[inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter. Follow us to get publishing news, scheduling updates, author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. Twitter. Com booktv. Pulitzer prizewinning science and Technology Reporter john markoff, whose work appears in the New York Times, talks about the current and future relationship between humans and robots. John markoff has been seeing around the corners of the future as one of the nations Top Technology writers since he joined the New York Times in 1988. In 2013 he won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting as part of a team of New York Times reporters. Hes a frequent host and moderator for our revolutionary series, and we love john for all of these reasons. But we have a special affection for john for other reasons as well. He is a child of Silicon Valley. He grew up and went to high school here. He started covering technology in Silicon Valley in 1976. His vivid book, what the doormouse said, illuminated the influence of the 60s counterculture of the valley on the personal computing revolution, and he did so in a way no one else had or has. And now once more he looks around the corner toward a new future of technology with his brilliant book machines of loving grace the quest for Common Ground between humans and robots. If youre keen enough to catch the literary reference in the phrase what the doormouse said, you may also understand the cultural reference of this books title. It comes from a 1967 poem by Richard Brodigan which in its entirety said this i like to think it has to be of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters and all watched over by machines of loving grace. [laughter] if that was brodigans vision almost 50 years ago when he was resident poet at cal tech, were here tonight to probe the proto socktive question provocative question loving grace or Something Else . Please join me in welcoming john markoff. [applause] welcome. Thank you. Youre among friends. This is the home team. Hey, hi. [applause] a little excited. I should be in that seat, shouldnt i . Well, you mostly are. And, of course, my nightmare is you were going to start asking can me questions, which is just going to be a disaster because i dont know anything about this, john. Youre the expert. You know, i mentioned that youre a child of Silicon Valley, and youve mentioned it a lot when youve been here. Its often something that gets interjected into your interviews, and i just want to ask you what has it meant to you to be a Technology Writer with so much of your personal dna coming from Silicon Valley . Well, what has it meant to me . It took me a long time, i mean, as a kid i didnt realize i was in a special place. I had no idea. I actually played in the hewletts house when i was in the first grade. I delivered papers at the house that steve jobs and larry page lived in. I like to say there goes the neighborhood. [laughter] and, you know, i actually wrote my last book, doormouse, because i left the bay area and went to the northwest for almost a decade, and it was kind of an antiautobiography. I came back, and i discovered there was this amazing new industry, the personal computer industry, and i wanted to find out how it got there. And, you know, it started as a series of oral histories which i love doing. So, you know, its certainly the air breathe in a sense. I grew up with it. You know, its also, its so generational. I grew up with a particular generation, ask now, you know and now, you know, the valleys moved on in a literal sense. Theres a wonderful piece of research that was done about a year ago by Richard Florida whos a sociologist, and what he did was he georotated the center of Silicon Valley by current Venture Capital investments. Once upon a time the center was in santa clara, and now its at the foot of the ill hill. And you can feel that. Its gone from being a Manufacturing Center to a marketing and design center. Its a very different place, and generationally i feel like im barely in touch with it. I went up to the science section this 2010 which is kind of a museum piece at the New York Times culturally. So i look at it, and, you know, i grew up as a reporter, and it was like swimming in this sea. I mean, it was, you know, i was part of a group of people, and now im distant from that sea which is still very much, is very real. And so in that sea, because youve seen a lot of other oceans around the world as youve covered technology and now science, before we get to the robots part of this have you ever been able to discern what it is about Silicon Valley that sets it apart from so many other laces that are trying to capture places that are trying to capture this mojo . Well, there have been moments. Personally, the moment i got Silicon Valley, there was a point in time where i sort of thought i understood it, what sets Silicon Valley apart. It was probably in 1981. The ibm pc had just come out. There was something called the big blue Computer Company big blue, it was a computer hobbyist group. Big blue something. They met at no, it wasnt home brew. It was an ibm pc group, and it met in sunnyville. It had the same flavor as the home brew, but the ibm pc was the new thing on the block. I went to the meeting, captain crunch was wandering around, it was 300 guys in white shirts and pocket protectors. [laughter] and it was guys, you know . And the San Jose Mercury tech reporter, really a great reporter, she basically interviewed this audience