I encountered a similar tactic when we studied health care policy at university (and I was surprised as anyone to find it in my fairly liberal school).

Was this in one of your SPEA classes, Zach? I minored in SPEA, actually, and was surprised that in my "Intro to Public & Environmental Affairs" course, the professor taught many reasonable, but outside of liberal orthodoxy, things such as that we're really not running out of room for landfills (there's plenty of space...siting and transportation is more the issue) and styrofoam cups are more environment-friendly than paper (paper doesn't break down quickly in actual landfill conditions, and styrofoam takes up less room per cup once crushed).

Transportation: faster, cheaper, safer (pick two).

One problem with using the "pick two" for safe, legal and rare, and one I'm suprised hasn't been mentioned before. If you don't pick "legal" as one of them, how can you guarantee the reality for the other two?

With safe, there's no methods of regulation, via the legal and/or legislative systems, to insure that the techniques being used by the doctors are actually considered safe. Not only that, but there would be few avenues of recourse for those who suffered from an unsafe procedure. In fact, I can see it now.

You killed my daughter, you bastard!

And with rare, how exactly will you determine the precise rarity of abortions? It would be like the police going up to drug dealers trying to determine the exact quantity of drugs they have sold, wouldn't it?

Pardon me, sir. Just a routine inquiry.

Snarkiness and extremely unlikely examples aside (Okay, the first one isn't very unlikely. The second one is, though.), the only way to insure that abortions are both safe and rare is to keep them, in principle, legal. To think otherwise is, in my view, one of those "unreasonable expectations" you mentioned.

You forgot the other combo: if they're legal and rare, why does it follow that they'll be unsafe? I'd think that in such a scenario, they're more likely to be safe (or at least, as safe as such a procedure can be).

Peter at Crescat had some snarky but (imo) basically correct responses to Jane on this one. I like her, but she's off on this one.

In the world of computer programming the saying is "cheap, fast, good - pick any two"

Rare and safe but illegal: this is pretty much what pro-life advocates want, a law that restricts all abortions to only those that are most neccessary, i.e., when the health or life of the mother is in jeopardy. (Granted, this does ignore those proverbial back alley abortions.)

Legal and rare but unsafe: a very restrictive law that would fail to adequately protect a mother when her pregnancy threatens her health or life.

And Jane responds to Peter in rather snarkier terms.

I'm reminded of another one related to cars, especially when considering emissions and design: clean, safe, and powerful -- pick two.

Of course Zach, everything humanity does is done with imperfect knowledge of the past, present and future.

One cannot build a bridge without deciding how many deaths are acceptable after it is built. If the bridge were perfect, then the amount of resources its construction would consume would be infinate.

In the same way, everytime we get into a car we are acknowledging that we are willing to kill someone to make our transportation more convienent. The probability of it happening is low, but integrated over a lifetime there is a reasonable expectation that we will be involved in someone's death directly as a result of our wish to commute in cars.

The same thing happens in education and health care. You can't have it all, and you have to draw the line at some point so that we don't waste resources. Unfortunately, it seems that preciously few political decisions are approached in this fashion.

A few days ago we had a discussion about telecom reform. Once again, the tradeoff is universal high-speed internet service vs. big telecom's ability to profit. The degree that the government mandates universal service will determine the nation's access to high-speed internet.

Vehicles: durable, reliable and economical to drive.....

I dunno, lc1. My Saturn would seem to fit all three.

Zach

My Saturn held up, but I've heard that later models are having reliability problems. The Big 2.5 in America haven't invested in making new cars over the past decade since they have been fat dumb and happy making "more bigger" SUV's.

Now that's coming home to roost with the gas prices, and people want cars again. Unfortunately, my guess is that GM is several years behind Japan on the product cycle.

Yeah maybe, but you took the best one in the article itself: single, attractive & sane.....