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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On November 09 2024 05:31 Velr wrote:
I'm actually still personally wrestling with the fact that a person like Donald Trump got voted in. With a majority of the vote, no electoral college bullshit.... Over half of the voting population of the US thinks a convicted felon, rapist, conman, reality tv-star.... .... that can't string 5 sentences together is the figurehead (again).
I mean... There is plenty of bullshit going around in tiny switzerland but this?... How do you cope? I couldn't....
You're telling me. If I manage something I'll let you know.
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Looks like the Democrat leadership is laying the blame for Kamala's botched nomination process entirely on Biden. I don't blame them, from the outside looking in it really did look like he engineered the timeline of events to occur in such a way that trying to get an open primary done in time for the election was all but impossible. If he wasn't going to be allowed to run again, then he wanted his hand picked VP to take the nomination and no one else.
Welp. Thanks a lot Joe. Ya done fucked us.
https://x.com/selinawangtv/status/1854968427854635409Nancy Pelosi to the NYT: “had the president [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.” “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. “ “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/us/politics/pelosi-harris-biden-open-primary.html
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On November 09 2024 05:46 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:00 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 04:15 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 03:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 01:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 01:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 00:11 ChristianS wrote:On November 08 2024 10:17 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote] "Take up arms" is a bit dramatic, I'm at "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" (or "I would read like 50% of a book by a socialist", edit: or just "I would stop voting for Democrats") and have been for YEARS waiting on you guys to have an answer to where you draw the line if not genocide for just that much.
I’m imagining various scenarios about Trump carrying out some or all of the atrocities he promised to commit, and your question is “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” Do you get how it doesn’t seem like a responsive question? If I promised that right this moment, it wouldn’t change the path a bit because I’m just one CA voter, and if voters en masse made the same promise, surely it would just embolden Republicans to commit atrocities without fear of electoral consequence. The obvious conclusion is that no amount of promising not to vote for Democrats is capable of stopping Republicans from committing atrocities, no? You had to skip "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" to get to the edit about voting. You should have started there. But the “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” besides being a bit of a transmutation, is a decades old question that precedes us. You speak to the timeliness as if I haven't been putting that question in one form or another to you and libs/Dems here for years without you all ever having anything resembling an answer. Most people just lob childish insults, or talk about any inane/bad faith thing (even on reasonable topics) they can with the oBlade types because as we know, they can't help themselves. You and the person you tried to elect President had the chance to discuss ending the enslavement of your fellow Californians and neither of you mentioned it 1 time afaict. I don't think people appreciate how fucked up that is on so many levels. I don't mean that as a personal indictment of you (I absofuckinglutely do of Harris), but of such deep systemic problems that it probably barely crossed your radar. It'd be bad enough if it was passing despite Harris NEVER mentioning how she was voting on ending the enslavement of her fellow Californians (let alone pushing for it), but it is failing. That makes it so much more unforgivably bad. + Show Spoiler +Maybe it would be helpful to pivot a bit to a related subject: a word socialists often like to use is “revisionism.” As I understand it, it dates back to a late 19th century German socialist named Eduard Bernstein, and the concept is “we don’t need a revolution, we’ll just form political parties, win votes, and enact legislation to bring about socialism.” Socialists don’t exactly use the term as a compliment; indeed, it’s the punchline to the joke about socialists that Drone posted a while back: + Show Spoiler [Drone’s joke] +There's also this joke, which comes in various ways - just copy pasting the first one I found: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "The proletariat love you. Do you believe in the proletariat?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a communist or a socialist?" He said, "A communist." I said, "Me, too! Marxist-Leninist or anarchist?" He said, "Marxist-Leninist." I said, "Me, too! What kind of thought?" He said, "Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Intersectional Trotskyist or Classical Trotskyist?" He said, "Intersectional Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Action (United States), Socialist Alternative (United States), or Socialist Equality Party (United States)?"
He said, "Socialist Action (United States)." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Resurgence splinter group, or Socialist Action mainline?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence splinter group." I said, "Me, too!"
