My comments are down because, apparently, SquawkBox has decided to charge me money to continue the account. I don't recall their having notified me of this possibility when I signed up -- otherwise, I might have chosen a different comments manager. Anyway, looks like they'll charge me 14 British pounds, which I'm guessing is between $20 and $25, for a year's worth of service. Anyone know if that's good? Is there another free service out there that won't suddenly demand that I upgrade? Your answers to these questions will, of course, have to be emailed to me since, um, my comments box is down.
Friday, September 05, 2003
The Marriage Pool
Conservatives like Jonah Goldberg subscribe to what I call the “public swimming hole” view of marriage. In their concern about the possibility of gay couples undermining the institution of marriage, they seem to think there is only one great big marriage for everyone, and therefore the behavior of any married couple affects everyone else. People who have promiscuous “open” marriages are basically pissing in the pool and ruining it for everyone.
I, on the other hand, think marriage is a lot more like a private pool in your back yard. If you want to pee in it, fine. If you and Jonah want to fill your pool with so much chlorine it makes your eyes smart, well, that’s okay too.
Critics of my view might point out that, by its very nature as an institution, marriage is necessarily a social phenomenon affected by all individuals who take part. “If people don’t perceive marriage as a desirable state of affairs, fewer people will try it out. If more people believe that marriage need not imply sexual loyalty, then more people will think it’s okay to cheat in their marriages.” But the monolithic character of the institution should not be taken as given. There is not just one model of marriage to which everyone must submit. The fact that some people have “open” marriages hasn’t changed the fact that, for the vast majority of married people, sleeping with other people is considered a serious violation of trust. And every marriage has its own idiosyncratic norms that other couples might find bizarre.
Unfortunately, the current one-size-fits-all legal regime encourages the notion that all people must swim in the same marriage pool. Anyone who gets married -- even once gays are allowed to take part -- faces the same obligations, the same rights and privileges, the same rules for jumping ship and dividing the property (at least within any given state). If conservatives are really concerned about saving their own vision of marriage, they ought to get behind privatizing marriage, thereby reducing the state to the role of contract enforcer. If marriage were privatized, many concepts of marriage could flourish, each with its own set of pool rules.
A Better Joke Candidacy
A few weeks ago, Mike asked why the California LP shouldn't nominate Gary Coleman for governor. The answer (of course) is that the last thing the LP's reputation needs is another joke candidacy a la Howard Stern. Nevertheless, it is interesting how often these political outsiders have libertarian sensibilities, even if they lack philosophical consistency. For the latest example, check out porn actress and gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey's platform. Aside from the tax on breast implants and the porn-for-guns program, it all looks fairly libertarian. And she has just announced four new positions (not that kind of position, you perv) that will have libertarians cheering: "Ms. Carey is against [that's right, against] government-provided universal health coverage [yeah!]. She supports physician-assisted suicide [right on!]. She is pro-choice [of course!]. She supports legalizing ferrets [woo-hoo!]."
Could this election be any more fun?
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Cancerous Statistics
An op-ed in the Sunday L.A. Times (registration required), authored by Drs. Samuel S. Epstein and Quentin D. Young, argues for increasing government spending on cancer research, especially research focused on prevention rather than cures. In order to prove the current approach (which already involves extensive government spending) is inadequate, they note the following:
A recent government analysis of leading causes of mortality in the U.S. from 1973 to 1999 revealed that, although the percentage of the population dying from heart disease decreased by 21 percentage points during the period, cancer deaths increased by 30 percentage points.These statistics do not even begin to show that cancer is a growing problem in the United States. The numbers provided would even be consistent with a decreasing cancer threat, so long as the threat of heart disease declined even faster. And as a matter of fact, that’s almost exactly what has happened.
If you download the SEER report cited by the authors (in pdf format) and look at Figure I-2 (page 42), you’ll see that cancer was responsible for 23.0% of deaths in 1999 versus 17.7% in 1973 -- a 30% increase in the percentage (yes, that’s a percentage of a percentage), as the authors indicate. But if you go to the very next page (Figure I-3), you’ll see that the number of cancer deaths per 100,000 actually went down by about 20% for people under the age of 65 during the 1973-99 period, while rising by just over 10% for people over 65. You’ll also notice that in both pictures, the number of deaths from heart disease per 100,000 fell dramatically over the same period. (Note on interpreting the graphs: “neoplasms” is another word for tumors -- in other words, cancer.)
Of course, old people die a lot more than young people, so the rate for the whole population could have increased. But if you look at Table I-2 (page 18), you’ll see that the U.S. cancer death rate rose by just a tenth of a percent annually from 1975 to 1999, which is not nearly as scary as the authors imply in the article. (The figures are age-adjusted to take into account changing demographics, so the small increase is presumably not attributable to the aging of the population. It might, however, be attributable to the fact that some of the elderly people who would have died of other illnesses died of cancer instead -- which again does not indicate an increase in the cancer threat.) It also turns out that cancer death rates have been falling since the early 1990s (new document, Table II-3, page 3).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)