Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Friday, September 9, 2016

Cela Ne Peut Pas Etre Un Etre Humain




Matthew Yglesias at work.

Because Matthew Yglesias is a soulless, calculating, automaton and fake journalist hack, he wrote a post arguing for less government transparency. Because Megan McArdle is a soulless, calculating automaton and fake journalist hack, she wrote a post complaining that if the government gets to avoid transparency, so should businesses.

The money shot:
Moreover, customers also have a voice in how businesses run, because they can move to a competitor if they don’t like your performance. Arguably, this gives them more control over businesses they deal with than over their elected officials, which is why you get better customer service from your cell phone company than from your local purveyor of building codes. Why, then, should I have a right to know not only what options Goldman Sachs sold me, but what they thought of them, if similar government deliberations are shielded from view?
We want to see the internal deliberations of Goldman Sachs because that protects us against fraud. But consider how you’d feel about a presidential administration that sold its new health-care overhaul by saying, “If you like your plan you can keep it,” and then later discovered that this was untrue. Then consider how you’d feel if its leaders knew that this promise was false and made it anyway. Even a well-run administration will make honest mistakes. But an administration that lies about one policy proposal will probably lie about them all, and you’ll want to adjust your faith in its promises accordingly. Which means you have a stake in knowing, not just what happened, but the internal process that led to that promise.
Goldman, Sachs sold bad mortgages and then bet against them. McArdle doesn't want you to know that second part. Of course this lucrative deceit has nothing to do with Obama's predictions for Obamacare, all of which suffered from constant Republican undermining and the need to get the approval of the medical field and drug companies.

This is what passes for clever in McArdle's eyes.

Title corrected.

9 comments:

fish said...

I think in this case Megan is arguing on the correct side, but as usual her only frame of reference is through the market. She is saying Gov should be as open as business not that business should be as shielded as gov. She is just a shitty writer.

Susan of Texas said...

Fish, I agree, I thought her petulance was funny.

fish said...

O I C

Yastreblyansky said...

I still say only a crazy person would "like" the insurance policies conservatives claimed to want to keep. They were seriously abusive, overcharging for a payout that hardly anybody was ever going to see. The people Obama was addressing were those on decent employer provided plans--and he was promising us those wouldn't change, as they didn't. (My Blue Cross premium increase has been under 2% for two years in a row, don't know if they'll keep that up. Not that it's perfect, the dental in particular is terrible. But that's the point, nobody has ever "liked" an insurance policy ever, the idea is absurd on its face.)

NOte the headline should read "Cela ne vaut pas...."

Anonymous said...

Hum... in French "Cela Ne Veut Pas Un Etre Humain" means "it doesn't want a human being". I think you meant "cela ne peut pas être un être humain" meaning "this cannot be a human being"
Respectfully.

Susan of Texas said...

Thanks for the corrections. I don't know French obviously but I wanted to reference Magritte.

I am trying to figure out how to speed up and shorten my posts so I can post more often. However, I'm not very happy with the result. My posts are long because I try to be very careful.

Anonymous said...

Gaspésie sends it's regards, the Magritte reference would be "Ceci n'est pas un être humain" as in "This is not a Human being" but for that to work you need to show a picture of a real Human.

With the picture you have, the title would be "This is not an automate" "Ceci n'est pas un automate"
Take care.

Kathy said...

Perhaps you can just break up your posts into separate parts? The posts are sometimes so lengthy and detailed I read them in increments anyway, otherwise: info & outrage overload.

http://lifehacker.com/limit-how-much-information-you-have-to-process-to-avoid-1786522112

Ken Houghton said...

The problem with McMegan's example is that she is wrong =on the facts.=

There was nothing in PPACA that required companies not to offer their shitty, inadequate policies. The rule was: you can continue to offer it as long as you want to do so.

The businesses decided to stop offering them. (A good deal of this was people realizing they could get better coverage for the same price or slightly more.)

So McMegan is complaining because businesses made decisions the government did not require them to make.