91–100 of 119 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Violence is literally always a last resort.
Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. We can take down this cancerous thing via more civilized means. It’s that civilization that separates us from the thugs we oppose. Otherwise we’re just the new thugs.
Violence is literally the last thing a person can do. If there is violence then all other means have been tried.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. We can take down this cancerous thing via more civilized means. It’s that civilization that separates us from the thugs we oppose. Otherwise we’re just the new thugs.
I don't think you are understanding what I'm saying. Violence is literally the last thing a person can do. If there is violence then all other means have been tried.
Violence can change things very rapidly in a superficial way: change who is holding the gun mostly.
More substantial and lasting change generally requires ideas framed by compelling words and cemented by personal sacrifice.
That’s the sort of change I’m signing up for.
Any idiot can kill someone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> scope remains for negotiation and compromise and peaceful resolution I feel like the murderer wouldn't be so widely commended if that were true. Justice is what is supposed to prevent vigilantism, and apparently lots of people here felt that the murder was just.
>I feel like the murderer wouldn't be so widely commended if that were true. Justice is what is supposed to prevent vigilantism, and apparently lots of people here felt that the murder was just. OK then, what crime did the CEO commit? Simply presiding over a business that people don't like, which he has no real power to change, is not a crime in any sense. Vigilantism only makes sense when there is no justice for rea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His actions touched a nerve. If you want to try and smear the alleged manifesto, go ahead, but I don't think you'll be changing many minds. And by the way, there's no shortage of "writers from both ends of the political spectrum and points between" who broadly agree with its points. Luigi is more popular than Joe Biden lol [0]. 60% of New Yorkers would acquit him [1] (100,000 sample size). 0 - https://www.msn.com/en-…
Your second link seems to be fabricated. I'd guess it's an invention of AI. A survey of 100,000 people is extremely large, and would be quite expensive to administer, and its source as given as "PoliticsVideoChannel", a twitter account with 200,000 followers. There's no link to the survey. My guess is, if it's based on anything, the Twitter account ran a poll which got 100,000 votes. That's quite different than a sur…
I don't think anyone who has been on the internet the last couple weeks can argue in good faith against Luigi's broad popularity across left and right; that's why I didn't put effort into verifying the source. I still ought to have tried a bit harder there though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, the stat I am working from is "homicides", not "gun deaths"; I'm just inferring that guns drive those homicides. If there's a huge, outlying number of homicides, but there's even more suicides by gun death, does that sound like a mental health system that's working? It's so weird that you'd think this strengthens your case somehow. > our health care system has the same structure in basically all 50 states. But…
No, it isn't wrong. The difference between the approaches we have here is that I'm looking stuff up, and have actual information in front of me, and you're defending a narrative. If your narrative was supported by the facts, I'd be defending it too. I don't care about insurers. But it isn't; attacking insurers is problematic not just because murder is wrong (it deeply is), but also because it's not fixing the problem…
It is though. It’s deeply and profoundly wrong; blatantly wrong; a child could see that it's wrong; every other country in the world can see that it's wrong; and most Americans see it as wrong despite deacdeas of unanimous corporate propaganda.
That’s why there have been many books and documentaries about how US insurers are a huge problem. Luigi's manifesto even called two out by name: Rosenthal [0] and Moore [1].
It would have been nice to see you acknowledge the weakness of your last argument instead of responding by accusing me of "defending a narrative" (that's called 'projection' btw). Asking me to google vague phrases is an even weaker line of argument.
> Insurers are simply not where the costs in our system come from.
Do you realize how many times now you've just stated something as if it were fact when there have been shelves of books written demonstrating the exact opposite? It's not normal tptacek, and intellectually incurious in the extreme.
This particular statement of yours is so obviously wrong it's hard to imagine where to begin: Where do those billions in profit come from? Why was the DoJ launching an antitrust investigation against United? Why were there credible accusations against Brian Thompson of insider trading? ... If you want hundreds more examples, try reading a book about this topic: Maybe 'Delay, Deny, Defend', or 'The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—and How to Fix It'. There are dozens to choose from, and you don't seem to be able to even acknowledge that they exist; it's almost spooky.
At the very least, please, try to acknowledge that actually there might be something very wrong here. Plugging your fingers in your ears, and making outrageous and aggressive claims as if you were delivering mathematical proofs with certainty, is really disappointing stuff.
0 - https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-health-insurance-changed-fr...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did not find it to be terribly dumb, simple though it was.
The causal factors for the life expectancy gap between the US and the G8 have in fact very little do with our health care system, and the (manifold) problems of our health care system have in fact very little to do with health insurance. In fact, if you isolate the health care system, and don't try to six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon every inequality and equity problem in America onto the health care system, we actually te…
Now you're just flat lying. That's not what it said at all, and in fact I explained this to you only hours previous.
Here's what the alleged manifesto said:
> Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play.
