...dozens of countries that have universal access and radically lower per-unit costs. People who say we need less government are appealing to…nothing. To a fantasy, a matter of theological belief that markets are the way...
What we're talking about is "how do we fix the current system".
The big options on the table are "more command and control" and "more market". Basic economic theory has predictions for what will happen in each case, we should pay attention.
It's inappropriate to point to other countries' systems and claim we can import every detail of them here. For example many of our HC issues go away if Americans become less fat, but changing that is unlikely without serious culture changes.
Similarly, referring to "economic theory" as a "religion" is like trying to refer to the "Theory of Gravity" as a "religion".
I will outright say that I don’t have any real problem replacing our privately run death panels with government death panels.
I go back and forth on this one. I think we need death panels to make anything like UHC work, and it's more likely than not that we'll attempt something like UHC.
However I don't expect good things from the gov on this, and the advantage of a privately run company is it's incompetence has feedback loops to make it respond (maybe not respond to you, but in general).
With the gov... basically incompetence needs to rise to the attention of the media or something in order to attract attempts to fix it.
Ideally everyone sits on their own death panel, perhaps is even the only person on it, and takes ownership of what happens.
If you think that being poor and diabetic should be a death sentence, then I suppose we’re not going to able to argue very productively.
People are currently dying because your "command and control" solution results in only one, seriously expensive, epi-pen on the market. That's what "resource inefficiencies" mean here and the epi-pen is only going to be one example of many.
Countries which claim "food is a right" and insist on using command/control for it typically see starvation because command/control is *that* inefficient.
The number of people who starved to death in the US last year was effectively zero, because we use the market and market friendly policies like food stamps.
So give the poor guy in your example a voucher for medical care and let the market work (you can attach it to his food stamp card).
The thermal exhaust port doesn't need a real purpose or function.
Say you're an Imperial Engineer working on the project. If you try to research what that port is doing and why, you'll find complicated technological speak and requirements which require a LOT more time to understand than you have.
The port doesn't impact any of the subsystems you do understand. A high level system architect thought it was a good idea and apparently put a lot of thought into it. He knows a lot more about this than you do, any confusion on the issue is probably your fault (note the word "fault" is important here).
You're a busy man, there are unrealistic deadlines, and Lord Vader shows up occasionally looking for inefficient people to serve as example(s). It's a really bad idea to actively try to do things which waste time and draw attention to what can be viewed as your own incompetence.
I accept the reality. I just reject the demagogic framing of it. Anyway, it’s not “We’re going to kill you”, it’s “You’re going to have to pay for that part yourself, either out of pocket or with more expensive insurance”, which has always been true.
Demagogic? It's a Panel of experts which decides who gets life saving treatments and who dies. "Death Panel" is literal, descriptive, and has entered popular culture.
Embracing the concept is a big part of what makes UHC possible in other countries. Which raises the issue of "why can they do it and we can't"?
Unified culture? Is a bunch of rich white doctors deciding that some poor guy's life isn't worthwhile more scary here?
Umm are some peoples lives worth more than others?
The moment we start allocating scarce resources? Yes. This isn't a new concept in the real world, witness the 911 compensation payouts.
The moment public funds gets involved we end up making value judgements; For example, which is the most cost effective way to spend a million dollars, keeping a dying 90 year old man alive for another year or giving vaccinations to 50,000 babies?
However these sorts of value judgements are very complex, subjective, and that's a description of something normally best resolved by markets.
True, but this is Star Wars and it's scale is absurd.
It's reasonable to walk into a random bar in a hick backwards town, on a hick backwards system, and find someone with a spaceship with transwarp drive. Transwarp drive means everything is within reach of everything. We've seen the equiv of taxis move halfway across the galaxy, we've seen ships lift off the surface of a planet and be in orbit a few seconds later.
There's no exploration in SW because the entire galaxy was fully mapped a long time ago. Similarly "new" technology is also something of a non-starter, technology is *old*.
Private companies can have enough "security" droids to think they can take over planets. Criminal gangs actually do. These things are considered small enough that it's not worth the attention of the authorities.
The Empire tried to hide the building of the 2nd Death Star in the imperial budget by farming it out to some virtual organization. Construction of the Death Star has to involve stripping multiple systems of resources, absurd numbers of people and droids, and it's such a small part of the Imperial budget that they think it's possible to hide the money.
Some fans pointed out that the destruction of the 2nd DS would bury the Ewoks home in many meters of steel and exterminate them all. Lucas pointed out that the rebels could (and did) bring in enough ships to tractor the debris elsewhere.
