Blogging will be light today, as I am wending my way west towards the Aspen Ideas Festival, where I'll be blogging, and moderating a few panels. If I have time between flights, I will try to provide you with a couple of posts on intellectual property and other goodies. Meanwhile, a few thoughts to tide you over:
Really moving article on black autoworkers in Detroit. This seems mostly like a hook, because the core story is the same as that of white autoworkers in Detroit. Liberals often accuse conservatives of hating union workers, and maybe some do, but I think it's great that people who maybe weren't cut out for college had a decent way of earning a good living, getting ahead a little. I think it's really sad that era is over, especially for people who were encouraged to bet their whole futures on a deeply troubled industry. It's just that I'm also aware that the reason people could have well-appointed jobs-for-life was an oligopolistic cartel which was able to cut rich side deals in order to buy labor and political peace. The culmination of this was the hideous junk of the 1970s, which is the kind of place that oligopolistic cartels tend to end up.
But that doesn't make all this any less tragic for the workers.
Next tragedy: Michael Jackson. Oxycontin. Discussion question for libertarians: assume we all agree that drugs should be legal. Is a doctor who enables an addicted patient to take fatal doses a good doctor, or should he be liable for malpractice? Discussion question for non-libertarians: how, pray tell, is this an argument in support of our current draconian drug laws?
Third tragedy: now we've lost Billy Mays too. Whatever cosmic force is targeting celebreties, I think it's time to stop, 'kay? I was really enjoying Pitchmen, though of course, I'm not sure there's really a wide market for business-and-economics themed reality shows. (The Apprentice doesn't count as either, thank-you-very-much).
Off to Aspen, where Madras goes to die.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
"People who weren't cut out for college..."
Is that a euphemism? Are we going back to a form of noblesse oblige?
I'm with you on legalization, but I think the standard response from non-libertarians would simply be "drugs are bad". The fact that there was a fatal overdose involved lends some credence to the idea that there should be limitations to what drugs should be readily available to people. Likely the response will be that the drug laws aren't nearly draconian enough.
"Assume we all agree that drugs should be legal. Is a doctor who enables an addicted patient to take fatal doses a good doctor, or should he be liable for malpractice?"
How about if drugs that are medically necessary--oxycontin after a broken leg, say--are prescribed by a doctor who is liable if drugs go wrong but drugs that are recreational--oxycontin for a pop musician--are acquired without prescription from a recreational drug dealer who isn't liable. If a doctor deems a patient's request for drugs is not (or no longer, if the broken leg is a distant memory) medically necessary, he or she can refer patient to a non-medical drug dealer.
Very poignant NYT story, but... Detroit killed itself. It's terrible, for those caught up in it, but then most of the people in the story seem to have pretty poor planning skills - the main guy tried starting a GM career twelve years ago, having drifted aimlessly from 18-26. Hello? Didn't you notice the company was getting smaller, not bigger?
One of the more interesting books I've ever read was Sabotage in the American Workplace, which had a few anecdotes from line workers. They hated the companies so much that they intentionally produced crappy cars so that people would buy something else.
Let's get something straight, I *do* hate union workers. The Air Line Pilots Association has a well-circulated scab list that strikes fear throughout the industry- fortunately I never had to quit a job to avoid crossing the line, although it was close- but then took all the Continental scabs in. It's just about money for the insiders.
I would never buy a UAW made vehicle after the incident with the Marine reserves. And in any case why should I pay more for a piece of junk so these people can enjoy a better standard of living than me?
And in any case why should I pay more for a piece of junk so these people can enjoy a better standard of living than me?
Bitter much? Do you hate the banksters with equal zeal?
We knew THAT one was coming. Why don't you throw in a "Bush's Fault!" while you're at it?
Said without bitterness: Why should he buy a relatively inferior product for the same price? To provide employment for people paid more than him?
A bit harsh, no? I friggin' hate the unions and a lot of the people that ran/run them, but why hate on the average guys and gals? Why hate a guy who wants to be an electrician just because union-catering governments set things up so that he pretty much has to join a union to do his job? Why hate people for trying to maximize their personal returns? The problem lies with the so-called union "leaders", who worked hand-in-glove with so-called "managers" to get their members promises of unsustainable future benefits instead of cash now, and ultimately wrecked the industries that used to pay them.