of people like you. And at one point she said how many of you people want to start your own company . And threequarters of the hands went up. And i went, oh, i get it. I mean, at that point it was very clear that people felt deeply that if they had a good idea, they could start a company, and that was part of the dna of Silicon Valley. Thats really what stuck with me as sort of what separates the valley. I moon, theres other, theres other bits of history. So i always used to tell the story when people say, you know, why did Silicon Valley happen here . Well, the first point is that shockley came back here because his mother was here, right there so it was this serendipitous thing. And then there was this other point which i think is important, and that is the first at t antitrust lawsuit, one of the deals that at t made with the government in the 1950s was the mandatory free licensing of transistors. That hadnt happened, no Silicon Valley. And then there was this thing that happened in congress that allowed the creation of Venture Capital, and somehow the synergy of those three things, you know, ive always sort of said thats what the valleys about. Except i learned something new from david brock who wrote the biography of gordon moore, moores law, recently. And brock was and this is in my book because i just thought it was the most wonderful piece of research. He was in the archives looking through shockleys papers, and he stumbled across this threepage memo that shockley wrote in, i think, 51 or 52, probably 52, before he left bell labs. And he made this impassioned case for bell labs to build something he called an automatic, trainable robot. And you read this thing, as a matter of fact, rod brooks who started rethink robotics baxter sort of stripped he just gave his employees the text of this document, and nobody could tell, you know, what the date was. I mean, he really sort of laid out the notion of what a device like baxter or like whatever google might be doing now. And so the connection is that makes it important for Silicon Valley is he went to beckman of beckman instruments. He didnt go to him to ask him to make a transistor company, he asked him to make a robotics company. I thought that was striking. And he wanted beckman to build the robots eye. That was the first product he had in mind, and it kind of devolved into a transistor company and was set back. But the original vision the sort of lets go was about robots. So here we are thats fascinating. 50 years later full circle. What a perfect segway into the whole discussion of robots. This book really seems to have captured a big chunk of the national imagination. Your book tour has been extensive, and youve been this a lot of places, and its doing well. I just wonder what is it about our current you seem to have caught a moment where our current fascination with robots has met your expertise as a writer and observer, and why do you think that is right now . Yeah. And just for contrast, my last book involved driving to san jose. [laughter] it was much smaller. So i have a theory, and i cant prove this, but ill throw it out there, and people can tell me what they think of it. And that is you know how we make fun of the japanese for being robot crazy and theyre in love with robots . I actually think americans are as obsessed, we just dont acknowledge it. And the difference is we have this love hate relationship with robots. You cant turn around without seeing some sort of robotobsessed comb point of our component of our society, science fiction, movies, the whole thing. I actually think its episodic. This has happened periodically since the invention of, you know, modern well, initial computers, you know, the book cybernetics was written by Norbert Wiener in 88, and three years later he wrote the human use of human beings, and there was this alarm about the arrival of automation. And he had some very clear views about that as he spelled out the social and economic consequences of it. And then a decade later there was another sense of alarm in the United States and the triple revolution. People wrote their manifesto about automation, there was a fullon government investigation into the impact of automation. You know, the vietnam war happened, and it kind of went away because we got distracted. And then, you know, probably over the next three or four years it spun up again because this new wave of a. I. Technology thats starting to work. A. I. As a field has had the most, you know, has overpromised and underdelivered so many times, and now its starting to deliver this remarkable ways, so thats created a great deal of anxiety. I want to get to that, what you call the rise and fall of a. I. In a minute. Right up front you Say Something very sobering. You say how we design and interact with our increasingly Intelligent Machines will determine the nature of our society and our economy. It will increasingly determine every aspect of our modern world from whether we live in a more or less separate satisfied society to what separatefied society to what it means to be human. Gee, john, too bad you didnt pick a book with some higher stakes around it. [laughter] that is quite a profound statement, and you deliver again and again on that observation. The other day somebody asked me what is it to be human . And i was, like, oh, my god. I kind of have an answer to that question. I mean, you know, humanity, i think, is rooted in the interaction between individuals. I mean, what is human