ObamaCare: Morally Right and Mathematically Wrong
by Steve Consilvio 

Obama gave a great address to the nation regarding the need for healthcare reform, but it was right and wrong at the same time. 

He was right that we need to stop kicking the can, and leaving problems for the next generation to solve. He was right, as was Ted Kennedy, that healthcare is a moral issue. He was right that healthcare and the deficit and the health of the economy are related issues. 

He was wrong if he thinks that combining the best ideas of the Left and Right will solve these problems. In fact, the Democrats and the Republicans are consistently wrong. As we incompetently try to deal with huge symptoms with arcane subtleties, the final victor will be the laws of mathematics. The laws of mathematics are not swayed by majority rule, checks and balances, or political and cultural traditions. 

Let me be clear: our problems are wholly related to the laws of mathematics. Nothing more, nothing less. Until we accept and respect the laws of mathematics, all the moral angst of one thousand generations will have no effect on solving anything. Any system that is mathematically flawed must fail. Call a system by any name; Socialism, Capitalism, Communism, Islamism, Monarchy, Papism, Humanism, Secularism, etc., they are all subject to the laws of mathematics. 

Once any government coins, spends, and taxes its first penny, continental, yen, ruble, pound or whatever money is called in the local currency, the system is mathematically doomed if ages-old bad habits are followed. In modern times, because we have created paper money, inflation and the money supply are both infinite. The problem is not in the government exclusively. Government is only half of the problem. The other half is the private sector. 

The question we should be asking is, ‘what are the government and the private sector both doing to create the mathematical phenomenon of boom and bust, inflation, concentrations of wealth and poverty?’ Mathematical events must have a mathematical explanation. 

Those who trust free competition believe the system will automatically self regulate. This is perhaps the single most absurd idea on the planet, but it is based loosely on the concept of cause and effect. I suppose, a monkey with a typewriter will eventually bang out War and Peace. It is mathematically possible, but statistically improbable that it will occur in a time-frame that would be beneficial to anyone alive during this century. 

Those who trust a regulated system, like what President Obama proposed, assume that you can regulate cause and effect through a series of perpetual adjustments. In fact, cause and effect cannot be ‘regulated.’ Like the Sun, it simply exists. We can get burnt, or warmed, or grow food using the power of the Sun, but we cannot regulate the Sun itself. Nor can we regulate the laws of mathematics. There is no such thing as a ‘peaceful co-existence’ outside the laws of cause and effect. The laws of mathematics do not compromise with majority rule, anything or anybody. 

So what then is our problem? In a nutshell, we have a divided private sector. Non-profit organizations are illogically trying to co-exist with for-profit corporations, and both are subject to government mismanagement. Nobody in this triad is respecting the laws of mathematics. Whether we champion a church or private charity, universities and non-profits, large corporations or small businesses, manufacturers or financial services, local government or federal government, the elderly or the young, the weak or the strong, there is a mathematical component to every transaction. ‘Buy low-sell high' has consequences. Revenue by taxes, profits, wages or donations are different names for the same mathematical event. One person’s revenue must be another’s expense. Just as every transaction is imbalanced, so too must the whole. The micro is the macro.

Every transaction in the economy has a mathematical echo. The goods or services are consumed, but the mathematical value of what was created never expires. The Federal Debt of $13 trillion represents the cumulative value of every transaction for the last 230 years of American history. Other nations have their own numbers, in their own currency. It is all the same phenomenon. 

Health-care, food, housing, education and transportation are all fundamental needs of the human species. Naturally, as the numbers surge or implode, there must be a crisis in one or more of these areas. Since we are also a part of these industries for our own livelihood, whatever goes around must also come around. 

Bernie Madoff’s victims, for example, were not really victims at all. They simply experienced mathematical cause and effect. The predator was transformed into the prey. Elie Weisel said of Madoff, ‘We thought he was God,’ because of the returns he delivered. After all his years of writing, Weisel does not understand why Hitler hated the Jews. The suffering of others is always morally acceptable for those who benefit from the suffering. That is the moral double-standard that is always being applied anew. Moral failure is when the rich take advantage of the poor, or when the strong bully the weak.

