Frozen Transparency

Suppose there are ten people. Person one has 1$ in free money, person two has 2$ in free money, and so on, so person ten has 10$ in free money.

Let us then assume there is soap (a good for which it can be assumed that everyone wants it), but there are only seven bars of it. All ten people want soap, but only seven will get it—so how do you determine which seven?

The way a market would determine—this example being both contrived and overly simple, admittedly—is to set the price of the soap such that only seven of the people can purchase it. For example, each bar of soap would be 4$. The bottom three people cannot buy it, even though they want it.

But now, suppose people want everyone to have soap. Some might claim it’s even a human right to have soap (though this right didn’t exist prior to there being soap)! The question then becomes: how do we guarantee that everyone has soap?

“Aha!” go some politicians. “Since the price of soap is 4$ a bar, all we need to do is give people money so they can afford it!” So they give everyone 3$, which means that everyone can afford it. But there are still only seven bars—so the price of soap goes up to 7$ to compensate. That person who had 6$ (and so was decidedly middle-class) was previously spending 66% of their income on soap. Now, they are spending 77%.

Of course, that 3$ given actually has to come from somewhere, so let’s take 3$ from each of the top three people, and give it to the bottom three. So now our money range is: 4,5,6,4,5,6,7,5,6,7. But we still only have seven bars of soap! The price would then probably become 5$—enough for eight people to afford it, which means that one gets short-shafted. Or it might be 5.50$, so some people have to sell off family heirlooms to get that extra half-dollar.

Alternatively, the politicians could simply regulate the price, and make soap cost one dollar. There are still only seven bars of soap, so that means that we have a shortage of soap, since only seven people (out of ten) have it—even though everyone can afford it!

The real problem here is that there are only seven bars of soap; if we had ten bars, there would be no issue whatsoever. The price would probably be 1$ (the price enforced by the government), so everyone could afford it, and there would be no shortages. The question then becomes: why are there only seven bars? Is it possible to produce more?

In the case of soap, yes, there is. However, that’s about the point where they find out that the government limits the number of bars of soap that can be made. So the government is trying to solve that which is already the cause of the government, and people still lose out.

How do you make sure everyone can afford soap? Get rid of government caps on the amount of soap that can be produced—then you produce enough soap so that everyone can have a bar (I didn’t discuss sharing for simplicity). Once you reach that point, you might either get a soap monopoly that still overcharges, or you might get a competitive marketplace that pushes the cost of soap down to 1$ a bar—but at least you have enough soap for everyone.

By the way, if you replace “soap” with “medical care”, and “bar” with “doctor”, you have a grossly over-simplified view of healthcare in the United States. (Yes, the situation is far more complicated than the AMA intentionally limiting and reducing the number of doctors—that’s why I said “grossly over-simplified”.) So maybe we ought to stop talking about health insurance, and start talking about why medical care is so expensive in the first place. Might it be because of a lack of supply?

Shortly after wrapping up Continuum, I found myself hankering to start writing something new. I resisted it for some time; I didn’t want a large project anymore, so I could spend time focusing on short stories and poems, instead. I wanted a chance to cool down. Unfortunately, my awen (as I refer to my Muse) would not stop bothering me, and so I ended up starting a new story, Heir To The Gallery. But it wasn’t entirely a sudden thing: there was some evolution in thought before I even set pen to paper (as it were). This entry discusses that train of thought.

Therefore, there are spoilers for the book, including things only revealed at the very end; read at your own discretion.

(more…)

Whenever I ride the Metro, I always see people listening to music, and I find myself wondering what music they’re listening to in their little world of headphones. Of course, I am usually sitting there, listening to music of my own world, separated by simple headphones. Perhaps they sometimes wonder what I’m listening to.

Perhaps it says something about our culture when two people seem to have something very heavily in common, yet cannot even bridge the simple gulf to see how common their taste really is.

In either case, I shall continue to stay in my own little world, sheltered by the sweet strains from my headphones.

I am a writer; this is a fact that I mention on my profile page, and tend to talk about a lot. Writing has been important to me for a good decade now, so I have had plenty of time to observe myself as a writer. I have recently finished a major story of mine, Heir To The Gallery, after eighteen months of work. It clocked in at about 321,000 words (about half the length of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy), with 275 entries (plus chapter markers and so forth). As I write this, I have not yet posted it all online; shortly after this goes up, the ending shall be revealed, and the completed story will be available (in a very rough format) for anyone to read online. Having finished it, though, gives me to pause a moment and consider the whole. The writing process.

(more…)

I know that not everyone uses the Gregorian calendar, and I also know that the choice of when a year ends is a completely arbitrary choice. In either case, I would still like to wish you a Happy New Year. As would be said in Fincaiyan, my conlang:

ensel teirei dan ni lontevoi taru

Which roughly translates to:

May you be guided in the coming year

For those wishing to know how to pronounce it, vowels are roughly as in Spanish, consonants as in English, except for “t”, which is usually rendered like the English “th” in “teeth”, and “d”, which is usually rendered like the English “th” in “that”. Accents are all on the last syllable of the word, except for “taru”, in which it is on the first. At some point, I will try to put up a guide to Fincaiyan pronunciation.

Regardless, have a Happy New Year.