is this thing that is culture. And so now were getting these machines that are increasingly intelligent. And, you know, as a species, you know, we have a propensity to anthromore poise everything. We talk to our cars, we talk to our pets. As the machines we are building begin to talk back to us, i mean, youre going to have to have a science of social relations because its very clear that people treat these thing will treat these things as autonomous, sentient beings whether they are or not. And thats already happening. The designers siri to get something done. But this is a companion 20 million registered users talking about multiple conversations a day then with multiple interactions 50 said theyd you and 20 percent i love you even in creeping out the microsoft designers. [laughter] even before former i am researcher said when we come to your country if it is quiet in china the interactions they have contact all the time it is called total time they go into the bathroom to have long conversations with gel ice this is the world of the her were stepping into her. Another important definition that you make early in the book about Artificial Intelligence you talk about those who believe in a. I. Will run through history so explain why it is important to understand that this is just augmentation. It is a puzzle of course, it is a dichotomy and a paradox because if you are a human you displace humans. I noticed when i was writing dormouse there were two laps underside of the stanford campus. At that time they believed it would take a. I. To perfect a human being on the other senator campus the of the set out to build technology to augment the human beings. It is still philosophically opposed and i was struck by that because those two labs set off to communities in the computing world with the committee and those edison around humans and i realized you solution is to use a. I. Technology designed to augment humans rather than and displace them. I look for examples of people who crossed over from a. I. Over to i. A. Im a failed social scientist. There is a distinct view in the valley that were in the process is to give birth of a. Species of technology some people people will believe him seibald and i think that is poppycock. I am of the school of churchill that reshaped our tools then they shape us. The hammer is a hammer and it is a tool. With that is the perspective that i take the search tools designed by humans with human values imbeded. How much of that often disappointed notion is behind the rise and fall . Have we been expecting all these years we would see robots that would replace us . Yes with this propensity we are surrounded by sciencefiction with provocative notions and for people who subscribe to the notion that i commend to them the outtakes from the robotic challenges 25 of the best robotics researchers in the world for several years with millions of dollars to do the best they could and most of them could not open the first store. The manager whose brainchild wanted to create a contest to focus on designing a machine. His kids said if you are worried about the terminator just keep your door closed. [laughter] that is where we are today. Is a perception that i believe it is episodic we see significant in vantage and its is but there is almost no autonomy there at all they were operated machines a small amount of the economy that he would see the you could draw a circle on the screen around the door knob they might be able to grab the doorknob bin may be opened it able and you literally could keep the door closed and be okay. [laughter] but there are technologies out there now particularly if the database the but it will not be what people think. You call this out in specific ways in this talk about those because theyre getting increasingly familiar especially human replacements vs augmentation. What about the self driving car . We have one downstairs and you seem generally optimistic it will help have been relatively soon with the social benefits. Is that right . I continue to revolve on this. I think the edge cases are killers that will keep us from completely self governed i said to somebody to drove me to dinner in a decade for for now i would pay. Google went down this path it is almost 1 million miles now and their branch point basically said there are problems we cannot solve it is limited at 25 Miles Per Hour because you get into a different Regulatory Regime that the point with no Steering Wheel noah accelerator and it is made out of plastic and the windshield is plastic so when they hit the bicyclist they dont kill them which i thought was interesting but google got so far with the project then they went to hand off and i believe they had these professional drivers who would sit there and lost over the machine then they begin experimenting with cars of to their employers to go home then they discovered distracted behavior up to and including falling asleep. That is a handoff problem he will not solve. I am sorry if you ever have Situational Awareness and a quarter of a second there is no way anybody can solve that problem for a long time and and tell you get the human entirely out of the loop we shouldnt think of self driving cars bin cars that wont crash that is a close sick a classic a. I. Approach and i think the Auto Industry is going that way from gm and tesla we do have some coming through and i think that audi had this already that the car drives a adduce to rise but i think audi in this lowes be driving system the car drives by itself following the traffic behind it you have to touched the wheel within 10 seconds or the lawyers got involved if not it will drop out of that mode. So this will continue and that is great to make driving safer. You talk about safety oriented innovation you say 34,000 people died in Car Accidents 2013 it could be a big benefit but also you point out in the larger area of robotics 3. 