"Socialist Resurgence committee of 2019, or Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021." I said, "Die, bourgeois revisionist!" And I pushed him over. Lenin spends no small amount of time in What is to be Done tearing into Bernstein and Revisionism, and yet for all his sarcasm and scorn, I have trouble enumerating what exactly would be his explanation of why socialism cannot be enacted by electoral campaigns in a liberal democracy. He’s not a vanguardist, he doesn’t think the proles are too dumb to get it and you need a small cadre of radicals to stage a coup and give them their dictatorship against their will. So if you’re going to have to convince the masses of your program, why would it be an unacceptable route to elect representatives who pass bills and amendments? To be clear, I’m not asking this because I think the conclusion is wrong. Now especially, but even after 2020 I didn’t have a ton of faith in our democratic process as an effective engine for change or political decision-making. Kwark et al. are going on about how dumb it is that voters would blame Biden for inflation and such when it’s trivial to analyze why inflation happened and whether Biden did a good job combating it; but the fact remains, voters overwhelmingly make decisions on the basis of those kinds of factors. Where can you go with that besides questioning the premise of government based on elections decided by this electorate? If a fairly simple analysis like “why does inflation happen?” is way beyond what we can expect of the average voter, I certainly don’t think you can expect a majority of them to undergo the kind of revolutionary socialist self-education you’re begging everyone in the thread to find time for. But… then what? Are we back to vanguardism? Lenin eventually got somewhere with this stuff, but I’m not particularly thrilled to follow the path of early 20th century Russia (neither how they got to revolution, nor where they when after it). I want to keep this manageable so the rest can wait. Let's take back a step and focus on "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization". I obviously favor Revolutionary Socialism (as developed primarily by Black radicals mostly after WWII) but how about just a socialist org? We could include DSA which still does plenty of voting for Democrats? I get people are busy, but "democracy" in any meaningful sense of the word isn't just voting every couple years based on a party you have no influence on. + Show Spoiler +I mean, I guess the generic answer is “people (including myself) will sign onto a political project if they think it seeks better outcomes than the alternatives and has a reasonable chance of achieving them.” When exactly to focus on ideology (“seeks better outcomes”) and when to focus on efficacy (“has a reasonable chance of achieving them”) is a constant dilemma with no simple solution, and different posters might place their objections to socialist organizations on one or the other (or both), but I’m guessing for most folks around here, they think revolutionary socialists have almost no chance of ever taking power in America (extremely low on the efficacy measure), and if they did, they worry all the quoting Lenin and Stalin and Mao is an indication they would institute some kind of authoritarian regime (presumably low on the ideology measure as well).
But that’s me guessing at what everybody else thinks. For myself I guess I do figure the socialists tend to have somewhat idealistic/naive conceptions about affecting political change (i.e. potentially low on efficacy) but all the hard-nosed cynical Democratic political operatives seem pretty fucking incompetent, too. Feels like nobody knows anything about how to make things happen, and the actual outcomes are decided mostly by chance or circumstance. This is what Democrats robbing their supporters of the actual history of change does smh. Most of what we take for granted today (weekends, overtime, not being locked inside burning buildings, etc) that was achieved (mostly in the first half of the 20th century and before) was won by socialist guided organized labor engaging in organized mass civil disobedience. Democrats are functionally the people that shepherded people away from the functioning socialist approach to change and toward the lib/Dem one you recognize is shit now. On ideology I just don’t feel like I understand what socialists want enough to even say anything conclusively about it. + Show Spoiler +Certainly the realities of Soviet or Maoist rule seem pretty grim, maybe less so than the monarchist or colonialist regimes they were meant to replace but not obviously superior to liberal democracies, either. But also those were/are pretty much entirely undemocratic regimes, and socialist revolutionaries in the US always seem to think their system will be democratic. Which leads me to the question you decided to put off until later: how exactly are you supposed to get widespread support for a program that requires so much challenging self-education, and if you could, why would you need to overthrow liberal democratic governments just to establish a new system that’s apparently still democratic? Like, why are we even still talking about my vote? + Show Spoiler +I didn’t vote for Biden in the primary and it made no difference. I did vote for Kamala in the general and it made no difference. I’m well aware my vote is insignificant, I mostly only bothered to fill the thing out for some of the propositions that apparently are also gonna fail (fucking hell, this state). You and I seem to be in agreement that meaningful change is only gonna come from non-ballot-related activities, so why do we keep talking about whether I bubble in that first question or not? Why do you even care? Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: On November 08 2024 22:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 15:37 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 15:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 14:04 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
