{"id":1669,"date":"2011-07-24T14:33:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T19:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=1669"},"modified":"2011-09-30T00:21:09","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T05:21:09","slug":"shared-misery-nobody-can-have-air-conditioning-unless-everyone-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=1669","title":{"rendered":"Shared misery: Nobody can have air conditioning unless everyone can"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Heat.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1670\" title=\"Heat\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Heat.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"176\" \/><\/a>Do people on the political left really want to help folks? Or do they just want to make sure everyone suffers equally?<\/p>\n<p>A friend of mine is applying for admission to some elite northeastern U.S. colleges, and he found himself on a tour of one of them last weekend. Something he heard from the tour guide says a lot about the way the modern liberal mind works. (I&#8217;m using the word &#8220;liberal&#8221; not in its classical sense &#8212; which would have meant what we call libertarian today &#8212; but in the mainstream &#8220;progressive&#8221; sense.)<\/p>\n<p>While explaining information about the campus dorms at this very liberal school, the tour guide said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The two new dormitories have air conditioning, but it&#8217;s not used in any of them, because the administration doesn&#8217;t think it&#8217;s fair for some dormitories to have air conditioning while the rest don&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You just can&#8217;t make things like this up.<\/p>\n<p>Those on the left don&#8217;t seem to care that medical progress will be slowed dramatically by turning more of it over to state price controls and rationing &#8212; as long as everybody is forced to suffer the same kind of care. They don&#8217;t exactly say that, but it&#8217;s clear what their priorities are. This is true across the board with them, it seems.<\/p>\n<p>My friend pointed out one exception to the egalitarian rule. The administration building from which the college president issues his pronouncements on shared student suffering <em>is<\/em> air conditioned &#8212; and it&#8217;s used regularly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do people on the political left really want to help folks? Or do they just want to make sure everyone suffers equally? A friend of mine is applying for admission to some elite northeastern U.S. colleges, and he found himself on a tour of one of them last weekend. Something he heard from the tour <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=1669\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-qV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5157,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/5157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}