Christopher Stuart wrote:
> Joe's "constancy" is right.  Joe, you sure can sniff out a tax, I'll say that.

I do my best.

> By the way, Joe, I've been amused by your Jefferson e-mail tag for a long time but can't remember if I've ever commented on it:  "One man with courage is a majority" -- Thomas Jefferson.  I propose a revision:

Hey, now, pick on me all you want, but leave my man Tom alone :)

I notice Chris doesn't have a tagline on his messages at all, but given 
his general political orientation, I might suggest Karl Marx:  "From 
each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

Of course, I could deconstruct that in the manner that Chris applied to 
Jefferson's quote:  "From each according to how much we can forcibly 
extract from him ... to each according to how much some political 
apparatchik thinks he deserves ... with a healthy cut taken out of the 
middle for the care and feeding of bureaucrats."

The problem here is that Chris and I have a "religious" quarrel.  I can 
no more convert him from socialism to libertarianism than he can convert 
me from libertarianism to socialism.  To each of us, these are 
unshakable, core convictions.  Some folks are innately individualists 
(I'm proud to be one) and some of us are innately collectivists (Chris 
appears proud to be one).  It really boils down to the same kind of 
difference as Christianity vs. Islam, Tennessee vs. Alabama, shaken vs. 
stirred, or Red Sox vs. Yankees.  You pick your "team" early in life and 
you stick with 'em, win or lose.  Chris should be comforted, though, by 
the fact that at least among a university faculty, his "team" greatly 
outnumbers mine and is likely to score victories for the foreseeable future.

Gavin Townsend wrote:
> I'd wager a good number of our students would also endorse a fee (even a "tax"!) to cover the cost of full-service, free student health care for all current UTC students.

Well, there is a thought.  Instead of the socialist and libertarian 
faculty debating each other on whether or not the students would endorse 
such a concept, why don't we *ask* them?  Just like we did with the 
athletics "tax."  Oh, wait, we did ask them about that one, and they 
said no by a 3:1 margin, and our administration in its infinite wisdom 
imposed that tax anyway.  And, as all taxes tend to do, it has already 
gone up.  Imagine that.

Matthew Evans wrote:
> I hope the moral responsibility to help insure the health of fellow students would outweigh the desire to hold on to the dollars students could save letting others fend for themselves.

Ah, another player on Chris' "team."  A great example of collectivist 
thinking ... we have some divinely ordained "responsibility" to insure 
the health of others, which is apparently more significant than their 
own responsibility to take care of themselves.  I know both of these 
guys are sincere and probably really feel such a "responsibility" ... 
but I think it would be interesting to see how many of our students feel 
the same way, before implementing yet another tax without any effective 
representation on their part.  (And people wonder why we have a hard 
time significantly increasing enrollment.  People *do* vote with their 
feet, and Chattanooga State with much lower fees ... and taxes ... is 
right down the road.)

Hugh Prevost wrote:
> In this year's
> discussions for health services, we realized that we must find a
> solution to this problem.   The possible answers are two-fold-propose and
> adopt a student health fee or require all UTC students to purchase a
> standard insurance policy.

The possible answers are many-fold.  Keeping the status quo is always an 
option, unless one has a solution(s) looking for a problem to "solve." 
Both of Hugh's proposals are forcibly imposed, collectivist "solutions" 
to a problem that only exists for a limited number of students.  Change 
is not always bad, but neither is it always good.  And one size, despite 
what we are often told, does not fit all.  Again, could we actually 
*ask* the students what they would like to do before cramming this down 
their throats?  And I don't mean a select group like the SGA officers, 
but the student body at large, as in the athletic "fee" vote.  Except 
this time, maybe we should *listen* to what they have to say?

Chris Smith wrote:
> Is health care a privilege or a right? In my mind ... it is both ...

This indicates a misconception of the nature of rights vs. privileges. 
A right is something you can do on your own, without someone else's 
permission, and is based in the idea of property; a privilege is 
something you have to ask for someone else's permission or cooperation 
to do because it involves their property.  It's like eating:  I have the 
right to eat my own food, that I grew myself, or acquired honestly from 
someone else (by them giving it to me, or them voluntarily exchanging it 
to me for something else, such as money).  I own it, I have the right to 
eat it (or throw it in the garbage if I want to).  I do *not* have the 
right to eat my neighbor's food.  He may invite me to his house for 
dinner and give me the privilege of eating his food, but it is his to 
give freely, not mine to demand.

Health care is the same way.  I have the right (and the responsibility) 
to care for my own health, but no right to force anyone else to do it 
for me.  It is government artificially decreeing such a "right" where 
none exists that has distorted the once (nearly) free market that 
existed in health care before LBJ's awful "Great Society" programs and 
resulted in the crazed hybrid system of supposedly "private" (but 
government subsidized and regulated) insurance programs and HMOs, 
coupled with socialist government programs like Medicaid and TennCare, 
that despite billions and billions of spending of other people's money, 
*still* allow many people to "fall through the cracks."

Joe "Jefferson" Dumas

-- 
Joe Dumas, Ph.D.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Computer Science & Electrical Engineering
Dept. 2302
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37403
Phone:  (423) 425-4084
Fax:  (423) 425-5442
E-mail:  [log in to unmask]

Notice:  This correspondence should be considered a public record
and subject to public inspection pursuant to the Tennessee Public
Records Act.

"One man with courage is a majority." -- Thomas Jefferson

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