It's the first. They trusted in institutions that couldn't be relied upon. Sooo the same thing they are doing by handing Trump/Project 2025 control of the most lethal military in the world? That' should work out well /s We can ignore all the warnings people got that this would happen, and just go with "fool me once, shame on you, fool me 542 times..." Also, to be fair, the institution of the Supreme Court did give Democrats the power to hold him accountable. Unfortunately, Democrats are even less reliable than Trump's Supreme Court. Dunno why you keep holding this stuff against me as if I'm running the Democrats. ...supporting them. They ostensibly derive their power from you and voters like you. From a liberal democratic pov, you and people like you need to extract better than that from them. Alternatively, you and voters like yourself need to extract them and replace them with people that will do better than make the same mistake for the 543rd time of trusting institutions and norms to control Trump/Project 2025's openly fascist ambitions. I'd prefer you and voters like yourself just join revolutionary socialist orgs and go from there, but if you all insist on keeping your lib-Dem politics, the WORLD needs you to demand better from your leaders RIGHT NOW, EN MASSE, in every venue possible. Which ties into the issue with you and other libs/Dems not having a line for when you'd have to stop supporting Democrats since clearly even genocide doesn't cross it. On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 06:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:
If the Democrats framed Trump as a shitbag who’d shortly fuck off, let’s figure out some messaging to counter him, that’s one thing. Kinda my position
But they want to simultaneously frame him as a Fascist threat to democracy, while also doing nothing to block his ascent to power What is terrifying to me is that libs/Dems are just going to retcon the "Trump is a fascist that will destroy democracy" thing, as we see happening now. Then insist no matter how authoritarian Trump gets, that he's not actually a fascist dictator, because then electoralism wouldn't be worth shit and they are lesser evil absolutists. They'll be the one's explaining " actually this bipartisan mass deportation bill is a win because we got some more weapons for Israel and Ukraine!" Then " Oh, turns out there's no where that will take the ~10,000,000+ people we Democrats and Republicans rounded up, guess we'll have to make these camps a bit more permanent" Then " Oh you know who could do the work? These people illegals we rounded up! It's okay if they don't want to, we can legally force them" and so on....That's just one of the lib/Dem to fascism examples but there's more. Before anyone tells me "oh Democrats wouldn't let Trump enslave undocumented immigrants, put them in work camps, and violently punish those that refuse". Genocidal Democrats are already building the cop cities across the country that could fill/staff the prison camps while actively voting against ending slavery in California in 2024 (Harris NEVER mentioning this being on her ballot is actually unbelievable to me). FOH. This is all happening right in front of our faces and libs/Dems are just like "man this hot tub is nice, smells a bit like spices though...". I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. ... What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point, when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. You voting for someone that couldn't even mention that there was an opportunity to stop enslaving her fellow Californians from her home state when the whole country was looking at her, is emblematic of how problematic that is. + Show Spoiler +Sure, the Democratic Party derives political power and legitimacy from people like me or Kwark or DPB being willing to vote for them. The US government derives power and legitimacy from our labor, tax dollars, etc. If we were to stop being willing to vote for them, they’d pivot to whatever position allowed them to maximize their support from whoever continued to engage with the political system; if we were to stop working or paying taxes the US government would pivot to deriving its power and legitimacy from whoever continued to engage with the economic system.
You’re fundamentally opposed to making moral arguments on a “compared to the alternative” basis, but personally I’m going to be more interested in plans which achieve better outcomes, which requires choosing among available alternatives. Political abstention is one of those available alternatives but I have yet to hear even a theoretical mechanism by which it would achieve better outcomes for anyone. + Show Spoiler + If I didn’t give a shit about achieving better outcomes for people, and just to keep my name or reputation or immortal soul unsullied by association with horrible stuff, I can see how political abstention would help me. But when this stuff has real, enormous consequences for other people’s lives it’s hard for me to feel good about just trying to not get my hands dirty.