8 Million People earn their living as commercial drivers in the United States and there could be as much displacement is the unintended way of safety for people who need that. What is up with that . It might be real as the drivers are still committed to doing research to not replace all of their workers but it is called the earth is into this study in colombia comparing the economics of the robot cars in the urban area like new york compared to a human taxis. The economics are incredibly compelling and it looked like a google style completely elevated 25 Miles Per Hour might work in that situation. The average speed of cars and symbol cities is 17 and 80 m. P. H. That would be just fine. In the urban areas and campuses that could come. So yes that could displace drivers. But does it become a crisis . A lot of books were written recently arguing we are precipitating the crisis it is happening so quickly there will be large scale destruction everybody has heard of this a clear view for a short distance i am much more skeptical it doesnt show up in the data for all the handwringing a great period of productivity and enhance bin was a decade ago. How you explain that . With a the economist and theyre all over the map. This is a reporters dream. On one hand you have the International Federation to argue with a Product Technology and on either hand who have no human jobs at all and they can do everything by 2045. Who is right . I read the literature for a long time and it is all over the map and i am convinced the things that will actually make this happen that havent happened yet. So many books point to this my point is that it is extremely nuanced. We have two examples actually. In three books eyesight instagram vs kodak. 13 programmers 140,000 workers at kodak with digital photography. If you pick that apart you realize instagram did not kill kodak. It killed itself ticket of pulled the trigger many times because the competitor made it across just fine. The next thing that you look at is instagram did not come into existence before the mature internet happened. So about 2. 5 million jobs. Engineering jobs technical jobs it is just much more complicated and one more story to that point is because i am part of the problem. In 2010 writing about the next wave of technology 35 an hour paralegals and all of the attorneys would be displaced with discovery software. And at one point to have this discussion my hair was on fire about one china what happens with robots come to china . And he says you dont get in china they are coming just in time. Excuse me . He pointed out that china is the very rapidly aging economy their work force will be shrinking the chinese will the robots and the work force in didnt elder care if you look at china and japan my god. The New York Times decided amazing article about ghost towns. Japanese society is imploding on itself. It is true and let europe that is aging very rapidly the irony we are the exception because we have immigration and somewhat insulated. Donald trump where are you . [laughter] the e you spend 1 billion to develop the elder care robot. If you look at the outtakes you dont want them in a weird year grandma. [laughter] we have a lot of work to do is just super complex and fascinating. So for the people who are worried about this out to explain their right now in america more people are working than ever before in history . People say the Labor Force Participation is declining. If you pick that apart yes you are right but with the mainstream economists technology is a small part but there are other factors a once again it is very complex. Host i will remind the everybody you have question cards if you want to be involved in the discussion. You mention in 2045 a great chapter in your book called a tough year for the human race and it could be a really bad year to talk about that. The scientists have pick that year that that is the year we are obsolete. So another thought of the acceleration question i grew up in Silicon Valley things will get faster just faster faster and cheaper faster. So there is a thing called the s curve it isnt dead. I think they will get to 5 nanometers, but remember ticktock . They were on that curve for the longest time now is at ticktock talk, doubling it two year interval since he revised that so a long time now look. The largest feeling stopped the clock speeds stopped going up and recently we have slipped from two years down at three years there is a phenomenon called dark silicon you cannot turn on all the transistors at the same time. Is a you have to go three laverock algorithms. So if you dont do that simultaneously will lose some efficiencies. Everybody in the industry except intel is saying now that the cost of transistors has stopped falling and if that is true then it would be you get a designed to shrink it the next time around. Everybody but intel says it has stopped. Sold whole notion of exponential to be just around the corner i am super skeptical about. That is supposed to be the year . 