Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 839 posts

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#581

Post by harimau777 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #509
someothherguyy wrote: post #201

If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on. I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acti…

> many in this country are It's exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley elite. Between the stupidity and kowtowing it has revealed a startling amount of groupthink and cowardice, even among people I once held as independent thinkers.

Isn't that more or less the behavior that's normally associated with the professional managerial class? That is to say: They throw in with whatever side will give them prestige and privilege.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#582

Post by cinntaile »

hnhg wrote: post #487
dukeyukey wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as anti-Brexit as they come, but it didn't change the UK's direction much. It's still the 2nd richest European state (with the 1st declining fast), the 3rd largest tech ecosystem worldwide, one of the premier military powers. Brexit wasn't great, or even good, but it's not disastrous.

That’s because Europe overall is declining fast. However the rest of the world is rising fast and the next ten years should be interesting from this alone.

What metrics are you using?

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#584

Post by shkkmo »

XorNot wrote: post #428
shkkmo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a legal-if-you-don't-look-at-it way to bribe the de facto head of the US government / the expectation of massive corruption How does the sale of the debt help Elon Musk or Trump? They don't own that debt, they don't make money off that debt. Do you expect the fund managers to forgive the debt as a bribe? That would clearly be a bribe, but until that happens, it isn't and I don't think it is terribly likely. There a…

I'm saying when you see a lot of smoke coming from a house, the neighbours probably didn't just buy an industrial sized BBQ and suddenly decide to have a huge cook off after some kids threw a bottle through the window.

So you think a debt purchase is blindongly obvious example of bribery? Then it should be easy to explain how it is bribery.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#585

Post by kelnos »

computerthings wrote: post #157
kelnos wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the people in the country either a) want to watch everything burn, because the system has served them poorly for too long, or b) are stupid enough to believe that Trump actually wants to help them. Or both. Many (most?) Americans don't seem to have ever learned how to think critically or question what authority figures tell them to believe. On top of that, COVID was rough for lots and lots of people. Even though…

Mind you that not even a quarter of Americans voted for Trump.

Sure, and not even a quarter of Americans voted for Harris.

But if you really want to be pedantic: there are around 75M non-citizens living in the US, so that means there are only 265M Americans in the US. A quick search suggests that the number of American citizens living outside the US is under 5M. 77M out of 270M is 28%, so Trump did get more than a quarter of Americans to vote for him.

(For the record, I said "of the country", and didn't restrict my comment to only US citizens as you did.)

At any rate, I don't find these sorts of takes all that useful when it comes to electoral math. 77M people voted for Trump. Around 100M people in the US are ineligible to vote (under 18 years old, non-citizens, felons denied voting rights, etc.). That leaves around 90M people left who could have voted, but didn't: to me, that's either "I'm fine with what the people who vote decide" (so a tacit vote for Trump) or "I don't care at all, screw this".

So that's 167M votes either explicitly for Trump, or implicitly for watching things burn. That's about half the country.

But sure, if you must be pedantic, amend my comment to "nearly half the people who voted in the election". It doesn't change the meaning or outcome or implications of the rest of what I said.

So let's stop playing dumb number games. Half of the country either actively wanted this, or was fine with it.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#587

Post by s1artibartfast »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #563
s1artibartfast wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The big questions remain unanswered. Where are costs inflated between pharmaceuticals, providers, hospital administrators, insurance administrators and patients seeking unnecessary care? Pharma costs are inflated by R&D costs and promotion. Insurance overhead is actually relatively lean, but base cost is primarily driven by cost of goods, and to a lesser extent admin. Provider costs are inflated by high legal and re…

If you had to pick one policy that maximises impact and messagability, what would it be?

I dont know that they work well in isolation, as there are multiple market failures at play.

If I had to pick one, I would say heterogeneity of insurance plans as most fundamental.

Consumers must have some exposure to cost savings or liability for downward price pressure exerted and inferior substitutes to be selected. People will never pick a $20 treatment over a $20,000 unless they have skin in the game, even if it is 99% as effective.

I think this has to be instituted at a insurance policy level for a number of reasons. Charges are stochastic and in the future, while policy premiums are predictable and immediate, allowing consumers to see cost or savings across the entire policy and pre-commit.

Measurability is tough on this because it amounts to allowing inferior treatment, and I dont think this could be papered over, even if it brings down the price of all care and allows more treatment in aggregate.

Uniform pricing is much better on the messaging. It is adjacent to collective bargaining, just mediated by a market instead of a technocrat. It can be sold to the left as an attack shadowy rentseekers. It can be sold on the right as a free market reform. On the pragmatic front, it can It has a transparent pricing angle, where you could see prices, which current transparency legislation seems to fail. I also think there is a lot of negative will pent up about negotiated pricing and the idea of companies paying drastically lower prices than an individual because they can throw their weight around when bargaining.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#588

Post by wakawaka28 »

Considering that this criminally deranged nutjob was a high-ranking Biden nuclear safety officer, I think they are doing the right thing by looking into whether the remaining staff are qualified: https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/non-binary-ex-biden-...

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#589

Post by harimau777 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #564
afavour wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just look how fast Luigi Mangione got out of the news. What news would there be? He was arrested and locked up, his court case hasn’t started. Should we have “Luigi still in jail” headlines?

This is the failure mode of the anarcho-liberal awareness premise. "Awareness" is almost never the limiting factor to policy change. This is why awareness based movements such as occupy, BLM, and climate protests go nowhere. Everyone is aware of climate change, police brutality, or inequality. Organized opposition with leverage and a compelling alternative is the bottleneck. Awareness isn't a policy position and does…

Wasn't the thesis that can change minds behind Luigi basically "If we don't fix the system then this could happen to me"?

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#590

Post by harimau777 »

DennisP wrote: post #506
mschuster91 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the insiduous thing we're seeing - when you have to work two jobs just to make rent on a dilapidated shack for a slumlord you don't have time to protest, and when your healthcare insurance depends on having a job (because there aren't charity-run hospitals around any more) you can't afford the risk getting fired for going on a strike, much less actual "direct action". On top of that, mass media controls the na…

Healthcare doesn't depend on a job, and I don't understand why this rhetoric continues. Except in certain red states that refused federal funds, anyone below a certain income gets Medicaid and anyone above it can get ACA insurance, complete with a subsidy based on your income. Preexisting conditions are irrelevant. Republicans might make big changes but this has been the situation since Obama.

Everyone I know with ACA plans can't actually afford to go to the doctor because the copay is too high.
Post reply on HN