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The Cement of Society Is...

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Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#101

Post by luckylion »

flamble wrote: post #58
smegcicle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Medicare for All being a success in one state would change little at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU eg, I'm not sure how they're connected, but it's obvious that the majority of medical research is being done over here, and I never see that mentioned in the comparisons between our systems and overseas; if the overpayment we're doing over here is necess…

> at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU The EU and Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. It works all over the world. Research on the US system accords with the overwhelming evidence from all around: it would work. > eg, I'm not sure how they're connected ... medical research Let's clarify. The repugnant gouging in the…

> The EU and Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. It works all over the world.

Not necessarily at the same price though. The US healthcare system is crazy expensive because US salaries for high-skill individuals are crazy high (because tuition is crazy high?....). To fund an expansion might be more expensive.

I'm sure it's possible, but if you need more funding, you need more taxes. I'm not at all sure Americans would be okay with that. Remember that you have very low taxes compared to Europe or Japan.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#102

Post by darkerside »

082349872349872 wrote: post #94
wodenokoto wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea was to have quotes that explicitly used the word cement, not just quotes pertaining to what keeps society together.

It's good that it's a purely syntactic collection. Viewed semantically, the "cement of society" produces a strange image, as if a single event could, once set in a given form, hold society together forever and ever thereafter. I think society is held together by a process, not an event, so what could the "X of society" be in that case? "The covalent (primary) as well as van der Waals and hydrogen bonds (secondary) of…

The electromagnetism of social cohesion

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#103

Post by oxygenjoe »

blhack wrote: post #21
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but "basic understanding" and "facts" are two very different things: facts are facts. Their understanding has more to do with the interpretation. And if we all agree on interpretation of the facts, then cementing the society becomes too easy of a task.

You're in a car. The speedometer reads 50mph. How fast are you going?

Too fast for the city, too slow for the highway. 50mph is a compromise that nobody wants

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#104

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

groby_b wrote: post #43
jariel wrote: post #11

'Conscientiousness'[1] (there's some science to this one) Basically shared values, behaviours, rough sense of justice, morality and humanity, and a sense that individuals ought to aspire to those on some level. It's funny because in the West we talk a lot about 'freedom' and 'classical liberalism' - I really think that's partly: a) A response to historically authoritarian systems either political or cultural which we…

I think you're overgeneralizing. There are several cultures "in the west" that do very much want to follow rules. Both Germany and Japan come immediately to mind. Neither is a strict rule following culture, but both place a fairly high value on rules that regulate the commons.

> Germany ... Neither is a strict rule following culture

If you put your recycling in the incorrect bin, in Germany, your neighbors might correct the notion that the rule following is not strict.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#105

Post by vixen99 »

bildung wrote: post #85
smegcicle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Medicare for All being a success in one state would change little at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU eg, I'm not sure how they're connected, but it's obvious that the majority of medical research is being done over here, and I never see that mentioned in the comparisons between our systems and overseas; if the overpayment we're doing over here is necess…

As a proxy of the effectiveness of the current US health care system, please have a look at the achieved life expentancy in the US vs. the other G7 countries: https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.ht...

Yes, the US is an outlier. One example: "In the most extreme case, we see that Americans spend more than 5-times what Chileans spend, yet the population of Chile actually lives longer than Americans".

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#106

Post by luckylion »

rtkwe wrote: post #42
tasogare wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s especially egregious in this case with 1/3 of examples being extremely politically oriented (the so-called systemic racism). One of the big issue is when people start thinking their fantasies are reality and will distort every fact to fit in, instead of critically think that they may, in fact, be wrong.

This is a fine example of what I mean. To me, from the left, there's very little room to question the existence of systematic racism. [0] From my perspective it flows pretty cleanly from several pretty solid facts. Black people were literally property for several hundred years. Once that ended there were explicitly racist laws and actions to keep black people out of any kind of economic or political power. [1] Maybe…

An issue I see with that line of thinking is that Turks in Germany are also a lot poorer than native Germans, get lower education and rely on welfare a lot more, commit more crimes etc. Yet they immigrated barely 60 years ago and were immigrating as workers, not refugees.

