Elsewhere: Universal Health Care, Regulations, and Capitalism; David Foster Wallace

• Matt Haughey argues that universal health care might be good for capitalism:
  

  Everyone I know that freelances or works a day job and wishes they could quit and follow their dreams of launching a company complains about the lack of healthcare. Whenever I used to talk about freelancing at tech conferences, the first question was always about healthcare coverage. I've heard that in places like Berlin where you don't have to worry about where your healthcare is coming from or how much it costs, up to 35% of working age adults are freelancers. It may sound crazy and anti-capitalist to consider healthcare for all, but if we flipped a switch tomorrow and everyone had health coverage I swear a million small businesses would launch overnight. I know lots of people that keep a job just to get healthcare that are wasting their creative talents because they had a cancer scare or were born with a defect or otherwise are deemed uninsurable on their own.

  
  
• In a similar vein, Yglesias points to an example of regulation improving the market.


• Via Kottke, an excerpt of a sort-of biography of David Foster Wallace, and an interview with the author of that biography.