The blog world (and now the Twitter world) seems to value brevity. Obviously, I don’t. But today I will offer a brief thought, perhaps out of laziness. My brief thought for today is a follow up from my blog a few days ago regarding George McGovern’s semi-conservative reboot. As an older guy, McGovern has come to question whether big government is always a good thing. His life experiences following the demise of his political career during the Reagan Revolution taught him to question the doctrinaire liberalism that he so ardently fought for in the Senate and as a Presidential candidate in 1972. I.e., that government is always good and more government is better; and that big government control of the economy is the sine qua non of a just and humane society.

Now McGovern is saying that big government, even American constitutional big government, actually does have its downsides. Thus, perhaps we have to trade off some injustice and inhumanity so as to preserve and foster the long-term benefits of a free society. Conservatives say that big government can’t enforce humane-ness and justice; in doing so, government itself can become inhumane and unjust (this has happened a bit too often during the history of civilization). They believe that the only path to a just society is via the underlying VALUES of a society. You can’t force people to have the right values using big government; you can only hope that they somehow adopt the right ones through societal traditions, e.g. via religious institutions and property ownership. Conservatives (well, the more intelligent ones, anyway; not that Bush crowd) say that the founders of our nation assumed this, and they actually have a good point there. As Madison said, “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

Well, I myself don’t see this as a complete “either / or” situation. In a just society driven by widespread positive values based on respect, love, responsibility and open-mindedness, there would certainly be a role for a collective mediator of the instruments of justice, which that society would desire. And that “collective mediator” would be government. However, in a society that cared enough, government would not be set free to gain a mind of its own. Everyone would follow and involve themselves in political opinion, expression (including talk radio!) and other acts as needed to keep the “collective” on the right path. No Stalins or Hitlers would be allowed!

And yet, the conservatives still have a very good point about information. Government actions ultimately have to be carried out by bureaucrats (like myself), who only have so many resources and time allocations to make decisions that greatly affect the populace. As economist-philosopher Friedrich Hayek said, government inherently can’t obtain enough information to help everyone properly; yet to give it such power is to risk totalitarianism. Information has a cost, and taxpayers would need to give up more of their income (and personal control of their lives) than practicable to have a near-perfect government assistance mechanism. So, you get a lot of perverse results from well-intentioned programs, like rich people who invest in huge farms (but wouldn’t know a rutabaga from a red wiggler worm) receiving big government subsidies from programs originally intended to help small farmers.

My own mother had some interesting experiences with Medicare that illuminate the information dilemma. Last autumn, she developed a tendency to have COPD exacerbations, which are something like asthma incidents on steroids. She went through two month-long stays in the emergency room and then a hospital recovery ward during the winter. After the second incident, we were told by various hospital staff that she needs a “BI-PAP” breathing machine at home, to help her ride out her exacerbation incidents. Her doctor agreed. You would think that Medicare would be glad to subsidize the $3000 to $5000 needed for a BI-PAP in my mother’s case, given the savings of avoiding a two or three week hospital incident (could be in the range of $50,000 to $100,000).

But no, we were told that Medicare would NOT pay for a BI-PAP; not one red cent. Medicare had done some studies and concluded that the only situation justifying a BI-PAP is where the patient has been documented as having sleep apnea, through an overnight study in a certified facility. The records from her hospital stay would not count, even though they clearly showed her to have breathing difficulties both night AND day. Unfortunately, she is a bit too frail to be left overnight at a qualifying sleep clinic. SO, no go on the BI-PAP; she didn’t fit within the Medicare cost-containment and cost-effectiveness parameters. The Medicare bureaucrats just didn’t envision a situation like hers. They just didn’t have enough information, nor the time, to properly consider my mother’s case.

My brother and I bought the BI-PAP out of pocket, and over the past three months it certainly did avoid at least one hospitalization. But what about a family that couldn’t afford it? They would be back in the hospital, taking “pounds of cure” for what Medicare couldn’t recognize as an “ounce of prevention”. Because the cost of Medicare acknowledging that “ounce” is also measured in pounds.

In this particular situation, I don’t fault the government too much; I can’t think of an acceptable free market solution to the problem of allowing old people access to the expensive health care interventions that they need (and which I will possibly need in not that many years). Medicare is imperfect, but it is certainly more just than a free market solution where the wealthy get wonderful care while the poor and less fortunate would be left to die. BUT, as to whether the government has enough information to plan the future for (and even help run) our big banks and automobile companies and health care providers – – forget about just regulating them — well, that’s where it starts getting scary.

Barack Obama is a young man, and he is leading the nation down a path similar to the one George McGovern might have followed in the early 1970s, had McGovern been a better, shrewder and more charismatic politician (as President Obama certainly is). Now McGovern is saying, hey, I’m older now and I can see some problems with all of this. Bill Clinton also wouldn’t take the nation where Obama now boldly goes. Perhaps someday, Barack Obama will have similar personal revelations. But in the meantime, the whole damn US economy is going to be his school of trial-and-error. And once again – – that’s where it starts getting scary.

Hey, this wasn’t a short blog after all! Sorry.