No One Wants to Know

This is truly the age of anxiety. We're living with so many arguments unresolved. So many ideological beefs like cars idling at the starting green.

For example: if science could develop tests to effectively determine your medical future, would you want to know it? When?

Should it determine your ability to get medical coverage? What if you were a minefield of medical calamities? Should the medical companies be able to get their hands on that information, if they could? Even if you didn't want it?

The short answer is - too late, those issues will be decided for you.

I was discussing this with a friend, who is a college professor [Ha! Try guessing that one. Half my friends are college professors.] He was discussing privacy, and the subject of being watched/tracked by the government. And I think his students were debating this subject. I gently pointed out to him that on the drive to where we were, we were caught by dozens of security cameras, our cells phones triangulated our whereabouts, and so forth. In short, these students are terrifically naive to think that they will have any say whatsoever with regard to privacy issues.

Delete those cookies? Use an anonymizer? How about a phony address when you sign up to Yahoo! mail? Good luck. You're whistling in the dark.

For example ... in my profession there is this notion of Consumer Directed Health Care. Which means, the consumer gets more ... options. Which means the consumer takes more risk. Which means the consumer also has to disclose more information about their own choice-making. If you choose wisely, you pay less. If you eat at In-N-Out, you pay more.

The endgame is that (a) people with better genetics will pay less for insurance, and (b) people with more discipline and self-control [or people who just like to exercise obsessively] will pay less. So the favored will be favored even more. And their coverage will really only cover pandemics and accidents.

And the disfavored will be taxed up their massive wazoos.

If you hate the thin, healthy and beautiful now, you will really hate them when they are also richer than you are.