2045 . I dont know now but recently they said 2023 or 2027 . Im not sure. Had a wonderful moment at the stanford affiliates for the Semiconductor Industry this summer and coldwell the former pentium decider talking about these problems for us to go down this curve and at the end of the meeting iran into a computer architect and he is a pity because now you have to rely on creativity so cool things will happen but maybe not like turning the crank like intel has done. Progress may be over but it may be less episodic. You have such an incredible wide range of places you visit it in stories that you tell about a. I. And the development of robotics but where in the world is the most important work being done . Here in the valley. No question. I keep wondering when a significant platform will come someplace else in the world. Tom friedman said if it is slated to be uneven Playing Field but in fact, in 2006 it looked like mobile Application Software to say it is amazing than the iphone happened. And i still expect at some point it will be scaled to the whole world much as Silicon Valley but. What is driving it . The dean of the Information School one of the best to explain of network defects in the culture you cannot duplicate anywhere else. It is very much alive. Before we get to audience questions you mentioned siri you talk about a search for a truly personal assistant and you thought of the distinction to go back to but the other is the status of this desisted from microsoft. We all remember clip the clippy. [laughter] he came for work of people from stanford so as much as people love clippy there are Things Microsoft could have done. That undermined clippy in Canada Research and development what did they call it . That fucking clown . What would we get less obnoxious is that it did not ship with us distribution desk. And also there was some divine design issues that was fundamentally wrong. Nice try but i basically said back maybe a of a decade. To early and google glass set back augmented reality. [laughter] that had a similar impact but i actually think to design these systems has a tremendous amount of potential. Talk about siri. Apple recently said the 5 speech recognition 4 percent is what humans are supposed to do but if they get better over the last half decade talking to siri is stunning justin heard text. I remember going over to sr i to get a demo of speech recognition given the of a navy funded project you can basically say left and right and it might to get a right so that is in the space of 30 years. Now has a conversational system that is the merging being close to human beings. For those of us that think it should be better than it is, are we just being impatient . I think it is coming very quickly. With that the Parting Technology that there is more headroom there. What is holding the back . It is improving quickly. Dell think i have done enough reporting. I am fascinated but then to see the progress over a short period of time. But the point i would like to make about siri the two architects of siri are affected. Maybe you are familiar with the video that sculley put together said chief visionary had left to compete but scully had to have an idea. Event he that that was funny to didnt exist yet. In the notion of the intelligent assistant with infinite vision videos but i said where did the idea come from . He said i a channel negroponte. [laughter] but if you go back a lot of those ideas were there. Where did you get this idea . So i looked into this guy named gordon and interesting cybernetic assessed who is hanging out at m. I. T. As a close friend of negroponte with the notion that intelligence was situated in the conversation that i think is a compelling idea. The other is have become incidence that they could be designed into or out of it is seems to be the central debate so what do we make of robots and warfare . I pretty much stay away from that in the book. And in the soviet era we have Cruise Missiles with human intervention and were about to pull a Weapon System called verizon one in back into and it is about china and basically the carriers have to stay farther away from the area to be engaged to be safe so that has the capability to fly five for 600 miles to be completely at of context with human controllers. The pentagon calls it a semi autonomous weapons system of. That he did being has picked a target the robot doesnt begin to split the hairs between economist or not but that Weapon System makes that without human intervention when it gets to the target. There are dozens of countries that have the autonomous Weapon System it is the antia radiation weapon it is the template and that is the target without a human intervention you could replace the of radar seeking to have devices later looking for particular human faces. So if people dont know those debtor paying about 10,000 feet above washington d. C. They are designed to do 24hour surveillance against a threat i assume of a submarine launched Cruise Missile attack but you can see all sorts of technology to being put into the system in the future. I dont want to think about it. One of the things that influenced me is there is the conference from robotics and a wellknown roboticist who basically could make the case to give a lecture of the worlds best robot designers that they have to take responsibility because the technologies they were designing to do things like the rescue robot theres human design machines. Then conducting warfare by drones. Operated by soldiers with convenience suburban locations in nevada and