Paying for the treatment of ill health therefore also becomes a 'dread all the time'. Most rich societies have come to the conclusion that this last problem at least can be addressed by paying for health via taxation ie where nobody has to worry any of the time about paying for ill health.

The one chief drawback of this is that everybody gets the same treatment, something that is viewed as a nuisance by those (not necessarily the rich) who wish to spend more on their and their family's health than the average. However this problem has mostly been solved by constructing a parallel private health apparat. It has though been overwhelmingly found everywhere that even where there is a fully developed private system, the State sector is still used by would-be private health consumers in various sectors eg A & E, acute surgery, general practitioners etc.

This public system is unquestionably more efficient in delivering health care than the private system. So much more efficient in fact that 'going public' tends to permit these societies paying much less per head for generally perceived 'proper' health outcomes. There is no doubt that this tends to a relative decline in health outcomes because the political thrust for improvement is not there.

However, this trend is always addressed sooner or later by using some arbitrary (but higher) measure. For instance, Britain spent something like four per cent on health during the first fifty years of the NHS whereas the USA spent perhaps double that. This is why Americans are convinced that 'socialised medicine' is so bad -- they were not measuring like with like cf British railways being perceived as bad by Europeans when actually it is that we do not spend vast sums on them. But since c 1997, Britain has adopted "the same as the European average per head spending" policy ie virtually doubling health spending and the NHS has rapidly improved to roughly US (and European) standards.

There are lots of side benefits to state-funded health. I will not go into them except to say that many countries have moved from a private to a public system but not a single one has ever moved the other way. Or even seriously contemplated it -- right wing parties everywhere are constantly trying to inject market schemes into the public system but none, as far as I know, have seriously advocated returning to the American system. Even right-wing prats approve of the NHS through clenched minds.

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

[Chad]

[Ishmael]