Douthat doesn't talk about politicians, and neither does Fallows.

Sorry, ED, but I need names in order for this to be credible. Fallows singles out Krauthammer, probably the most hypocritical of the bunch, but his point was explicitly that Douthat makes all of these equivalencies without any citations. Which political commentor on the left has been as bad as Krauthammer? Or even close? Without names, you're just blowing the same smoke that Douthat was.

Wow, a lot of the quoted piece seems to be nothing more than different preferences described in extremely negative ways. A "hedonism of few children, late and long meals and disco hours until the early morning"? I mean, having two or fewer kids, eating dinner at 7 PM and going to the bar until midnight are enough to be part of a hedonist, socialist dystopia? My family ate dinner at 7 or 8 - just late enough that everyone was home and a nutritious meal had been prepared - frequently when I was growing up. Who knew that Omaha was a hotbed of hedonist socialism?

Monopolistic behavior is indeed bad. Which is why the current setup is broken - nearly every step along the way is a monopoly-like behavior. Because my insurance is partially subsidized by my workplace, I don't get a realistic choice of insurance companies. Because my insurance specifies which doctors (or really, clinic) I need to see as my primary care providers, I don't get a choice there. Because my primary care clinic needs to refer me to a specialist in order for my insurance company to cover it, I don't get a choice of specialists. I can't shop around for estimates for even non-emergent care the way I could for, say, a car repair. I talk to a doctor, he gives me a diagnosis, a treatment plan and a bill. Getting a cost estimate from a doctor or insurance company is like trying to get milk from a bull. That doesn't even get into emergent care, where I'm less likely to worry about costs -and thus subject to more monopolistic behavior - because I need my condition treated right away.

Where's the competition in the current setup? Competition only works when a consumer chooses based on price AND quality. I don't get a realistic choice based on either, because part of my pay implicitly comes from the subsidized insurance. The only people who make a choice are the employers who provide insurance, and in some cases they don't even get a real choice - in many states one insurance company provides upwards of 60% of the insurance. Even then, it's tough to determine if the insurance companies are competing on quality, because many employers don't have good feedback mechanisms for benefit quality.

I know you admit that the current system is broken, but the political system only offers so many ways to fix it. Fixes have been killed about once a generation. Either you're for the status quo, or you're in favor of the fix being proposed and debated right now. Promoting an alternative system that no one is proposing right now is as effective as promoting an alternative system where no one ever gets sick so we never need health care. If you're in favor of the status quo, just come out and say it.

(Also, you really should read Domenech's takedown of McArdle. Megan's article was a giant pile of BS, and it's clear that she has basically no knowledge about how research and development works in the medical field.)

@Matt C:

I'm not pro life, so it's not really something I think about, but I think that heavily subsidized child care and birth control would be (mostly) politically feasible and (likely) effective. Of course, the challenge would be to make sure that the child care available doesn't end up like schools, where wealthy white districts get lots of funding and quality services while poor minority districts get low levels of funding and poor service.

Subsidized birth control also has the problem of being politically dicey (likely less so than transfer payments, however) as many people who oppose abortion also oppose birth control, as discussed upthread.

@Matt C:

The idea of transfer payments to mothers is nothing less than paying people to have kids. I realize that. I didn't say that transfer policies to mothers would increase total social welfare, I said it would reduce abortions. Of course reducing abortions doesn't result in more rich, well cared-for children, rich people can afford more reliable birth control and frequently have large networks of (also rich) family that can help them, say, finish their degree while the child is small. Reducing abortion means increasing the number of children born to poor single mothers, born to mothers who have to choose between college classes and baby clothes, born to mothers whose boyfriend skipped town when she tells him she's missed two periods. It probably means increasing the number of children born to parents who have many, many difficulties taking care of them, and will probably have little to no effect on the number of children born into wealthy, stable homes.

While ED brings up many good points, I feel that the pro-life movement loses out by being associated with not just the right-wing culture wars, but the right-wing economic arguments as well. One of the ways to lower the abortion rate would be to drastically increase the size of the welfare state - not just transfer payments to mothers, but completely subsidized child care and essentially free birth control as well. Of course, the right wing in America isn't about to advocate for those things - especially not if non-whites can take advantage of them - so instead the people that advocate for reduced abortions also end up advocating for poverty for poor or middle class women unfortunate enough to get pregnant before they get married and have an established career.

"I also like the idea of projects with public/private partnership potential."

Out of curiosity, E.D., why do you like such projects? Frequently, the projects that the government undertakes are projects where there's a very high value in having a monopoly and competition requires excess infrastructure without large cost savings. I am thinking of public utilities, specifically, but this applies to roads as well. Turning over such projects to private companies seems like a recipe for abuse.

Furthermore, there was just a story yesterday on CNN about a privately-operated youth detention facility bribing judges to send kids to them, thus increasing their profits (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html). Some of the worst abuses in Iraq were perpetrated by the private contracting firms that Bush hired. The list of abuses of public-private partnerships is not trivial. It seems to me that the "public-private" partnerships you advocate often end up featuring the worst parts of both public and private ownership, rather than the best of both.