Moving back to the missile; It has to function in space and have a range greater than the diameter of the moon, maybe much greater. I also suspect our missiles have "drives" better than our taxis.
The fighter very clearly has a drive (multiple drives probably since it's probably able to do translight), a missile probably also has a drive.
Nothing on the screen is going to be using chemical propellants, whether or not anything experiences "acceleration" is also seriously questionable from a 21st century viewpoint, and I very much don't trust that "conservation of momentum" applies.
More importantly, Luke can only fire that thing when he's right on top of the port, it's possible he's got a tail gun so its "launch" is only relative to himself and it comes out slower than he is.
For a whole slew of goods and services markets are a better mechanism to allocate resources than central planning, but health care provision isn’t one of em.
Why is central planning "a better mechanism to allocate resources" for health care?
Judging by the rest of the first world? The next most expensive system would cost half as much per person than we spend now, with better results, and full coverage of the population.
You totally missed the point. All of these other systems were imposed when costs were low, and they reduced the *growth* of the system.
For example there are hospitals in other countries which use the "ward" model and have lots of patients in one large room. However we're not going to be burning down hospitals and building new ones and expect to save money.
None of these other systems actually reduced costs after they were imposed. It's very difficult to cut salaries of and/or fire anyone, much less gov employees.
If we want to reduce medical spending by say 5% of GDP, that's a lot of jobs and pain inflicted on people. What's more realistic, that the gov has the political will to stand up to doctors and other health care workers, or that the markets can squeeze things?
Seriously, what is with the weird insistence that universal health care is some area the US is breaking new ground on?
UC in the States is a history of Progressives trying to enact it and the people flinching away from the cost.
Or to put it differently, you're claiming you're NOT going to ration by Price (markets) or by Queue, and instead will ration by "triage".
I'm asking you if you know what that means.
I think you're talking about death panels (which btw I favor), but if you can't even bring yourself to pronounce the words then how can you realistically argue in favor of it?
Triage means you don't give more than minimal care to people who will die anyway. If that's what you're suggesting, then you aren't doing yourself any favors by being evasive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage
Wait, do you seriously look at the US health care system and conclude that the only problem is that markets are less than free? This is theology, not analysis.
The only problem? No.
The most serious problem? Yes.
A lack of free markets means we're paying FAR more than we need to, on the orders of a significant part of the GDP. If we had the ability to squeeze money out of the system then we wouldn't be breaking budgets left and right and there'd be money to spend on other things.
A lack of free markets also has all sorts of nasty side effects other than "money". For example the lack of transparency means I can't research how safe "Hospital "A"" is over "Hospital 'B'", which means there's no reason for whichever is worse to improve.
Where we get into religion is when people look at Cuba's economic system and say "I want that". They're still driving cars built from before the revolution because they have no other alternative.
Market efficiency is merely the matching of wealth and resources. If you have the money and want a toaster, you are matched with a guy who has a toaster and wants money. Why is this a desirable goal in medicine?
How much more efficient is the world's best medical system than ours? Twice? Three times? And they don't use much markets either?
If the cost of medicine were a quarter what it actually is (look at the medical market for pets if you think that's unreasonable), then there'd be a LOT more medicine actually available at a given price and we wouldn't be worrying about breaking budgets.
And to be real clear, so that there's less of a "fantasy world" aspect to this, it means we would be letting sick people die if they didn't have the money to stay alive.
It also means there'd be a lot more money available for things like college, and paying for medicine out of pocket would be a lot less painful than it sounds.
Beyond wishing that would put Peter Pan to shame, the Republican plan is essentially to force individuals to absorb more of the costs of their health care and, if they can’t, to do without. That policy approach will kill people.
Every policy approach in health care kills people. Even if we had unlimited resources (which we don't), the death rate holds steady at 100% and this isn't going to change.
The issue is one of resource utilization and efficiency, which is something that free markets tend to do very well and governments poorly.
We have problems in that the markets are less than free (asymmetry of information among other problems), and various other problems but whatever.
First a quibble: Holding up the US tax system as a model of efficiency and effectiveness is problematic since it's complexity and distortions are so awful.
Scale problem #1: "Who dies"?
Large scale means the federal gov is calling the shots.
How do our politicians grow enough of a spine to say to the elderly, "it's not worth society's resources to fund your last year of life, that money is better spent on [basically anything else]"?
