Category Archives: Technology

The Private, Online Alternative To Gov.Con.

Government, Healthcare, Private Property, Socialism, Technology, The State

If you’re going to let the government herd you into Gov.Con., go to HealthSherpa.com to “Instantly compare premiums for health exchange plans.”

No, this simple, working site is not a government stopgap. “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” explains why a command-and-control fix will always fail.

HealthSherpa.com was designed by “three 20-somethings.”

three young men from San Francisco, George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang, and Michael Wasser, did what the government has not been able to do: build an easy to use site where people across the country can get quotes and compare different health care plans through the federal exchange.

A couple of kids built the site the state could not build. It took them three days. It cost a few hundred dollars, while Gov.Con. contractors have conned the taxpayer out of half a billion dollars and counting. And the Gov.Con. site will likely never quite work. (What’s the incentive to get it to work? Close to none. Read why.)

BACKWARD Zuckerberg : We Subsidize His DREAMERS

IMMIGRATION, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Taxation, Technology

There is a very good reason Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg can promise the world to “young undocumented immigrants,” or “Dreamers,” pretend that by lobbying to let them stay in the USA, he is tapping into endless possibilities; make like they’re God’s gift to the American high-tech industry (when they’re not), and generally carry on like a filthy rich d-ck: the objects of his affection—young, illegal immigrants—are subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Legalization of low-skilled or no-skilled migrants (such as Zuckerberg’s “Dreamers”) amounts to a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to big business via big government.

As Hans-Hermann Hoppe has written, “”[E]mployers under democratic Welfare State conditions are permitted by state law to externalize their employment costs on others” and will “tend to import increasingly low-skilled and low value-productive immigrants, regardless of their effect on all-around communal property values.”

Here, the rightful owners of public property (taxpayers) do not get to vet the newcomers—the state and big business do. Yet when faced with such economic fascism (government-business collusion), open-border libertarians exalt business’ every move.

“His tentative grasp of property leads the leftist libertarian to forget that public property is property funded by taxpayers through expropriated taxes. It belongs to taxpayers. Yet at least a million additional immigrants a year are allowed the free use of these taxpayer-supported amenities. Every new arrival avails himself of public works such as roads, hospitals, parks, libraries, schools and welfare.
In the absence of a state, or in the presence of a limited government where almost all land is privately owned, migration would be a very restricted affair. It would depend on the graces of private property owners. A newcomer may be invited over by a propertied person, who would shoulder the costs. If he wishes to venture beyond the invited sphere, the newcomer would seek consent from the private property owners with whom he wishes to interface. The more the status of property approaches the libertarian ideal, the less free migration would be.” (From “LOVE-IN AT THE BORDERS”)

UPDATE III: HealthCare.gov : ‘Please Wait. We Have A Lot Of Visitors …’ (His Proctology)

Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, Government, Healthcare, Political Economy, Socialism, Technology

The message that greeted future patients who logged on to HealthCare.gov was, “Please wait. we have a lot of visitors on our site right now and we’re working to make your experience here better. Please wait here until we send you to the login page. Thanks for your patience.”

The message @ HealthCare.gov is a good metaphor for what will unfold under Obama Care: long lines precipitated by the inevitable inability of centrally planned exchanges to bring supply and demand into balance.

The Affordable Health Care Act’s motto will become, “Please wait, we have a lot of patients, and not enough of your money and everything else needed—doctors, supplies, equipment—to treat them.”

Obama, however, compared the inauguration of Obamacare—the website practically crashed, as will The Plan—to the bumpy “launch of iOS 7, the new mobile operating system released by Apple on September 18th.”

Obama was referencing a bug that came with the launch of iOS 7, the new mobile operating system released by Apple on September 18th. The bug allowed anyone to bypass an iPhone’s lockscreen and access their personal information and content. Apple released a patch for it a few days later.
“I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t,” Obama added. “That’s not how we do things in America. We don’t actively root for failure.” According to Obama, issues with the site have been caused by a heavy influx of new users and general launch bugs. Wait times on both the site and hotline have been longer than expected.

