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Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

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Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#441

Post by tmoertel »

consumer451 wrote: post #437
tmoertel wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. In many parts of the United States, regional hospital systems have captured their local markets through consolidation and exploitation of their non-profit status. They then offer their own health insurance plans to provide access their own hospital systems, sometimes even denying access to other insurance plans. So when these insurance plans spend on patient care, they are, in effect, paying themselves at rates…

Wait, I previously replied too passively. Yes, that is corruption. However, it is being punished! If a for-profit insurance/hospital group does this in the USA, taking money from patient care to profit... there is no punishment. Instead, it is encouraged. Correct?

The point is that both for- and not-for-profit systems can be exploitative and often are. And not-for-profits have extra avenues for exploitation.

> Yes, that is corruption. However, it is being punished!

In the example I shared, the evidence suggests that the punishment, as you call it, has not been adequate to solve the problem. And that problem has been ongoing for a decade and a half. And still continues.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#442

Post by thirdacc »

radpanda wrote: post #103
croes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is what would you do if you were Cuban?

Buy back the Mavericks (probably for less than he sold them for), fire Nico Harrison and trade to get Luka Dončić back. Oh, you mean about 18F? I’d just keep trying to draw public attention to what appear to be hasty decisions made by this administration that aren’t actually beneficial to the country.

> I’d just keep trying to draw public attention

This does nothing. It did nothing in 2016 and would do even less now.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#443

Post by luckylion »

surgical_fire wrote: post #433
luckylion wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You mention the Soviet Union as an example of a government that worked against the people, ignoring plenty of good examples in different countries. No, that's not what I meant. I mentioned them because they are the largest experiment in having everything run by the state and ignoring human nature (or, in their case, thinking they could change it by pretending it didn't exist for 20 years). The outcome was people vo…

It is also more efficient to refuse hospital care for those with serious medical conditions. Letting them die is probably more cost-effective. I can come up with countless examples of how it is more cost-effective and innovative to exploit people for profit, but I am sure you already got my point. I think here is where we will have a fundamental disagreement in world views, probably in a way that is impossible to rec…

> It is also more efficient to refuse hospital care for those with serious medical conditions. Letting them die is probably more cost-effective.

No, it's not, that's a silly argument. We have hospitals not because we're such great moral people, but _because_ we've figured out that it's much better for society if an illness doesn't mean you have to roll the dice whether you survive.

But at some point, costs become an issue, I'm sure you see that as well, e.g. with an ageing population. It's not even a moral question, at some point you're arguing against the laws of physics. And you may think that human laws are hard to change, but wait until you've tried changing those.

> You think that profit-seeking can be a force that results in progress, whereas I think it is fundamentally adversarial to the public at large.

There's some schools of thinking where living in the West is "fundamentally adversarial" to the public at large and we better go back to pre-industrial life, traditional and simple because reject modernity and all that. I don't subscribe to that.

I don't think there's a way to deny that profit-seeking results in progress - the only question is whether you could achieve a similar level of progress without it. I believe history has shown that you cannot, and then it has re-run this experiment multiple times, and always ended up with the same result.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#444

Post by surgical_fire »

luckylion wrote: post #443
surgical_fire wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also more efficient to refuse hospital care for those with serious medical conditions. Letting them die is probably more cost-effective. I can come up with countless examples of how it is more cost-effective and innovative to exploit people for profit, but I am sure you already got my point. I think here is where we will have a fundamental disagreement in world views, probably in a way that is impossible to rec…

> It is also more efficient to refuse hospital care for those with serious medical conditions. Letting them die is probably more cost-effective. No, it's not, that's a silly argument. We have hospitals not because we're such great moral people, but _because_ we've figured out that it's much better for society if an illness doesn't mean you have to roll the dice whether you survive. But at some point, costs become an…

> I believe history has shown that you cannot, and then it has re-run this experiment multiple times, and always ended up with the same result.

You seem to think I am a communist simply for thinking that profit seeking should be regulated by the government and that government functions should not be in the hands of corporations.

I never once said that corporations should not exist, ot that all profit-seeking activity should be forbidden. You just presumed that, because you hold fairly extremes points of view.