florida. What happens when enemies have the same technology . That might lead to the arms race to exercise control over a population with a very small group of people. Many be inevitable. Maybe that is the reason i did not pursue it. Now lets light than that up. What part will be determined by the cultural influences like hollywood . My two best examples to be a pioneer and roboticist. And kaplan was cofounder of symantec that was a. I. Company both of them went in to a. I. After they saw space odyssey 2001 but they said i want to design that. [laughter] so i think from knowledge navigator there is a culture out there that shapes technology. But with augmented reality i highly recommend and i saw a magically. In the book i write it because the expert had become the called industrial perception when it was bought by google he went to work magically with the express intent of personal computing. Bin to be in downtown San Francisco . With the part of the evolution. And to put intelligence into these things is the direction for technology. Is putting objects in the world into the fidelity of reality. The demo that i got i saw this at a Laboratory Bench basically called the digitally feel that hopefully lets people like meet to see a for arm creature wandering around in space that was good as any that i have ever seen. They claim they will get better but that was interesting. But what got interesting to me something is wrong it is very compelling. They want to destroy the entire asian display manufacturing i find that completely compelling. It was natural to sit at a desk to compute . It is ubiquitous computing. What besides autonomous driving are you most excited about using . Interacting. The elder care robot. How does that work . I can see many levels. But most elders in assisted living facilities to do useful things that doesnt have to look anything like a robot but the Elder Committee might be the first that is bound to a place of there is the technology to create real communities i get excited about that. May think that would be very cool. I have to then i held through through those situations and i talk about the debate their critical of the notion of elder care robots so the problem isnt the lack of labor he had huge amounts that were not willing to pay for but i realize society has changed enough we will never go back to extended care situations where our inlaws are living with us. It just wont happen. Lets go for that. Is this the answer to bill gates and Warren Buffett that we have to be careful . And with the soulful where machines of how to gain control. Its not going to happen in our lifetime. Be real but autonomy is a real problem. With those devices that operate were having a real discussion but right now would be Genetic Engineering Technology to allow for the easy modification of the species of people with vice coeducation but that brings up another question of what you say in the book the best way to answer questions about control in the world is to understand the value of those of the systems. How to redo that . It is a tall order. Is my belief that they carry the values of the designers with them. With a point of great hope and a point of concern but these are extensions of the designers. So a stanford economist wrote this book called the engineers so that Technical Knowledge was into the hands of the engineers and didnt work out that way but the designers of the new systems will have a tremendous power in the state the shape of society shapes the way we live. Is a help to design interactive the future. Why did you work write the book . I grew up in with the personal computer industry and the internet and i watched as they transformed the world it in 2010 and looked at what was happening that a. I. Robotics would have an equal impact on the world in that is why went in that direction. Thats great. We like to have our authors read their own work. We have a copy of your book right here. Very short. [laughter] and mention people who went from a. I. Over to i. A. The solution to the contradiction from a. I. Through i. A. Were the scientists. To all potentially chose a human centered design. With the computer age had a clear sense of the significance of the relationship between humans and their creations. He recognized of benefits to eliminate human drudgery but he worried the same Technology May subjugate community. In the intervening decades of what he first identified this is about humans in the kind of world we will create not the machine. I think we failed so lucky that only have the shining light on a cool subject is you have been writing for so long. Thank you for that and to be so good at it cockup. He will exit stage left and the book signing will happen down there so please go down and say hi to get books for your friends and relatives we will see you in september. Goodnight. [inaudible conversations] joining us now from the independent Institute First of all, what is said and what you do for a living . It is a bank a think tank called the goodman is to work very closely together i and many economists and my focus is on public policy. Host where are you based . Dallas is a virtual think tank so i can be anywhere. Host you have written about health care for quite awhile. Here is a most recent book a better Choice HealthCare Solutions for america but the Affordable Care act is now a lot of the land. This focuses on big problems of obamacare that are not going away to require congress to get together to solve them and