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Kevin Pezzi, MD

I developed technology to instantly
stop school shooters and other criminals,
such as rapists, robbers, home invaders,
and shoplifters. I also created ways to block
airborne germ transmission. Read more >

Iconoclastic views on economics, politics, technology, science, and life.

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

Paying your fair share: is zero fair?

Americans in the top 1% of income now pay over a third of the total federal income taxes and the top 5% pay about 60%, while the bottom 95% pay about 40%. President Obama and most Democrats say the top earners should pay more to pay their fair share.

Mitt Romney drew fire for saying that 47% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes. That is true but a bit misleading, because most of them pay other federal taxes and everyone with a pulse pays countless other taxes (although many poor people receive so much money and other freebies they don't pay anything in net). Nevertheless, Romney raised a valid point in suggesting that Democrats have an advantage because folks who “don't have any skin in the game” by not paying federal income tax have no incentive to not want others to pay even more. Gee whiz, if they paid much more, the 47% might receive more freebies!

In this incessant talk about fairness, one thing is almost never heard: is it truly fair for those 47% to pay no federal income tax? Making them pay even 5% would make them think twice about letting our politicians:

Ignore obvious ways to improve governmental efficiency.
Continue blowing money on ridiculous things, from the Vulcan monument to funding research to see if female co-eds go all the way after drinking beer.
Spend trillions of dollars on the endless wars we cannot afford.
Ignore alternatives that would permit taxpayers to keep more while giving more to the recipients.

If our government is to survive, it must embrace innovation, but it wants to cling to hidebound ways that obviously are not working. We need real change, not talk of it. All the yapping about making “the rich” (which could be a person like me driving a rusty 13-year-old vehicle and wondering if I can afford to turn the heat up in winter) pay more misses the fact that all of us already pay not just too much tax, but way too much tax.

Most people never realize how many taxes they pay, and how the government cleverly disguises them. If people knew how much the government was bleeding them, people would revolt. They would also revolt if they understood how our system is engineered to be fundamentally unfair. As Henry Ford said:

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

What prevents that revolution is primarily ignorance and a strange quirk of human nature called system justification that turns people into sheeple.

If President Obama and other Democrats were truly concerned about fairness instead of just giving lip service to it, they would address the many fundamentally unfair ways our system rips off the poor, middle class, and even “rich” people to favor the über-rich. Columnist Michael Goodwin wrote, “This is not mere class warfare. That’s just a tactic. The goal, as it always has been for his [Obama] kind throughout history, is to accumulate power that the elite can wield without accountability or checks and balances.” Goodwin, a Democrat who voted for Obama in 2008, now regrets his mistake and is blistering him in a series of articles.

Research has shown that even some animals possess an inborn sense of fair play, and react negatively when they are treated unfairly, typically exhibiting a “if the game isn't fair, I won't play it” response. Surprisingly, most humans go through life never understanding why they are not more contented and happy. They instead fall for the divisive rhetoric emanating from Democrat and Republican politicians who use ignorance to perpetuate a system that is ripe for a major overhaul.

Notes:

Are You Paying Too Much of America's Taxes?
Comment: This article proves that the rich pay a disproportionate share of the taxes.

The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Kevin Pezzi, MD

Paying your fair share: is zero fair?

Notes:

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