Should We Allow Rich People to Buy College Admission?

I went to college in the mid 1970s.  This was a time of transition for many things.  One of them was a change in admissions policies that mostly opened it to better scrutiny.  By and large, this was a good thing.   Policies that had been discriminatory were changed, and lots of people who had been denied college were able to go.  For most people, a college degree opens lots of doors.  When I went to college, most people didn't have college aspirations, although many people took advantage of Junior College and the specialized trade schools.  Today, most people do have college aspirations, including the vast majority who do not have the aptitude for it.  This has opened a gigantic market for scam colleges and perhaps even worse, scam college lenders.

Wealthy and upper middle class families have always seen college as a natural step for their children and the vast majority saw to it that their kids got in.  Most got in through the various aptitude measurements, but plenty of kids really didn't have the aptitude.  In the old days, the college was happy to take a kid that wouldn't have otherwise made it, in return for a nice donation.  This would be sufficient to provide the kid with tutoring and other needed support, and in most cases it was sufficient to give a scholarship to a bunch of other kids who did deserve it but couldn't afford it.  This was a good arrangement.  Everybody understood that the kid was there on the merits of daddy's donation, and kid would end up having career undistinguished by anything but the nice diploma and probably a large bar tab and perhaps a few racy scenes in the tabloids.   It was corrupt, but openly so, and the good it did far outweighed the bad.

The new admissions schemes have ended most of the corruption.  But not all.  Good parents will do their very best to open doors for their kids, and if open corruption is blocked, they will find ways around the rules.  The recent scandal involving sports recruiters getting students admitted on the basis of non-existent talent, mostly in relatively obscure sports, is an example of this.  Lori Loughlin apparently spent $500,000 getting her two kids into USC.  Had this been open, that could have provided 12-15 student-years of free rides for deserving students.  Instead, it mostly went to various scammers.

Most of the people who went to college this way in the old days lived undistinguished lives.  There are a few exceptions though.  It's pretty clear that Donald Trump doesn't have the mental wherewithal to get into a decent college, much less a good one like UPenn.  Daddy Fred plainly found a way to open the door though.   Don apparently did attend a few classes, but managed to be remembered mostly for being absent from most of his senior year while he started his real estate business in New York, and somehow graduating anyway.

I say: This is ok, but there should be a clear paper trail to be found by anyone who is curious, such as grad schools and newspaper reporters.    If each undeserving student pays for a half dozen or more deserving ones, that's an acceptable price, provided the undeserving student can be prevented from using their purchased diploma for evil, as the Trumps did.  An undeserved admission should never be used for admission to subsequent education, such as medical school.  On the other hand, there are plenty of cases of bad students waking up during their college years and going on to do something great, so it shouldn't be a barrier either.   MCATs, GREs, LSATs, and actual decent college grades should be sufficient to separate the wheat from the chaff.

What to do About the Novel Coronavirus

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was first discovered in late 2019 in Wuhan, China.   There is no vaccine, humans have no pre-existing immunities like we do to the Flu, and it weakens us in a way that may kill us on its own, or it might expose us to opportunistic infections.  It is fairly infectious, including for a week or more before we show any signs of being ill.  Around half of people recover before they show any symptoms, yet they were infectious the whole time.  There are no known palliative measures, although a few have briefly shown some promise.  So far, none have panned out.

The Trump administration chose to abandon all pandemic preparations made during previous administrations.  This included demoting or firing most of the people who had any real expertise, such as the Pandemic Response Team, tossing their extensive plans, and installing a toadie as head of the CDC.  The first Trump CDC director was pushed out for blatant corruption, the second seems to have engaged largely in preventing the CDC from doing its job properly.

Trump has consistently poo poohed the need for testing, and has consistently lied about it.  He has also obstructed the distribution of medical ventilators, and most alarming of all, has obstructed the distribution of all types of Personal Protective Equipment: masks, gloves, gowns, etc.   We're 3 months into this thing and while it's finally possible to get a simple mask, it is still not possible to get an N95 without a special connection.  Most of this can be categorized as negligence, but two things: forcing the distribution to be exclusively on the open market, which has led to enormous gouging, and numerous cases of federal agencies swooping in and confiscating PPEs just before they got to their end user, have massively and needlessly exacerbated the problem.

So what should we do?  In the absence of anything better, quarantine.  The bubonic plague has been pretty much eliminated through quarantine.  Smallpox was substantially suppressed with quarantine, although its final elimination didn't come about until we had a vaccine. And so on.

