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What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

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Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't really need to do this if you provide a strong welfare state Why is providing a welfare state a prerequisite here? From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? > all taxation is oppression? Of course it is - it's robbery. Just like the draft is slavery. The important question is "What circumstan…

> From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? I'll answer this with a question: you said elsewhere that its unethical to compel doctors to treat a patient. Let's assume that's the case. What happens when you are robbed by someone, shot, and your wallet is stolen, you even pass out from the shock and blood…

> What happens when you are robbed by someone, shot, and your wallet is stolen, you even pass out from the shock and blood loss.

You are at this point reliant on the charity (read: voluntary) of others. Even if you were identified and your insurance accepted, the paramedics or doctors can just refuse to do their jobs, for whatever reason, and face only professional consequences. You are in no way guaranteed to be treated.

Also, the insured could demand coverage for this case from their providers, with liability to their estate if they are not treated. This would force insurers to negotiate with hospitals to treat these patients rather than incur the liability.

> don't deserve to die

What do you mean "don't deserve?". If you're laying shot in the street, then clearly you're going to die soon without lots of outside intervention. This is your lot. Insurance isn't there to provide a guarantee of some outcome, it's there to reimburse as best it can after the fact.

> don't like the instability that comes from a lack of welfare state

Doing what "people like" isn't the same as being ethical.

> the best thing for me to do is to steal from someone

That depends on the risk/reward balance between stealing and figuring out how to be productive. If the punishment for robbery is severe, then chances are you'll figure out how to be useful to someone before resorting to it.

> Is coercion voluntary

Yes? If your grandmother offers you a cup of tea, insists, and will be offended if you don't take it, does that make it involuntary? She's clearly coercing you.

> why isn't it violent to withholding food they need to live

Everyone needs inputs to live, and everyone is born without the means to provide them for themselves. Therefore everyone must, at some point, enter into a negotiation with those who possess what they need. Absent any law and order, these negotiations often turn violent. All we've any right to do is make some rules around the negotiations, not prescribe universal cooperation.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I'm of the opinion that, like my house, under what conditions I choose to admit people to my business is none of anyone else's concern. " ... " ...which injures no one else... "

How does denying someone my cooperation injure them?

You're smart, you'll figure it out if you think about it for a while. Try putting yourself in the position of someone who could be injured.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From where do you derive the need to protect people from the total consequences of their failure or misfortune by forcing the collective to bear the burden? I'll answer this with a question: you said elsewhere that its unethical to compel doctors to treat a patient. Let's assume that's the case. What happens when you are robbed by someone, shot, and your wallet is stolen, you even pass out from the shock and blood…

> What happens when you are robbed by someone, shot, and your wallet is stolen, you even pass out from the shock and blood loss. You are at this point reliant on the charity (read: voluntary) of others. Even if you were identified and your insurance accepted, the paramedics or doctors can just refuse to do their jobs, for whatever reason, and face only professional consequences. You are in no way guaranteed to be tre…

> This would force insurers to negotiate with hospitals to treat these patients rather than incur the liability.

The ROI here functionally never makes sense for the insurer to do this, unless clients are paying enough to offset the cost of paying all unidentified people.

> You are in no way guaranteed to be treated.

Are you saying that this is the case today, or that this is how it would be. Because I agree with you. Despite laws that require doctors to treat you that exist today (to prevent this exact scenario), no one ever holds a gun to anyone's head. There's no need for violence. Professional (and in general civil) consequences are enough to enforce this.

> She's clearly coercing you.

Coercion requires force or threat. From me shooting you is the same as the harm from me starving you, so the threat is the same. A grandmother being upset isn't a threat, and certainly not the same level of threat, not is it force. So perhaps let's ask a different question: is choice freely given when your life is threatened?

> Doing what "people like" isn't the same as being ethical.

Utilitarians would disagree with you.

The root problem with how you approach the world is that you see any government force as worse than all force by everyone else. Like given how your approach contacts, if I coerced you to sign yourself into slavery, that's acceptable, since it meets your definition of "strictly voluntary, at-will, consensual".

If you believe government is the worse bad and nothing else can be as bad, sure that's a viewpoint. But it fails when you have other powerful organizations that hold the same power over an individual as a government does.