Turks have never been enslaved (quite the contrary, they've been slave-owners for much of their history), there were no racist laws against Turks, yet they still ended up in a very similar place.

That suggests that there might be different reasons why groups are less successful, and might suggest that it's not racism. That the results in different African American groups are very different also makes the simple narrative of "it's because of racism" hard to follow, I think.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#107

Post by vixen99 »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #51
rtkwe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fine example of what I mean. To me, from the left, there's very little room to question the existence of systematic racism. [0] From my perspective it flows pretty cleanly from several pretty solid facts. Black people were literally property for several hundred years. Once that ended there were explicitly racist laws and actions to keep black people out of any kind of economic or political power. [1] Maybe…

I think noone in their sane mind will deny that racism does exist. This is a fact and there are scientific ways to check it. The questions are: how much does racism contributes to poverty among black people? Is it the only reason? Is it the main reason? Are there any other reasons? If these reasons are unpleasant (pick your favorite here) will we still be able to freely discuss them? If racism is not the reason (let'…

Other reasons? http://www.tsowell.com/Discrimination2.html '...challenges the very foundation of assumptions on which the prevailing “social justice” vision is based. The first two chapters of Discrimination and Disparities present a new framework of analysis, and back it up with empirical evidence from around the world, before proceeding to demonstrate why and how so much of the "social justice" vision is a house of cards.'

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#108

Post by bildung »

luckylion wrote: post #101
flamble wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least it would prove to work here- it's not like the US is in the exact same position as the EU The EU and Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. It works all over the world. Research on the US system accords with the overwhelming evidence from all around: it would work. > eg, I'm not sure how they're connected ... medical research Let's clarify. The repugnant gouging in the…

> The EU and Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. It works all over the world. Not necessarily at the same price though. The US healthcare system is crazy expensive because US salaries for high-skill individuals are crazy high (because tuition is crazy high?....). To fund an expansion might be more expensive. I'm sure it's possible, but if you need more funding, you need more ta…

Not qualified to have an opinion on that, though of course that doesn't prevent me from a back-of-the-envelope calculation:

* A third of US healthcare cost is assumed to be administrative overhead just caused by the current system. "Cutting U.S. administrative costs to the $550 per capita (in 2017 U.S. dollars) level in Canada could save more than $600 billion, the researchers say." [0]

* Median wage level for healthcare workers (everyone directly care-related, i.e. including nurses, technicians and MDs) is $68k, about 5.5M people alltogether. [1]

* With the efficency gain of $600B one could double the headcount of medical practitioners and still be better off as a society.

[0] = https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-costs-administrati...

[1] = https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes290000.htm

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#109

Post by wolfram74 »

bobthechef wrote: post #16
rtkwe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to believe when from your understanding of the world the other side is blatantly lying and misrepresenting things. It forms a bit of a positive feedback loop where seeing bad intentions leads you to being less likely to give slack so you see more bad intentions. From the left looking rightward at Fox News and many local stations (increasingly owned by and forced to run identical scripts from Sinclair Broa…

You do realize that the "other side" has the same EXACT perception of you, right? It would be nice if people were a bit more skeptical of their preferred news outlets and opinion makers. What I see instead is the continuing existence of the same bubble that led to the shock and surprise at Trump's election. An absolute refusal or inability to consider other views, an inability to interpret events in historical contex…

I don't doubt conservatives feel like liberals believe in nothing but power, and I'm sure the left has a few marks against it on that count. But I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded in door events shortly afterwards[0]. It's easy to manufacture a narative that has the left drinking the blood of babies, but how much support is there for some large scale malicious thing?

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-p...

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#110

Post by watwut »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #104
groby_b wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overgeneralizing. There are several cultures "in the west" that do very much want to follow rules. Both Germany and Japan come immediately to mind. Neither is a strict rule following culture, but both place a fairly high value on rules that regulate the commons.

> Germany ... Neither is a strict rule following culture If you put your recycling in the incorrect bin, in Germany, your neighbors might correct the notion that the rule following is not strict.

Then again, age restrictions in amusement parks are completely ignored.

Also, there are fines (or you pay more) for recycling wrong, it is not about neighbors only.

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