But there's all this asymptomatic contagion.  The first step was stay-at-home orders for just about everybody.  Unfortunately we need medical attention and groceries, so there has to be some big holes, which allows a lot of spread.  Fortunately, we already have several tests, but unfortunately, the knucklehead in charge at the CDC screwed up when it was discovered that there had been a mistake, and Trump has insisted on the vicissitudes of the free market governing availability.  This would have been a perfect use for the defense authorization act, but no.  He has several times suggested that he doesn't like testing, and the reason always seems to be that he's afraid that knowing the truth will make him look bad.  On this I am sure he is correct.  How about fixing this problem by not being such a pathological idiot?

The first and most important thing we need to do is to get a lot more testing.  As of today (May 17), we are doing about 200,000 tests a day.    People who regularly come into contact with the disease, mainly medical people, should be tested every day.  There are 1.1 million doctors and 3.8 million nurses in the country.  Not all of them are working COVID.  Let's estimate that 2 million of them are.  In addition, there are around 20 million people who have jobs rated "essential" (e.g. grocery clerk) that come into contact with a lot of people, but only a few of them are likely sick, and with barriers and similar measures, we can reduce their risk, but not eliminate it.  We should probably test them once a week.  That's another 3 million tests a day for a total of 5 million.   This is the bare minimum.

We need to test the people in nursing homes.  These are people who are especially vulnerable and they're living in very close contact with each other.   There are about 1.5M of them.    they, and the people who take care of them, should probably be tested pretty often.  Lets say 300,000 tests a day nationwide.   The prisons are roughly the same size.   There are only about 70,000 people in the meat slaughtering and packing business, but they work in very close contact and there have been several bad outbreaks.   They should probably be tested a couple of times a week.  There are probably a bunch of other such occupations.

I'm thinking we should probably test everybody at least every other month or so.  There are 320M of us, but subtracting the people from other categories, it's a bit under 300M.  If we test each of them every 60 days, that's another 5 million tests a day.   We're up to a total of 10 million tests.  That means we're undertesting by a factor of 50.

Marion Medeiros

Marion was a teammate of mine on the cross country and track teams at Cupertino High School in the early '70s.   I stumbled on this last night, which is an obituary from the San Jose Mercury.   He was a sophomore when I was a senior, but we were pretty good friends anyway.  He was a good kid and a great runner and pole vaulter.  He set the school pole vault record as a sophomore and seemed destined to go quite a bit farther. 

He had been teased as a child about having a girls name so he usually pronounced his name "Morion".  He was definitely not a girl, although I have no idea about his sexuality.   We talked about all sorts of things in the two years we were teammates.  I think he thought of me as a sort of mentor, although he was a better runner than I was by far.


His older brother Baron was also a teammate and I knew him well too.  The last time I saw either of them, Baron had just enlisted in the army, and would join up after finishing high school.  Apparently Marion joined the army too and worked as a recruiter.

The article says Marion had a stroke which made him quadriplegic.  It doesn't give a date, but it looks like it happened in 1990, give or take.  Marion would have been about 38.  19 years later, in July 2009, the house he and his family had grown up in burned.  His mother was able to get out, but Marion was not. (This house was in Rancho Rinconada, a housing development in Cupertino, not far from the High School)

My heart aches.  Rest in peace, Marion.

Date of Stay at Home Orders

19 Mar
California
21 Mar
Illinois
New Jersey
22 Mar
New York
23 Mar
Connecticut
Louisiana
Ohio
Oregon
Washington
24 Mar
Delaware
Indiana
Massachusetts
Michigan
New Mexico
West Virginia
25 Mar
Hawaii
Idaho
Vermont
Wisconsin 
26 Mar
Colorado
Kentucky 
27 Mar
Minnesota
New Hampshire
28 Mar
Alaska
Montana
Rhode Island
30 Mar
Kansas Maryland 
North Carolina
Virginia 
31 Mar
Arizona
1 Apr
Nevada
Pennsylvania
2 Apr
Maine
Texas
Tennessee
3 Apr
Alabama
Florida 
Georgia
Mississippi
Missour
7 Apr
South Carolina

Cities have orders but no statewide
Oklahoma
Utah
Wyoming

No Orders
Arkansas
South Dakota
North Dakota
Iowa
Nebraska

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-stay-at-home-order.html

Politifact Lie of the Year.

I haven't done one of these in a few years, mainly because the election of Donald Trump has resulted in an almost constant stream of pants on fire level lies coming out of the liar-in-chief.    One of the effects of this is that Politifact only has a hard time choosing among Trump and his allies lies for the the worst of the year, and none of the D's minor lies or misstatements rises even close to competing.