(HuffPo)

What an Ass With Ears (although Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld also failed to zero-in on why the comparison was so stupid, saying instead that the one item was a neat product that everybody wanted; the other not so much).

Nobody is forced by law to purchase or subsidize an iPhone or an iPad, or any other product produced by Apple.

UPDATED: Glenn Beck and his very funny team went to Healthcare.gov to see what gives. Not much:

When Glenn attempted to access the site, he was promptly greeted with the Internet equivalent of a “hold button.”

“I’m here, and I don’t know if you can get a shot of this… but I just went to Healthcare.gov and I’m on this exciting page right now: ‘Health insurance marketplace, please wait. We have a lot of visitors on our site right now and we’re working to make your experience here better. Please wait here until we send you to the login page. Thanks for your patience.’”

Below is a screenshot of the message:

“The government is the only business that has actually come up with a ‘hold’ button on the Internet,” Glenn said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve got a hold button. Hope you don’t have anything really wrong with you. So I’m just waiting now. They have a lot of visitors on their site right now and they’re working to make your experience better.”

“We appreciate your patience. You are Number 477,326 in line,” Pat quipped. “Please continue to wait, as you will be taken in the order in which you arrived. Thank you for your patience.”
Advertisement

After being completely kicked off the site and told to “try again later,” Glenn finally reached the log-in page on Healthcare.gov.

“I just got a login. Oh my goodness. I refreshed. I tried again later, and it just… ‘New to healthcare.gov? Create an account. Log in.’ I think, well, I am new to healthcare.gov. So I should create accounts.”

Stu, meanwhile, was not quite as lucky.

“I was trying to log in as well. I just got a new message,” Stu said. “Would you like me to share it with you because it’s important for your healthcare. It’s ‘???.ee.shared.header.learn???’ followed by ‘ffeee.shared.header.getinsurance???’. That’s what came up on the screen when I refreshed. That is good. I feel healthier already.”

Pat was somehow able to avoid the ‘question mark, question mark, question mark’ error, but his experience was not anymore pleasant. “Now, this says ‘Get ready for the Marketplace.’ I’m at that page. It’s asking me a question, and I fit into none of these categories,” Pat lamented. “‘Do you want information on any of the following situations? This will help us provide material about coverage options.’ ‘Dependent under 18:’ No. ‘Self?employed:’ No. ‘Low?income coverage options:’ No. ‘Disability:’ No. ‘Pregnancy:’ No. ‘Veteran:’ No. ‘American Indian or Alaskan native:’ No. ‘Preexisting conditions covered’ and so there’s either yes or no, and those are the only options. I can’t click anywhere except ‘go back.’”

“Hold on. We’re trying to make your healthcare experience even better. Stand by,” Glenn joked. “Question mark, question mark, question mark.”

Very funny.

UPDATE II: “Worse Is the New Normal” by Mark Steyn:

So, as in banking and housing and college tuition and so many other areas of endeavor, Washington is engaging in a kind of under-the-counter nationalization, in which the husk of a nominally private industry is conscripted to enforce government rules — and ruthlessly so …

UPDATE III: “100 Unintended Consequences of Obamacare,” Trader Joe’s is at #80:

Even though it has previously provided health-care coverage for its part-time employees, an uncommon practice in the industry, next year Trader Joe’s will give employees who work less than 30 hours a week $500 to purchase a plan in the upcoming Obamacare exchanges. With federal subsidies and possible earnings from other employment, the company said, workers can find coverage that will be just as good. One employee described her soon-to-be lost coverage as “one of the best parts about the job,” and her reaction to hearing it would be dumped was “pure panic, followed quickly by anger.”

I’ve been paying higher deductibles and co-pays and know full well why this has come about. There is no free lunch. Perhaps, like Michelle Malkin, I too will lose my healthcare coverage. Nevertheless, I feel nothing but glee at any discomfort experienced by those who voted for Obama and lectured us about the glories of his proctology.