As far as I can tell, the proponents of Universal Care think everyone will get everything, that somehow our medical resources are unlimited.
Scale problem #2: Disruption.
If we're going to do it right, then we need to fire (I assume) millions of people. I'm not opposed, but it's a problem.
Scale problem #3: "Who pays for this"?
I don't see how we do this without breaking the budget. In theory, you cut the cost of healthcare massively by firing (and/or letting die) millions of people so there's money to spread around.
However in practice what I expect we'll try is UC without death panels or disruption, and presumably what we'll see is what the states have seen, i.e. the budget breaks.
Arguably these are all "political" issues and not "scale" issues, but given the later is causing the former we really should have answers for them. And to be really clear, I'm good with "death panels" & "millions of people are fired" as answers, but if Progressives can't admit this is what they're arguing for then there's not a hope it will happen.
Why wouldn’t it scale? And more importantly, if it scales fine for the oldest, most expensive, sickest people in the US — Medicare and Medicaid — why wouldn’t it for the far more healthy rest of the US?
Aren't those two unprofitable in their own right and only work because they get subsidies from the rest of the system?
I like the economics of this, I'm not sure the politics work. Lots of people believe that society has the duty to give everything to everyone. That everyone's life has the same value and all that.
As the jackboots kick her in the kidneys while someone in the room screams “STOP RESISTING”, I suppose I could console myself with the thought that I only care about law and order.
Reading over her wiki, I see *nothing* about her being physically attacked, as opposed to scorned. People think poorly of Jane because she was photographed during the war sitting on a North Korean anti-aircraft gun cheerfully clapping and applauding.
The jackboots are imaginary, something the left tells itself to justify its actions. The anti-aircraft gun was real, and presumably killed US pilots.
I don’t know why we’re assuming it can be accomplished by turning health care into a free market mirage rather than the very many more government-centric systems in other countries that have dramatically lower costs.
Multiple reasons. What other countries have had is "lower rates of cost growth", none of them have had any success at actually lowering costs.
I don't know how we can look at our system and escape the conclusion that large amounts of the cost are from rent seeking. Our system already has large amounts of government intervention and so forth, all of the big players have already taken over whatever part of the gov is supposed to be overseeing them. Bureaucracy isn't good at cutting itself.
Lowering costs will be VERY politically painful because it involves firing large numbers of people and/or lowering their pay. Governments are terrible at that sort of thing, markets are great. Every change the gov makes would be opposed by hoards of insiders and their purchased politicians claiming people will die if a change is made. Some of those claims will be correct.
People will die with any change we make. The death rate holds steady at 100%. Half of your lifetime use of medicine happens in the last year or so of life. Everyone thinks we should shift resources so they're more cost effective, most people aren't willing to face the ugly details in terms of what that means, the government is poorly equipped to deal with the implications of all that.
...the Death Star... It's not supposed to defend itself very well.
Several problems with this. First the Death Star could have defended itself against larger attack craft, even just waded through enemy fire (with it's force fields and defensive weapons), blown up whatever planet they were defending, and then left.
Second, the Death Star's purpose was strategic, not tactical. Modern day Earth has the ability to kill all life on the planet with nukes. A single Star Destroyer could do the same thing, which raises the issue of why does the Empire need the Death Star at all?
The answer is force fields. Planetary force fields are so good that it was possible for a planet to encase itself in force fields to the point where the rebels thought they could defend themselves from the empire. The Death Star's purpose was to show them that they were mistaken, it's primary weapon's function was to destroy planets by cutting through the force field guarding them.
Go re-watch the destruction of Alderaan. The beam hits the planet for several seconds, even makes the entire thing glow. That would be the forcefield resisting the beam. Then the force fields fail and boom it's over. If memory serves Vader commented at the time that calling Alderann "helpless" wasn't correct.
Because of that, the Death Star (which was a prototype after all) may have actually been a failure. If Alderann's forcefields had been stronger (which might have been possible), then it would have survived the Empire's super weapon and it would have been another day before the Empire could fire it again. The next Death Star was built so it could repeated fire the main beam and overload even the best shields and also blow up capital ships.
Trench-mounted weapons failed at their job.
Even ignoring the DeathStar was fresh off the production line and clearly hadn't had all the bugs worked out yet, it's a hair awkward to claim both that this was easy and on the other that only Vader and Luke could do this and stay alive.
Further without the vent issue it would have been pointless. It was assumed small craft could not be a threat. Without the vent the little guys just die, how long it takes almost doesn't matter.
