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Other People’s Problems

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Re: Other People’s Problems

#131

Post by WalterBright »

maraphon wrote: post #111
WalterBright wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some moderate level of inflation is a pretty basic economic principle The US had zero net inflation from 1800 to 1914, and fantastic prosperity.

US property owners enjoyed vast expanses of unexploited resources to tap and legally protected exploitation of whole classes of people to help them do so. I hope you are not claiming that that (limited) prosperity wasn't generated by wiser and more humane policies than today's.

The US saw an enormous improvement in the average standard of living of Americans in its first century. Scores of millions of people moved up from poverty into the middle class.

This happens in every country that tries it.

For an example of an economy entirely focused on resource extraction? The Arab oil nations.

For examples of highly prosperous nations that have no resources to speak of? Japan and S Korea. With free markets.

BTW, it wasn't possible in the 19th century to have a 40 hr week and vast welfare payments. The productivity wasn't enough to fund it.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#132

Post by WalterBright »

lazide wrote: post #107
WalterBright wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Law of Supply and Demand. For example, open a lemonade stand in your neighborhood. Charge $20 a cup. See how it goes.

How about I run a bunch of fear ads and sell ammo for $20/box instead. I think we both know how it will go on that one.

Go right ahead! Let us know how it turns out.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#134

Post by goodcanadian »

mech422 wrote: post #122
atoav wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you say this can cut both ways. A good example would be the US where people constantly wonder whether $thing-that-29-out-of-30-developed-countries-do-since-decades could truly work. Yeah it works, we have seen it work, it is currently working. Now imagine you are a software developer entering the offices of a group of bueraucratic clercs that keep an intricate fax-and-scanner-based system of bullshit just barely a…

while I agree we need some sort of nationalized health care and should learn from the countries that have implemented it, I'm not sure thats the strong success you think it is? Just recently we had a bunch of comments here on HN about how bad candian health care can be if you live in the 'wrong' area. UK has had issues with NHS for decades at least (hell, they ALSO have 'private' insurance which seems to be almost a…

As a Canadian who has lived in the United States and in the United Kingdom, I can say without a doubt that both Canada and the UK beat the US "system" by a mile. While their universal healthcare can have problems, the problems in the US system are far worse.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#135

Post by atoav »

vonwoodson wrote: post #112
atoav wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure. You cannot translate what works in Sweden one to one to the US and expect the same success. But here is what you could do: realize that the cultural differences between Turkey, France, Australia, Ireland, Japan, Finland, UK, Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Belgium and so on are very likely not less than the difference between the US to all of these countries. And yet, some things US citizens cla…

The difference between California, Texas, South Dakota, Maine, Ohio are as different as Turkey, France, Australia, Ireland, Japan... It's a really foolish opinion or disregard the immense diversity of 350,000,000 people, and (unfortunately) it's made all over the internet. "Why don't you just do X", totally papers over the extent of what just needs to happen. " Everyone should just do Y" is always bad policy. Just lo…

I am aware that the US is not one monolithic block. To assume otherwise is a very US-thing to do. The rest of the world literally drowns in news about the US internal conflicts.

But maybe I sould give an example: guns. I grew up in an European region where the percentage of gun owners is close to US levels, yet our last school rampage was a decade ago. The rural town I grew up in is famous for it's traditional gunsmiths and home of a Glock factory, so not what some in the US would call big city liberals. The reason gun crime is low here is because we have commons sense gun laws of the type most gun owners in the US supporr as well. Yet you have US politicians claiming "it is a slippery slope" and it "can't possibly work".

Yeah, look at the numbers, it works, it also works in comparable regions to mine with totally different social and cultural circumstances. Of course if you'd like to you could also implement it in a way so it doesn't work, but that would be evil on a comic book villain level right?

The problem in the US is that corporations are really damn effective there to trick a sizable amount of the population into believing all kind of excuses that fall apart the second you look elsewhere.

E.g. given our gun laws many US citizens would say our freedom has been taken away, yet somehow 10 year old me managed to go shooting on empty cans with my hunter grandfather. We had a god damn shooting range in the cellar of our school. It is just that our guns are stored safely and people who shouldn't have guns don't have them. E.g. because they issue threats, have a history of violence, drug abuse, mental illness, or showed otherwise that they act irresponsible with the lives of their neighbours.