This is some of the poorest debating I've seen on HN in a long while. I really don't know why you think it's okay to make shit up like this, and then repeat it long after you were patiently corrected. Who do you think you're going to convince this way? Do you have that low an opinion of the crowd here?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The causal factors for the life expectancy gap between the US and the G8 have in fact very little do with our health care system, and the (manifold) problems of our health care system have in fact very little to do with health insurance. In fact, if you isolate the health care system, and don't try to six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon every inequality and equity problem in America onto the health care system, we actually te…
> The manifesto itself says that the guy doesn't understand any of this stuff. Now you're just flat lying. That's not what it said at all, and in fact I explained this to you only hours previous. Here's what the alleged manifesto said: > Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it isn't wrong. The difference between the approaches we have here is that I'm looking stuff up, and have actual information in front of me, and you're defending a narrative. If your narrative was supported by the facts, I'd be defending it too. I don't care about insurers. But it isn't; attacking insurers is problematic not just because murder is wrong (it deeply is), but also because it's not fixing the problem…
> No, it isn't wrong. It is though. It’s deeply and profoundly wrong; blatantly wrong; a child could see that it's wrong; every other country in the world can see that it's wrong; and most Americans see it as wrong despite deacdeas of unanimous corporate propaganda. That’s why there have been many books and documentaries about how US insurers are a huge problem. Luigi's manifesto even called two out by name: Rosentha…
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9154274/
(you don't even have to read that, just look at the charts, which are excellent)
https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...
Want more? Here's relative doctor compensation in the G8; notice anything?
https://www.physiciansweekly.com/how-do-us-physician-salarie...
Here's the AMA explaining how Medicare artificially restricts the supply of doctors, driving up costs:
https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/more-medicare-supp...
What they don't explain is how the AMA lobbied for that scarcity in the 1990s, to avoid an "oversupply" of doctors.
I don't know that "a child" could read this and understand what I am saying, but I expect you can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your second link seems to be fabricated. I'd guess it's an invention of AI. A survey of 100,000 people is extremely large, and would be quite expensive to administer, and its source as given as "PoliticsVideoChannel", a twitter account with 200,000 followers. There's no link to the survey. My guess is, if it's based on anything, the Twitter account ran a poll which got 100,000 votes. That's quite different than a sur…
Thanks, it does look like a bad source/poll. I don't think anyone who has been on the internet the last couple weeks can argue in good faith against Luigi's broad popularity across left and right; that's why I didn't put effort into verifying the source. I still ought to have tried a bit harder there though.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had noisy fans on the Internet! Rolling Stone put a glamor shot of him on its cover. People misread Internet fandom as popular support constantly. There is nothing too stupid or repellant for the Internet to create a fandom for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I feel like the murderer wouldn't be so widely commended if that were true. Justice is what is supposed to prevent vigilantism, and apparently lots of people here felt that the murder was just. OK then, what crime did the CEO commit? Simply presiding over a business that people don't like, which he has no real power to change, is not a crime in any sense. Vigilantism only makes sense when there is no justice for rea…
Why isn't it a crime to preside over a company that prioritizes profit over people's lives? The Nazis couldn't claim "I was just running the concentration camp" as a defense. The CEO of a company has the most power to change it, and definitely enough power to say "fuck this, find another CEO".
Insurance companies aren't overtly or covertly killing people. They might not be paying for their healthcare in every single instance where they should. As a business, they must decide what services to cover and at what price or they won't be in business for long. They face extensive regulation to ensure that they are not doing exactly the thing you're accusing them of. Yes that means everything has a limit.
Luigi was a rich kid. Neither he nor his family had any business with this insurance company or the CEO, as I understand it. So this action on his part is the result of some insanity plus radicalization, perhaps by people like yourself who have the gall to compare 100% legal businesses to Nazi concentration camps. Our political discourse has really degraded in my lifetime, with one large faction now frequently accusing everyone they disagree with of being Nazis. No good can come of this.
>The CEO of a company has the most power to change it, and definitely enough power to say "fuck this, find another CEO".
Perhaps he could change something but you can't articulate what that is exactly, because you don't care. You just hate the industry as a whole. Even if the industry needs a lot of improvement, it is entirely legal and regulated, and not a charity. The CEO has no reason to leave because he's got a great job at what most people regard as an upstanding business.
It could be argued that Luigi's murder of this CEO and the public reaction to it could make insurance worse. How? Think about it. What competent CEO-type would want to work at a company if it might put a target on his back? A lot of normal people would not want to. So you're less likely to get a competent and relatable CEO, and more likely to get a cutthroat or incompetent one. The kind of person who doesn't care that lots of people would celebrate his death just for having held the position. And an incompetent one could lead to more deaths, because insurance is basically a finance business that must make enough money to cover its expenses. If they go broke, then nobody is getting covered.