The most important benefit of a public enterprise is the competition that helps make sure the company is putting out a quality product at a reasonable price. How is a HSR public-private partnership going to be exposed to this competition to keep their quality high and prices reasonable? I think you need to make a more affirmative case for public-private partnerships than you're making here, where you're just asserting it as a good thing.

I think the comparison of CDs to DVDs is the most instructive one. While I know some movie pirates, movie downloading is not nearly as prevalent as music downloading. I think a big part of that is the price point that DVDs are set at, usually $10-15, even for new releases. CDs are set at that same price point, even though a consumer feels like he or she is getting less (audio only, few or no "extras", usually a shorter length) on a CD than a DVD. I do wonder what would happen if CDs set a permanent price point in the $5-10 range. I think that the increase in sales would offset the decline in price, but I really don't know for sure.

Mark:
I think that if you ask an atheist scientist whether science disproves god, you'll get a quick "No, it does not" in a large majority of cases, from Richard Dawkins* to the lowliest grad student (like me). Most scientists know what the limits of science are, and god's existence is not a testable hypothesis. We may be able to test the age of the earth and show that the world is sphere-shaped rather than flat - which contradict some creation myths - but we can't disprove god any more than we can disprove the existence of the flying spaghetti monster.

Which is to say, I think your claims of atheist science misuse of science are overblown. I've heard some people claim that science disproves god, but they were mostly 16-20 year olds who clearly hadn't thought hard about much of anything, much less the philosophy of science.

*I've only read one of Dawkins' books, "Unweaving the Rainbow", and it was a long time ago. However, I believe he explicitly states in this book that science can't prove the absence of god, the best it can do is make him unnecessary.

E.D., you're arguing against a point I'm not making. My point is that fake science and science denial are always bad and are a big problem in modern society. At worst, they're destructive and evil, at best, they're wasteful of limited resources like time and money. And the further point is that the biggest promoters of fake science and science denial have been religious leaders.

What you're arguing is that science isn't always good. I've never argued explicitly that science is always good, and you're presuming it into my argument. It does not follow from the arguments that I have made.

Great, now the hosts are breaking Godwin's law. Good work.

E.D., Mark, full disclosure: I'm a scientist. For me, one of the big problems in this country is science denial. I suspect that's also the case for most prominent "new atheists" or whatever we want to call them. It's not an accident that PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are all scientists in general and biologists in particular. Science has been under attack in the US for the past eight years. Global climate change denialists have been the biggest problem especially since we had one in the White House but creationism has been a problem too, as have, to lesser extents, abstinence-only advocates, AIDS denialists and vaccine conspiracists.

Science denial isn't a cost-free belief. E.D. brought up Stalin in the context of his (Stalin's) atheism, but Stalin was also a skeptic of Darwinian evolution. He called genetics "Capitalist Science", imprisoned prominent geneticists and instituted Lysenkoism, a pseudoscience that he thought was more in line with communist ideals. His science policies caused huge famines and were probably responsible for as many, if not more, deaths than his gulags. How many people do you think will die from George W. Bush's climate policies? Will it be more than from Stalin's denial of genetics?

Right here and now, in 2009 and in the US, the most consistent and prominent pushers of science denial have been conservative Christian leaders advocating for creationism. Some even work denial of climate change into their sermons.

Who is going to push back against this? Moderate and liberal Christians could, but they mostly don't or aren't very loud when they do. Larger denominations are probably too worried about offending their conservative wings. Pope Benedict even recently made some rhetorical gestures in the direction of Intelligent Design, which horrified me because my family is largely Catholic. If moderate and liberal Christians can't be bothered to push back against science denial from their co-religionists, the task is going to fall to scientists. Who are largely atheist. Who include among their rank some assholes like PZ Myers. Who are not going to respect your religion in general, and even less when you elevate science deniers to leading roles.

I am constantly baffled when I see science deniers defended from those mean atheists. Yes, Myers and company are jerks. But science denial is dangerous. Those who advocate it deserve every bit of scorn they get.

The problem with "believe and let believe" is that beliefs have consequences. At the very least, societal belief in god has usually been a pretty bad deal for women and homosexuals. It's frequently pretty bad for scientists as well, whether they're modern biology teachers or Galileo.

Furthermore, while some theologian's deistic god may be unprovable, that's really not what people believe. Geologic evidence really does indicate a very old planet, rather than an approximately 7000 year old planet. This doesn't disprove all gods, but it does disprove one specific kind of god - one that lots of people really believe in - which is why some people get bent out of shape about it. And while Bob from accounting believing that the earth is 7000 years old probably doesn't matter, it does matter if he goes to PTA meetings and convinces the school board to stop teaching that heathen evolution.

Some beliefs have a very detrimental effect on society if they are widespread enough. That's why you're getting push back on this stuff. Most of the time, people who believe in crazy, detrimental stuff are kept on the sidelines of civil discourse, but in the cases of creationism and discrimination against certain minorities (and other cases not listed here), religion is allowed to provide a veneer of credibility, a large constituency and therefore political clout to what should be fringe beliefs. That's why it matters.