Imagine for a moment another extreme example where the government has a total use of force monopoly, and I have a monopoly on the water supply. You say that is unethical for the government to act against me, and also unethical for individuals to act against me, no matter what. This is true even if I use that Monopoly to enslave people or commit genocide, because I'm doing it without violence, only coercion. If that's your ethics, something's broken.

And pragmatically it's also stupid: people will lose faith in a government that fails to protect them. So a government that fails to protect its citizenship effectively will quickly cease to exist (the people with guns will desert to protect their families and tada: a new government). So once you accept that democracy is ethically good (and really even if you don't), the ethics are irrelevant. Governments must keep people happy or they will quickly cease to exist. And I subscribe to the idea that the purpose of a system is what it does. Governments try to make their citizens happy. If they don't, they'll be replaced by one which does, because that's what the people want. Your job is then to convince me, and everyone else's that sacrificing my safety is worth a government that is in your view more ethical.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#654
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70s and 80s scifi media frequently depict floppy disks being used well into the 22nd century and beyond, despite the fact that optical and solid state storage did exist in some form back then. Either is is done to make the scenes relatable to the contemporary audience, or human beings really lack the abiltiy to imagine things they have no empirical experience with.

Do the details of the storage medium matter? It still stores ones and zeros - who cares how?

Yes it does. Like it all not we all subconsciously associate media format with a certain era or genre. A gramophone places a story back in the early 20th century and a minidisc surely brings up memories of the late 1990s. Having a period-specific piece media show up in depictions of the future surely breaks the veil of suspended disbelief.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#655
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United States does rank below the UK in terms of social mobility. The notion that that is because the economic development of the country is "finished" seems weird. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report....

"United States does rank below the UK in terms of social mobility." It always did, because the US had slaves, and ex-slaves who had no much opportunity to 'climb'. The US now also has a giant class of a specific kind of migrant - Latinos from Central America, who are completely different than those from Spain or Cuba and the rest of the world. They exist in a kind of 'separate' USA and while technically might have th…

>but it does line up with PISA standardized testing results which show the same, that non-Black/Latino America is actually 'a lot like' Europe or Japan in terms of so many outcomes

That's an understatement. Americans do well on PISA compared to their ethnic relatives.(https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-sco...>) Asian Americans do better than Asians; whites do better than Europeans; Latinos do better than Latin Americans; and blacks do better than Africans.

As you note, Hispanics and especially blacks' scores drag the US average down. Both white and Asian Americans score higher than Canada (and white+Asian is essentially Canada's racial makeup), and higher than New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, and the UK; Estonia is below US Asians but above white Americans. Norway is by far the wealthiest Nordic state but its average is only two points higher than the US national average, despite not having a demographic that is 13% of the population and scores 85 points below the white American average.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And predicting the fall of the US... Makes them both nazis and communists? I'm confused by your argument.

It's really hard to be both far-right and far-left at the same time.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact says otherwise.

German and Soviet troops that met in Poland after invading from the west and east had no trouble in celebrating their victory together, holding parades and such.

As John Gunther—who was in Moscow when the world learned of the pact's existence in August 1939—wrote, "communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood".

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody owes more money than the rich. This is true of countries as well. “Wealth” as most people think of it comes from power over money more than from the absolute value of net worth. I had a lot of credit card debt in University. I was the richest person my friends knew. That money gave me access to people and opportunities I would not have had otherwise. Today, I owe a million dollars ( mostly mortgage ) but am co…

>Nobody owes more money than the rich. This is true of countries as well. This is completely incorrect. The rich are net lenders. They are also net interest recipients. The companies they own are also net lenders.

Net lender doesn’t matter if there is no cap on the upside. The person you are replying to has it right.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#658
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep it's the same for me - dark when I go to work and after I finish. But I'm not taking any supplements at all so I'm just wondering if you personally notice a difference between when you do and don't take it.

Yes, I am on prescribed Vitamin D due to low results from a blood test. The difference being the dose. I do not see the sun at all for all winter. Difference is night & day (pun intended).

Just picked up some Vitamin D today. I've been feeling a little out of sorts recently so we'll see how it goes :)
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