121–130 of 143 posts
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It could happen this year; legislatures just need to pass laws. The hardest part is people posting comments like yours as a diversion from doing real work (though there are other hard parts too).
that's right! if only I wasnt posting snarky crap on HN we'd have a Utopia. Paging Upton Sinclair!
My parents ended up being forced by circumstances to move into a retirement home about five years ago. Fortunately, the place turned out to be run by people who mostly cared about their clients and so my parents' lives were basically OK, except that the food sucked (which AFAICT is par for the course at retirement homes). But a few months ago the place was acquired by a different company, which is trying to squeeze o…
The people that perform these acts to the elderly should be tortured to death. You may think "wow thats some hyperbole right there!" but active torture is effectively what they're engaged in against the people in their care. So let's give them an eye for an eye.
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We let capitalism run too far. Need to swing hard towards socialism or the whole thing will collapse
The actual problem is how do we give people things that are way more expensive than those people will ever be able to cover themselves? The answer is to make someone else pay for it. But man, have you ever gone to dinner with your large tech salary and been advised you have a moral obligation to cover 80% of the table's bill, and then be demonized for scrutinizing what people ordered? Socialism is great when you can…
I worked for a while selling fractional nurses into for-profit nursing/retirement homes at the end of Covid, got to interview some industry experts, who told me that these for-profit homes are the 21st century equivalent of 19th century insane asylums. If you or your loved ones have to enter one, seek at all costs a home that is not for profit (Catholic orders run some, Jewish organizations others, the VA also offers…
100% agree- the Jewish home for the aged is the nicest facility I ever saw in my career as a medic. I asked some of the nurses I worked with about why they were on such a different level - better than even the fanciest most expensive $30k a month places in Portola Valley or Palo Alto - and was told it's because taking care of the elderly is a fundamental tenet of Judaism.
As it's done in most of Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa. US/Canada were turned against family and tradition thanks to decades of brainwashing by movies, TV, and ads. To be cool you had to go to a college in another state. Then move to a big city. Pick career over family and having children. Take antidepressants.
This started in the 70s and is well documented.
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That's not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we have ceased demanding that our government produce reasonable outcomes. The reasons for that are many, but it's a core sign of how far we've fallen that there's even a discussion or argument about this obvious fact. We are in charge. We can just ban private equity companies from doing this you know. There didn't used to be ambiguity about the point…
> We can just ban private equity companies from doing this you know. Ideologues love to identify some small group of bad guys that if we only rein in everything will be great. It’s private equity! It’s health insurance executives! It’s trial lawyers! It’s CNN! The actual truth is far worse. It’s 100 million homeowners, it’s 20 million healthcare workers, it’s an entire generation too online, etc. There’s no magic bul…
We have more private equity funds than McDonalds, looking to do this kind of extraction everywhere, because we have huge wealth inequality and therefor those at the top needing to park more money in more places. Then end goal is modern feudalism, with the top owning everything and extracting more and more from every single transaction/event in a person's life.
We can't fix competence when we have one political party working to make the government incompetent so that they can leverage that to tear down government. They have internal politicides such as 'starve the beast', all with the goal to make American government unable to function.
People who think the government is bad have never met a corporation.
People who think the government is bad generally point out that there's only one government, but typically multiple corporations. I am not one of those people, but their point does need to be fully addressed.
In the US we have one that recognized we are a society and need things to work. and one that wants to get rid of government at all costs, to the point they have for the last 40 years had policies such as 'starve the beast' with the sole intention of making government completely unable to function.
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It could happen this year; legislatures just need to pass laws. The hardest part is people posting comments like yours as a diversion from doing real work (though there are other hard parts too).
You say all it takes is for the legislature to pass the laws and seem to assume our government is functioning as expected without any bugs. And yet we’re talking about an extremely well-connected and powerful industry in PE. Do you really think they won’t lobby intensely against legislation that would cripple their profits? Are the majority of our legislators really immune from considering corporate interests?
It's not a fairy tale; it is hard; and yet our predecessors moved mountains.
It isn’t the fault of private equity that banks make excessive loans against assets in a leveraged buyout. Banks (such as per the article, The Royal Bank of Scotland) have a duty to ensure that their loans are of properly assessed risk, and if the PE firm that wants to or has bought an asset does not look qualified to run it, then the banks should not be making the loans. Articles that keep casually dropping triggers…
When I deal with bob renting his house, we come from a kind of equal place. When I rent from XYZ agencies, there is no fair deal, there is their deal or no deal, designed to be as exploitive of me as possible. There is no coming to terms from somewhat equal place, there is only agreeing to corporates terms. The same with dental work. Getting a roof put on. The society we had didn't work that way in every transaction in life, and the society we have now doesn't really work for large swaths of society anymore.
Systems with no slack become brittle. In the case of modern society, that brittle aspect is people not able to afford to live and businesses so 'optimized' they can't afford to do their core businessing well, their workforce unable to themselves live, and their workforce pushed in a way that isn't sustainable long term, but since their owners have purchased large amounts of the competition the business is able to stumble along for a while. Until they get their exit by selling the unsustainable bundle to a retirement fund, with PE yet again destroying another aspect of what made society work in the past.
I worked for a while selling fractional nurses into for-profit nursing/retirement homes at the end of Covid, got to interview some industry experts, who told me that these for-profit homes are the 21st century equivalent of 19th century insane asylums. If you or your loved ones have to enter one, seek at all costs a home that is not for profit (Catholic orders run some, Jewish organizations others, the VA also offers…
100% agree- the Jewish home for the aged is the nicest facility I ever saw in my career as a medic. I asked some of the nurses I worked with about why they were on such a different level - better than even the fanciest most expensive $30k a month places in Portola Valley or Palo Alto - and was told it's because taking care of the elderly is a fundamental tenet of Judaism.
It's by no means one of these places that puts on a facade of being a retirement resort. A first impression might be that it is dingy. But, for the combination of dementia and other care needs we have had on our plate, they have provided just about the best care I could hope for.
Along the way, I've had to disregard superficial judgements from some extended family or family friends, who seem to harbor a fantasy image of elder care as an elevated experience with the trappings of a luxury hotel stay and experiences fit for aristocrats. In a dream, I too wish my mom could have stimulation and education in her final years like immersion in an artist colony combined with a Parisian salon from a novel.
I settled for a place that consistently keeps her safe, gives her communal meals, manages her hygiene, manages her medications, monitors her health, and communicates reasonably well with me on these topics. I also visit weekly and take her to all her medical appointments etc., so I think I have an accurate view of how things really go there.
My biggest lesson from this, applicable to future generations, is to find your enriching experiences and setup your end of life plans while you are young. By the time you or your family realize you are in decline, you likely have lost the cognitive and/or emotional flexibility and/or agency to really adopt the most enjoyable lifestyle or life setting. Your more basic care needs will start to dominate all decision-making.
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Americans often confuse socialsim for handing out money freely and letting people commit crimes without going to jail, both the left and right, so its this wierd catch 22 going on or something
> and letting people commit crimes without going to jail Looking at the administration, the feudal internet lords and other megacorps, the US is deeply socialist then.
We prefer to let capital (and its representatives) commit the juiciest crimes...