One of my favorite examples is Canada 3000 Airline, where the owners just gave up and wound up the business in the middle of a long strike - basically saying "we don't need the hassle any more. You think the unions always win these things in Canada - well screw you buddy". That's why businesses NEED to be allowed to fail, whether as a result of an overly-aggressive union or because of inept management, pour encourager les autres.
If he does, does that make it OK?
How about a German car made in Germany or a Japanese car made in Japan? Union shops, all of them. They only run non-union in the Southern U.S. and other third-world hellholes...
Japanese unions are far weaker and do not have the power or motivation to do what the UAW did to the US auto makers.
Speaking as a former GM employee you need to hear the inside stories from engineers to appreciate just how damaging the UAW has been and what a pox it has been on the US auto industry. The engineers I know all loathe the UAW because they see it as not only parasitic but obstructive. Want to fire a drunk who screws up? Sorry, that drunk is a UAW employee. Want to fire people who take off for fun and leave lines undermanned? Sorry again, UAW after all. The Japanese make sure they can function on the assembly line.
These guys got high wages. In exchange they should have fought to get rid of people to lower quality rather than to keep them. They should have embraced quality improvements in manufacturing processes instead of blocked changes.
The UAW improved in recent years. But this came too late.
I don't think the unions in Japan are actually weaker. The difference is all that "team" talk isn't just rhetoric. If you come in drunk or take off in the middle of the day you're seen as letting down your coworkers, and they'll make your life unpleasant until you shape up. There's a big difference in the mindset and it's 90% cultural.
You think the Southern U.S. is a hellhole? Compared to what, Detroit?
I was really enjoying Pitchmen, though of course, I'm not sure there's really a wide market for business-and-economics themed reality shows.
Ditto on Pitchmen - but then, who thought in 2003 that MythBusters would still be here seven seasons and 140+ episodes later?
One of Pitchmen's best aspects (I think) is the level of work and resources most of the inventors have invested before approaching Billy and Sully.
One especially sad note - was watching the "Crunch Time" episode this weekend as the news came out, and Billy's three or four-year old daughter had wandered on to the set of a spot he was shooting. Just a reminder that behind every "personality" is a real person, with a real family.
Bring up the notion of ecocosmology because you and the others there will be able to take it places I never could.
For sure.
I think the doctor who enables a drug addicted patient to OD should be liable.
A bartender who "overserves" a patron who later kills himself and others while driving is criminally and civilly liable, isn't this the same thing? If not, why not?
If you wanted to establish the equivalent of a Dram Shop liability for prescription drugs then you’d have to have doctors (or whoever else you want to be liable) actually administering each dosage of the drug rather than writing a prescription and letting the patient take them on their own according to the instructions. I’m not sure that it would be a good idea to create those sorts of bottlenecks in our health care system, particularly for older patients and the chronically ill who are more likely to have multiple prescriptions and might not be able to visit the doctor on a daily (or multiple times a day) to get medication that they currently can administer themselves.
Is this a trick question? If drugs were really meaningfully legal then people wouldn't have to seek a doctor's grant of largess to acquire the drugs that they want, so the addict in question would almost certainly not have involved a doctor. However, if a person went to a doctor that had access to records of that patient's previous addiction to a drug I could see that they could be held properly liable of malpractice for recommending it's use if the patient then overdoses.
Discussion question for non-libertarians: how, pray tell, is this an argument in support of our current draconian drug laws?
In this case, a fringe is abusing drugs, and a small group die of ID.
The concern, I imagine, is that the legalization (or rather, decriminalization) would increase the use, increase addiction, and increase the number of people who OD.
Not to mention increasing the number who cannot support themselves because of their drug use. Get rid of welfare, and I'll support drug legalization. But can we really have both for an extended period of time?
"I think it's great that people who maybe weren't cut out for college had a decent way of earning a good living, getting ahead a little. I think it's really sad that era is over,"
But is it over because of the fall of the auto industry? Or because of the over-reliance on a piece of paper that, at best, often just means your capable of learning what your new employer will still have to teach you?
I'm convinced there are many fields where people could succeed very well with apprenticeship like programs where people can learn on the job. We've just been convinced we need to go through a 4 year period of taking classes whose content we may never need for our jobs - many of which are intended only to make us 'better citizens' (don't get me started on the UMass 'diversity requirements'.)
I have a BS EE and almost everything I need for my computer programming job I learned on my own - and most of it didn't require any of the 4 year education to help understand it.
