The Far Middle episode 104 is dedicated to former Major League Baseball pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych who made his first Major League start this week back in 1976. Nick reflects on The Brid’s career, particularly his dominating 1976 all-star season, before drawing a Far Middle connection to the healthcare industry.
Nick presents some “brutal math” demonstrating how the laziness in American healthcare efficacy is stacking up to a nearly infinite height of waste, cumulatively totaling trillions of dollars. “Who knows how many lives are negatively impacted by a healthcare system that is less efficient than it could or should be,” says Nick. He goes on to discuss America’s out-of-control healthcare costs coupled with poor health outcomes for patients, and how our healthcare system has morphed from a competitive meritocracy to an unaccountable oligopoly.
Next, Nick tackles the religion of the Left infiltrating government and academia. “If you seize the mindset of government and academia you position the ideology to play the long game and start to slowly subsume all other areas of commerce and culture and societal norms,” says Nick. “And you can start to grind away at, materially evolving and permanently altering, something like the healthcare industry as well as all kinds of other Industries and institutions.” Nick proceeds to profile The Fabian Society and Frankfurt School.
One of the founding members of The Fabian Society was playwright George Bernard Shaw. Nick offers a few of Shaw’s assessments of historical tyrants representing the extreme left and right—further evidence of how the ends of the ideological spectrums wrap around to meet one another.
The interesting rabbit holes of episode 104 wind down with a discussion on Aesop’s Fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare," as well as poet George Murray’s version, “The Hare and the Tortoise.” In Murray’s version, the hare wakes up in time to win the race. Nick says the Murray ending is the version we need if you like individual rights, capitalism, the free market, and if you want them to survive the onslaught of the Left. “It's time to wake up because the race is almost won by the wrong side.”
Nick closes by noting this past May 15 was ZZ Top Day, saluting guitarist Billy Gibbons, one of Nick’s
top ten rock guitarists. What are Nick’s favorite ZZ Top single and album? Give a listen!
