Bush's Finest Fifteen Seconds

Came in the 2000 debates when Bush repeatedly said Gore trusted government and he (Bush) trusted the American people. That struck a chord with me, and a few events of late had made me realize there's a lot to be said for the conservative ideology. Specifically, a simple market force can be stronger than pages and pages of government laws and regulation.

Here's two examples:

1. Microsoft is researching ways to prevent spam. One idea is for a computer to be forced to solve a mathematical problem before the e-mail can be sent. Ideally, this would cause a ten second delay before the message is sent, which is no skin off Joe Six-Pack e-mailer's nose. But it would be devastating to spammers who need to send out tens (hundres?) of thousands of e-mails a day to be profitable.

Click here to read mor about this project.

Is this system perfect? Not yet. But I am willing to bet the farm that an industry-driven solution will cripple spam in ways that pansie-ass government regulation can't. Especially when you consider just how watered-down this regulation would be once special interests help sculpt the bill. Market forces are stronger than the government in this case.

2. Emily and I are in the home-buying process. We hired a home inspector our realtor recommended to us and he found a) a dislodged pipe in the water heater and b) cracks in the furnace. These cracks were so bad that when the repairman came to look at it, he said he was shutting off the gas until a new furnace was brought in.

The significance of this story? The Minneapolis city inspector missed both of these issues. These are huge oversights. Will these oversights affect his paycheck or his job status? I'm guessing "nope."

But our inspector's paycheck depends solely on the quality of his work. His job is governed by the market forces and the city inspector's isn't. Look at the difference in the quality of their work.

Emily and I talk about "voting with our dollars" to create change. Why? Because the market, at times, is much stronger than our vote.

And just to make things interesting, I would also like to say that I as much as I think HMOs are out of whack and need to be reigned in by government regulation (sometimes government can be a good thing), I do NOT think a single-payor health care system is the answer. It's a nice idea in theory, but in practice I think it's a horrible idea.

I do think there can be basic universal health care coverage (which is different than signle-payor), but I think the results of such a system could also be disastorous. A lot of us who have shitty insurance through our employers would suddenly have much shittier insurance. Why? Our emploer may not be in a market that has to offer its employers quality insurance since Uncle Sammy is providing us with the basics.

Does this mean I'm suddenly voting for Bush in 2004? No way in Hell. But, I don't think we should write off all conservative economic ideologies just because some neo-cons are scary as all get out.