Products and Services

It was just one of many news blurbs during the morning commute—typically, they splattered against my ear drums like heavy rain onto pavement, visibly discoloring the surface but causing no real damage in the process. THIS one, however, distinguished itself immediately: not because the newscaster and attendant disc jockeys mocked it (they mock everything, and that's why I was still listening to them instead of pressing PLAY on some mood-lifting metal-raging) but rather because of its legal significance.

What should have been insignificance, in my opinion, was worth arguing in the Arizona state Senate and—oh yes indeed—creating a LAW (or trying to; I have not bothered to see how this bill did in the House, and I'm not sure I want to know). And while it irked my Libertarian sensibilities to hear about what seemed to me to be a colossal waste of time and unnecessary government involvement, it also tweaked my sense of the ridiculous and made me bristle with the same indignation sparked by the alteration of common terms to suit the politics of the time.

And so I made a note—first mental and then physical, because I don't know where I keep putting them, but it doesn't really matter because those damn mental notes need WAY better adhesive anyway—to find more information on the Internet, and eventually, that's what I did. (As an aside, I'd like to note that when a site, such as the one in the preceding link, demands for you to REGISTER with them—"It's FREE!"—for the privilege of printing their fine article on the political debate over whether a breast implant consitutes a "product" or a "service," then do not fall for it, but go ahead and use that fine tool known as COPY-PASTE, right into another program that cares not for the registration of people it will likely never see again.)

Anyway, here are the words of Senator Pamela Gorman, R-Anthem, on the subject:

"We're just trying to say: 'Listen. If you have surgery and they have to put anything in your body that wasn't original to when you were born, it doesn't make it a product,'" Gorman said.

"It's still a service," she continued. "And we're just trying to clarify that."

See, this more than anything else—like the fact that previously, the law made a distinction between breast implants put in "for strictly cosmetic reasons" and those inserted "to correct a medical problem"—is what bothers me. Let's say, for example, that I hire "Dirt Sucks" to come clean my home. I think we can all agree that if they clean it and leave nothing behind but dust mites trapped deep underneath the disgusting surface of the carpet, then what "Dirt Sucks" provides is a SERVICE.

However, if "Dirt Sucks" comes and installs a central vacuum system in my house and leaves that behind for me, I would have to say that they had provided me with a PRODUCT. Sure, you could argue that the installation itself was a service, and I'd be okay with that, but that GREAT BIG HONKING DEVICE that remains, THAT, my friends, IS A FREAKING PRODUCT.

I can understand the state of Arizona wanting to do the right thing here, and I have to agree with Ms. Gorman that there CAN be a "gray area" between what constitutes "purely cosmetic" and "reconstructive." Granted, I would guess that it's not all that difficult to see the difference, but hey, maybe I just don't know boobs as intimately as I think I do. Regardless, I simply do not understand how it can possibly be argued that a THING is a "service" ... it's not! IT'S A PRODUCT.

Which brings me to my beef with the tax system as it currently stands in general. Fairness is a noble goal, and I would not argue against it as a principle if my life depended on it, although, if there were cheesecake involved, I might have to rethink that stand. But if, in our zeal to create more fairness in a world which admittedly doesn't seem to give a shit about the concept, we start weaving a hideous web of "exceptions" that require so much maintenance (i.e., TIME and MONEY) to maintain and enforce by virtue of sheer complexity, are we really promoting fairness, or are we serving to create chaos out of simplicity?

When we start redefining inherently obvious terminology to provide a small tax break on an item that—whatever else it may be—is, in fact, an ITEM, I have to believe there's something wrong with the picture. The inherent unfairness of our existing taxation system aside—and, really, the code's ever-increasing exception list only serves to emphasize the disparities and general sloppiness of the massive beast—it isn't fair to anyone with common sense to present an argument that shouldn't need to be made in the first place: because regardless of your reason for getting it, surgery is a service, and a "medical device" is a product.

And there is just no way that those definitions should constitute "news" to anyone.