The fact that you don't see how extreme your point of view is turns this conversation in an exercise in frustration. Oh well.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#445

Post by exsomet »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #164
xivzgrev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they’re similar at all. Musk is cutting things left and right, creating large messes and giving himself hand outs. He is making things less efficient (vs more). Cuban sees the mess, and an opportunity to make some money while also providing value to the government. I guess they’re similar in taking advantage of the moment and looking to make money, but I don’t see how Cuban’s proposal is destructive, un…

An opportunity to provide value to the government by replacing their own service with an inevitably more expensive one which can be recontracted out to whoever suits the interests of a specific administration with minimal pushback. It's not Musk's ideal scenario I'm sure, but he'd be an awful lot more happy with it as the new status quo than what was there before.

I’d propose a slightly different reading:

“The government just tried to screw you, but they need you so you should join together in a way that when they inevitably come calling, they no longer have the power to screw you again.”

How many people have said they wished to be in the same position over things like RTO? Or employees unionizing after managerial and corporate abuse?

Once somebody proves themselves untrustworthy, it’s not wrong to protect yourself from them in the future.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#446

Post by wraaath »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #26
croes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is what would you do if you were Cuban?

Live my best life in the wilderness and never have to hear about politics again

Until someone gets mineral rights to your wilderness and goes to strip mine away

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#447

Post by wraaath »

hollerith wrote: post #430
1659447091 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars Guess it's a good thing we are in the US and there is no tax dollar coercion considering you are free to renounce citizenship and leave the country. Thus never having to pay the fees required to participate/live in US society. Kinda like if you don't want to pay monthly gym fees, don't--but don't expect to use their gym equipment whenever suits you.

Uh, Washington thinks you still have to pay income tax after renouncing your citizenship and bullies governments into collecting it or even extradicting you if you do not pay.

What percentage of the world's countries will still respect the US's extradition treaties in 4 years?

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#448

Post by hollerith »

wraaath wrote: post #447
hollerith wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, Washington thinks you still have to pay income tax after renouncing your citizenship and bullies governments into collecting it or even extradicting you if you do not pay.

What percentage of the world's countries will still respect the US's extradition treaties in 4 years?

Approximately the same percentage that respect them now IMHO.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#449

Post by luckylion »

surgical_fire wrote: post #444
luckylion wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is also more efficient to refuse hospital care for those with serious medical conditions. Letting them die is probably more cost-effective. No, it's not, that's a silly argument. We have hospitals not because we're such great moral people, but _because_ we've figured out that it's much better for society if an illness doesn't mean you have to roll the dice whether you survive. But at some point, costs become an…

> I believe history has shown that you cannot, and then it has re-run this experiment multiple times, and always ended up with the same result. You seem to think I am a communist simply for thinking that profit seeking should be regulated by the government and that government functions should not be in the hands of corporations . I never once said that corporations should not exist, ot that all profit-seeking activit…

I did not assume that at all. It's just that the communists denied that greed (or, framed more nicely: self-interest) is a common human trait, so they set out to prove that it's much better without it. And the rest is, as they say, history. My opinion is that we don't need to try that again.

You appear to believe that profit-seeking cannot result in progress, and I disagree. Is that an extreme viewpoint? If you, too, consider self-interest "of the devil", capable only to destroy but not to create ("profit-seeking can [not] be a force that results in progress"), then I suppose it is an extreme viewpoint, much like the idea that the devil could be a force for good.

I just don't believe in the devil, or god, but I believe that you wanting to optimize the outcome for you in a game constrained by rules that require you to create value for others in order to receive value, will end up being much better at creating value than if there was no external motivation for you.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#450

Post by 1659447091 »

hollerith wrote: post #430
1659447091 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars Guess it's a good thing we are in the US and there is no tax dollar coercion considering you are free to renounce citizenship and leave the country. Thus never having to pay the fees required to participate/live in US society. Kinda like if you don't want to pay monthly gym fees, don't--but don't expect to use their gym equipment whenever suits you.

Uh, Washington thinks you still have to pay income tax after renouncing your citizenship and bullies governments into collecting it or even extradicting you if you do not pay.

No you only have to pay if you keep your citizenship and leave the country. If you are no longer a citizen you no longer pay.
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