Not to say there are no jobs that require 4 years of education - or even 4 years of Electrical Engineering - but we should just be more aware of which jobs those are.
Ditto msully. I'm the assistant treasurer of an oil company. I traded commodities for a while. My college degree is in English literature...proof that in at least one case, a college degree is not required.
College for a sizeable chunk of the marketplace today is the Prisoners' Dilemma in action.
How so?
I think where he's going with this is that college may not be requisite for the work to be performed, but if one of two applicants has gone to college, he forfeits tuition and the opportunity cost of the lost time, but gains a qualification advantage over the one who did not. Both would be better off in the cooperative position of refusing to get a college degree that is useless for the required work.
Great analogy! The cost is huge, but as long as everyone else consumes 200k, you have to, or else you'll be labeled as "uneducated" and therefore unemployable in the neuro-economy.
Of course the problem is that if the signal isn't expensive and time consuming it will become meaningless.
Actually replying to Peter.
No, the signal has to be difficult to achieve and even harder to fake.
If we had a college equivalent test, that took 6 months, but required the same level of
1. Ability to follow directions
2. Ability to understand complex concepts
3. Ability and willingness to turn up on time, every day, and put in the hours
4. Ability to get on with civilized human beings to the point where you aren't impossible to work with.
Then that test could, and after proving itself would, be a fine substitute for a non-technical college degree.
Actually a 6 hour process would be even better, but I don't see how you can prove items 3 and 4 in such a short time frame.
doctorpat:
Sounds like flipping hamburgers in McDonalds would do the same thing. After a few years you don't have student debt, have learned how a real business works. And got paid for it.
The real downer is when you do the schooling, rack up the debts and still have to flip hamburgers.
Derek
The concern, I imagine, is that the legalization (or rather, decriminalization) would increase the use, increase addiction, and increase the number of people who OD.
Do the drug laws really make it that difficult to buy drugs? The Netherlands have one of the lowest drug use rates, but far more lax drug laws.
Not to mention increasing the number who cannot support themselves because of their drug use. Get rid of welfare, and I'll support drug legalization. But can we really have both for an extended period of time?
I'm confused, people on welfare don't do drugs because they are illegal? Or our draconian drug laws are a major cause of poverty as they contributed to 1% of our population being incarcerated at this time?
I think he's trying to make the point that drugs are more addictive than alcohol, and that more people would become incapable of holding a steady job.
I think he's trying to make the point that drugs are more addictive than alcohol, and that more people would become incapable of holding a steady job.
I don't concur that legalizing drugs would significantly increase the number of people addicted to them. I believe that our war on drugs has caused far more people to be put into prison, which makes them far more expensive to the government and dangerous overall than people it's prevented from becoming an addict.
What is the difference in marijuana usage in the US as compared to Canada, which have quasi legalized possession?
Similar culture, similar economics, similar cultural influences one way or the other.
I think it would prove your belief wrong.
Derek
I don't concur that legalizing drugs would significantly increase the number of people addicted to them. If you decrease the cost of a thing and increase availability, people generally use it more. This is especially true of addictive substances.
To show otherwise, you'd have to demonstrate that drug-abuse is very strongly genetic or otherwise innate and that newer drugs would just replace things like alcohol. That may describe a subset of the drug using population, but to the extent that it's not true, lowered cost should mean higher usage.
It really depends doesn't it? Some are more addicting, some are less.
Cars:
I fail to see the tragedy. Pathos, but not tragedy. The death the auto industry has been evident for all to see for decades. Those who staked their careers and family's livelihood on its recovery were, like the recently remarried, indulging in the the triumph of hope over experience.
The pathetic metallic contraptions marketed as "cars" were not overpriced, they were over-cost-ed. Which is why the industry is hemorrhaging cash. You cannot have global productive capacity of 100mm units SAAR and demand for 70mm units SAAR and not have fatal margin compression. This has been the case in airlines for years.
Low costs win in any shakeout. Ask Eastern Airlines.
Drugs:
The "public welfare" argument would be that increased availability leads to increased addiction and increased OD. A federal solution would allow state-specific Rx regulation--but the national authorities will never allow a federal experiment.
By the way, national solutions always appeal to moralists on both sides of the question. Federal solutions appeal to pragmatists. I'm not sure if a libertarian needs to be a moralist. But many, many libertarians seem that way to me.