But anyway, haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we already done this? I don’t want to talk about trolley problems, particularly at a moment when it’s already clear to both of us that neither of us have any influence over whether the lever gets pulled or not anyway. Like, I agree that Kamala should have voiced support for the amendment, and more generally that CA liberals are responsible for a state that continues to enact regressive and exploitative policies while pretending everything would be progressive and wonderful if national politics went their way. I have no control over that. Supposedly leftists have proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things, why don’t we talk about those? Doesn’t that sound more productive? + Show Spoiler +"Not voting for Democrats" Isn't political abstention. I know you know that and strawman it that way disingenuously on purpose. You should stop that. Man, “political abstention [from national electoral contests such as the recent presidential election]” is a lot to type! I write my posts on my phone! But yes, I certainly understand that you don’t advocate abstention from all political activity, not even from all electoral politics, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Would “national electoral abstention” be a better shorthand? + Show Spoiler +Or would that still be a strawman since you don’t necessarily advocate abstention from all national electoral contests, just most of them in the current political environment? No, I voted for president days ago. You should have some control over that. There are people that go to the Democrat meetings and make the policies from the local to the national level (though for Democrats it typically flows the other way nowadays). That could be you just as easily as anyone else (but for the whole Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam. problem of electoralism) Just to be sure I’m understanding you right: you want me to work at becoming one of the movers and shakers setting Democratic Party policies? Work my way up from the inside, ingratiate myself to party leaders, win some influence and use it to change things from the inside? That sounds like the kind of thing you’d dismiss as misguided attempts at reforming the current system + Show Spoiler +, and Lenin would dismiss as Revisionism. Surely you’d say I dedicate my energies to something more revolutionary ? It is imo, but if you're insisting on keeping your lib/Dem politics, that's how you stop yourself from having to vote for people that support slavery and genocide. That is, if not supporting slavery and genocide is something that is important to you. I presume it is, but you're slowly working on convincing me otherwise. As to talking about "proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things" being more productive, it is with socialists. It Is with (edit:most some)reasonable social democrats. Not so much with libs/Dems that are primarily just looking to shit on them in order to rationalize their continued support of genocide and the rest. So you’re trying to convince everybody to be socialists, but you don’t want to talk about all the good stuff socialists can do except with other socialists? No, I said it can be done with some social democrats too. It's about how one comes to the conversation and Freire talks about this. + Show Spoiler +Maybe part of the problem here is that the only correct answer to “how should I engage with national politics?” is “Don’t!” but this is fundamentally a thread about US national politics. You’re apparently doing a lot of good engagement with local organizations on local problems, but you don’t want to talk about it here because it’s local stuff nobody in the thread has reason to know or care about. Meanwhile what you actually think the rest of us should do is similarly engage with local organizations on local problems, but you can’t tell us how to do that because you’re not from the same place we’re from. I’m not sure what the answer to that problem is, though; I can think about how to have solidarity with my coworkers but it’s not especially useful to discuss in the thread. That's why I've been telling you to join a socialist org (could even be DSA, very easy to find/join) for years. They are doing local things, with local orgs in your area, tackling local problems. That's how you do it, and I've been telling you specifically (along with everyone else) that for years. The reasonable conclusion for me to draw is that it's one of those “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” type things where you can say opposing genocide/slavery matters to you, but your "budget" (be it time, money, effort, voting, etc) is telling me otherwise. Sure, I’m like anybody else, I work a job and try to take care of myself and my friends and family, and generally be kind to the people around me. If I find any time around the edges to go to a bar with coworkers or play a video game for an hour I count myself fortunate. I like the idea of making more substantial commitments to bigger projects out of a sense of civic responsibility but most of the time (especially in the last year) it feels like I’m barely keeping my head above water. Yes, I generally prioritize that stuff above studying socialist theory or attending city counsel meetings or getting involved with my local DSA. I’m pretty sure that’s normal though. Yet those organizations exist, and are also populated by people like you barely keeping their head above waterIt always feels like you’re threatening to proclaim me selfish and complicit in all the atrocities of the modern world but you’re holding back on actually doing it because you’re hoping I’ll be motivated to scramble and show you you’re wrong. But for me it does the same thing berating myself does – destroy my motivation level and make it even harder to get through the day taking care of myself, let alone find something extra for helping others. I'm reserving judgement, but this is basically the "the libs being mean to me made me a Nazi" thing Republicans do and I think you're better than that. When I describe your politics/engagement and you feel I'm describing selfishness and complicity, that's not about you personally, that's just what liberal/Democrat politics are, selfish and complicit.
Maybe talking specifics about how joining orgs and volunteering time and energy and money has helped your community (even though I’m not one of the socialists or social democrats you’ve deemed worthy of those conversations) would be more motivating to me? But don’t stress too much about motivating me one way or another, just proclaim my soul lost and move on to someone else you think is still savable if you want to.
Maybe when you join an org you can tell me about your experience, we can compare and contrast, and then go from there or you could also just recognize you don't actually care that much about your opposition to stuff like enslaving your neighbors.