2019: Trump's repeated false claim that the whistleblower got Trump's Ukraine call almost completely wrong
2018: Online smear machine tries to take down Parkland high school students
2017: Trump's repeated false assertions that Russian election interference is a "made up story"
2016: Fake News
2015: Trump's campaign lies
2014: The Ebola Scare.
2013: If you like your health care you can keep it.  (Had this been expressed "If you like your qualifying health care, you can keep it" it would have been true: the plans that were closed by ACA were fraudulent in some way.   In 2008, they had rated this same statement as true)
2012: Romney/Ryan completely false claims that Jeep was moving its factory to China
2011: Democrat's completely true statement that Republicans voted to end medicare as we know it.
2010: Republican's absurdly false claims that the ACA is a government takeover of healthcare.
2009: Republican's dangerously false claims about death panels.
 

Coronovirus Statistics

As I write this (18Mar2020) the deaths from the Novel Coronavirus have risen to just under 9000 worldwide, 150 in the US.  China appears to be the only country that has a declining number of new cases, after draconian measures sharply reduced the spread of the disease.  They so far have had just under 81,000 cases, nearly 70,000 of them have recovered.
 
The incubation period is between 2 and 14 days, with a peak between 3 and 7.  The disease itself seems to last about 2 weeks if symptoms are mild, 3-6 weeks if they're severe.   Severe cases seem to become severe about one week from the onset of symptoms.  The cause of death seems mostly to be hypoxia (shortness of breath: can't get enough oxygen into the blood), either from the disease itself or from opportunistic infections, mostly pneumonia.

The symptoms start out with malaise, muscle pain and low-grade fever, sharpening to higher fever and a dry cough.  Oddly, very few cases seem to have a runny nose, sneezing or sore throat.  The patients that do have these symptoms seem to have simultaneously had a cold or some other issue.

The death rate for previously healthy patients is under 1%.   Heart disease, Diabetes, Chronic Respiratory disease, Hypertension and Cancer multiply the death rate by 7-14x.

The worst case scenario I've seen is that we will need nearly 1 million medical ventilators at the peak of the crisis.  There are presently about 160K, about 100K of them obsolete but could be used in an emergency.  The problem is not just the disease itself.   The US loses about 2.8M people a year.  The top causes are Heart disease (650K), Cancer (600K) Accidents (170K),  Chronic Respiratory diseases (160K), Stroke (146K).  Normally, something like a million people a year require a ventilator--about 60K at a time.  If at the peak of the crisis, we need 150K ventilators, we will only lose 30K of them.  A terrible catastrophe, but small on the scale of heart disease and so forth.  It's obviously cold comfort if one of them is someone you cared about.   If, at the peak of the crisis, we need 500K ventilators, we will lose nearly 400K.  A great many of them will be people who never had coronavirus at all, but did have a life threatening condition that required medical assistance and/or ventilation. 

The appallingly terrible response by the Trump administration has made the problem much worse than it needed to be. China sprang into action very aggressively and used many tools which are not really available in the US.  China may manage to keep its deaths under 5,000.   While they've only had about 3000 deaths so far, Italians are dying at over 450 a day and it's unlikely this will slow down for some time.  They have 35K cases and had 4200 new ones today.  Extrapolating the curve looks like 30-50K deaths.   The US is much bigger and our response has been in many ways worse.

e.g.: Trump poo poohed the problem and did literally nothing for over a month.
The original tests provided by the CDC were defective and there are still far too few tests available.   This cost us a month or more.
He fired the team of advisors that would have been the most useful in 2018--apparently because they were warning him that something like this might happen.
He's given a very mixed message on the border controls, such as announcing that all trips from Europe except the UK (where he owns resorts) would be cancelled, triggering panic travel, massively overwhelming the medical checks for re-entry.  If any one of those people actually did have the disease, there are now a thousand new vectors, and sure enough, New York and California, which previously hadn't had many cases, immediately because major centers.   If you're going to close the border, close it completely and immediately.   Better yet: leave the border open, and be prepared to maintain distancing while you're doing your entry checks on what would be normal travel levels.  He got this exactly backwards.

There are lots of other terrible problems.  I rank the new coronavirus as only 3rd or 4th on the list, although its pressing and immediate.   The most pressing, immediate problems is that we must remove Donald Trump and his toadies from power as soon as possible.   I think when the accounting is done, Trump will have killed over a million Americans.


https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

The Spectrum

Here's the way I see the present economic spectrum

Communist:
  There hasn't ever been a communist with national political creds in the United States. The nearest is probably the Wobblys (IWW) of the John Reed era or Longshore chief Harry Bridges.  There have been numerous small communes that were somewhat successful over the years, but they are imbeded in the larger culture.  By Communist, I mean that most or all of the means of production is owned and controlled by "the people", meaning the state.  Whether this state is democratic, authoritarian or something else is a separate issue, although the large ones have all been authoritarian.  Significant free enterprise is not allowed although there may be small businesses with government licenses.

