The "issue" of abortion and negative eugenics

The issue of abortion like many legal concerns is also an ethical one. The most famous legal case concerning abortion is Roe v. Wade (1973); this may be related to the fact that it is perhaps the most politically polarizing U.S. Supreme Court case in recent history. However, initially after its decision in 1973 public approval was met by a majority of men and woman—Republicans (68 percent) even more so than Democrats (59 percent)—according to a Gallup poll. This convergence of public support with legal ruling was short-lived. By the late 1970s, the abortion issue became entangled with partisan politics and the rise of the religious Right, which has to this day divided our country and especially the Republican Party. In a tactic known as divide and rule, politicians could play these newly created single-issue voters against one another in a largely incoherent, semantic debate between “pro-life” and “pro-choice”. As Ronald Dworkin pointed out:

“[P]eople’s opinions about abortion do not come in only two varieties, conservative and liberal. There are degrees of opinion, ranging from extreme to moderate, on both sides, and there are also differences of opinion that cannot be located on a conservative-liberal spectrum at all.”

For example, whether a later abortion is worse than an earlier one does not appear to be distinctly either liberal or conservative. What constitutes an ethical abortion—if such a thing can be said to exist at all—has been politically linked to the legal question: Does a woman’s right to an abortion fall within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment? The Supreme Court from Roe v. Wade (1973) through Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) has come to answer this question with a nuanced Yes. The decision in Webster may have reaffirmed the constitutional concept of right to privacy, utilized in Roe v. Wade, but it has renewed abortion as a political issue on the state and local levels.

Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Attorney General (1942)

This case concerning the involuntary sterilization of repeat criminal offenders of “moral turpitude” was decided, interestingly enough, when across the Atlantic the Germans were practicing a most infamous process of negative eugenics. A basic definition of justice is treating like cases alike. The court having found stare decisis in Buck v. Bell (1927) may have found the due process protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment lacking in this case since “the defendant is given no opportunity to be heard on the issue as to whether he is the probable potential parent of socially undesirable offspring”. Ultimately, however, Justice Douglas did not cite the lack of due process or even Skinner’s concerns over the cruel and unusual punishment as material to the court’s decision, but rather found that the statue constituted a denial of equal protection guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment since some offenses of equal magnitude and otherwise identical punishments were omitted from the statue (e.g. white-collar crime). Treating embezzlement in a manner that is grossly different from larceny seems to be unjust.

The purpose of the statue under review was to eradicate undesirable genetic propensity for criminal activity of “moral turpitude”. Putting aside the “view of the state of scientific communities”, this preventive theory of crime and punishment—which is commonly utilized in the defense of the death penalty—is arguably immoral. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had wrote for the court in Buck v. Bell, stated that the preventive theory is immoral since it “furnishes no measure of the amount of punishment, except the lawgiver’s subjective opinion in regard to the sufficiency of the amount of preventative suffering… and treats man as a thing, not as a person; as a means, not as an end in himself” (cf. Immanuel Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals).

Information Asymmetry in Health Care

A continuing concern in health care is fraud litigation—the cost of which has been on the rise since the Department of Justice began keeping statistics in 1987. For the past fiscal year, the settlement and judgment recoveries in health care fraud cases was $2.615 billion. Most of these cases are initiated by qui tam ‘whistleblowers’. In fact, 90 percent of health care fraud cases are qui tam actions; this percentage has also been on the rise. This may be the result of what may be understood as the moral hazard arising from the relationship between the government and the qui tam relator. The government has conceded its civil responsibilities to qui tam relator with the guise of gathering ‘insider information’ of false claims. Under the False Claims Act, relators are guaranteed a significant portion (usually around 20 percent) of any recovered damages. This, of course, creates an incentive for qui tam relators since rewards or settlements tend to be quite lucrative; the total of which for 2013 was $318,029,245.

The notion of moral hazard was famously applied to health care by the Nobel laureate, Kenneth Arrow, so as to explain how widespread medical insurance increases the demand for medical care. Simply put, moral hazard is the effect of insurance on incentives. Moral hazard increases the aggregate costs since an insured party is less averse to risk due to the knowledge that any losses from risky behavior will be borne by the insurer. Applying this notion to qui tam false claims cases, we come to perceive the government as an insured party since the relator insures the government from the costs associated with initiating litigation and pursuing discovery. This, in turn with the incentives provided by the generous awards available under the False Claims Act to a qui tam relator, increases the number of anti-fraud cases prosecuted and arguably decreases their quality.

United States v. Greber (1985)

This case highlights the inherent asymmetry of information in the health care field. Where there happens to be disagreement between circuit courts on the issue of kickbacks, this court properly sides with the broader view taken by Hancock (1979) and Tapert (1980). The 1977 amendments—the "Medicare-Medicaid Antifraud and Abuse Amendments"—were “intended to combat financial incentives to physicians for ordering particular services patients did not require”. In order to address the wide range of ‘inducements’ resulting from kickbacks and/or remunerations that produce problems of information asymmetry, an equally expansive interpretation of the 1977 amendments was utilized by the district court and then affirmed by the circuit court.

