Smart Toilets and How They Could Save Your Life

I have been thinking recently about an invention that could greatly improve information in the healthcare industry. In recent years, there have been toilets invented that can check blood pressure, BMI, urine analysis, stool analysis, and much more. TOTO makes a toliet called the "smart toilet". If a toilet was able to analyze all of this can send the results to our doctor or allow people to save the data everyone would have more information. Urine analysis alone can be used to diagnose high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney stones, kidney failure, urinary infections, and liver disease. Stool analysis can help find diseases of the liver and pancreas. In addition to this, it can screen for colon cancer. If the toilet could measure weight (most likely by the force pressed down on the seat) it could provide people with very valuable information. People are literally flushing down valuable information that could be used for preventive care and perhaps save thousands of lives per year. The toilets are currently in Japan but have not debuted in the United States. One problem could be the cost of the toilet. The cost ranges from $4,100-$5,850. Although, this sounds like a lot one group that could benefit from the toilets are hospitals that use the same room over and over again. The toilet could monitor patients without as required care since more tests would be done through the toilet. Competition and technology will ensure over time the prices will go down and the technology will get better. Once prices come down to levels that consumers can afford I believe there will be a better revolution when it comes to diagnosing and preventive care. Usually people don’t go to the doctor they feel or think something is wrong. Information can give people the power to make choices. This is especially important when it comes to healthcare. Not only could people get their results from their home but they would have to avoid going to the doctor and free up the doctor’s time to see patients with more important illnesses.

One problem however is how much people will reveal. Insurance companies could I suppose ask to have some of the information sent to them in order to figure out how much to charge in premiums to customers. Also it may take time before the stool and urine analysis for a toilet become as accurate as those found in a medical lab. Although, I think these are minor issues that I think will be solved in time. Just remember next time you flush what important health information could be going down the toilet too.

Driverless Cars: More GDP, Less Deaths, More Leisure?

One thing I have been thinking about lately is driverless cars. True, it does sound like something out of the future but I don’t think these cars are too far away. Google a couple of months ago made news with its driverless car. The car drove 1,000 miles without any human intervention and 140,000 miles with occasional human intervention. The technology will continue to improve and allow cars to go even more miles without humans. Driverless cars do pose some interesting questions though.

In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey estimated that Americans spent more than 100 hours a year commuting to work. If people instead of driving could be doing something work related or thinking without having to worry about driving they could be more productive. If millions of people are able to do this then it could easily add a couple of billion dollars to GDP since people could become more efficient. If cars were able to drive themselves and people had a long commute and the car was able to take people to their destination people could sleep an extra hour or so and not have to worry about driving. This brings me to my next point. Driverless cars would also reduce the number of cars theoretically to zero. Around 40,000 people are killed each year in car accidents and in 2005 there were nearly 6.4 million auto accidents per year. The economic cost to America in 2000 was around $230 billion. People could go out as late as they wanted to party since they would have a designated car for them. Another point about driverless cars is that people would no longer need insurance which would be like a tax cut for everyone. Cars could also become more fuel efficient if they were able to drive themselves because the cars could figure out from traffic congestion who was driving and what paths to take. Sometimes drivers drive at speeds that are fuel inefficient if cars drive at a speed that optimizes fuel efficiency this could be beneficial as well.

While these are all positives I am somewhat skeptical of how long this will take. Driverless could be here in 10 years, 20 years, or even 30 years. Technology will continue to improve and get cheaper. The first cars might be $80,000 and only the rich will be able to afford them. Highways might have to set up sensors or signals to help cars get around and this could have problems and cost a lot of money. Although, they can claim it really is the information superhighway. Plus, people who really enjoy driving cars (Jay Leno) will not like this. I also think people won’t trust a computer driving them from place to place. However, this is odd when most planes run on auto-pilot. The first cars won’t be perfect and might lead to some accidents but they will improve over time. Police officers wouldn’t have to arrest people for under the influence, give people tickets for not obeying the law, or have to pull people over. This would free up a lot of police resources. Let’s review. Driverless cars have the potential to save thousands of lives, prevent millions from getting in accidents, increase GDP and increase leisure/sleep time, increase fuel efficiency, decrease traffic congestion, get rid of car insurance, and most likely decrease crime. Although this is assuming the driverless cars are actually safe and courts rule that they are legal to operate. Only time will tell what the future holds.

