Hughesair (Inflection Point)
Retired physician and air taxi operator, science writer and part time assistant professor, these editorials cover a wide range of topics. Mostly non political, mostly true, I write more from a lifetime of experience and from research, more science than convention. Subjects cover medicine, Alaska aviation, economics, technology and an occasional book review. Globalization or Democracy documents the historical roots of Oligarchy, the road to colonialism and tyranny
Alaska Floatplane: AVAILABLE ON KINDLE
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
The Devil promises a utopia of worry-free egalitarianism beckoning you to an Orwellian hell of despondency.
Its a matter of giving or taking. Work for your family and community supporting the common good, or take from the wealth of those who produce and promise benefits to those who do not and those destroyed by the theft of their own creation.
Friday, June 21, 2024
National Debt
If the Fed were to issue new Bonds at varying maturities, call them P Bonds for people, and use these new bonds to pay down the the outstanding US debt to a functional level, and then credit these P Bonds to all US citizens, it might solve the debt crisis. The American people would own the debt which they already do but would now own the asset and receive the interest.
This strategy would return wealth to the middle and lower class from which it was stolen by bad management and return the assets to where it will grow the economy and the velocity of the GDP.
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Medical Education
From the perspective of fifty years of medical practice, almost everything the medical bureaucracy did to reduce cost and improve care made it worse.
As with any problem, education might best be the starting point. Medical schools must lead the Renaissance of education, six years with a PhD degree and a much more vital role in continuing education and research. There is a need for much more science education in AI, the genome, and quantum physiology.
Older physicians should rotate back to their medical schools on fellowships. Research should come in balance with high volume clinical care at graduated low cost. Research must occur in medical schools, not corporations, drug companies, or secret laboratories. Subsidizing medical schools heavily will save wasted dollars elsewhere. The medical school clinics will ensure equal access to all and the highest standard of care.
Get corporations out of medicine. A hospital CEO has no business receiving a multimillion-dollar salary. Hospitals do not need a CEO but an administrator and a highly organized nursing staff. The same applies to corporation sponsored insurance. Corporations might provide insurance but should not restrict the choice of providers, nor should insurance companies. Doing so for quality reasons had the opposite effect. Family doctors quit in droves or went into other specialties. Robert Kennedy Junior's book may be controversial, but he validly criticizes corporate capture.
Subsidize primary care physicians with RN salary coverage and a small reimbursement for clinic overhead as a visit charge. This subsidy must support after-hour telephone coverage and cover-physician availability. No more, "If this is an emergency, hang up and call 911."
End mandatory guidelines. Guidelines are helpful but are inflexible, do not evolve well, do not cover everything, and, most significantly, do not cover multiple problems. Multiple problems are more often the case and frequently contradictory to the guidelines. Reduce the cost of CME and board examinations. Subsidize both. Give back responsibility for credentialing to the county medical society or state society akin to the lawyer's bar. It would be further helpful for county societies to have cooperative help from legal colleagues.
Perinatal care needs a limitation to liability, especially for the physician attending a delivery. Liability issues plague the dismal neonatal mortality rates. Some protection is necessary to allow family doctors and obstructions to risk obstetric work and give common access to prenatal care.
The distribution of healthcare remains a problem. Medical schools might provide extensions to rural areas. Six years of medical school would yield more clinical and laboratory research and the providers necessary for rural healthcare coverage, quality and access.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Economics 101
Lecture 101
1. Gross, Domestic Product
a. GDP = V x M1
b. 25.74t = 1.29 x 19.82 x 1012 (t)
c. Velocity was 15 as recently as 2008 before housing crisis
2. Sectorial Balances
a. S + (Imp - Exp) = I + (Gov Spend – Rev)
b. S = consumer or demand side wealth
c. I = Foreign and domestic supply side excess profit
3. Capital Divergence / Global Trade
a. Decreases Demand Side Wealth (Middle Class)
b. Decreases economic Volume (productivity)
c. Increases Supply Side Investments & Oligarchs
d. Increases Government Spending
4. Elasticity of Demand
a. Calculates sales volume / price change
b. Critical Margin
c. Company w/ narrow margin raises price.