Reality shows:
What about Mad Money? Why can't Megan go toe-to-toe with Cramer? That's a reality show I'd watch.
A speculation: It wasn't Oxycontin alone but a combination of OxyContin and benzodiazepines given/taken in increasing doses for his increasing anxiety as his 'Tour' approached. Benzodiazepines, e.g. Valium, Xanax, even taken in deliberate overdose by themselves are extremely safe from the standpoint of respiratory depression. A strong dose however in the setting of significant opioid medication, and significant is not an easily defined number, and the person quits breathing. You often have then 3 'doctors,' if you include the patient, not knowing what the other is doing. Granted, my knowledge of his history is primarily limited to his appearing to be able to walk normally, but it's hard to see how a deadly dose of OxyContin alone could be 'prescribed.'
Nice one Ms. MacArdle - I see you're still dragging Michael through the mud. Why don't you give it a rest? The "Ideas Festival" at Aspen would be a perfect place to discuss why rumors started by the tabloid press regarding Michael have persisted to this day. Why is this, hmmmmm? Will the "genius forum" at the Ideas Festival have enough time to clear the air once and for all about Michael's innocence? Or is it better to make sure the emperor in the room stays naked?
Borton, in the previous Zicam thread, you jumped at MM for "not covering Michael" (she had, with a YouTube tribute link), even going so far as to claim that the MSM were ignoring the story as well (obviously false), and now that she has waited out the rumormongering phase to make one innocuous comment -- ONE comment -- addressing the probable cause of death, and she is "still dragging Michael through the mud."
Are you firing on all cylinders this week?
Michael, I am not a pharmacologist but I appreciate your fidelity to this issue (Michael Jackson's downfall). One thing to consider - the drug/s is not the issue. What drove Michael to substance abuse is important though. The truth is that the man was accused of a crime he did not commit, and the tabloids were allowed to paint him as a monster. The stress is what drove him to drug addiction. I would think that Michael's demise has opened the door for several topics of discussion, all of which would be stimulating and topical for those in Aspen this week - like Freedom of the Press and Libel, Standards in Journalism, and how Michael was almost like a modern day Jesus Christ insofar as he bore a cross hewn and assembled by the American media (and BlogoSphere?), and was crucified for being a success.
Whether or not he actually molested children, an adult male inviting unrelated children to share your bed, repeatedly, doesn't pass any normal person's smell test. David Spade put it best at the time of the first accusation, "A man who's 34 years old, never married, dresses like Sgt. Pepper, invites your 11-year-old to sleep over in his bed because he 'loves children.' WTF?"
While I think it's actually possible the man was so far removed from reality that he had no idea of what appropriate boundaries were, I have no idea how anyone thinks they can say unequivocally that he was innocent.
Court testimony, and witness accounts of others who were at these gatherings, paints a much different picture of these sleep-overs. Michael and the kids would usually stay up late watching movies, usually Disney fare - often in the company of adults (Elizabeth Taylor was a notable guest). Michael would typically move out of the room, or onto the floor when the kids fell asleep. Think of it as staying up with your grandparents or an uncle/aunt to watch a movie. Granted, this was pretty weird. But the other kids who were there (MacCully Culkin was one of them), their parents, and the other adults in attendance testified that nothing happened. The court appointed psychiatrist who evaluated both Gavin Arviso (the plaintiff) and Michael Jackson reported that Michael did not match the profile of a pedophile. His assessment was that MJ had regressed to the mental state of a 10yr old, but he was hardly a predator. While it might make sense to you to take a joke from David Spade and just "go with your gut" a la Bush and write him off as a child molester at the worst or at the least as a guy who had serious boundary issues, I'd implore you to take 10 minutes and just check it out on Wiki (read the full case description) and examine the plaintiff's motives. The Ariso family had a prior history of trying to extort money from celebrities (George Lopez being one) and a history of petty theft (shoplifting at a JC Penny). They were using the same legal team that assisted the Chandler family with their shakedown of MJ in 1994. The jury was mostly white - so race wasn't a factor like in the OJ case, and the state had done a thorough job of building their case (it was extremely shaky, but they spared no resources in their hunt for evidence - at one point 80 detectives conducted a search of MJ's residence - found nothing but some hetero and fat girl porn, no crime there!). Many of the jurors had children. The bottom line is that tabloids and shows like Inside Edition spun up the story. Comedians picked it up, and the public bought into it. But anyone who does a cursory search into the case details should come away convinced that the man was wrongfully accused. So if you want to make a change, I suggest YOU start with the man in the mirror.
