121–130 of 190 posts
I think we've become increasingly anti-human. Everything must be monetized and transactional including basic interactions. We argue that everything has a cost instead of growing the pie. To be human is to be connected in our shared humanity. Instead we build walls or worse, fail by default design to build 'connections' between us and prefer to insulate and isolate ourselves in socio-economic psychological safety.
Oh yes, the old, "Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people. "Everyone gotta get preauthorization from insurance because what if there is insurance fraud"....even if the delay kills someone on the hospital bed. "Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to…
"Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people. how does having an ID eliminate the right to vote? "Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to lose their jobs. how about fixing the delay then? these seem non-problems to me. at least they are non-problems her…
You can walk on the streets without carrying ID, unlike many European countries.
Because of the driving culture in the USA not driving / having a DL means you need to take other steps to get an ID.
But the law does not require you to have an ID.
In general I do like the idea of having to prove ID when voting / for work, however I am weary of the government collecting so much data. The less they know about me the better.
Same goes with DLs. I give my address, DMV sells it and I get car warranty spam. Should be illegal.
Something I’ve always noticed across the US political landscape: people really don’t like spending money to directly help people (mental health care, institutions, public housing, addiction recovery programs) but are fine with wasting money in weird ways like having this non profit travel the world to learn how to put up a sun shade. It’s like the thing Americans dislike isn’t spending the money but the idea of helpi…
Somehow, we Americans always prefer our government pay some entity to indirectly work towards a goal, than to simply use that money to directly achieve the goal. Direct action is so much more efficient, but we insist on doing it the worse way. Paying some non-profit, with executives, and PR people, and lobbyists, and administrators, and administrators-to-administrators, all soaking up the money that could have been a…
Red states also introduced a lot of red tape under the guise of preventing fraud. It instead prevents qualified folks from getting the help they need!
https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/temporar...
Something I’ve always noticed across the US political landscape: people really don’t like spending money to directly help people (mental health care, institutions, public housing, addiction recovery programs) but are fine with wasting money in weird ways like having this non profit travel the world to learn how to put up a sun shade. It’s like the thing Americans dislike isn’t spending the money but the idea of helpi…
> directly help people Indirect, I think you mean, and probably because people generally don’t trust their money to be spent well by institutions, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Americans lead the world in charitable giving and much of that is more direct - anonymously giving money to help a church member or giving money to local charities both are avenues with more visible impact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re taking about really different things. In general: * Insurers try very hard to keep costs down. * Unions try very hard to keep labor costs up. * Drug makers try very hard to keep drug costs up. * Hospitals just try to survive. * Medical provider try to keep a decent work life balance while paying off their student loans.
I could accept these as true if the effect was comparable to any other place in the world. It's not. So either Americans are uniquely bad at trying really hard, or the system is set up with different goals in mind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It kind of does? I go back and forth on this - I do hate the trope of blaming everything on "capitalism", because doing so seems like a recipe for something much worse. But the best good faith definition of capitalism that I can come up with is that it's a framework focusing on capital first and foremost. Contrast with focusing on free markets first and foremost. A lot of people hand wave away the distinction between…
> Similarly, capitalism would seem to include regulatory capture and other purchased legislation as a form of business capital. That seems to equate our current system as the only thing that qualifies as capitalism. Slavery or the abolition of slavery both seem happy to coexist in our definition of capitalist societies. We are happy to talk about ownership of the means of production without including the ownership of…
> The same presumably applies to the existence or non existence of intellectual property
If the two are orthogonal, why is it common for arguments against imaginary property to be characterized as anti-capitalist?
And is there not a general tendency for "capitalists" to push dividing up things that would otherwise be public commons or the purview of government, to parcel out for private ownership? eg water rights, radio frequencies, power grid, the Coase theorem in general. There have been varying amounts of success with privatizing each of these things, but the point I am making is that putting primacy on the private ownership aspect is a bit like putting the cart before the horse with regards to the overall quality of the outcome.
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The pharma-hospital-insurance complex. The same non-profit hospitals in which at least one person you're seen by will be out of your insurance network because it makes more money for the hospital. The same pharma companies which evergreen and lobby for drugs to be ruled unsafe once patent rights run out. The same AMA that limits the number of doctors and ensures they are paid more than any other country while patient…
You’re taking about really different things. In general: * Insurers try very hard to keep costs down. * Unions try very hard to keep labor costs up. * Drug makers try very hard to keep drug costs up. * Hospitals just try to survive. * Medical provider try to keep a decent work life balance while paying off their student loans.
https://www.aafp.org/students-residents/medical-students/beg...
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Well if they had houses they'd be naked and shitting in their house, if they had housing they'd be smoking fentanyl in their house. So at least y'all'd stop going on and fucking on about "open air drug markets" and "the city looks like something out of mad max". It might not solve their problems, but it would solve yours .
No - it doesn’t solve anything. Some cheap crappy collection of houses that are “maintained” by whom? The psychotics and fentanyl users? The “solution” creates a ghetto that has to be maintained by city expenditure. And after that dumb expensive mess fails, then what? Maybe that’s your neolib solution this entire time - ghettos. Typical.
Also yes, maintained by city expenditure, it's been shown time and time again that housing is way fucking cheaper than a combination of policing and emergency medicine.
that's not even to touch the moral/ethical imperative that human life has intrinsic value and we should strive to provide everyone with the resources and dignity that they need.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.
If it fails, then what is the question you need to answer, because my answer is: keep trying.
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I've known a lot of people that use drugs recreationally. The proportion of those that abuse drugs is small. That group almost invariably are in a bad situation before they compound it with drug use. Exploitation is damaging. In my opinion, fewer exploited people means fewer damaged lives means less drug abuse.
> a high-regulation/low-trust society like the US It used to be, we were the other way around.
I think memories of a low-regulation/high-trust society are hard to reconcile with America's long struggle with racial integration.