Michael C Hogan

Agile Product Development & Innovation Strategy

Oct
8

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Introducing the Bulls#%t Mountain tag

Category: Philosophy Tags: Leave a Comment

Inspired by John Stewart’s debate with Bill O’Reilly I’m introducing a new tag on my blog: bsmtn.

As the L.A. Times reported during Rumble 2012

The “Daily Show” host centered his remarks around the idea that many on the right live in an “alternate reality,” of which O’Reilly is allegedly the mayor. It’s a place, Stewart declared, where “problems are amplified, solutions simplified.” The name Stewart gave O’Reilly’s domicile was somewhat more spicy, but you get the drift.

The name Stewart gave O’Reilly’s domicile was “bullshit mountain” and starting today I’ll be using that tag to identify posts that bring poorly reasoned and overly simplified political positions back into the real world.

Oct
8

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“Free Markets” are Fictional

Category: Engineering, Philosophy Tags: , , Leave a Comment

In his article “Why health insurance is the problem and not the solution” Dr. David Mokotoff argues we need to return health insurance to the free market:

Health insurance is not sold in a truly free market, like home, disability, and life insurance products, etc.

Here’s the problem, nothing is sold in a free market. All products—especially insurance products—are sold in regulated markets. The free market is an idealized scientific model that works under ideal conditions where consumers have perfect information about product pricing and no regulations exist.

Here’s a great video that illustrates the difference between the real world and ideal scientific laboratory conditions using the age-old example of the feather and bowling ball drop experiment.

Just like the feather and the bowling ball, we don’t live in a scientifically ideal world, we live in the real world where some people are better educated and others lie, cheat, hold information secret and steal. The purpose of market regulation is to equalize all of that real-world human behavior.