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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (78290)	10/23/2003 5:43:28 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

You sure can come up with a yarn. I hope the thirteenth guy isn't named Mohammed or Joe. We have what appeared to be classic "lifeboat exercise" as done to death for decades in corporate training rooms across the country and probably around the world. I assumed that's what you were talking about and Chris probably did, too, which is why we responded as we did. In common usage, the lifeboat has nothing to do with materialism at all, unless you consider fear of death to be materialistic since it pertains to the material world as opposed to the afterlife. Finding one's property intact upon rescue from the lifeboat isn't an issue in the classic version. The afterlife isn't an issue, either. The risk is simply death if the boat sinks. If there's fear, it's fear of death--total loss--the corporation goes out of business. The exercise is a question of how to apportion scarce resources and minimizing risk for continued viability. So please excuse the rest of us if we thought you were talking about the obvious usage. Given that the topic was apportioning health care resources and the classic lifeboat exercise fits with that, it was reasonable to assume that's what you had in mind. In the real world, health care, I agree that there is a risk of loss of material security if society has to cough up the resources to pay for the care of an ever increasing and more expensive population with more need than money. I agree that there is also a risk of loss of humanity if one turns a blind eye. There is also the risk associated with uncertainty about what the carrying capacity of any system is and where the tipping point is and what the rate of illness might be in the future, etc. You did not mention that last risk/fear. I assume that's because you opt for unending kindness so would consider systems analysis irrelevant. Also, you see less risk in sinking the boat than I do since you have an afterlife to fall back on if you drown heroically in this life. I think these two differences between us make it all but impossible for us to communicate usefully on this topic. My instinct is to redesign the system so that it is stable. Throwing kindness at is a feel-good exercise that causes the system to sink faster. There is little basis for communication there.