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Cake day: June 5th, 2025

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  • Let me explain. Our health care industry is part of our (mostly) global capitalist economy. That means investors demand the maximum profit the industry can produce. Imagine that this industry had the choice of providing an inexpensive one-time cure for cancer, or a long-term expensive treatment. Which option would generate the most profit for the industry? It doesn’t matter if there are people in the industry who would like to find a simple inexpensive cure. The board of directors is elected by the shareholders, which really means the largest and most ruthless capital owners. If the CEO or any officers approve research on an inexpensive cure that will threaten the profits of the corporation they will be ousted and replaced with someone who “sees the wisdom of using existing proven treatments”. So the built-in conflict of interest of a for-profit medical system means we will always be stuck with a system that extracts as much cash as possible from its patients.

    Are there alternatives to this approach? Of course, but they depart from a pure capitalist system, and so, at least in the US, we will never see them as long as we accept our current economic structure.





  • Why live? What’s the meaning of life? What’s the purpose of life? I hope I don’t have to explain that people have been asking this question since we first were able to form words and start thinking. You’re going to get as many different opinions to answer this question as there are people to write a response. You could spend a lifetime studying philosophy and not find a definitive answer. And in the end you just have to decide for yourself which answer most speaks to you. Are you atheist, materialist, spiritual, philosophical? Take your pick.

    Personally, I like Buddhist philosophy for these kinds of questions. And I suspect the Buddha would say that we are here because of craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and ignorance of our true nature and the true nature of reality. We live because we want to exist, we want to have experiences and feel the things that are available to us as living beings. Whether it’s food or sex or money or adventure or admiration or love we feel like getting the things we want will make us happy. The flip side of craving is aversion, where we feel like achieving separation from those things that are unpleasant will make us happy.

    Volumes have been written about this and it’s impossible to summarize well in a single post. But if it speaks to you there’s a lot more to say about it.