Question:
Some sites are reporting that Jodan Chandler has admitted that he lied about being abused at the behest of his father in order to win a settlement from Jackson.
Since CNN, TMZ et. al. haven't reported it I have to think it's just an Internet rumor.
http://www.makli.com/jordan-chandler-admits-he-lied-about-michael-jackson/
The cosmic force continues:
Fred Travalena has succumbed to Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma on Sunday, June 28, 2009, after a courageous seven-year battle with the disease.
Michael was almost like a modern day Jesus Christ
It really doesn't help your credibility to pretend you're on a first name basis with Mr. Jackson.
News flash: JC was executed by the central government on trumped-up charges. MJ died of a drug OD. Any suffering was psychological, not physical. "If men were angels, they would have no need for government."
I'm not sure the charges were 'trumped up.' There was a reference in Instapundit to a law school class that looks into this. IMHO in terms of the multiculturalism as observed by the Romans in regard to Palestine, they would back Jewish ritual observance in the Temple. So charges could be brought by Jewish law against Jesus; thus the question may be did he break Jewish ritual law? Perhaps not so oddly, St. Paul was charged with bringing a nonJew into the Temple and was executed as a Roman for that.
In a democracy the people are king. And the king in this case was intent on persecuting the man for crimes he did not commit. Some were like the Jewish elders - the tabloid press, Jordan Chandler, and Gavin Arviso - and they made a concerted and sustained effort to bring him down. Jordan was more like Judas IMHO though. The government was like Pilot - reviewed the facts and said there was no crime, but could not fight against the tide of the public's decree. The rest of us were like the onlookers who watched the crucification, and perhaps mocked the man from afar. Michael himself was a sensitive man, who performed miracles (the Moon Walk, Billy Jean, Thriller), gave huge amounts to charity, and hung out with little children - remember that line from the Bible that says something like "do not suffer the little children?" We Are the World was basically a better version of Sermon on the Mount. Michael's heart and physical body could not handle the torment created by the public, and he died. Case closed - this analogy is fool proof! Your argument is nothing, booyah!
remember that line from the Bible that says something like "do not suffer the little children?"
No, but I do remember the exact opposite in Matt. 19:13-14. "Then were there brought to him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come to me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
You might consider firming up your Biblical scholarship (and orthography) a tad, at least if you want to make Biblical allusions.
Addiction is merely a desire offensive to social norms. Runners experience the exact same chemical reaction when they push their bodies to release internal morphine (aka "endorphins") yet they are not persecuted for their ravenous pursuit of opiate sensation because their desire conforms to social norms.
The question is whether we incorporate the state into our system of social norms. The term socialism is a very precise and literal one.
"Addiction is merely a desire offensive to social norms."
Correction: Being high (or drunk) is a state that is offensive to some social norms and is generated by means of an externally supplied chemical. Addiction is defined by the brain latching onto an externally-supplied chemical so strongly that the body goes into a neuroendocrine breakdown when deprived of said chemical. They're not the same thing.
Addiction is not restricted to externally supplied chemicals. Unless you would deny Gambling addiction as a real problem.
What you are defining is physical addiction, a subset of the problem.
This social norm stuff is silly. Unless you would deny that a person who drinks a bottle of vodka a day is addicted to alcohol just because he is in a Russian mining town where such behaviour is normal. (You would need to be addicted to drink that much mining camp vodka. Been there, done that. The only excuse is that it was better than mining camp beer.)
Physical addiction -- fair enough.
Your vodka example is an interesting one but not entirely clear since some races, possibly by virtue of longstanding cultural norms, seem to inherit a fairly high tolerance for alcohol. And in many places, it was traditionally safer to drink beer or distilled spirits rather than the water, as only the latter was guaranteed to make you ill. The type and degree of dependency is not always clear in such cases.
At any rate, many "social norms" regarding substance abuse seem to arise from whether or not a substance causes someone to lose control of their work ethic and/or good judgment, when it was indulged, and by how much. Basic survival instincts, really, and many of them still quite rigidly enforced.
I seriously doubt that you know anything about either chemical addiction or running.
