----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim May"
I am unable to find any gentler way to say this: a lot of you (Neil, Yardena, Nathan, Robert, etc.) are woefully ignorant of economics, markets, and the nature of a free society.
In this insurance debate, several of you seem to think that Bob has some "right" to insurance...at the price _he_ or some committee thinks is "fair."
Please read up on some basic economics--preferably not Marxist economics.
As a matter of fact I'm studying it right now (for my Software Engineering Economics Class). Heaven forbid Here's a good quote even: "The use of dollar profit as the only criterion to be used in decision making often leads to decisions with good short-term profit properties, but poor social outcomes for the people involved (and often, as a result, poor long-term profit prospects)." . . . "The net value approach used in this book assumes that ALL [Author's emphasis, not mine] the relevant components of effectiveness--employee's need-fulfillment, customer's good will, users' information privacy, operator's ease of use--have been translated into dollar values and incorporated as such in the total value function". (p 212 - Software Engineering Economics by Barry W. Boehm) In other words the Alice should take into account more than just what it is going to risks/cost to treat Bob. But most companies are going to only consider their short-term interests (There's that "Tragedy of the commons" again) unless they are forced otherwise. Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC