The notion that free-market capitalism is the universal solvent for every problem is akin to believing that a hammer is the universal tool for fixing everything that's broken.

You have to define just what it is that the market knows best, and that would be maximizing profit. If you define a problem as insufficient profit, then it's best to turn the problem over to the private sector, because that's the problem they know how to fix. But for other problems you need other, more appropriate, tools.

By turning the problem of health care over to the metaphorical hammer, what we've gotten is hammered by businesses managing health care for maximum profit, not for maximum health. Or maybe a vise is a better toolbox metaphor: Squeezed between downplaying preventative care because there's less profit in it, and denial of service because that enhances profit.

Of course the US ranks last in the list of 19 industrialized states. Our healthcare system is run by people who read "costliest system in the world" as "most profitable in the world", and visions of dollar signs dance in their heads.

I don't know how it is in Australia, Nick, but here, living in America is like living in a fundamentalist nation. It's not our religious fundamentalists, so much, because their numbers are relatively small; it's the ideological fundamentalism that's a much bigger aggravation. Just as a Christian fundamentalist believes that Jesus is the answer to every problem, our ideological fundamentalists believe that free-market capitalism is the answer to every problem. Both are equally blind and equally demented, and equally strident; and, under the right circumstances, equally destructive.

Do Australian immigration laws look kindly on 54-year old pony-tailed geeks?