But maybe you know more about why the world I live in can't work and have a good explaination that for some reason keeps benefiting certain corporations, while it kills the kids of your population.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#136

Post by voltaireodactyl »

p_j_w wrote: post #119
vonwoodson wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between California, Texas, South Dakota, Maine, Ohio are as different as Turkey, France, Australia, Ireland, Japan... It's a really foolish opinion or disregard the immense diversity of 350,000,000 people, and (unfortunately) it's made all over the internet. "Why don't you just do X", totally papers over the extent of what just needs to happen. " Everyone should just do Y" is always bad policy. Just lo…

>The difference between California, Texas, South Dakota, Maine, Ohio are as different as Turkey, France, Australia, Ireland, Japan This is just so obviously not true on the surface. We all speak the same language at the very least, which isn't true for a single one of those countries you listed.

Australia and Ireland certainly speak the same language as much as Maine and Texas do.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#137

Post by isleyaardvark »

mech422 wrote: post #122
atoav wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you say this can cut both ways. A good example would be the US where people constantly wonder whether $thing-that-29-out-of-30-developed-countries-do-since-decades could truly work. Yeah it works, we have seen it work, it is currently working. Now imagine you are a software developer entering the offices of a group of bueraucratic clercs that keep an intricate fax-and-scanner-based system of bullshit just barely a…

while I agree we need some sort of nationalized health care and should learn from the countries that have implemented it, I'm not sure thats the strong success you think it is? Just recently we had a bunch of comments here on HN about how bad candian health care can be if you live in the 'wrong' area. UK has had issues with NHS for decades at least (hell, they ALSO have 'private' insurance which seems to be almost a…

Not too long ago I saw an article from a Canadian source about how bad Canadian healthcare was getting, and complaining Canada had or was about to drop out of the top 10 rankings.

It had a scatter chart showing the metrics, and while Canada was shown as lower than many of the other countries, the gap between all those countries and the US was enormous.

When other countries complain about their healthcare, they're complaining about complaining about sane systems not performing to their standards, and that doesn't make the US any less of a dumpster fire.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#138

Post by lazide »

WalterBright wrote: post #132
lazide wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about I run a bunch of fear ads and sell ammo for $20/box instead. I think we both know how it will go on that one.

Go right ahead! Let us know how it turns out.

Been working out quite well even without the ads, actually.

Re: Other People’s Problems

#139

Post by mech422 »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #137
mech422 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while I agree we need some sort of nationalized health care and should learn from the countries that have implemented it, I'm not sure thats the strong success you think it is? Just recently we had a bunch of comments here on HN about how bad candian health care can be if you live in the 'wrong' area. UK has had issues with NHS for decades at least (hell, they ALSO have 'private' insurance which seems to be almost a…

Not too long ago I saw an article from a Canadian source about how bad Canadian healthcare was getting, and complaining Canada had or was about to drop out of the top 10 rankings. It had a scatter chart showing the metrics, and while Canada was shown as lower than many of the other countries, the gap between all those countries and the US was enormous. When other countries complain about their healthcare, they're com…

I agree, single payer/universal health should be a table stakes. And I wasn't picking on Canada - it seems to be a better system all around. But all systems can be improved (as you mentioned). If we're going to this from scratch, shouldn't we look at all the systems and try to follow the 'best practices' from all of them ?

One reason I look at Canada so much is the population is almost 1/10th of the U.S. population - so I would expect (naively) all issues would be magnified 10x. Also, the pain points with Canada's healthcare seems to be in scaling and funding as the population grows? Scaling up the number of doctors/hospitals available - to cut wait times, and providing consistent funding not based on where you live. Definitely solvable and much better then the issues the US healthcare system has.

For the US, I think good way to start might be to actually fund the VA Hospitals and see what it takes to properly run a national health organization in the US. How many doctors does it require? How many hospitals? What sort of budget? etc. If we can scale up the VA to provide quality healthcare without the under staffing, waits, long distances between facilities, etc across the entire country - then we can use those lessons to scale up to true universal healthcare? The last thing we want to do is introduce some half-assed 'designed to fail' system that lets politicians just say 'yeah, we tried that...Didn't work'

Thanks!

Re: Other People’s Problems

#140

Post by bluGill »

d0mine wrote: post #126
bluGill wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, like my sister in law who moved all the yellow books together. Fiction, all different non-fiction, different series - all over the place, but the shelf looks nice by color even though I can't find anything without reading every title.

Can chatgpt help you find the book on the photo of your shelf?

Maybe, but that is a lot of overhead vs a well organized bookshelf where I don't need reach for some app(s) on my phone just to find a book. This story is from several years before chatgpt, I've organized my bookshelf since so I won't have to find out.
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