The following comes from an Oct. 11 piece by Robert Leeson, visiting professor of economics at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), on sfgate.com.
Economists typically assume that individuals seek to maximize their lifetime satisfaction – yet, when it comes to voluntary euthanasia, the law prohibits such a decision. Moreover, many dying people are beyond the stage where they can act according to this calculation; younger people are much better equipped to make this rational choice in advance.
At the beginning and the end of a working life, individuals should be free to decide about such matters. At the beginning, there might be a choice between buying end-of-life insurance (maybe with pre-tax dollars) in return for a reduction in Medicare tax; or accepting that end-of-life costs will be charged to – and recouped from – their estate. And at the end of a working life: a choice between receiving end-of-life care, or allocating those funds to grant oneself a metaphorical “immortality.”
For those opting out, such “immortality” could be provided through an annuity – an eternal income to a worthy cause of the individual’s choosing (a “named” scholarship, an annual charitable contribution, etc.). The end-of-life privately insured could be offered a cash payout in return for surrendering their policy. (Or public and private insurance could offer both choices.)
Medical co-payments assist rational decision-making: the private, unarticulated conversation that mumbles on in one part of our brain is confronted by the external reality of incentives (costs). This external conversation leads to actions that more closely resemble reported desired outcomes (for example, many tobacco smokers report that they would like to quit, but remain trapped in their habit. Increasing tobacco taxes nudges short-run outcomes toward the desired long-run result.) Public policy should assist such outcomes; without such intervention, the individual will likely make no decision at all – to the detriment of all concerned.
A large proportion of health care resources are allocated to a system in which the dying have their bodies – but rarely their lives – prolonged: in the United States, about 27 percent of Medicare’s annual budget is spent on final-year-of-life expenses. In advance, many would choose to forgo these last few months; but when death is close, there is no longer a legally available choice.
A prolonged death can drain more than societal resources; it can be traumatic for those who lose their parents and loved ones long before the funeral. Even if some final-year expenditures produce measurable benefits, these have to be weighed against alternative uses. There can be no objection to someone choosing to self-fund palliative care; neither can there be an objection to the taxpayer choosing to fund, for example, better infant mortality outcomes than end-of-life expenses.
The primary objections would be raised by those religious leaders who regard voluntary euthanasia as a sin. However, even the most devout recognize that religions are (at least in part) secular institutions. Religious doctrines change: Indulgences, for example, are no longer typically extracted in return for the promise of a reduction in the length of a sentence (purgatory). And some religions maintain that birth control is a sin – yet their followers practice the sin regardless. In a competitive market, religions that fail to adapt will lose their customers.
Moreover, most religions instruct that we are not just our bodies: We should behave with potential immortality in mind. Bodies can be kept alive long after life has any connection to conventional quality-of-life measures. While still free to choose, many would prefer secular “immortality” to a lingering, humiliating and incapacitated drift toward a rapidly approaching death.
To read the original article, click here.
I hope the usual detractors note the unimpeachable free-market credentials of the Hoover Institute and its long-standing function as an incubator of Republican party policies and candidates.
Brain S.
As a former Republican Officer, I will be the first one to admit that not all Republican party policies are moral and that goes for the Hoover Institute as well, besides he is just one of many in the Hoover Institute. Many in that Institute will strongly disagree with him.
Of course if you base your chances on Eternal Salvation on any secular organization, chances are you will come up far short on your judgment day!
May God have mercy on an amoral America!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
Cut to the chase folks, ObamaCare will absolutely lead to euthanasia. The anti-life fanatics depend on slick, supposedly well reasoned arguments to fool the populace. My, how Nazi of them.
What in the world?! If this person who has written this is of any influence, someone please get them into therapy (the Sacraments) so that they can recover from this illness. Then the rest of us ought to get heir name on a list to pray for their soul.
As a distant relative of President Herbert Hoover, I can tell you that he would be shocked and dismayed to learn that the organization which houses his papers and is named after him on the Stanford campus had provided a platform for a visiting professor to propose such an ungodly idea. As a peace-loving Quaker and a great lover of humanity, life and service, for which he never accepted a dime in salary, Herbert Hoover would have denounced such demented thinking, and quite rightly. He lived into his 90’s, and many of the family members are thriving at the same age and would not have wanted this kind of thinking to be associated with “Uncle Bert’s” good name.
Uncle Bert may be shocked, but the “free-market” globalist principles advocated by the Hoover Institute lead directly to the commodification of human beings and turning that advocacy into reality is exactly the business of the Institute. Their Fellows are a Who’s – Who of power players who use the work they publish as their enabling intellectual cover.
This advocate is no fringe player or crank. He is repeating the same arguments that have been and are repeatedly since at least Friedman and Hayek. Advocates of these arguments have dominated the Nobel prizes during the decades that governments have eliminated national boundaries from trade and investment.
Of course this has been opposed by the Popes, including Pope Francis very directly, unfortunately the concepts still number Catholics among their supporters.
Annonymous,
While Imay agree with most of what you wrote above, I still ask why you take the cowardly position of “Annonymous”?
May God have mercy on an amoral America!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
This piece was written by Robert Leeson, a visiting professor of economics at Stanford University and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. I went to Hoover Institutes website they have well over 100 names listed as contributors. As of this writing, Professor Leeson’s name is nowhere to be found. The original article did say that it would eventually be posted on the Hoover Institutes website. So far it is not.
