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)

Health of The State

How would privatized fire fighting services work?

First, there would be the insurance companies that you would pay fire premiums to, for an agreed upon level of service. And then there would be the private firefighters. If someone's home caught fire, they would call the firefighters. The firefighters would come out, assess the fire and send a report to the insurance company. The insurance company would then go over their policies and if they found that the level of services required was within the purview of the policy agreement (interpreted completely from their profit-making point of view), then they would authorize the firefighters to go ahead and extinguish the fire. If for some reason, from the insurance company's point of view, the level of service required wasn't authorized for the policy then they might deny the claim and parts of the house or all of it would just burn down. However, let's say the insurance companies are compassionate and they always authorize all services. But there still remains one little hitch in this model. If the fire was big enough then by the time the insurance company and the firefighters figured out whether or not to put the fire out, it might have already burned the entire house down.

Someone's house burning down like that would be a terrible thing to happen to them. Especially if it was a big, pretty and expensive house. Especially if it could have been avoided. And that scenario doesn't even take into account the danger to the life and health of the residents and neighbors. Clearly such a business model would hardly work. The risks are too high to allow private business with profit-motive to operate in such cases. So what do we have instead? Socialized firefighting. Everybody pays taxes to hire and maintain a public firefighting squad. The person with the pretty, big, expensive house, gets the most value out of it in case of a fire though. The insurance companies play an entirely different and minor role here, merely to replace material things afterwards.

What about a private police force running on the same model?

There is a break-in or armed robbery or some other emergency so somebody calls 9-1-1. At the other end the dispatcher asks, what is your emergency and can I have your insurance policy number please. And if the emergency doesn't involve the caller, the dispatcher might even refuse to talk to the caller, insisting rather that the people facing the danger make the call themselves so that their insurance information may be obtained to be run through the same process of service authorization.

My guess is this model probably wouldn't work for the police either. What do we have instead? Socialized police.

How about the military? That's socialized too.

Makes sense; fair enough. After all that's the reason for existence, the raison d'être, of the State. To protect the people from what, as individuals, they cannot protect themselves. To protect their life and property from threats that are too big for any one person to handle. That is the social contract. People give up their natural rights in order to be part of the State. The State, in return offers them collective protection and a set of civil rights. So why is it that the State can socialize the protection of property but not the protection of health? Why is it that the State can socialize protection from fire that burns your house but not from fever that burns your flesh? Why from threats that are large and visible but not from threats that may be microscopic and invisible? Threats that invade the territory but not threats that invade the body? Why do private insurance companies have so much power over the level of medical care a person may receive? Is the threat to a person's health of less importance than the threat to somebody's property? What is the State? Is it property? Is it territory? What is the State without people? The people are the State. Whatever person or organization argues against public healthcare stands against the State.

If firefighting is a service provided by the State, if public security is a service provided by the State, then by the same logic healthcare must also be a service provided by the State. It is not enough for the State to offer healthcare insurance. Healthcare itself must come from the State. Just as it is a collective responsibility to maintain a police force, so it is a collective responsibility to maintain a medical force. And not just for infectious diseases but for all kinds of medical needs. Firefighters and police officers come to our rescue regardless of whose fault it was that put us in harm's way. And it should be no different for healthcare. What hypocrisy to advocate for a strong military but at the same time trivialize public healthcare! If we trust the State's military to protect us why can't we trust the State's doctors to heal us?

It must be noted that the State is not the same as its government. Government is the instrument a State uses to administer itself. It is one thing to be against big government, but an entirely different matter to oppose an obvious and fundamental purpose of the State.

Salus populi suprema lex esto: the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law. (Cicero, De Legibus).

Locke,Voltaire, Rousseau, thinkers and writers who heavily influenced the founders of the United States, all adopted and professed the same principle. It is about time the healthcare "industry" and its advocates understood the meaning of that principle.