How American Health Care Killed My Father
David Goldhill, The Atlantic, September 2009, page 38

This article profoundly effected my views on the health care debate. I wasn’t happy with either side of the debate, but wasn’t sure how a better plan would look. It’s an extremely complex issue. I like David’s ideas very much.

When it comes to the current debate about health care/insurance reform the Republicans on the right are disingenuous, crazy and blinded by their hatred for a black president. The proposals on the left are merely Band-Aids and do not address, nor will they fix, the causes of our medical mess.

(more…)

government · health care · politics · the atlantic

It’s nice to hear the anti-marriage drumbeat intensifying.

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Sandra Tsing Loh, The Atlantic, July/August 2009, pg. 116

Sandra Tsing Loh is getting divorced. In this article for The Atlantic magazine she explains the usual trajectory of relationships and why monogamy is unnatural. She uses this to argue that the current model of marriage is outdated. Serial monogamy, she says, is a much more natural model for human beings.

I am a critic of both marriage and monogamy and agree with much of Loh’s analysis of each.

Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure, it made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grand-parents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?

What I do not agree with, however, is that relationships must necessarily end in order to start fresh with someone new. A more utopian model is polyamory, where individuals are free to love more than one person at a time. Each person satiates different needs and at different levels. This is what we should strive to achieve to maximize happiness.

(more…)

divorce · marriage · open marriage · the atlantic

Sink and Swim
Megan McArdle, The Atlantic, June 2009, p. 30

Far too many Americans are more concerned with fairness than a reasoned pragmatic approach to social and economic problems. Bankruptcy is one of the areas with which many of us would like to punish irresponsible behavior despite the obvious negative results of such policies.

This article enumerates several reasons why the punitive strategy to financial irresponsibility is ill-considered. Our “free-and-easy, all-is-forgiven model” of bankruptcy is vital for a healthy agile economy.

Our leniency toward those with unsustainable debts helps not only profligate debtors, but the rest of us as well. Less onerous bankruptcy procedures boost rates of entrepreneurship: reduce the cost of failure, and people become more willing to take risks. America’s business environment is much more dynamic than that of Europe or Japan, for many reasons—and our generosity to capitalism’s losers is one of them.

“But that isn’t fair!”, you protest. (more…)

bankruptcy · economy · the atlantic · united states

What Makes Us Happy?
Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Atlantic, June 2009

I’ve long been intrigued by people and how they relate to one another. I have considered ad nauseum the source of human happiness. Since I was quite young I realized happiness could not be derived from riches alone; there are simply too many who are either happy and poor or sad and rich. When I became an atheist I realized happiness does not derive from god or faith in a higher power. Happiness, I’ve understood well, is all about relationships. It turns out I am correct.

Arlie Bock—a brusque, no-nonsense physician who grew up in Iowa and took over the health services at Harvard University in the 1930s—conceived the project with his patron, the department-store magnate W. T. Grant. Writing in September 1938, Bock declared that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases—and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties—could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well. His study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” Bock said, and it would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” He defined normal as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living.”

(more…)

defense mechanism · grant study · happiness · harvard · psychology · relationship · Science · study · the atlantic

Cold Fusion
Wayne Curtis, The Atlantic, June 2009

David C. Sampson

This article could turn you into an ice snob, too. Instead of requesting the bartender use top-shelf liquor, I’ll now ask what is the quality of the ice.

“Ice is as important to a bartender as a stove is to a chef,” he explained, in the cadence of an oft-cited mantra. “With a chef, it’s a matter of heating things up. With a bartender, it’s a matter of cooling things down. You’d never tell a chef he could have only a stove-top burner or a fryer. And I couldn’t do without at least three or four different types of ice.”

From the first sip, the drink with cheater ice was like a debased “cocktail lite,” with thin flavors and watery insipidness. The chunk ice yielded a richer taste, and had a denser, almost velvety texture to it. After five minutes, the cheater cocktail was deadly flat (“quite foul, actually,” decreed Rubel after a taste), while the drink with chunk ice seemed to be opening up and blossoming. Only after about 20 minutes had the second drink begun to soften around the edges.

Cheater ice is so ghetto. :)

bar · bartender · cocktail · ice · liquor · mixology · the atlantic

The Gift-Card Economy
Virginia Postrel, The Atlantic, May 2009, pg. 28

In this fascinating article, Virginia Postrel explores the “all-too-familiar inner conflict between the would-be disciplined self who wants to get up early, exercise, and lose weight and the pleasure-seeking self who prefers to sleep in, watch TV, and eat chocolate.”

Marketers aren’t the only people who can benefit from the research of behavioral economists; individuals can internalize these lessons to increase their own happiness.

Shu and Gneezy found in surveys (as we all know from our own experiences) that tourists with limited time are more likely to visit local attractions than are residents, who presumably can go whenever they want. In fact, residents tend to make their tourist-like visits when they have out-of-town guests or when they’re about to move away. With no immediate reason to hit nearby landmarks, locals put off for tomorrow what they might enjoy today.

A Saturday at the museum sounds great until you have to leave your errands undone and find a place to park. You wind up sticking to your routine, even though you’d be happier breaking it.

Does this mean I should stop procrastinating another visit to Acadia?

Related post:

Gift Cards
Brent Danley, The Rhetoric, November 27, 2007

economics · gift card · happiness · psychology · the atlantic

How the Crash Will Reshape America
Richard Florida, The Atlantic, March 2009, p44

The economic recession in which we currently find ourselves is the result of bad public policy and an embarrassing culture of greed, consumption and self. Hopefully we will learn from our folly and reshape a better America. The effect on population distribution of what will be a long recession will, I believe, put us in a much stronger position to innovate, produce and conserve in the future. It will also be better for the environment, our collective intelligence and our psychological well-being. We need to be a more urban, producing, saving and renting nation.

This essay in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine(March 2009) is insightful and important. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts.

To an uncommon degree, the economic boom in these cities was propelled by housing appreciation: as prices rose, more people moved in, seeking inexpensive lifestyles and the opportunity to get in on the real-estate market where it was rising, but still affordable. Local homeowners pumped more and more capital out of their houses as well, taking out home-equity loans and injecting money into the local economy in the form of home improvements and demand for retail goods and low-level services. Cities grew, tax coffers filled, spending continued, more people arrived. Yet the boom itself neither followed nor resulted in the development of sustainable, scalable, highly productive industries or services. It was fueled and funded by housing, and housing was its primary product. Whole cities and metro regions became giant Ponzi schemes.

(more…)

american dream · buy · economics · home ownerhsip · recession · rent · suburb · the atlantic · urbanization