A Funny Encounter, or sad?

So I ran into someone on the street.
He asked me if I am from China. I said yes. Then he said he has a friend who went to China. Without my asking how was it, he said "She told me in China, no one can practice any religion, except for tai chi".
I was stunned for a second. and said "what?, tai chi?"
"Yes" he continued, "she also told me the emperor does not like christianity, or what is that person called again, not emperor, you know china is a communist country, so do you guys call him dictator?"
"President, actually", I replied, at a loss how to explain to him what my perspective is"
"yeah, president", he continued, but probablly not so convinced that we also use such a term. He went on to tell me things that made me wonder if I ever lived in China.
Don't get me wrong. I like this fellow. He is a superb man from other parts of our conversation, not on china.
But it strikes me as horrifying that in US, some people still cling to such an outdated view of China. That impression is probably true 40 years ago when China was in the cultural revolution.
What can I say? When we move to a place that is foreign, and when we have language barriers, and when we move there with prejudices, our perception of that place will be quite wrong. Maybe we enclose ourselves too much to protect ourselves and we never even ventured to see the true place.
We trust anecdotes too much. It is more personal than hard facts. After all, a trusted friend told me so. Just as we need to take a grain of a salt with what eye witness say in court due to many cognitive bias, personal perceptions could easily go way off when the subject is complicated and hard to comprehend.
Maybe I should not think of this too much. This is after all, an encounter, and will be an anecdote, isn't it?

Life, not for sale, but for purchase

One thing that makes people uncomfortable about universal health insurance is so called death panel, where health care has to be rationed among people.
It is sad, but it is not outrageous.
Some people argued that you cannot put a price on life.
Well, not for sale, but for purchase.
What do I mean? There is a maximum price one is willing to pay for his life! This is quite obvious, since people are putting a price on their life all the time. When opting out of insurance, when not seeing the doctor when not feeling well, or when choosing to take indirect flight to save money. At least, they are putting a price on a partial life---in a probablistic sense.

So how much are you selling your life? You may ask?

There isn't a price! Hence my title, life, not for sale but for purchase.

This seems most bizzare and irrational. Not really, when it is for sale, I possess my life, and at this point I value it infinitely. When it is for purchase, I do not possess my life, and there is only finite amount I am willing to pay for it. The fundamental effect is income effect, as economists call it.

If you really insist, then let me explain it in a trivial example. Suppose life gives you certain utility $U_0$, and money gives you some utility $U(c)$ where c is money. Of course it is concave. Suppose you total utility is the sum of these two. The optimization problem is
\[
U(c)+U_0\; or \; U(c+p)
\]
for selling life, and
\[
U(c-p)+U_0\;or \; U(c)
\]
for buying life.
One can easily show that as long as $U(\cdot)$ is bounded above, given a high initial c, there is no price for life for sale. In that situation, there will always be a price for buying life.

So which concept is more relevant? In the medical context, buying life is more more relevant.

time inconsistency and the evolution of policies

Just something random came to my mind.
Imagine there is a National Park that is open to public. Every year some visitors ran into accidents. The public begins to demand a rescue team to help out. Sure, no problem. The government set up a rescue team. To cover the cost, every one must pay an insurance fee before entering the National Park.

"That is not fair!" some protested, "We don't need that stupid rescue team! We are never like those stupid duechbags, we stay in line and we know our stuff!" Yeah yeah, why should those cautious hikers subsidize those reckless fools?

No problem, the coverage is voluntary. But one must make up his mind before entering the National Park. Either covered or not. One cannot get himself into deep sh*t and sign up for the insurance.

All is well for a while. Then some day, one guy got into big problem. Fell from a cliff and broke his leg. What is worse, he chose NOT to have the insurance. The rescue team did not help, and he died. The public was furious. How could this government agency stand by to watch a life disappear when it could deliver the help! When a life is at risk, the stupid government agency is still thinking about the stupid money! We need CHANGE!

Sure, you want change, and you are granted a change in a democratic government (though it is never guaranteed if it is for better or for worse). So the director of the rescue team was sacked and publicly humiliated. The new director was careful, and when this happened again, he sent his man.

Soon enough, fewer people want to pay the insurance fee. After all, they will still send out the men if I need help, won't they? As fewer people pay for it, to keep a balanced budget, the rescue team increased the price. Sure enough, even fewer people pay for it. After a couple of rounds, no one is paying for it. The rescue team is bankrupt.

So it is dissolved. The public was not happy, and sure enough the government bail it out. We gonna fund you.

And they live happily ever after. Except, many people never realize that now everyone is paying for the rescue team, whether you are a hiker or not. How so? It sounds condescending for me to even point out that the government money has to come somewhere. Yeah, the tax payers. No government generate its own money (though at least in China, many fail to understand this subtle point despite their high international rankings in math). Probably less well-off people in general do not go to that National Park that often. It is usually a vacation place for the more well-to-do. So we now have a more regressive tax.