--- On Mon, 7/7/08, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> What evidence is there that people would be motivated to
> take less care
> of themselves healthwise based on how much they pay for
> health insurance?
> This seems like a ignorant and baseless assumption to me.
>
[WS:] You are asking a wrong question, John. Economic rationality (i.e. a belief that everything in life has a monetary value and people make choices to maximize that value) is an article of faith or perhaps an apriori frame of mind. As such it is 'self-evident' and thus does not need any evidence, nor can it be disproved by it.
The right question to ask is not whether there is any evidence in support of economic rationality (there is very little, indeed), but why it has become the only interpretative schema that frames all public policy discourse? In other words, why should we be concerned with what is profitable, and not what is ethical or healthy or pleasurable or emotionally fulfilling, etc?
The reduction of all public discourse to econobabble is prehaps the greatest conservative victory in our times. Once an issue is framed in the econobabble terms, conservatives have already won the debate, and no evidence quoted by their opponents can change that. Braking the econobabble frame is the essential pre-condition of breaking the conservative hold on public discourse.
With that in mind wou should not as about evidence to support or refgute the econobbabble on health issue, but perhaps "What kind of person would put a money value on a human life?" Stated differently, the only way to debate econobabble is to show that its proponents are either sociopathic monsters or untrustworthy spinmeisters and liars, as no decent person would sincerely embrace their views.
This, btw, is my lesson from the newest Lakoff's book "The political mind." Highly recommended. I also think that Obama is especially qualified to break that conservative frame in public discourse. If he manages to do just that, it would be the greatest liberal achievement since the Civil Rights Movement, or perhaps even the New Deal.
Wojtek