Why private death panels are better than government ones

The short answer is they are more efficient. I have some friends who I don't see eye to eye with on all issues, but for this they clearly have the stronger argument.

Think about it. A government death panel. You, or your loved ones, waiting in comatose oblivion while the papers are sent up the ladder: from secretary to secretary, admin to admin, department to department to eventually arrive at the death panel's desk to sit there for weeks, perhaps months. Then the panel finally looks at the documents and after prolonged discussion over a few days finally decides to pull the plug. Of course, then it's another long detour from department to department, desk to desk, finally to arrive at the patient's bedside. The comatose patient might have already recovered by that time! Blinking, talking, may be even sitting up or taking a few steps down the hallway!

The death panel's recommendation to pull the plug would be rendered useless. Too late! That's government bureaucracy for you.

Now contrast it with the insurance companies' private death panels. There is hardly any wait. The hospital sends your information to the insurance company. Depending on your financial status and standing, which determines your insurance level, your case would be looked at by either a claims examiner, or a supervisor, or progressively higher levels of authority. But whatever be the case, each level has decision making powers and rest assured, your case would be dealt with swiftly. And unlike the prolonged discussions by government bureaucrats, any decision to pull the plug will be made quickly based on concrete evidence of your financial value to the company. That decision will then be transmitted down to the hospital within a day or or two, using modern communication methods and you, or your loved ones, won't have to stay plugged in to so many hideous looking life preserving machines for long. You, or your loved ones, can spend valuable time doing more important things, like planning a proper, respectful funeral.

Now that's efficiency. After all you pay high premiums for a reason: to have efficient and prompt treatment.

The Ugly Hybrid

The predominant argument against the Prius these days is that it is ugly. Sometimes some people want to really emphasize their point, so they call it fugly. You may still hear some random comments about its performance, and that it doesn't accelerate as fast, etc. but gone are the days when people used to say that the Prius is unsafe, impractical, unreliable, hyped-up and so on. Their comments now have converged to the looks of the Prius.

Well, lets see here. I am thinking of the fairy tale we all must have read: The Ugly Duckling. The ugly little duckling wasn't a duckling at all. He was unlike the rest and they made fun of him all the time. Then one morning he found out that he wasn't, after all, just a lame duck: he was a majestic big white swan! And he unfurled his wings and flew away as the mere ducks looked on. May be some of these aesthetic critics need to read their nursery school story books again.

Why is the Prius ugly? Because it doesn't look like other cars? Is there a standard by which the aesthetic qualities of a car can be measured? What is it about other cars that make them "pretty"? Why does it have to look like other cars? Why don't all the other cars out there look like the Prius? Why do cars have their engines in front under a protruding nose? Why do they have similar protrusions at the back? Why do cars have four windows on the sides? Why do cars have wheels? Why four of them? Why does the driver have to sit on one side and not the middle? Honestly I think almost all cars are ugly. And I am not even thinking of SUVs and trucks yet.

Now we all have our own idea of what the ideal woman or man should look like. That idea is shaped mostly by our genes, our DNA and the environment we grew up in. It's a genetic appeal. It's a hard wired attraction. It's an instinct. Basic instinct! However, the shape of the best looking car is not an instinct. It is merely something we have gotten used to. We have seen cars that look a certain way. We are used to it. And we have taken it for granted that that is what cars should look like. It's the engineer's idea of what a car should look like. It started with Karl Benz and Henry Ford and over the last 130 years the idea has been fed to us so many times that we now think that it is indeed our own idea of what a car should look like.

The car, the automobile, is a machine. And machines don't look good or bad. Machines perform well or poorly. And the looks of a machine is a function of its abilities and efficiency. That's how we judge machines. The Prius has the lowest drag coefficient of all cars out there. Drag coefficient depends on a number of things but most notably the shape. It determines the magnitude of the force that the rushing air would exert as the car travels through it. It's something we all know very well, stick your hand out the car window (safely) and have your palm face the wind, then have your palm face the ground. The drag coefficient of your palm facing the wind is higher than your palm facing the ground. The Scion xB probably has a very large drag coefficient given its boxy shape (what's up with that Toyota?); so do most SUVs. The Prius on the other hand is extremely streamlined making it efficient. Its looks were not determined by the random whim of Toyota, but by the equations of aerodynamics. And if you think the Prius is ugly, why did Honda copy the shape for its new Insight?

We don't hear much about the looks of airplanes, now do we? The Boeing 757, for example, is shaped like a thin tube with two flat surfaces sticking out on the sides, yet no one complains why it isn't shaped like the Porsche!

ENIAC and the piston engine

ENIAC was the state of the art computer during the late 1940s to mid 1950s. It was built with vacuum tubes, diodes, resistors and other electrical components. To quote Wikipedia

ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power.

