INDUCING COLLECTIVE COORDINATION PROBLEMS. Turn something that is private property into common property, then correct the ensuing tragedy of the commons.

If we collectivize costs, by having a social safety net, suddenly most of my choices have externalities associated with them. My big fat ass is likely to cost you higher medical bills, because I rely on you, the working guy, to pay my health insurance.

But then of course you are going to want my big fat ass to get thinner.

In twenty five years: It's six a.m. An alarm goes off, in Norman, OK. Sleepy, but extremely fit, people climb down the stairs of their high density apartment blocks. They move to the middle of the streets, which have been blocked off to traffic. (The traffic is only buses nowadays, running on solar cells. The EPA has outlawed fuel cell cars, because some people got wet from second hand water vapor exhaust).

The folks in the street get into the ready position. THe ubergruppenhealthfuhrer blows her whistle and says, "250 pushups, all of you! You must be healthy, for the common good! DOWN! UP! DOWN! UP!"

Maybe those Japanese corporate loyalty songs and workouts so beloved of a few business gurus of the mid-1980s were a way to lower deductibles.