Are We Desperate Yet?
Yglesias provides the best argument yet for Canada-style socialized medicine: socialized medicine makes it easier for young folk to make music popular with wealthy American white kids! Sounds good to me. But is it even true?
A very quick glance at the Pitchfork best recent list reveals (without actual counting) something like 10% Canadianness. Is that high or low? I think Canada’s population is just shy of 10% the US’s. So that doesn’t strike me as Matt’s “indie rock dominance.” Oh well.
It’s true, though, that socialized medicine is probably the best deal when you you’re young and don’t actually need medical care. As Canadian medical entrepreneur Dr. Brian Day put it this New York Times article about Canada’s hungry uptake of newly legal private service:
This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.
Russ Roberts has more on the demise of the Canadian model.
February 28th, 2006 05:23
Hi Will,
I just wanted to say I loved your response to Michael Brendan Dougherty’s post on “morality” and markets.
- a libertarian from sioux city
March 8th, 2006 23:49
Dude, your math is wrong. If the Pitchfork list is 10 percent Canadian, then that means US acts outnumber Canuck acts 9:1, but the US population outnumbers the Canadian population 10:1. Perhaps more to the point, many non-Canadian bands aren’t American either. 10 percent Canadianness (assuming that’s the right number) is a lot of Canada.
For indie rock promotion purposes, at any rate, the relevant feature of the Canadian system is simply that it severs the employment-medicine link rather than its various other aspects.
March 12th, 2006 19:42
I don’t follow this at all. What does socialized medicine have to do with making music? Correlation doesn’t imply causality.
A better bit of Canadian socialism to blame is CanCon. Perhaps there are good music scenes in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto.
March 13th, 2006 00:24
Even if I had no preconceived opinions about socialized medicine, I’d hardly consider it a recomendation that it would help subsidize a proliferation of whiney and tuneless crackas who can’t play their instruments.