The physician acts on behalf of his patient as an agent—ideally for the principle’s health. However, when kickbacks are afforded to the physician, he may be less likely to act solely in the interest of his patient's health—who is unaware of these ‘inducements’. The physician may order a blood test from a particular laboratory, not because this laboratory is the most cost-effective (or even because the test is medically appropriate), but because it offers him a kickback in whatever form that it may happen to take. The patient and the insurer—Medicare—are not made aware of this inducement and thus an information asymmetry is created. A physician who acts in such a manner betrays the trust that is necessary for the physician-patient relationship to operate optimally. Moral hazards and adverse selections in health care lead to an increase of aggregate costs and largely unnecessary services and procedures; as such, health care providers ought to take care to assure they provide care that is necessary and not wholly contingent upon financial incentives.

Concerning the profound superficiality of the Greeks

The truth embodied by the Olympians dis-appeared with the parting of the Veil of Minerva. There had existed a superficial profundity to their forms; they had given us art and a reason to be. But this naive quest for "truth" at Sais has left us barren. Verily, we sacrificed even more than Isis to "truth"!

We, moderns, have killed God through the carelessness of the scientific method's search for "truth". But what, now, shall fill the void we have created? We stand without the metaphysical grounding God had furnished us... Or, do we fall without any sense of direction?

The Algebra of Need

Immediately after his shot the heroin addict is cheerful, almost ebullient. This active response to the shot quickly gives way to the "nod" or "nodding out." The junkie's goal with each shot of junk is to "get the nod on,” to get into the detached state of twilight sleep in which the long reveries of the opiates can unfurl themselves. In this state there is no pain, no regret, no distraction, and no fear.

Junk yields a basic formula of ‘evil’ virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control.

Heroin addicts exist in a pyramid of total need, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops as there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on the basic principles of monopoly.

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and the more you have the more you use. All the hallucinogen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them; there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults—"the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God"—but no one ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money.

~William Burroughs & Terence McKenna~

Philadelphia on July 3, 1776

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." ~ John Adams

Of course, John Adams mistook the importance of legality for that of rhetoric.  For as Posterity knows well, the Fourth Day of July 1776 became the National Day of the United States.  Although, the legal separation of the Colonies from Great Britain occurred on that Second Day when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence behind closed doors.  Thereupon, Congress appointed a Committed of Five, headed by Thomas Jefferson, to articulate to the Public the reasons for the Congress's declaration.  The resultant document was the Declaration of Independence, which was made known to the Public on the Fourth of July 1776.  Concerning, however, the official signing of the aforementioned document, there has been a historical debate, culminating in 1884 when:

Mellen Chamberlain, the distinguished historian and Librarian of the Boston Public library, definitely established the fact that Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson had all been defective in their memory and that the Declaration positively had not been signed on July 4 ("The Authentication of the Engrossed Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776", Wilfred J. Ritz).

Contradicting historical fact and legal truth, our Nation's holiday remains and shall continue to remain on the Fourth of July upon the foundation of political rhetoric.

The Chekhov Gun as the Red Herring

Archer's "Training Day" (14 January 2010)

Sterling Archer: Oh, my god! You killed a hooker!
Cyril Figgis: Call girl!
Sterling Archer: No, Cyril!
[Cyril: She was a call-]
Sterling Archer: When they're dead, they're just hookers. God, I said the cap on the poison pen slips off for no reason, didn't I?
Cyril Figgis: But I just assumed that if anything bad happened...
Sterling Archer: No, do not say the Chekhov gun, Cyril. That, sir, is a facile argument.
Woodhouse: And also woefully esoteric.
Sterling Archer: Woodhouse...
Woodhouse: Fetching a rug, sir.
Sterling Archer: Now he's fetching a rug. Happy, Cyril?
Cyril Figgis: No! No, I'm not happy!
Sterling Archer: Well, guess what? Me neither! I mean, big picture, I wouldn't say I'm a happy person.
Woodhouse: Sir, I have fetched the rug.
Sterling Archer: Plus, now I'm out of a rug.

Why is the Chekhov gun both a "facile argument" and also "woefully esoteric"?

Anton Chekhov, the Russian dramaturge, outlined the principle of his eponymous gun on at least three occasions.

• "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."
• "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
• "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The Chekhov gun, however, does not kill the call-girl turned hooker, but we, the viewers, are misled by Archer's highly specific "hypothetical" situation explaining his need for an "underwear gun" (i.e. the Chekhov gun).  Thus, Archer has transformed the Chekhov gun into a red herring so as to be esoterically comical.

On Scholarly Insight

What is revealed by the philosopher blinds those unaccustomed to the sun's rays.  On the other hand, scholars' eyes tend to be old & feeble--or perhaps refined & refracted--and thus see specs of light at angles conducive to insight.

The rest...follow Oedipus to Colonus.