Speaking broadly, they were less accurate than WWII anti-aircraft guns.
WW2 anti-aircraft guns didn't have to shoot at targets which can move faster than the speed of light and at distances which need to be measured in light seconds. Further those guns were for larger ships.
How many hundred Gs did the "missile" pull when it made that right-angle turn into the thermal port opening?
You're assuming the "missile" was as fast as the ships. More likely it was (by their standards) pretty darn slow. Luke's ship was able to fly multiple "size of the death star" lengths away from the DS in the time that the "missile" took to fly just it's radius.
A slow missile could also presumably be targeted a lot easier than a fast ship.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Liberals are Smug”
What we're talking about is "how do we fix the current system".
The big options on the table are "more command and control" and "more market". Basic economic theory has predictions for what will happen in each case, we should pay attention.
It's inappropriate to point to other countries' systems and claim we can import every detail of them here. For example many of our HC issues go away if Americans become less fat, but changing that is unlikely without serious culture changes.
Similarly, referring to "economic theory" as a "religion" is like trying to refer to the "Theory of Gravity" as a "religion".
"
I go back and forth on this one. I think we need death panels to make anything like UHC work, and it's more likely than not that we'll attempt something like UHC.
However I don't expect good things from the gov on this, and the advantage of a privately run company is it's incompetence has feedback loops to make it respond (maybe not respond to you, but in general).
With the gov... basically incompetence needs to rise to the attention of the media or something in order to attract attempts to fix it.
Ideally everyone sits on their own death panel, perhaps is even the only person on it, and takes ownership of what happens.
"
People are currently dying because your "command and control" solution results in only one, seriously expensive, epi-pen on the market. That's what "resource inefficiencies" mean here and the epi-pen is only going to be one example of many.
Countries which claim "food is a right" and insist on using command/control for it typically see starvation because command/control is *that* inefficient.
The number of people who starved to death in the US last year was effectively zero, because we use the market and market friendly policies like food stamps.
So give the poor guy in your example a voucher for medical care and let the market work (you can attach it to his food stamp card).
On “Regarding the Thermal Exhaust Port “Design Flaw””
The thermal exhaust port doesn't need a real purpose or function.
Say you're an Imperial Engineer working on the project. If you try to research what that port is doing and why, you'll find complicated technological speak and requirements which require a LOT more time to understand than you have.
The port doesn't impact any of the subsystems you do understand. A high level system architect thought it was a good idea and apparently put a lot of thought into it. He knows a lot more about this than you do, any confusion on the issue is probably your fault (note the word "fault" is important here).
You're a busy man, there are unrealistic deadlines, and Lord Vader shows up occasionally looking for inefficient people to serve as example(s). It's a really bad idea to actively try to do things which waste time and draw attention to what can be viewed as your own incompetence.
On “Liberals are Smug”
Demagogic? It's a Panel of experts which decides who gets life saving treatments and who dies. "Death Panel" is literal, descriptive, and has entered popular culture.
Embracing the concept is a big part of what makes UHC possible in other countries. Which raises the issue of "why can they do it and we can't"?
Unified culture? Is a bunch of rich white doctors deciding that some poor guy's life isn't worthwhile more scary here?
"
The moment we start allocating scarce resources? Yes. This isn't a new concept in the real world, witness the 911 compensation payouts.
The moment public funds gets involved we end up making value judgements; For example, which is the most cost effective way to spend a million dollars, keeping a dying 90 year old man alive for another year or giving vaccinations to 50,000 babies?
However these sorts of value judgements are very complex, subjective, and that's a description of something normally best resolved by markets.
On “Regarding the Thermal Exhaust Port “Design Flaw””
True, but this is Star Wars and it's scale is absurd.
It's reasonable to walk into a random bar in a hick backwards town, on a hick backwards system, and find someone with a spaceship with transwarp drive. Transwarp drive means everything is within reach of everything. We've seen the equiv of taxis move halfway across the galaxy, we've seen ships lift off the surface of a planet and be in orbit a few seconds later.
There's no exploration in SW because the entire galaxy was fully mapped a long time ago. Similarly "new" technology is also something of a non-starter, technology is *old*.
Private companies can have enough "security" droids to think they can take over planets. Criminal gangs actually do. These things are considered small enough that it's not worth the attention of the authorities.
The Empire tried to hide the building of the 2nd Death Star in the imperial budget by farming it out to some virtual organization. Construction of the Death Star has to involve stripping multiple systems of resources, absurd numbers of people and droids, and it's such a small part of the Imperial budget that they think it's possible to hide the money.