... Perhaps some social norms are functional? Fewer people have their lives cut short because of running or can't support their children because they just had to have those new Nikes.
If you want to make an argument that a particular norm is non-functional go right ahead.
This gets into the whole 'building a fence around the law.'
Should we ticket drivers, not because they've actually hurt anyone, but because they put themselves in a situation where they might be more likely to hurt someone else?
tehdude,
What do they say if the hangover came first alcohol would be mandatory.
Some people say that. But it's stupid.
You can list all sorts of behaviours that have pain now for pleasure latter. Very few are mandatory.
Off the top of my head: Exercise, going to the dentist, gardening.
When do the drunk driving deaths and liver disease come in in this hypothetical?
Non-libertarians and celebrities whose doctors prescribe drugs: If that is what killed Jackson then this is evidence of how at least under current restrictive law richer people can do damage to themselves that is harder to do if you are poor.
I mean, if Dr. Roberts (that's a Beatles reference) was available to everyone a lot more people would be taking harmful pills and dying from them.
But they didn't do it at the expense of the auto companies, at least not until the introduction of serious foreign competition. By and large the people who paid for it were making less money than the auto workers. I don't see that as a good thing, getting ahead on the backs of retail employees and fast food workers.
It's pretty hard to tell the difference between a zero sum situation and a non zero sum situation when you're in it, and the vast majority of people don't bother. Almost everyone believes that everything they do is justified almost all of the time.
You will have a very difficult time proving that the auto workers did anything that anyone else in their situation (including you and me) wouldn't have done. You're criticizing them because they got caught.
Oh, I have no doubt most people would have done the same in the same situation, but that wasn't my point. I was responding to "...but I think it's great that people who maybe weren't cut out for college had a decent way of earning a good living, getting ahead a little." It may be understandable, but for all the people who, over decades, paid too much for a car it's not "great".
Yeah, define "too much".
Anything the car buyers paid over what would allow UAW members to live the same lifestyle as customers with the same skill set is too much. If I work at Starbucks for twelve bucks an hour I don't really need to be paying a car price which supports a $35/hour wage for an assembly line job.
I read the autoworkers tale. I see the same fate awaiting many here in Richmond where Philip Morris and DuPont have a large presence. Reynolds
Aluminum has already died.
The problem will grow worse for the black middle-class IMO in the coming years for America's corporations will no longer be able to afford to hire supernumeraries for diversity's sake AND because there is a new minority in town, Latinos, who will tire of the landscaping and general labor jobs they now hold. They will want their share of the state and local government jobs now held disproportionately by blacks.
Once Latinos become fluent in English there will be a real fight for the remaining industrial jobs and given the superior work ethic of most Latinos they will take jobs from blacks here too.
It seems to me that even if it was legal for doctors to administer drug doses purely for the pleasure of the recipient, the doctor could still be liable for an OD. The sentence "Doctor, please inject me with morphine so I can get high" implicitly includes the phrase "without killing me or otherwise doing irreparable harm beyond that normally associated with the procedure".
It should be treated the same as any other medically unnecessary elective procedure. If the doctor doesn't think he can do it without killing you, he has an obligation not to do it. If he thinks he can and he's wrong, well, that's malpractice.
Michael Jackson didn't overdose on OxyContin, or Demerol, or any other opioid. A little known fact about opioids (this includes opium, morphine, heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and all the synthetic opiate-like substances) is that they're virtually impossible to overdose on in isolation, and even less likely to be deadly to somebody who had any sort of tolerance to them (which Michael Jackson surely would).
No, MJ most likely died from a fatal combination of two or more central nervous system depressants. One of these was probably an opioid (Demerol or OxyContin, as the press accounts suggest), but it takes two to tango. The Daily Mail confirms my suspicions – that he was also taking CNS depressants daily (specifically Xanax, a benzodiazepine, and Soma, a nowadays-rare CNS depressant in a separate category from benzos, but with similar effects). When you combine CNS depressants, it doesn't take much to finish you off.
Perhaps if opioids were legal, people might know this, and they wouldn't mix their depressants, and they wouldn't die. (Junkies often use other CNS depressants to ease the withdrawal symptoms when they can't get their number one pick - heroin. But give them cheap enough heroin, and they won't even bother with pills and alcohol.) If you read William Burroughs' Junky, you'll find that addicts living nearer to a time without prohibition were wise to that fact in a way that today's addicts are not.