All that being said Prof. Leeson sounds like a full blown Libertarian. While it is true that Libertarian’s often vote Republican, they can only be said to be “economic” conservatives and definitely not “social” conservatives. Even within the ranks of “establishment” Republican representatives, you will see a complete disdain for their “social conservative” base. They find us to be an utter embarrassment and an impediment to their cause.
Well, anyway, Hoover Institute is a “think tank” and this visiting fellow has “thunk”. I doubt that every contributor to Hoover would agree with him. As for myself, I find his comments godless and discusting!
Yes, Leeson is a visiting professor, meaning that the Hoover Institute has brought him to the country (from Australia) and is paying him to spread this idea. They are giving him a great honor, and it exactly because of thoughts like these. These are the thoughts that inform what are called “conservative” today.
Christians stand for faith, hope and love. Suicide is an admittance of hopelessness and a denial of both faith in God and love of man. Suicide? Just say no.
Government funded suicide? I have had enough of this Culture of Death mentality.
Death Panels.
In Obamacare they will be administered by the IRS and Social Workers. Just you wait.
Pope John Paul II was exactly right about the culture of Death.
Folks, it’s the Hoover Institution, not the Hoover Institute, and it is not an arm of the Republican party, even though Condileeza Rice has made it more famous in recent years.
Most of the comments here display a lack of understanding of the Hoover Institution, based primarily, I believe, on the person whose philosophy is the subject of this article. Misunderstanding has dogged the Hoover presidency and the Hoover Institution all these years, bringing to mind the old saying that there is nothing new under the sun.
Not an arm of the Republican Party? Oh well – who are you trying to defend here? The Hoover Institution, who funds the types of Leeson, or the Republican Party, who the Institution supports every election cycle?
At any rate, beyond Ms Rice, Hoover fellows include George Schultz, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Ed Meese, Herb Klein, Gary Becker, Pete Wilson, Victor Davis Hansen, Larry Diamond, Republican talking heads, all. Look through the Institution’s advocacies yourself, Maryanne, and find the last Democratic initiative it supported – if you can.
Brian S., “and find the last Democratic initiative it supported – if you can.”? Did you mean “Democrat” initiative? Are you talking about supporting the so called “right” to kill an unborn human being?
Sorry, but “democratic” is an adjective, the republican insistence on mangling the English language is petty and stupid.
I repeat, the Hoover Institution is not an arm of the Republican party, no matter what you may wish to infer from a partial list of the Hoover fellows you chose to select. Please remember that academia seeks to explore the worth of ideas based on their own merits and is rarely dictated to by any party, not even the Democratic party, to which most academics these days seem beholden, including the majority of those associated in any way with Stanford University, once upon a time a bastion of remarkable erudition and compassionate conservatism, and now in no way so described.
Actually what I said was that it is an incubator of Republican policies and candidates, which it certainly is. You erected the “arm of the Republican Party” straw man.
But your evolution on this matter is breathtaking. In your first post, you claimed that Herbert Hoover would be “shocked” and “dismayed” to see the Institution providing a platform for these ungodly ideas. In your last, you exclaim the virtue of academic freedom and celebrate the consideration of ideas “on their own merits”, including, apparently, these ungodly ones.
If the merits of an idea are non-existent, then it should be discarded, for sure, if not actively debated and/or denounced. In academia, all ideas are to be offered for discussion, and most of them will be discarded. Only a few superb ideas come forth in any debate, or from any one individual over the course of a lifetime, as most ideas are not original in any what whatsoever, nor are most worthy.
I never said this idea was worthy of any consideration whatsoever. It will likely be forgotten and ejected into the trashcan along with virtually every other idea of most human beings throughout their lifetimes. As will most, if not all, of yours and mine. Still, we should keep thinking, aloud or quietly, in company with others, who can help mankind move forward if ideas are considered carefully.
One of the alarming experiences of our day is to observe mankind moving in the opposite direction as traditional values are examined and found – not unworthy – but too difficult to bother with. To justify the resulting immorality, traditional religions such as Christianity are rejected without serious consideration, and are even subjected to ridicule.
As traditional values are discarded, traditional thinking is also rejected and even ridiculed, leaving society in a state of anomie, and shocking ideas will be more and more widely seen as the world searches for ways of redefining life and death and everything that happens in between. Some will even be adopted. It is wise to keep your ear to the ground, evaluate all ideas that come your way, and speak out. Each of us contributes to the culture of mankind, however quietly, and each of us is responsible to God and mankind for the ideas on which we base our lives and our legacy.
The values taught by Jesus Christ have flourished during the period of time when the vast majority of significant human progress has been made, and a practical thinker will bear that in mind when evaluating any new idea. If the concept is anathema to a Christian thinker, work toward its downfall.
I don’t expect this ungodly idea, which is to monetize life in order to determine whose life may be extended and whose ended, to be discarded.
Unfortunately, as the Hoover Institution’s sponsorship of this wretch makes clear, this idea unites the death panel advocates of the “left” with the libertarian economics of the “right”.
This idea is yet another example of how the culture of death advances through the unified efforts of supposed enemies while those entrusted with promoting the culture of life splinter around (among other things) the perceived unworthiness of their allies, assisted by political parties established to accomplish that splintering.