Some fans pointed out that the destruction of the 2nd DS would bury the Ewoks home in many meters of steel and exterminate them all. Lucas pointed out that the rebels could (and did) bring in enough ships to tractor the debris elsewhere.
Moving back to the missile; It has to function in space and have a range greater than the diameter of the moon, maybe much greater. I also suspect our missiles have "drives" better than our taxis.
"
The fighter very clearly has a drive (multiple drives probably since it's probably able to do translight), a missile probably also has a drive.
Nothing on the screen is going to be using chemical propellants, whether or not anything experiences "acceleration" is also seriously questionable from a 21st century viewpoint, and I very much don't trust that "conservation of momentum" applies.
More importantly, Luke can only fire that thing when he's right on top of the port, it's possible he's got a tail gun so its "launch" is only relative to himself and it comes out slower than he is.
On “Liberals are Smug”
Why is central planning "a better mechanism to allocate resources" for health care?
"
You totally missed the point. All of these other systems were imposed when costs were low, and they reduced the *growth* of the system.
For example there are hospitals in other countries which use the "ward" model and have lots of patients in one large room. However we're not going to be burning down hospitals and building new ones and expect to save money.
None of these other systems actually reduced costs after they were imposed. It's very difficult to cut salaries of and/or fire anyone, much less gov employees.
If we want to reduce medical spending by say 5% of GDP, that's a lot of jobs and pain inflicted on people. What's more realistic, that the gov has the political will to stand up to doctors and other health care workers, or that the markets can squeeze things?
"
UC in the States is a history of Progressives trying to enact it and the people flinching away from the cost.
Or to put it differently, you're claiming you're NOT going to ration by Price (markets) or by Queue, and instead will ration by "triage".
I'm asking you if you know what that means.
I think you're talking about death panels (which btw I favor), but if you can't even bring yourself to pronounce the words then how can you realistically argue in favor of it?
Triage means you don't give more than minimal care to people who will die anyway. If that's what you're suggesting, then you aren't doing yourself any favors by being evasive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage
"
The only problem? No.
The most serious problem? Yes.
A lack of free markets means we're paying FAR more than we need to, on the orders of a significant part of the GDP. If we had the ability to squeeze money out of the system then we wouldn't be breaking budgets left and right and there'd be money to spend on other things.
A lack of free markets also has all sorts of nasty side effects other than "money". For example the lack of transparency means I can't research how safe "Hospital "A"" is over "Hospital 'B'", which means there's no reason for whichever is worse to improve.
Where we get into religion is when people look at Cuba's economic system and say "I want that". They're still driving cars built from before the revolution because they have no other alternative.
"
How much more efficient is the world's best medical system than ours? Twice? Three times? And they don't use much markets either?
If the cost of medicine were a quarter what it actually is (look at the medical market for pets if you think that's unreasonable), then there'd be a LOT more medicine actually available at a given price and we wouldn't be worrying about breaking budgets.
And to be real clear, so that there's less of a "fantasy world" aspect to this, it means we would be letting sick people die if they didn't have the money to stay alive.
It also means there'd be a lot more money available for things like college, and paying for medicine out of pocket would be a lot less painful than it sounds.
"
Every policy approach in health care kills people. Even if we had unlimited resources (which we don't), the death rate holds steady at 100% and this isn't going to change.
The issue is one of resource utilization and efficiency, which is something that free markets tend to do very well and governments poorly.
We have problems in that the markets are less than free (asymmetry of information among other problems), and various other problems but whatever.
"
First a quibble: Holding up the US tax system as a model of efficiency and effectiveness is problematic since it's complexity and distortions are so awful.
Scale problem #1: "Who dies"?
Large scale means the federal gov is calling the shots.
How do our politicians grow enough of a spine to say to the elderly, "it's not worth society's resources to fund your last year of life, that money is better spent on [basically anything else]"?
As far as I can tell, the proponents of Universal Care think everyone will get everything, that somehow our medical resources are unlimited.
Scale problem #2: Disruption.
If we're going to do it right, then we need to fire (I assume) millions of people. I'm not opposed, but it's a problem.
Scale problem #3: "Who pays for this"?
I don't see how we do this without breaking the budget. In theory, you cut the cost of healthcare massively by firing (and/or letting die) millions of people so there's money to spread around.
However in practice what I expect we'll try is UC without death panels or disruption, and presumably what we'll see is what the states have seen, i.e. the budget breaks.
