The New York Times discovers economics. Sort of.

It’s happening anyway, see, so we should just let the government do it. That’s my pithy summary of David Leonhardt’s article in yesterday’s New York Times.

I still don’t know Leonhardt from Adam, but this is the second time I’m going to point out that he’s wrong, and why.

First, though, I’ll point out why he’s right. Leonhardt’s subject this time is rationing. In the economic sense, first, and then as it applies to health care. He gets to be wrong at that point, but…

…well, let’s let him tell it, shall we?

Wait, are you talking about rationing medical care? Access to medical care is a fundamental right. And rationing sounds like something out of the Soviet Union. Or at least Canada.

Note: I just wrote about the “health care is a right” thing. Read that here. The gist: if it’s a right, it’s a right that can only be exercised if someone else is willing – or forced – to supply the service.

Back to Leonhardt:

Today, I want to try to explain why the case against rationing isn’t really a substantive argument. It’s a clever set of buzzwords that tries to hide the fact that societies must make choices.

In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life. It is the process of allocating scarce resources.

To this point, he’s absolutely right. Resources are scarce, which is to say of limited quantity. There are only so many pork chops on the market at any given time. At a given price, everyone who wants a pork chop (at that price) will get one. Those who don’t, won’t.

Rationing is the term used to describe the method by which resources are distributed. There may be a better illustration of this, but Stacy McCain’s favorite, “I, Pencil,” is pretty good.

Anyway, when we Righties complain that nationalized health care will lead to “rationing,” we might as well be complaining that Autumn will lead to Winter. In an economic sense, rationing is happening already. Always has been, and always will be.

The real argument in health care isn’t whether there will be rationing, but how that rationing will be done. I’d prefer more of an “I, Pencil” approach. Nationalized medicine proponents like Leonhardt prefer to substitute nests of government cubicles infested with a few thousand white-collar workers.

Leonhardt makes a number of eye-rolling statements over the next twenty paragraphs or so – he clearly has some notion that the economy is an order-from-chaos creature: like an ecosystem or global weather pattern. But he clings to the idea that if we pull this string here, that will move over there, when we really have no idea what that string is connected to, much less what other strings it might intersect along the way.

He thinks substituting the decision-making of a relatively few human beings for the natural regulation of the price system will work just fine, thanks, and never mind those three-hour lines at the shoe store the old USSR used to have.

I’m getting kinda verbose. I’ll skip to the end:

…all the noise about rationing is not really a courageous stand against less medical care. It’s a utopian stand against better medical care.

If placing the government in charge of rationing goods – in the everyday sense or the economic sense – will produce better medical care, then why did actual socialist countries – places where the government was in charge of rationing all goods – not have higher standards of living than the West?

And one more thing. Regarding G.I.Normous systems, like the ecosystem: do you notice how liberal/progressives can’t stand the thought of anything that might make the slightest tiny change in the ecosystem?

No, don’t drill! You might inconvenience a caribou! Don’t build there! There’s a…oh, hell, I don’t know, a yellow-toothed crusty lizard, or something. If you tap that underground well, the water level in this lake over here might drop an inch, which’ll kill these ferns, which’ll deny these bugs a home, which’ll hurt these birds which…

You get the picture.

When it comes to another enormous system containing millions-if-not-billions of inputs, though – the economy – they’re all for mucking around with this, that, whatever. Cut those trees! Drain that swamp!

UPDATE - Linked by Mike at Letters in Bottles, who adds his own thoughts.

Yeah, but where were those “hundreds of thousands” of protesters?

I know it doesn’t make much difference exactly where they were. “Tehran” is really all the info a casual consumer of news like me needs, especiallys since I’m buried deep in the American midwest and the odds of my actually going to Tehran are even lower than the odds that Glenn Reynolds or Michelle Malkin or Ed Morrissey will link to this post.

At least, I hope they’re lower than that.

But still, I’m curious, and I have access to the internet. The story:

TEHRAN, Iran – Hundreds of thousands of protesters wearing black and carrying candles filled the streets of Tehran again Thursday, joining opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to mourn demonstrators killed in clashes over Iran’s disputed election.

