Obama, getting crushed in the marketplace

Six weeks after the grand opening of Obama's iHealthcare doohickey, a grand total of 50`000 people have managed to join in.

To illustrate just how facemeltingly bad that number is :

1. That's 50`000 out of a total 319`000`000 people that should be covered. It's a case of 0.015%, rather than just being 50`000.
2. The entire predicate of the effort was that the new system would be more inclusive than the old system, which other than providing so called "progress" and the vaunted "change", would also lessen the financial burden of running the thing. The old system included at least to some degreeⁱ well over 200`000`000 people, with a view towards 250`000`000. So in this perspective the 50`000 isn't 50`000 but more like negative 199`950`000 to negative 249`950`000 people. Or moreover, it's not a case of 0.015% success, it's a case of 99.99% failure.
3. Those 50`000 aren't even a random sample of the population. It stands to reason that people who are truely desperate, people who need coverage right now are more likely to spend their little time and strain their limited understanding to get on this list of promised miracles than are their more successful, less needy and more capable neighbours, who probably to this day still fail to give a shit about what Obama thinks, says or does. Wealth and power insulate one from idiocy thusly, that's why they're good things after all.
4. The reported signups aren't actually a very good measure, in that the 50`000 figure does not represent 50`000 actual people who have in fact obtained coverage and are now contractually covered. The 50`000 figure merely represents people who have completed the paperworking step, dealing with the government red tape.ⁱⁱ Whether any company actually signed them up or ever will is, according to Obama's own bureaucrats, entirely up in the air and simply unknowable. Isn't bureaucracy greatly useful ?

There is no spinning out of this. Apple, offering its various products to a market much much narrower than 319`000`000 individual consumers, has not yet to date sold 50`000 units on any one launch. The iPod, the iPad, the iPhone or the iDildo have all had much better receptions. 3DO, a company you never heard of which went out of business for this reason sold its now forgotten console by the million units in what counted as a "lukewarm" launch and flagging performance. The Slinky sold its initial run within 90 minutes of launch seventy years ago and continues to sell well today.

A smartphone, a gaming console or a length of spring steel are all significantly cheaper than health insurance, they all reflect much less of a commitment on either party. And while they target much much narrower consumer pools, even failed launches of smartphones, gaming consoles or silly toys far outstripped the results of Obama's folly.

Now then, let us sit and learn, again, for the nth time : socialism is always defeated in the marketplace. That is all. There is no point arguing with idiots that ended up with a Stanford degree on the basis of Stanford being legally required to dole out each year some of its degrees to niggers whether those niggers deserve them or not, whether those niggers earned them or not. There is no point arguing with idiots that ended up with a Nobel Peace Prize on the grounds that the Nobel committee decided it must finally bury that antiquated piece of nonsense in a sea of irrelevance and ridicule. Simply let them do whatever it is they think they should and can do, then laugh while they struggle to explain what just happened in terms that avoid any "and then I got totally owned by the marketplace, because I'm too fucking stupid to live". It was the kulaks and the wreckers that did it, right ? Thought so.

And now that we're done discussing offensively stupid niggers (such as the current US president, I wish to clearly state and thickly underscore), let's talk for a moment of they who really got the short end of the stick in this deal.

When we talk of the poor we usually think of the thieves and prostitutes, of the drug abusers and illiterate crowds gathering on Reddit and whatnot. We think of the obnoxious stupid poor, as the most vocal and bothersome subset of that unfortunate and unhappy social group. However, not all poor people are obnoxiously stupid. In fact, the millitantly idiotic are but a minority among the poor.

Most poor people are just that, poor. The don't think they're owed anything in particular by anyone either in particular or in general, they don't spend the time they don't have howling in Parliament or generally getting in the way of their betters. They just do every day the best they can to try and navigate a very demanding situation, to come down Shit Creek without the use of a paddle.

If they had a lot of knowledge they wouldn't be poor. But they don't have a lot of knowledge. If they had a lot of leisure they wouldn't be poor. But they don't have a lot of leisure. If they had a lot of resources they also wouldn't be poor. But they don't have a lot of resources. All they have, practically speaking, is hope, and that minimal asset often isn't very much and gets stretched quite thinly over a large and growing set of liabilities.

So when these people, who don't have a lot of time, take the time they don't have to navigate a Kafkian hell of confusing, ill designed, dysfunctional gauntletry, when these people who don't have a lot of resources take the resources they don't have to try and fulfill whatever conditions a scummy idiot put before them as toll on their hope so he may feed his vanity by it all, when these people who don't have a lot of knowledge strain the little they do have and wrack their brains to make sense of the enacted idiocy of an escaped African village shaman all in the hope that who knows, maybe this way they resolve a problem, a problem they have, a problem of theirs, a problem which is probably pressing, and desperate, and is holding them by the throat with a steel claw half preventing every breath like the problems of the poor usually do but then don't actually get anything for their trouble I get pretty fucking angry.

It's one thing to try and scam me, Hussein Barrack Scumlord. It's one thing to try and scam me, when I have the resources and the connections and the power to smack you over your stupid head so bad every stray mongrel in Kenya recognises the yelps. I'm untouchable, because I'm rich, because I'm powerful, because I can afford to not give a shit about all the scummy shit you pull any more than I actually care about any other Bitcoin "financier" in his own head and Internet scammer at large. You're no skin off my back with your stupid, ill baked schemes, unfit for Junior High as they may be.

It's quite another thing when you cavallierly take the five free hours an unfortunate McDonalds cashier has at her disposal this month, it's quite another thing when a marginally socially adjusted person with mild retardation accomplishes a lot with their meagre means according to what you asked and then lives to see nothing come of it because what you asked of them was a stupid thing to ask and you had no reason to be the one asking in the first place, it's quite another thing when some guy with the thousand teeth of sickness gnawing at his guts spends his last five dollars on an hour of rented net time to complete your scheme for "progress" and gets exactly as much as if he had bought lottery tickets for it.

It's quite another thing, and the evil that you are, Hussein Barrack Scumlord, the evil that you are can never be washed. By no one, through no process, there is no grace to redeem you, there is no agency which may forgive this. You will take to your grave, alongside the aloof mask of smug idiocy, uncomprehending, imagining itself misunderstood, you will take with you to your grave the guilt of having wasted some time, some money, some effort from the hands of those who could least afford such luxury.

You are a very bad man. Go away.

1. Any degree is better than "none", you know. [↩]
2. In other words, there's quite a difference between a dating site on which 50`000 people have made accounts and a dating site on which people have gone on 50`000 first dates. [↩]