Consumer Reports, the National Review, and academics specializing in addiction have all discussed this persistent myth, but unfortunately the truth hasn't penetrated the zeitgeist quite yet. But I'm confident that some day, we'll look back on heroin and the "overdose" and see it in the same light as we do people being blinded by bootleg alcohol during that drug's prohibition.
Ultimately though, it was a BROKEN HEART that killed Michael.
Wow, what a bad week for the loss of celebrities. RIP Billy, I will miss hearing your voice in the middle of the night. There will be no replacement for you!!! God Bless! found more info at http://billymayes.blogspot.com/
"weren't cut out for college" - I suspect that describes more than a third of our fellow countrymen. We'd better find ways to place such people in honorable useful gainful occupations, or this place is finished. College as a entrance pass for employment is a disastrous idea. We need to get back to shop classes in high school, instead of trying to choke a "world class education" down everyone's throat.
And even for many types of intellectual jobs, a good test for proper credentials (actuarial exams...) would be far more useful to employers than a college degree. You can learn anything online these days, for free! We just need some way for employers to know that you did it.
Most of the growing jobs in the US are skilled technician jobs at the diploma/associate degree level. I get lots of Bachelor's degree graduates who can't get careers going coming back to pick up a skilled trade. Philosophy 101 doesn't really have a high value in the marketplace after all.
These are the kinds of jobs that are also non-offshorable and some lend themselves really well to starting your own business. I bet more of my college's technical program graduates have started their own business compared to the local private and public 4 year college and university.
College is a class indicator now. It's how employers know you're a normal middle class person. They can put you in a room with a bunch of other normal middle class people and there won't be some kind of wierd uncomfortable situation.
What percent of tradesmen in this country are Detroit auto workers? 1%? Yet they get all the attention. Here's some low hanging fruit- how many construction workers are out of work because their jobs have been snatched up by illegal immigrants? Think our government is gonna touch that one? It's not just the supposed jobs that no-one else wants to do that are getting taken these days, there is a lot of skilled labor that is going to illegals.
Yep! Big time.
The illegals are all over the construction business and have driven down wages - a lot.
The contractors that want to hire Americans are underbid by the contractors with illegals. That creates even more pressure to hire illegals and not hire Americans. In some places you can actually see help wanted ads that say: "Spanish speaking helpful but not required". Isn't that nice!?
I have quite a few friends who are contractors in various trades. They do NOT want to hire illegals. They pull their hair out trying to find Americans to work for them at a wage that keeps them competitive with the the contractors that hire illegals. They would gladly pay more, but cannot afford to lest they be driven out of business.
Of course our nice liberal leaders in DC, and at state and local levels, turn a blind eye or even encourage the illegals. The publicly sponsored gathering sites for illegals to be picked up by contractors for day jobs - to work illegally are a nice touch.
Message to citizens from your nice liberal pols: F--K YOU!
Hate to say it but the WSJ wing of the conservative movement is just as bad - look at Shamnesty McCain.
The Loony Liberal Left has validated their
beliefs by treating them as truth, writing
them into law, making them the social norm,
for forty years, and now the Raptors are
coming home to roost. ;>
~ 1/3 can benefit from a college education;
A real one, which teaches them how to think.
The rest are wasting their time and money;
They should be learning a skilled trade.
The shortage of such workers is now becoming
too great to ignore, particularly of those
proficient through years of experience.
One category of personal interest to MM;
Nurses Specialists in the computerized
hardware used to assist those patients
in respiratory distress.
P.S. Go a little further down the Bell Curve,
and find ~ 1/3 who cannot make it on their
own in a 21st century, hi-tech society;
Fortunately, POTUS has a plan to help them. :(
The last thing this country needs is a United
Incompetent Workers government bureaucracy.
P.P.S. The middle third, on the other hand,
could benefit greatly by replacing their Union
with a Workers Co-Op. Need a nifty name..umm..:
Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Merchantiles ;)
"Discussion question for libertarians: assume we all agree that drugs should be legal. Is a doctor who enables an addicted patient to take fatal doses a good doctor, or should he be liable for malpractice? Discussion question for non-libertarians: how, pray tell, is this an argument in support of our current draconian drug laws?"
Discussion question for Megan McArdle: W, pray tell, TF? What does "this" refer to? Why is it implied (via the arch "pray tell") that "non-libertarians" support such laws? Whence the implied notion that only libertarians (about which, don't get me started) object to current drug laws?
