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Well because you said that, we're going to add public investment in crypto too, everyone gets an NFT with their taxes this year.
Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
11–20 of 134 posts
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number one expense for SMB is healthcare, providing a nationalized healthcare service would likely unlock trillions in value (imagine what Americans would do if they got $200-500 more per paycheck?). Instead we are forced to watch some of the wealthiest companies on the planet burn money for fun because apparently the government is "wasteful." What a crock of shit.
The U.S. spends more money on education per student than any OECD country other than Norway and Luxembourg. Yet it gets quite mediocre results. Why do you think the U.S. will be able to do public health care in a more cost efficient way than it does public education? I favor universal health insurance, but you’re going to pay more, not less. European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of…
The U.S. system is neither fish nor fowl, there is more spending per capita than other countries' public systems and endless amounts of red tape because instead of one government bureaucracy you're also dealing with the insurance networks, the providers, etc. I certainly don't think it'll be automatically cheaper, but one can't help but think that the current system encourages hop-ons that exploit the inconsistencies and convolutions. It's like one big nightmarish parody of public–private partnerships.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number one expense for SMB is healthcare, providing a nationalized healthcare service would likely unlock trillions in value (imagine what Americans would do if they got $200-500 more per paycheck?). Instead we are forced to watch some of the wealthiest companies on the planet burn money for fun because apparently the government is "wasteful." What a crock of shit.
The U.S. spends more money on education per student than any OECD country other than Norway and Luxembourg. Yet it gets quite mediocre results. Why do you think the U.S. will be able to do public health care in a more cost efficient way than it does public education? I favor universal health insurance, but you’re going to pay more, not less. European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of…
>European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of money by just “cutting out the profit.”
They sort of have with pharmaceuticals (which to be clear is only maybe 10-15% of overall healthcare spending) by having the government negotiate drug prices nationally, instead of having individual insurers negotiate. This has monopsonistic effects, which really does cut the profit margins of drug manufacturers substantially. Of course, in many ways, they’re free riding on drug discovery funded by profits made overseas (particularly in America) but it does result in appreciable savings.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would nationalized healthcare get funded other than shifting that 200-500/check towards… nationalized healthcare?
When you cut out the insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies driving up record profits at the expense of care you can get pretty far with less in taxes
Insurance companies make like 2-4% hardly breaking the bank here. Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money, but the US also funds most drug development which other countries freeload off of. US healthcare workers get a state enforced shortage to drive up their wages thanks to residency limits, but nobody ever wants to look at that.
If you can't tell I am extremely pessimistic about the changes of universal healthcare improving on our current system. And to be clear it's universal, not unlimited.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would nationalized healthcare get funded other than shifting that 200-500/check towards… nationalized healthcare?
When you cut out the insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies driving up record profits at the expense of care you can get pretty far with less in taxes
You cut out the insurance middlemen but you introduce government bureaucracy.
There's absolutely no way the government operates more efficiency in this space.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
The U.S. spends more money on education per student than any OECD country other than Norway and Luxembourg. Yet it gets quite mediocre results. Why do you think the U.S. will be able to do public health care in a more cost efficient way than it does public education? I favor universal health insurance, but you’re going to pay more, not less. European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of…
>European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of money by just “cutting out the profit.” They sort of have with pharmaceuticals (which to be clear is only maybe 10-15% of overall healthcare spending) by having the government negotiate drug prices nationally, instead of having individual insurers negotiate. This has monopsonistic effects, which really does cut the profit margins of drug ma…
Yes, good point. That’s one of the switches that will have to be flipped.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you cut out the insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies driving up record profits at the expense of care you can get pretty far with less in taxes
You cut out the insurance middlemen but you introduce government bureaucracy. There's absolutely no way the government operates more efficiency in this space.
Better one bureaucracy than many. The U.S. health system requires constant patient management of multiple moving parties, it's maddening.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you cut out the insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies driving up record profits at the expense of care you can get pretty far with less in taxes
Insurance companies make like 2-4% hardly breaking the bank here. Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money, but the US also funds most drug development which other countries freeload off of. US healthcare workers get a state enforced shortage to drive up their wages thanks to residency limits, but nobody ever wants to look at that. If you can't tell I am extremely pessimistic about the changes of universal health…
Insurance companies basically are banks, in that while they make low profit margins they wield such vast amounts of capital, some of which they invest in, they might as well be financial service institutions. There's also other categories of entities (pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers and distributors) that also get a cut.
https://medium.com/@brian-curry-research/the-healthcare-maze...
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The U.S. spends more money on education per student than any OECD country other than Norway and Luxembourg. Yet it gets quite mediocre results. Why do you think the U.S. will be able to do public health care in a more cost efficient way than it does public education? I favor universal health insurance, but you’re going to pay more, not less. European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of…
The U.S. system is neither fish nor fowl, there is more spending per capita than other countries' public systems and endless amounts of red tape because instead of one government bureaucracy you're also dealing with the insurance networks, the providers, etc. I certainly don't think it'll be automatically cheaper, but one can't help but think that the current system encourages hop-ons that exploit the inconsistencies…
But our publicly run systems are full of inefficient bureaucracy and red tape, too. Why shouldn’t we assume our public healthcare system would be operated the same way as the public school systems in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles?
Moreover, there is a massive amount of overcare that americans aren’t willing to confront. My wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87 and was airlifted from rural oregon to a hospital in portland. She had only 3/4 of her lungs after having cancer in her 60s. The doctors wanted to do an intensive intervention, which didn’t happen only because she refused and died peacefully the next day. My parents are on medicare and they just wander into the ER every time their blood pressure goes too high. I took my 7 y/o son in for a black eye after he ran into a table. The doctor looked at him, concluded there was almost no chance of internal bleeding, but ordered an MRI (or CAT scan, I forget which) “just in case.” We got one and the results within 90 minutes because we just have million dollar machines lying around “just in case.” My daughter went to get her retainer at a small dental office in exurban Maryland, and the office had four people working at the checkin desk. I think this practice has only three dentists total.
America’s “customer is always right” culture means it will be politically impossible to roll back any of this.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#20They already invest in open-source AI, but nothing is truly free. Commercial AI will usually dominate because devs are paid to make it their primary effort. Goodwill and part-time contributions cannot reliably compete with livelihood and profit incentives.
That's what people said about operating systems, and databases, and compilers, and so many other big complicated categories of software that over time became increasingly dominated by OSS