171–180 of 260 posts
I wonder if Squid Game has had an impact. Gi-Hun had a flashback to an auto factory strike that was pretty traumatic that led him down the path to sign his life away to the game. https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanted to comment with a snide "QED", then got really sad, because jumping from poor reporting on boat rallies to "never trust the media" feels way too real right now.
More like jumping from "any time I am familiar with something and see an article on it, the article is super inaccurate" to "never trust the media"
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect? Its like all these dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale movies and shows are just expressing the never ending exploitaion and helplessness around people.
I can tell you from personal experience that pretty much every Kdrama show I can think of, has the same narrative of the "Elite" being corrupt and abusing it's power and influence to do what they want vs the middle and poorer classes. Maybe not always as the focus of the story, but it's a common element. And it's not just the popular shows that make it big internationally. I guess it's ingrained into their culture. I…
As far as I can recall, that one also has a rich guy, almost a member of the team, who has been of much help to the cause.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One wonderful thing about Japan is that houses are as much of an investment as toothbrushes. The minute someone uses it, its value drops immensely. 10 years is old but still somewhat livable and generally cheap. Once you get past 20 years, locals basically see the house as scrap. It's really easy to buy cheap houses or apartments over 20 years old. Some clueless foreigners new to Japan see these prices and think they…
That doesn't quite make sense. You're basically paying for the land in many European cities, too, so how is the price of the building an important factor? It's the land that's very expensive.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are known for their thuggish ways. They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda. within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike b…
Meanwhile in the US John Deere is cutting off health insurance to strong arm them into ending the strike. Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea.
> Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea. Not that I disagree, but I'd like to point out that you're effectively advocating for all other employers to "cut" healthcare as well. As someone who pays my own (and my family's) healthcare to the tune of $16K/yr for a really shitty plan, I'd also say that _who_ pays is probably not the primary concern here. If it cost one third what it does now (which…
"Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea."
> Not that I disagree
If you agree that employers controlling health care is bad, what are the alternatives? Either universal coverage, or everyone has to foot the bill for their own health insurance plan. The former has a track record in every developed country in the world, the latter doesn't work at all.
>but I'd like to point out that you're effectively advocating for all other employers to "cut" healthcare as well.
No, universal coverage means that no one's healthcare gets cut. The fact that I even have to state this is strong indication that you're not arguing in good faith.
>The primary concern, instead, should be how much this shit costs, as well as the fact that the costs are _still_ rising.
I don't think that can be the concern without A) understanding why costs are rising AND B) why costs are rising faster here in the US than they are in other developed countries around the world who all have universal coverage for less than what we pay (big hint, it's the profit motive)
>And this concern can't be addressed until we force hospitals to publish prices, allow people to buy healthcare across state lines, and force US Big Pharma to treat the United States more favorably than they treat, say, Europe.
I wonder why Europe is treated more "favorably"? Maybe we just haven't showered "Big Pharma" with enough profits for them to like us? You know what might help with the whole "buying across state lines" thing, some sort of nationwide standard for insurance coverage so you wouldn't worry about the next state over having a completely different set of laws by which insurers have to abide by. And if there's one national standard for insurance coverage, what's the benefit of having one insurer over the other? And why don't you think hospitals publish their prices? Because it's not about what procedures or anything costs, it's about what insurers will pay. So between all the insurers, some won't pay this and others won't pay that, so we'll just charge astronomical prices and let the negotiators sort it all out.
> and the high cost of doctors and nurses ($300 for a 10 minute consultation? GTFO, not even lawyers charge this much),
Doctors charge that much because they have no idea what your insurance will pay. Doctors typically like to focus on practicing medicine and making their patients healthier, rather than navigate crazy insurance mazes. So doctors (like many in the chain) realized they could sit down and figure out exactly what they should charge, bill the insurance company, then fight to get paid OR make up some crazy price, know that the insurance companies are only going to pay anywhere from 40-75%, then just accept it and move on. Don't blame the doctors here when insurance is the issue.
> Note that given the high levels of corruption in our government
A lack of faith in our government is a completely separate issue from health care. Connected, but separate. We COULD have a government that actually was held accountable and did right by the population it's meant to serve. Instead we have corruption, lies, regulatory capture, and mismanagement. We COULD try actually making government better and correcting it's flaws (as our founders intended), but instead many use examples of it not working as evidence that we shouldn't try to improve it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A class of people? You mean our democratically elected officials? For all their flaws, I would rather they do something productive with "some" of the resources we're talking about here rather than putting it to use on just another bottle of Dom Perignon. Sure, even that generates economic activity, but there are much better economically multiplying activities that can be invested in.
Well at the point of time when policies are that to the left hard to imagine you will still have elected officials but who knows
He's talking about stopping funding for the British Monarchy, not nationalising the means of production. It's not a majority position, but it's hardly hard left.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that includes real estate in Monaco priced at 100K per square meter, works of arts jewels, stocks trading at 100+ PE etc. e.g. sh#t not convertible into shelter, food and other things people need. It's not that elastic on a gloabl scale.
The majority of this is ownership, for example the Quandt family owns nearly 50% of BMW. Stefan Quandt alone owns 25% of BMW. It's pretty elastic - and that wealth share of 700 billion is owned by 500 out of 80 Million people or 0.000625% of the population.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are known for their thuggish ways. They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda. within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike b…
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are known for their thuggish ways. They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda. within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike b…
Imagine anger when you live in poverty, you work 9 hours/day (minimum, from workweek in Korea) manual labor, some people at work die or get disabilities in work accidents. As a worker you know that everyone lives from surplus you produce, the food, etc, programmers do not make food. You can only do programming since they made food for you. So as a worker, you know you do something useful, right? So you deiced to talk…
I’m trying to understand the point you are making?