Finally, this thought problem for the weekend: Michael Jackson used cosmetic surgery to transform himself from a black man into a white woman. He denied, repeatedly, that he had had any plastic surgery or skin treatment (cf. his interview with Martin Bashir), when anyone with a single functioning eyeball could see otherwise.
He slept with--meaning, let's say, literally slept with--a host of children not his own. His estate was a monument, not to children, but to remaining a child. His songs, and his crotch-grabbing dancing, dealt with matters solidly in the realm of adult sexuality. But he expressed surprise to one of those bedmate children when, seeking advice at the start of one of his marriages, Jackson was advised to try "foreplay," at which the new groom said something like, "Girls really like that stuff?"
He was patently and clearly a delusional "nutbar" whose grasp of what we grudgingly refer to as "reality" was close to nil. Thus, answer: How can anyone over the age of six argue that his drug use, and his death therefrom, was due to "a broken heart" or from a tragic and false misunderstanding of him by...you know..."society." Wasn't it the other way around?
You know, there still are private sector jobs that offer the opportunity of earning a good living and getting ahead to blue collar workers. The problem is, as I noted elsewhere recently, that although liberals support the goal of good-paying jobs for blue collar workers in the abstract, they
Every time I write out a prescription for a combination narcotic pain medication (e.g. percocet -- oxycodone/acetominophen) I "enable" an patient to kill themselves -- the standard post-op pain prescription amount (30-60 tabs depending on the surgery) probably contains enough narcotic to stop your breathing (if you're narcotic naive) and certainly enough Tylenol to kill your liver (and therefore you). I rely on the patient to take the medication as I recommend but have NO ABILITY to prevent "misuse".
If you want to avoid this I see two choices 1. the "dram shop" method as noted above. I don't know, sounds like it would suck to be a patient in this model but I bet I would make money. And 2. the model I favor which is "Here's my recommendation. Now go buy whatever you want (b/c it's all OTC) and have at it. AMFYOYO."
What is asked for in physicians is 'are you exercising a reasonable standard of care.' With somebody of apparently normal mood and normal attachments denying other use of narcotics or taking minimal doses, say 0.5 mg twice a day of clonazepam for anxiety, the prescription you indicate should be seen as a reasonable standard. Of course the concern with cases like this is 1) the retrospectoscope always focuses clearly and 2) somebody else's reasonable standard may be tighter than mine (yours), and they may in administrative review find you as inappropriate outlier and act accordingly, and cases like MJ's I fear tend to move the standard of review in a tighter direction.
I really hope this case doesn't provoke a "cracking down" on doctors who prescribe opiates for pain. I know of at least three cases where terminally ill patients were in unnecessary pain because they weren't able to get the painkillers in appropriate dosages. It seems like every time someone famous ODs the feds add another form for doctors to fill out, along with another layer of unnecessary scrutiny. I'd rather have ten Michael Jacksons OD through their own stupidity than see one terminal cancer patient suffer needlessly because his doctor is afraid of the government.
You know with all the talk of 'saving money with the electronic medical record,' we could actually save lives maybe even could have saved MJ's life with what we already have. For years now pharmacy records exist, available on line, of all a patients prescriptions. Before others faint away, take heart, not even your doctor(s) can get to them. That is especially useful to patients who don't want their doctors to know that they are getting sedative or opioid prescriptions that they'd prefer not to mention to the doctor seeing them. With a change in regulations, once a patient had filled a prescription of a doctor, or by some other criteria, he/she could see what they have received say in the past 3 months. I think you can see where that might have been useful in MJ's case; it's more automatic to think 'Is a doctor who enables ... liable for malpractice?'
I heartily agree. I suspect my mother was undermedicated when she died writhing in pain from mets all through her body. I've had cancer three times and my sister is my HCPOA and I have told her over and over that I am afraid of dying in the kind of pain Mom did--make sure I get enough meds to control my pain, even if the unintended secondary side effect is that it results in respiratory suppression or my death through whatever means. I don't care. Don't torture me. If you can't promise me that, I will commit suicide at the mets diagnosis out of fear and that WILL be on your head. An accidental OD from adequately medicating me leaves everyone innocent and guilt free. I swear I will haunt the shit out of anyone who lets me be tortured in pain on the way to death.