5. Inflation
a. Government spending
b. Credit easing
c. Low interest rates
d. Restricting fossil fuel production
e. COVID lockdown, pent up demand
f. Inherent instability of inflation
6. FED Failure
a. Phillips Curve, supply & demand
b. Reluctant return to Work, 2/3 stay home
c. Depressed private sector. Thriving supply side
i. Contradiction, pent up and depressed
ii. Non-discretionary vs discretionary
iii. Decreased sales, increased prices
7. Productivity, Velocity, Tighten M1
a. Small increase in Velocity = > GDP
b. Decrease government spending
c. Ways to increase activity
8. Staged Layoffs of non-productive
a. Unemployment in measured weekly number
b. Thus, the Phillips Curve for dis-inflation
c. Productivity from previously non- productive
9. Gold Standard (Conjecture)
a. What might happen? $1,000 = 1 oz gold
b. Might the government declare a J’oublie to discharge debt ?
Friday, April 26, 2024
Inflation Again
supply and demand drives inflation as with most anything else. post COVID
supplys were limited, workers refused to return to work, some never. The Fed
focused only on unemployment rates (Economists call that relationship the
Phillips Curve) and the stockmarket, attempted to control inflation with high
interst rates as if the cause was an over inflated economy. The strategy did not
work, no suprise. Was the strategy, synical, ignorent or a planed deception.
Causes
1 Labor shortage
2 Excess money supply
3 Supply shortage
4 Decreased merchant volumn, defensive pricing
(unstable vicious circle in combination)
Stock market has more to do with capital divergence and excess profit from massive imports and division of labor, but inflation also to a degree.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Saturday, April 06, 2024
Inflation
The Fed containing inflation with intrest rates to the point of unemployment, is like treating pneumonia with blood letting.
Try treating inflation by reducing the number of government employees.
With weekly layoffs, the Fed could adjust the numbers of layoffs from week to week to achieve what higher interest rates could not.
Newly ununemployed would be less willing to pay inflated prices.
The Fed could thus achieve an end to inflation, and lower interst rates as well.
A lower ratio of government employees versus productive employees in the private sector could be a plus as well.
Friday, March 08, 2024
Wireless Charging
Problems challenge the transition to electric vehicles. The grid lacks capacity and interconecion. The grid fails to keep pace with peak demand and disaster-based internuptions. It costs too much. It takes too long to charge EVs. There are too few charging stations.
Burying the grid beneth highways, however, can solve all of there problems. Inductive charging, as you drive over these cables can directly charge your batteries without the infrastructure needed for charging stations.
Cables beneath an extensive highway system might better serve connectivity, security, and continuity of the electric grid.
Ggovernment subsidies might better support cheap electricity and a vastly improved interconnected grid.
Sunday, February 25, 2024
DEI vs the Soul of Medicine
The Soul of Western Medicine
The medical profession has a soul, part religious, part scientific, and very much an entangled intimacy.
DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion destroyed the soul of Medicine much the way totalitarian political censorship. Propaganda and political correctness destroyed the Republic. DEI argues, "Poor doctors will better care for the poor."
Lawrence Weed, a professor of Medicine at Dartmouth, wrote a book, Medicine in Denial, in which he insisted that much of the excess cost and poor outcome in US medicine resulted from a lack of standardization. He advocated enforceable guidelines and algorithms for physicians and surgeons akin to airline pilots following strictly published procedures. Weed had great credibility as the champion of problem-oriented medical record charting, furthered by an enthusiasm for evidence-based medical care. Decades later, we experience a mindless top-down totalitarian framework for medical decisions that eliminates medical judgment and results in yet more expensive healthcare, worse outcomes, loss of continuity, and lower longevity numbers.
A thousand years ago, the church dictated health care. Medicine struggled from antiquity against mythology, religion, and greed. Today, we add an autocratic bureaucracy. DEI seeks compliant providers who do not question the profit-oriented guidelines provided by corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats
Sunday, February 11, 2024
Royalists
Brzezinski 1969 quote
In 1969 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, “The nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force. International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation state.”