Walter Williams: An Autobiography

The autobiography of Walter Williams just came out (December 1, 2010). I can't wait to read it although the Hoover Press claimed I would have to wait 10 painfully long business days before I could get my hands on it. This book should be a great gift for any capitalist on your Christmas list! Hopefully Dr. Williams will live to be 100 so there can be many more editions.

Sowell: A National Treasure

From Kudlow November 10, 2010

Cut Baby Cut!

The Republicans have recently taken over the House of Representatives and gained seats in Congress. One thing I keep hearing Republicans say is that they will cut spending. However, few politicians actually have the courage to do this since their constituents want politicians to “bring home the bacon”. While Republicans the Bush years show otherwise. Here are the largest expenditures:

Social Security $678 billion
Medicare- $453 billion
Interest on debt- $164 billion
National defense- $663.7 billion

Clearly, we need to trim back what we are spending since the spending can’t continue. The interest on the debt is also very low. Increases in the interest rate will only make matters worse. Also why not get rid of some departments of government altogether: Department of Housing and Urban Development ($47.5 billion), Department of Education ($46.7 billion) Department of Agriculture ($26 billion), Department of Labor ($13.3 billion). In 2005, the United States spent more than $477 billion to fight poverty this despite around at the time 12% of the American population was in poverty. Also spending might have a positive effect on the GDP in the long term if people that work for the government actually have to find jobs in the private sector.

News Vaults and an Economic Puzzle

With so many hours of TV stored in news vaults why are stations like ABC, NBC, and CBS holding all this content and not selling it to the public? ABC and NBC license footage to organizations. These organizations have to pay some type of fee or royalty to use the footage. However, if all this footage was released to the public and sold on iTunes couldn’t these companies be making lots of money? Economics would tell us that there is some reason why these companies are not doing this or else they would already be doing it. C-SPAN recently put its archived footage since 1987 online for free. C-SPAN has over 116,000 hours of footage and shows like The John Stewart Show and the Colbert Report use it for research (mainly to do jokes). The cost to C-SPAN to digitize everything was around $1 million per year. C-SPAN does recover part of the money by selling the same content on DVD’s for around Vanderbilt University has a Television News Archive that goes back to 1968 and allows people to make a video request loan for footage at a cost of $12 per every half hour of TV. Also, a lot of video is already free online. For instance, YouTube has a lot of older content that really covers important or breaking news.

In time I believe the cost to digitize older footage will decrease and with the growing space that hard drives allow for I think one day we could see news footage for sale to the public. It would be interesting to one day have a TIVO device and just search for anything ever on TV like the 1996 World Series or a Presidential Election.

Government Spending

Blue line represents spending at the spending rates under Bush. Black line is actual spending and Cross over line is when Obama came into office. (H/T Steve Landsburg)

Don Boudreaux on Law and Legislation

Talk given October 4, 2010 by Donald Boudreaux

FFF October 2010 from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

Interception of the Worst Kind

John Elway and a "business partner" invested $15 million with a hedge fund manager named Sean Mueller who is now charged with running a Ponzi scheme. John Elway's net worth is around $45 million (according to celebritynetworth.com, although don't know how accurate these numbers are). You would think Elway would be a little smarter with his money considering he has an economics degree from Stanford. I wonder why professional athletes don't take their money seriously when they know their careers statistically are usually less than a decade. Of course there are few exceptions like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods (before his divorce), and Magic Johnson. Hopefully, Elway learns from this mistake and will be more careful with his investing in the future. Mistakes are the best tool for learning.

Chile and Capitalism

I am glad to see all the miners in Chile are safe after spending 69 days below the depths of the earth. However, I am glad to see capitalism was at work. Companies and people trying to make money benefit society and don't take something away. The economy is not a zero-sum game but an economic pie that can grow or shrink. Companies in the United States are not only trying to get rich but millions of others around the world are also trying to get rich. Below is a list of how the Chilean miners were saved.

Drill rig- Schramm Inc. (US)

Cable-(Germany)

Fiber optic cable- (Japan)

Communication- Samsung (South Korea)

Self-sterilizing socks- Cupron Inc. (U.S.)

Allowing companies around the world to perform their core competency makes everyone better off and in the case of the miners saved their lives. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago the miners might not have been able to have been saved (since the technology or drill may not have existed). Greed is good and can even save lives.