Impressive, huh? The ENIAC could also perform 5000 simple addition or subtraction operations per second, with capacity to work much faster if strung to operate in parallel. It could also do 385 multiplications per second. I really suggest reading the Wikipedia entry for this. The details are fascinating. However, I wonder how many people would want to have the ENIAC as their personal computer. It's not even that old, just from the 1950s. I am sure vacuum tubes and diodes have become better these days, and a modern ENIAC could certainly outperform the original one by a huge factor.

Would you buy an ENIAC?

Consider this in contrast though: the Internal Combustion Engine was first conceived of in 1206 AD. That's 9 years before the Magna Carta was written. There have been various people who have made designs of it, till Nikolaus Otto came up with the 4-stroke engine in 1876. Then Karl Benz made the first automobile using a variant of the 4-stroke engine in 1879.

1879. That's 71 years before 1950. And we still drive 4-stroke engine automobiles. And we celebrate Benz (as we rightfully should) in the Mercedes-Benz. But we dismiss the Prius, which uses a hybrid system by combining an electrical motor and a 4-stroke engine, as a hype and as a political statement. The Prius actually uses the Atkinson cycle which was invented in 1882. So whichever way you look at it, the Prius uses more modern technology than any other car out there on the road. But people want the pricier BMWs, Ferraris, Mustangs and what not.

Why not buy a new ENIAC in a newly built concrete housing, with fresh paint, with voice operated climate control, with retina scan entry systems? Isn't that what the new cars offer? An engine technology nearly 130 years old with marginal, if any, modifications, packaged in shiny bodies with fancy interior gadgets.

Fortunately, the ENIAC now exists in the museum and we now use microprocessor powered PCs and Macs. Hopefully the Prius will send the 4-stroke Otto cycle engine to the museum as well. With a little help from the rising price of gasoline.

Driving habits, aerodynamic drag and horsepower

I touched on the subject of speed limits and speeding and drive time earlier, briefly. I wanted to revisit that. And you'll see why.

If we travel the same distance at two different speeds (velocities) we will record two different times.

Distance = velocity₁ × time₁ = velocity₂ × time₂

Let's say velocity₂ is twenty percent higher than velocity₁. Then you can write:

velocity₂ = 120% velocity₁ = 1.2 × velocity₁

So essentially you have a method to compare by how much time went down:

velocity₁ × time₁ = 1.2 × velocity₁ × time₂

Therefore: time₂ = 0.83 × time₁ = 83% time₁

You can save about 17% of time by going 20% faster.

I have done a few calculations, the up and down arrows signify by how much velocity goes up and by how much time goes down correspondingly:

Velocity ↑ 10%, time ↓ 9%

Velocity ↑ 15%, time ↓ 13%

Velocity ↑ 20%, time ↓ 17%

Velocity ↑ 25%, time ↓ 20%

Velocity ↑ 30%, time ↓ 23%

Velocity ↑ 35%, time ↓ 26%

Velocity ↑ 40%, time ↓ 29%

Velocity ↑ 45%, time ↓ 31%

Here's a more concrete example, showing the speed and the time taken to cover the same distance:

Going a distance of 25 miles @

65 mph : 23 min

70 mph : 21 min

75 mph : 20 min

80 mph : 19 min

85 mph : 18 min

Now that's one side of the equation: how much time you saved. What's the cost of that?

When you move through air, it pushes you back. That's called drag and the formula looks something like this:

Drag = ½ × Drag coefficient × Density of air × Area facing the wind × velocity ²

In that formula, the drag coefficient, the density of air and the area facing the wind all remain constant. The only variable there is velocity. The equation can be written as:

Drag = Constant factor × velocity ²

So the drag, which is a force experienced by a car, increases as the square of the velocity. Increase velocity by a factor of two, the drag will increase by a factor of four!

But wait, there's more. The power required to overcome this force and keep moving at that velocity is given by:

Power = Drag × velocity = Constant factor × velocity ² × velocity = Constant factor × velocity ³

What?! The power required now has velocity cubed as a factor. If you increase velocity by a factor of two, the power required to keep moving will increase by a factor of EIGHT!

Now, using the example above, an increase in speed from 65 mph to 85 mph, is roughly a 30% jump. Let's plug these numbers in and see how much power it takes to keep the car going:

Power₁ = Constant factor × velocity ³

Power₂ = Constant factor × (1.3 × velocity) ³

Power₂ = 2.2 × Power₁ = 220% Power₁

To drive at 85 mph, compared to 65 mph, the power required is more than double. Although engines have an optimal load point, for most engines that are in use, anything beyond 65 mph is inefficient. Also for most engines, horsepower and fuel economy are inversely related. In other words, horsepower and fuel consumption are directly proportional to each other.

By increasing your speed from 65 mph to 85 mph you gained 5 minutes. If this is your morning commute to work, isn't it easy just to start 5 minutes earlier? If you are in a job that is like everyone else's then those 5 minutes are probably not crucial. If you are in a job where it is crucial, like you are a captain on a submarine, then you probably don't drive to work, or don't have time to read this blog either, for that matter.