A major part of the reason the US political system is imploding in front of us is because of this mistaken idea that you can have the level of engagement you describe of yourself and still maintain a democracy with any worthwhile meaning to the word. You simply can't and Trump is proving that to all of you.
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On November 09 2024 05:14 Sadist wrote:
L_Master
When you start talking about "Genetic factors" my ears perk up and think you are slowly being radicalized by some people online or something. Combined with some of your other posts you may wanna evaluate your social media/podcast/youtube intake. Not saying thats happening but there are some of the early warning signs.
This also encourages people to seek preventative care, which is much cheaper!
My chemo bills would be three times as high if I hadn't caught it early, the longer medical problems are allowed to stew and fester the more they wind up costing
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On November 09 2024 05:41 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:26 RvB wrote:On November 09 2024 05:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:Universal or public health care isn't a panacea for all health problems or obesity, obviously. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with the problem that people are overweight, and frankly, there are probably other explanations outside the health care system - specifically - that cause the difference in degree. Cities being designed for driving instead of walking seems like a pretty big one: They found that adults who live in walkable neighborhoods were 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity, and 0.76 times less likely to have obesity, compared to adults living in neighborhoods with low walkability.The other major one is food. Looking solely at caloric intake, the US is #2 on the list for 2018, food energy intake per capita by country, and couple that with the sedentiary lifestyle, and yea, no shocker. The difference - as alluded to by several other posters - is that a country which pays for the health care of its inhabitants - where health care thus is an expenditure, and not a source of profit - is greatly incentivized to try to make some efforts towards preventing health issues rather than treating them, as that is a much less costly way of doing it. Meanwhile a profit-driven system will have actors involved who benefit from the population being unhealthy. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't have intricate data on this, and the following is more of a 'it is my impression that' - coupled with 'I'm too lazy to really study it in depth at the moment but damn this is kinda interesting to me' - but it is my impression that the big american health care companies will in at least some instances have shareholders/parent companies (I don't even know the terminology of this stuff tbh) who are also involved in, for example, the beverage industry, who have lobbied against, for example, sugar taxes. Kinda like how the opioid epidemic has been driven by profit-based health care benefiting from people being addicted to opiates, a profit-based health care system has perverse incentives to have an unhealthy population, and without being all conspiratorial, lobbyism in the US seems like a pretty tangled somewhat clandestine web of different actors who don't always have the best interests of the public in mind. So it's complicated, and it's not that 'public health care' by itself solves everything - but a profit-based system does, kinda by default, offer some perverse incentives compared to one run by the government. And while the competition inherent to capitalism can sometimes produce great results (hey, I'll admit that even as a self-described socialist), the combination of a) profit-driven b) impossible to opt out of and c) naturally monopolistic (in many cases your option of hospitals to go for treatment is 1) tends to create situations where capitalism at the very least requires some pretty strict regulation. Whereas if health care is government funded, the approach to health care will logically drive itself more towards a holistic solution of all sorts of prevention-based incentives or disincentives because these are less costly than treating health care problems is - for example through adding sin taxes, or building bike lanes and publicly available exercising options, or mandating/incentivizing work places to offer some exercise options during working hours. I'm not convinced that is true. Even in the US the state pays a large share of healthcare costs. Since employers pay a share of the insurance premium they have an incentive to lower healthcare costs as well. I mean, for all things political, we're usually talking degrees, not whether something exists or not. I'm not saying there's no government incentive to lower health care costs in the US - but I am saying that there are actors with political influence who don't want to lower health care costs in the US. Directly countering the first sentence of the post I am now writing, to my knowledge, those actors actually don't exist in Norway. (Or traditionally didn't. We've actually had a huge growth in private health care as of late, and it is worrying me in many ways, and pleasing me in none.) Anyway, observing the american health care debate, it seems to be centered around single payer vs private insurance based, while in Norway, I've seen many discussions steming from a 'how to best structure society so that people need less treatment'-perspective. At least until private companies started draining the public sector for doctors, weakening our publicly ran health care. And well TO BE FAIR, there's also been some issues with massive incompetence in the implementation of a new computer system in my region of Norway, where (government hired and employed) leader figures ended up spending a few hundred million $ on implementing a useless system which has, most likely, caused people to die, and which has also contributed to people moving from the public to the private sector because then at least they wouldn't have to deal with that system. I'm actually guessing this specific type of problem would be less likely to happen in a profit-driven hospital. Doesn't move the needle for what system I overall prefer, though.