Socialist:
 There have been a few socialist politicians with national credibility.  The most important was probably Eugene Debs. Most of the present national people who call themselves socialists really are Democratic Socialists.  By Socialist, I mean that a sizable share of the means of production is owned by the state, but significant free enterprise is allowed although with regulation.  Again, whether the state is democratic, authoritarian or something else is a separate issue.

Democratic Socialist:
  Most successful countries over the last century have been Democratic Socialists.  Major US leadership figures include Franklin Roosevelt, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and arguably, Abraham Lincoln.   By Democratic Socialism, I mean that the majority of the means of production is free enterprise, but a significant amount are operated by the government or at least strongly regulated.  Usually these are those industries that have been in some sort of market failure. The associate government is democratic or republican.

Capitalist:
   Most successful countries have passed through a capitalist phase.  By capitalist, I mean that the vast majority of the means of production is individually owned, there is little regulation, and there are few industries in market failure.  It is inherently an unstable circumstance: businesses will try to grow and dominate markets, and without limits, some will succeed and drive the others out.  It also tends to breed various labor abuses, including chattel slavery, wage slavery, debt slavery.  The capitalist era in the US ended with the rise of  "the guilded age" after the civil war.  Most "businesses" were family farms and most industries were small and isolated enough that there was no monopoly.  Interestingly some of the most successful were substantially sponsored by the government, e.g. the Springfield Armory.

  Those that profited most, and those who see only the opportunity to maximize profit and not the collateral damage of capitalism and the unique circumstances that make it possible are always trying to "revert" to capitalism.  Capitalism is highly transitional and can only thrive while there are literally hundreds of businesses in each market: enough to allow true competition and natural selection.

Oligarchist:
  What happens when a capitalist society fails to deal with market failure.  Individual businesses grow so large and powerful that they dominate their markets--often with tacit or explicit collusion from their competitors.  Before long they can afford to buy any regulation they may face.  Sometimes growth is for the good, but more often, the giant prioritizes profit over providing good service or decent wages.

Laissez Faire:
  There has never been a successful Laissez Faire society.  There are two failure modes: Chile and several others gave it a try but it went so badly they needed to put down near constant rebellions with extreme force, including secret disappearances.   The other way tends to last longer: it's called A Dark Age.  The tools of civil society break down--banditry is rampant and there is little or no distinction between bandits and police.  There is no rule of law. There are people who claim to advocate Laissez Faire.  They're profoundly ignorant.

There's also a political axis.  How leaders are selected and replaced, what powers they have, how they respond to popular opinion, etc.

Authoritarian:
   Leaders grab power by force, are free to do anything they want including manipulate the selection process.  They invariably are subject to frequent coups d'etat, especially after a previous leader dies.  There is usually extensive manipulation of media to quell almost constant grumbling from the powerless.  How the economy works, whether there is rule of law or not, etc., are separate issues.

Aristocracy:
  Leaders initially gain power by force but agree that replacement will be based on some predictable scheme, usually hereditary.  This tends to reduce the violence after a leader has died.   Again, the workings of the economy is separate.  Monarchy is a different name for the same thing.

Republic:
   Representatives gather and make decisions about what to do.  How the representatives are selected is based on various mechanisms--sometimes they're elected, sometimes they are land owners, Ancient Athens drew lots to decide who would lead, various other systems have been used.

Constitutional Monarchy:
   The same as a Republic but there is an aristocratic figurehead who may or may not have some power.

Democracy:
  The people vote on most things.  There have been no successful democracies larger than a few hundred voters.   All have either regressed in some way or have functionally been a republic.



Fascism is Authoritarian Oligarchy:  a dominant leader grabs and maintains power through alliance with monopolist or near monopolist businesses.  There are some stylistic things that usually accompany fascism: persecuted people who are supposedly the cause of all of these problems, state control of an extremely dishonest media, etc.  Technically, there are other ways to be Authoritarian Oligarchist, but fascism is the most common.

Chinese and Soviet Communism is Authoritarian Communism or Socialism.

There are several democratic socialist monarchies in western Europe: Holland, Sweden, etc.  Politically, these are republics but they retain a figurehead.  For example, functionally the German and Swedish political systems are pretty similar, but Sweden has a ceremonial king.  Saudi Arabia is an oligarchic aristocracy.  The US has regressed to its second oligarchic phase, having advanced to democratic socialism for most of the 20th century.   The current president has very, very strong authoritarian tendencies and we may go all the way to Fascism if we're not careful.