Changing our driving habits

We have all seen drivers who rush from one stop light to the next, accelerating as fast as they can, revving up the engine, screeching the tires on the ground, &etc. &etc.

What do they accomplish? 2 seconds of thrill? May be another 2 at the next red light? Is it the sound of the engine revs or the screech of tires that is the more exciting part? Or is it the acceleration that throws you back against your seat back? Because those are the three (3) things that really happen when you go from zero to sixty in 3.14159..ad infinitum seconds. The acceleration part is also available on rollercoasters. Or small planes. Or gliders. What these drivers do not realize, or do realize and do it anyway, is that the fast acceleration uses the most energy. If you were getting on a highway, it would be a good thing. But the bad part is when you have to stop. All the energy that was generated is lost as heat when the brake pads press against the wheels to bring it to a stop. Would be good if this heat could be stored somewhere to be re-used. But no one has done that yet.

What is the purpose of getting in a car and going somewhere? Is it a race? Are there prizes? Why do we drive as fast as we can when it really makes negligible difference in the time? If you have to go 10 miles and you were driving the speed limit of 65 mph you would get there in a little over 9 minutes. If you drove at 75 mph you would get there in 8 minutes. A minute sooner. That's all. If you were going 100 miles, then the trip would take 92 minutes at 65 mph and 80 min at 75 mph. Just 10 min earlier. However, if you were going 100 miles you would probably take longer to start the trip, or stop in between for more than 10 min. In the grand scheme, the 10 mph extra gets you nothing.

Email to the editors of SmartBrief

I wrote the following email to Jesse Stanchak and Robert Jones, editors of SmartBrief for Entrepreneurs.

Dear Jesse and Robert,

I went to Babson for my MBA and I love to read these little stories that you publish. They are informative and often inspiring. However, today I noticed a story, indeed, one endorsed by Robert Jones, that caught my eye. It seemed way out of line and extremely out of character for SmartBrief.

From what I've learned, through my own experiences and that of others', is that more than anything else, leaders are agents of change. Everybody can stay on the beaten track, it takes a leader to lead them onto a new path. And entrepreneurs are no different. In fact entrepreneurs are the distilled essence of leadership. They are change agents, sometimes disruptive enough to change the way we live. Not only are entrepreneurs change agents, they are also highly competitive. Change and competition are almost synonymous with entrepreneurship. So it is surprising that your journal would take a shot at the President's new health care option. It introduces new competition to the market and it changes the way the game is played now, in an almost disruptive way. It seems almost entrepreneurial in character.

Shouldn't you be celebrating?

Instead you opine how it will increase costs for "entrepreneurs". Well, from the entrepreneurs I know, I don't think they are too concerned about health care reform right now. They spend more time thinking of their own fledgling businesses, they don't always even pay in cash (but equity) and many would love to get such an issue off their hands so they can concentrate on the problems they face day to day. Your poll is completely out of character and even diagonally opposed from what entrepreneurship is about and is in total antithesis with your journal and its spirit. Besides, when you mention a poll, I am sure you know that you need to mention the number of people polled, the demographics of the polled sample and the margin of error. Without those facts, that can be independently verified, your poll is meaningless.

I could go off topic and tell you that health care is a form of physical protection, just like the police or the fire department, or even the military, and physical protection is the raison d'être of the existence of a civil society and even the State. Even if you cut everything out, physical protection must be there in order to have a functioning society. But that's a different debate that I might have with you on another day.

Let me conclude by saying that not only have you gone off character in your newsletter today but there is another thing that experienced editors would never let slip by unnoticed. When you wrote "The Devil You Know: President Barack Obama..." although you were referring to something else (viz. the known health care problem), yet by the juxtaposition of those words you were probably trying to make a subliminal association that is absolutely uncalled for. I do not believe that experienced editors like yourselves did not notice that particular word arrangement and did not think of the connotations it brings. So my conclusion would be, it was a deliberate choice of words and their arrangement. You are a newsletter bringing news of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. All that is well and good, but when you foist your personal political beliefs on others in the name of a "poll" I think you become a demagogue.

I will certainly forward this letter to Babson College and seek their opinion on this matter, since I am an alum of the school and their name appears on this newsletter and ask the opinions of my classmates and other fellow alums.

Thank you.

SmartBrief for Entrepreneurs has published their daily newsletter. Today's issue can be found here SmartBrief August 5, 2009. Near the bottom of the newsletter there is a "poll". I put poll in quotes because there was no accompanying data of the demographics, sample size or margin of error. To summarize the "poll", it seems a large percentage of entrepreneurs think that the public option for healthcare will increase the cost of running their businesses. Immediately following the poll are these words:

The devil you know: President Barack Obama has been making the case that businesses will save money under a federally mandated health plan, but so far entrepreneurs don't seem to be buying it. In fact, even if every undecided respondent were to break in favor of the Obama plan, opponents would still outnumber supporters by about 25 percentage points. -- Robert Jones, Smart Brief on Entrepreneurs contributing editor (original emphasis)