We can serve greed or we can serve God, but we cannot serve both. Obama is continuing a falsehood with his reforms that it is possible to serve the marketplace and one another. To stimulate profits with automakers with one hand, and try to rein in health-care costs with the other, is absurd. 

In a cannibalistic system, which competitive capitalism represents, everyone must get a turn in the pot. Cause and effect has no mercy, nor do the laws of mathematics. This is what the Golden Rule is meant to teach. 

Mercy is a uniquely human trait. To create a world of mercy between generations, then the existing generation must make changes to the status quo of institutionalized mathematical predation, which ‘buy low-sell high’ represents. The next generation cannot fix the problem. We must be the ones to stop kicking the can. We must all change our habits, and thinking, regarding money. 

Progress depends upon being better than past generations. What Congress is debating is mathematically pointless, even though it will offer some short-term relief to some people. Instead, we should do these five things: 

1. Abolish all debts in the country. 
2. Restructure the economy based on non-profit businesses. 
3. Create a new currency with a fifty year expiration. 
4. Distribute the currency in equal amounts to every citizen. 
5. Abolish all forms of insurance. 

Usually, some of these changes occur as a result of a war and the total destruction of the infrastructure. Thus far, we have managed to avoid a second civil war. We even have a Black man as President. We have to keep moving forward, and solving the moral and mathematical problems. Cause and effect can be our friend, but we must respect the laws of mathematics. 

The endowments of the universities, the cost of education, the inflation of land and housing must inevitably create a volatile and divided economy. We cannot want one number to go down (expenses) while desiring another number to go up (profits and wages). They are both connected. We need a steady and stable system, which ‘buy low-sell low’ (non-profit) represents. 

Politics will surely follow the economic divide. If history has demonstrated anything, it is that gluttony cannot co-exist with misery forever. What goes around must come around. The fear that surrounded the Presidential address to the schoolchildren is sign of just how paranoid we have become of one another. Plato said that courage is knowing what not to fear. Fear the math. Fear God. All of the prophets have warned against profit. Math is the moral issue, not just healthcare. 

Ted Kennedy could not solve the problem because he never confronted the reality of his family’s wealth. Rich and poor is a simple mathematical phenomenon. The rich take more than they give. The poor give more than they take. To have equality, we must give and take in equal proportions. Going from rags to riches is the American tragedy. One man climbs out by pushing another in. 

Profits and hoards are unnecessary; we only need to break-even. Trade is a global assembly line. Eliminating profits creates an economy without debts, without inflation, without taxes, but the free flow of useful and necessary goods and services continues. The human population can enjoy steady growth and consumption, without bust or poverty.

We were all born into this imbalanced system. It is our responsibility and fault if we perpetuate the imbalance. That is why the first step must be forgiving all debts. Debt is the can that is being kicked. The wealthy and powerful must give up their illusion that money is real. It is only a tool to facilitate trade. We can not collectively thrive or survive using money as a weapon.

We have institutions in place to correct our errors. These same institutions also commit errors.

Obama said to Congress, ‘We did not come to fear the future.  We came here to shape it.” The same is true for every person. Money is a chisel in each of our hands. 'We the people' determine the future shape of our society in every transaction we make. 'Buy low-sell high,' or 'buy low-sell low?' We have freedom of choice. The laws of mathematics will reward what is right, and punish what is wrong.

Every significant change in history has included the creation of a new currency. The first act after signing the Declaration of Independence was creating a new currency. When the Berlin Wall fell in Germany, a new currency was created. When one nation occupies another, the baseline of the cultural invasion is for the occupied country to use the invader’s currency. America shipped tons of cash to Iraq, for example. Hitler issued a new currency for the occupied nations. Money is always at the root of our problems. Rather than facilitating trade, profit disrupts trade.

While we print ‘In God We Trust’ on the currency, there comes a point when we must actually trust God and reason. The healthcare crisis is not caused by the small minority that are uninsured, it is caused by the old bad habits of the majority. This is commonsense.