…Many in the huge crowd carried black candles and lit them as night fell. Others wore green wristbands and carried flowers in mourning as they filed into Imam Khomeini Square, a large plaza in the heart of the capital named for the founder of the Islamic Revolution, witnesses said.

Well where the hell is that? Is it the big gray part here?

If so, that’s pretty convenient. There’s two airports right nearby:

You could probably get a cab. Or even just walk.

Of course I’m not actually going to go. I just think it would be interesting to be able to place these things on a map. We’ve all got this stuff right at our fingertips, after all. And the #iranelection thing at Twitter isn’t actually that much help in tracking such details down.

Here, play with the map yourself:

View Larger Map

And that’s with friends on the ratings board.

If we’re going to be accused of meddling even when we’re not meddling, shouldn’t we just go ahead and meddle?

William Jacobson:

You knew this was inevitable. Regardless of what Barack Obama said or did, the Iranian regime would accuse the U.S. of meddling in Iran’s internal affairs:

Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of “intolerable” meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter post election dispute. Opposition supporters marched in Tehran’s streets for a third straight day to protest the outcome of the balloting.

So we’re meddling, even when we’re bending over backwards to avoid meddling.

Fine. The Other Smith points out that we’ve got troops just a border away from Iran on both the east and the west. They’re gonna accuse us of meddling, fine. Let’s meddle.

UPDATE – well I’ll be damned. We are meddling.

“What the hell is goin’ on out there?” *

First Sonia Sotomayor, now Hillary Clinton.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fell and broke her elbow on Wednesday while en route to the White House but will resume her full duties soon as the top U.S. diplomat, the State Department said.

Clinton will have surgery to repair her elbow in the next week, her chief of staff Cheryl Mills said in a statement released overnight.

“On the way to the White House late this afternoon, Secretary Clinton fell and suffered a right elbow fracture. She was treated at The George Washington University Hospital before heading home,” Mills said.

Something happens to Kathleen Sebelius, and I’m gonna start talking conspiracy.

* Gimme one person not named Steve who can tell me whose quote that is.

Is it any less demeaning when you have to sit at the front of the bus?

I guess not, but it sure is more convenient. Via Marathon Pundit:

Gipsies [sic] and travellers should be given priority in NHS (National Health Service) hospitals and GP surgeries, doctors have been told.

They will be fast-tracked for doctors, nurses and even some dentist appointments above all other patients.

GPs have also been told to see any travellers who simply walk in without an appointment, even if all consultation times for the day are full.

They will also be given longer consultations than other patients. Five or ten minutes is the average but travellers will be given 20 minutes and allowed to bring relatives into the consulting rooms.

“Travellers” refers to another people who traditionally wander, rather than stay put in one place. Irish, these ones. Gypsies, well, you know who they are:

But wait! There’s more! Via Instapundit:

Terror law used to stop thousands ‘just to balance racial statistics’

Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under their counter-­terrorism powers – simply to ­provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.

Thank goodness that sort of thing doesn’t happen on this side of the pond, huh?

We normally leave the cattiness up to the girls…

…and, well, yeah, we’ll keep right on doing that. Here at The Trog, anyway. Track-a-’Crat, on the other hand…

…he does say it’s great that Mrs. Obama can be comfortable wearing regular-people clothes around the White House. That’s pleasant and accepting, right?

All I’ve got to say is: how does she outrank Padma Lakshmi on Maxim’s Hot 100 List for 2009?

In other news, Track-a-’Crat is some kind of heartless bastard.

That’s what Ford gets for refusing the government cheese

This seems like it should be ironic (given the headline), but (ironically?) it’s actually not:

…for the first time in two generations, the Navy is commissioning a new carrier, named after President Ford, who served with distinction on the carrier Monterey during World War II. Following custom, each subsequent ship constructed to these specs will be named after him: the Ford class of carriers.

The truck commercials almost write themselves.

I feel this way sometimes too

Little Miss Attila:

Sorry, Stephen: you’ve got great sideburns, and you can act the whatchamacallit off any metaphor that might elude me this time of night after a day at the office.

You can believe I’ll be using that one of these days.