if not things will get very bad. Host what is number one . Deal except the Affordable Care act as a lot of the land and are you okay with that . Of course, it is but these problems are big that we need to solve it is a bad reform we could do much better and that is what i am trying to. The biggest problem . We will be required to buy an insurance package that will grow faster than our income in the shrill grow twice as fast so it goes like this but the federal government was spending on medicare or the hospital indefinitely the subsidies of the age changes will grow only with the economy but the government help is flat so more burden overtime is shifted to the private sector. Host why is health care go like this . Has been for years and i suppose one of the major reasons were decide people in other countries we pay for with a time and some real scenes over the many like the employer or insurance company. Host in your view should health care be tied to the employer . I would create a level Playing Field you get just as much if you buy it on your own or at work and also get rid of all the laws to prevent employers to buy the insurance that is personable and affordable i think if they have something to offer they will end if they dont they should not be in the market. Host doesnt obamacare offer portability . No. It puts huge fines on employers who try to buy for their employees individual insurance just to give them the money so that is what state governments is dont ask, dont tell now the city will have punitive fines theyre really trying to stop that. Host what if it is radically change to favor republican is elected . I would like to see universal tax credits is a memo for Health Insurance regardless of where they get it. Is not affected how many hours or how much they earn to be truly universal then let Government Back up to get out of the way and let the market speak. Medical savings accounts . It is very key here we need a much more liberal Health Savings account to be very flexible wrapping around any thirdparty insurance. A huge boon to the chronically ill. Many would like to manage their own health care. Host you write as one of the Six Solutions the real insurance what do you mean . The president says he will end discrimination with preexisting conditions. But we have a baitandswitch so it is true right now they cannot turn you down or excluded because of a preexisting illness that we see a race to the bottom with a very Narrow Network so if you are a heart patient with you can find out there is in the heart doctor within 50 miles. There is a much better way to do it. The premium the individual pays is it based on the Health Condition but said they can get a fair premium as they do with medicare vantage and if that happens and they compete on a level Playing Field. The weather not health care is the right. No place in the world have they made it a right to live in canada you dont have a right to that mri or to wait in lines of the language distracts us from what is really happening. I think access to health care could be made much better in the United States and with obamacare o make access worse with low income people. Host medicaid as a competitor . I would but everybody join medicaid the left says says we want public to compete with private letter everybody get out to get a private plan if they want. If a wealthy person wants to do medicaid he can do that. Most plans are run by private health plans but they are still not very good and long waiting and private insurance is better. Host is it politically feasible to make it a competitive auction . Of course,. I would like to see a uniform tax credit available to everyone 2,500 for adults that is what i am told it cost to put people on medicaid so that is enough money to get medicaid like insurance and i dont see any reason they couldnt get it from medicaid themselves but the vast majority are not going to want to be in medicaid. Host john goodman independent institute here is the book. A better choice. All persons having business before the Supreme Court of United States give their attention. 759. Marbury vs. Madison is probably the most famous case this court ever decided. Ted harriet if this enslaves people here on land with slavery was that legally recognized . Putting that into effect of president ial orders in the presence of federal troops and marshalls with the courage of children. We want to pick cases that change the direction the also changed society. Said she told them that they demanded to see the paper to read what it was. So she grabbed added his agents and the police officer. I cannot imagine a better way than to tell the human stories behind a great Supreme Court cases. To pull the oppose the forest in terms of japaneseamericans during world war ii. After convicted for failing to report for relocation, he took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Quite often the most famous decisions are ones that the courts took that were quite unpopular. If you had to pick one freedom that was the most essential to the functioning of a democracy. As go through a few cases what it means to live in a society 310 Million People to help stick together in the rule of law. In early America Newspapers were stressed as vital to democracy. Mattison said the Public Opinion in a democracy is the real sovereign. And the Congress Passed the post office act and subsidize newspapers that was vital to the early history or the first 150 years. By the 1830s 90 percent of the vol