Arguably these are all "political" issues and not "scale" issues, but given the later is causing the former we really should have answers for them. And to be really clear, I'm good with "death panels" & "millions of people are fired" as answers, but if Progressives can't admit this is what they're arguing for then there's not a hope it will happen.
"
Interesting.
Define "by need". Who decides that and how?
"
Yes, exactly, and if we're going to make something like this work, then we need to face this reality and accept it.
"
I've got no clue what you're referring to. And "Jane Fonda Beaten" doesn't show anything useful in google.
Link?
"
Aren't those two unprofitable in their own right and only work because they get subsidies from the rest of the system?
"
I have problems with the idea that we can put roughly 25 cents of tax on a transaction that earns 2 cents of profit.
I have larger problems with the calm assurance that no one will change their actions and we'll raise as much money as predicted.
"
I like the economics of this, I'm not sure the politics work. Lots of people believe that society has the duty to give everything to everyone. That everyone's life has the same value and all that.
"
No, they're just suggesting that he won the election because of Russian hacking.
"
Reading over her wiki, I see *nothing* about her being physically attacked, as opposed to scorned. People think poorly of Jane because she was photographed during the war sitting on a North Korean anti-aircraft gun cheerfully clapping and applauding.
The jackboots are imaginary, something the left tells itself to justify its actions. The anti-aircraft gun was real, and presumably killed US pilots.
"
Multiple reasons. What other countries have had is "lower rates of cost growth", none of them have had any success at actually lowering costs.
I don't know how we can look at our system and escape the conclusion that large amounts of the cost are from rent seeking. Our system already has large amounts of government intervention and so forth, all of the big players have already taken over whatever part of the gov is supposed to be overseeing them. Bureaucracy isn't good at cutting itself.
Lowering costs will be VERY politically painful because it involves firing large numbers of people and/or lowering their pay. Governments are terrible at that sort of thing, markets are great. Every change the gov makes would be opposed by hoards of insiders and their purchased politicians claiming people will die if a change is made. Some of those claims will be correct.
People will die with any change we make. The death rate holds steady at 100%. Half of your lifetime use of medicine happens in the last year or so of life. Everyone thinks we should shift resources so they're more cost effective, most people aren't willing to face the ugly details in terms of what that means, the government is poorly equipped to deal with the implications of all that.
On “Regarding the Thermal Exhaust Port “Design Flaw””
Several problems with this. First the Death Star could have defended itself against larger attack craft, even just waded through enemy fire (with it's force fields and defensive weapons), blown up whatever planet they were defending, and then left.
Second, the Death Star's purpose was strategic, not tactical. Modern day Earth has the ability to kill all life on the planet with nukes. A single Star Destroyer could do the same thing, which raises the issue of why does the Empire need the Death Star at all?
The answer is force fields. Planetary force fields are so good that it was possible for a planet to encase itself in force fields to the point where the rebels thought they could defend themselves from the empire. The Death Star's purpose was to show them that they were mistaken, it's primary weapon's function was to destroy planets by cutting through the force field guarding them.
Go re-watch the destruction of Alderaan. The beam hits the planet for several seconds, even makes the entire thing glow. That would be the forcefield resisting the beam. Then the force fields fail and boom it's over. If memory serves Vader commented at the time that calling Alderann "helpless" wasn't correct.
Because of that, the Death Star (which was a prototype after all) may have actually been a failure. If Alderann's forcefields had been stronger (which might have been possible), then it would have survived the Empire's super weapon and it would have been another day before the Empire could fire it again. The next Death Star was built so it could repeated fire the main beam and overload even the best shields and also blow up capital ships.
Even ignoring the DeathStar was fresh off the production line and clearly hadn't had all the bugs worked out yet, it's a hair awkward to claim both that this was easy and on the other that only Vader and Luke could do this and stay alive.
Further without the vent issue it would have been pointless. It was assumed small craft could not be a threat. Without the vent the little guys just die, how long it takes almost doesn't matter.
WW2 anti-aircraft guns didn't have to shoot at targets which can move faster than the speed of light and at distances which need to be measured in light seconds. Further those guns were for larger ships.
You're assuming the "missile" was as fast as the ships. More likely it was (by their standards) pretty darn slow. Luke's ship was able to fly multiple "size of the death star" lengths away from the DS in the time that the "missile" took to fly just it's radius.
A slow missile could also presumably be targeted a lot easier than a fast ship.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.