That does not really adress my second point. You're right that there are more actors in the US that benefit from an unhealthy population. On the other hand there are also more actors that benefit from a healthy population because companies pay a share of private health insurance premiums. It's not clear to me which effect is larger.
I think you're right when you say that the debate is centered around single payer vs private insurance. I feel like this distracts from the end goal: relatively efficient healthcare with universal coverage. This can be achieved through all kinds of systems from single payer to private health insurance. What's important is implementation not the system. You may very well be right that there's too much of a profit incentive in the US. Removing the profit motive does not require single payer though. For instance, in The Netherlands health insurers are required to be non profit. Why radically change your system to single payer when there's an alternative that works.
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In the netherlands is your health insurance typically through your employer? Thats one of the major fucked up things in the US. Large company = more employees/customers = better rate. Small company or an individual buying insurance = worse rates or plans.
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On November 09 2024 06:02 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:46 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 05:00 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 04:15 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 03:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 01:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 01:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 00:11 ChristianS wrote:
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I’m imagining various scenarios about Trump carrying out some or all of the atrocities he promised to commit, and your question is “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” Do you get how it doesn’t seem like a responsive question? If I promised that right this moment, it wouldn’t change the path a bit because I’m just one CA voter, and if voters en masse made the same promise, surely it would just embolden Republicans to commit atrocities without fear of electoral consequence. The obvious conclusion is that no amount of promising not to vote for Democrats is capable of stopping Republicans from committing atrocities, no? You had to skip "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" to get to the edit about voting. You should have started there. But the “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” besides being a bit of a transmutation, is a decades old question that precedes us. You speak to the timeliness as if I haven't been putting that question in one form or another to you and libs/Dems here for years without you all ever having anything resembling an answer. Most people just lob childish insults, or talk about any inane/bad faith thing (even on reasonable topics) they can with the oBlade types because as we know, they can't help themselves. You and the person you tried to elect President had the chance to discuss ending the enslavement of your fellow Californians and neither of you mentioned it 1 time afaict. I don't think people appreciate how fucked up that is on so many levels. I don't mean that as a personal indictment of you (I absofuckinglutely do of Harris), but of such deep systemic problems that it probably barely crossed your radar. It'd be bad enough if it was passing despite Harris NEVER mentioning how she was voting on ending the enslavement of her fellow Californians (let alone pushing for it), but it is failing. That makes it so much more unforgivably bad. + Show Spoiler +Maybe it would be helpful to pivot a bit to a related subject: a word socialists often like to use is “revisionism.” As I understand it, it dates back to a late 19th century German socialist named Eduard Bernstein, and the concept is “we don’t need a revolution, we’ll just form political parties, win votes, and enact legislation to bring about socialism.” Socialists don’t exactly use the term as a compliment; indeed, it’s the punchline to the joke about socialists that Drone posted a while back: + Show Spoiler [Drone’s joke] +There's also this joke, which comes in various ways - just copy pasting the first one I found: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "The proletariat love you. Do you believe in the proletariat?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a communist or a socialist?" He said, "A communist." I said, "Me, too! Marxist-Leninist or anarchist?" He said, "Marxist-Leninist." I said, "Me, too! What kind of thought?" He said, "Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Intersectional Trotskyist or Classical Trotskyist?" He said, "Intersectional Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Action (United States), Socialist Alternative (United States), or Socialist Equality Party (United States)?"
He said, "Socialist Action (United States)." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Resurgence splinter group, or Socialist Action mainline?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence splinter group." I said, "Me, too!"
"Socialist Resurgence committee of 2019, or Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021." I said, "Die, bourgeois revisionist!" And I pushed him over. Lenin spends no small amount of time in What is to be Done tearing into Bernstein and Revisionism, and yet for all his sarcasm and scorn, I have trouble enumerating what exactly would be his explanation of why socialism cannot be enacted by electoral campaigns in a liberal democracy. He’s not a vanguardist, he doesn’t think the proles are too dumb to get it and you need a small cadre of radicals to stage a coup and give them their dictatorship against their will. So if you’re going to have to convince the masses of your program, why would it be an unacceptable route to elect representatives who pass bills and amendments? To be clear, I’m not asking this because I think the conclusion is wrong. Now especially, but even after 2020 I didn’t have a ton of faith in our democratic process as an effective engine for change or political decision-making. Kwark et al. are going on about how dumb it is that voters would blame Biden for inflation and such when it’s trivial to analyze why inflation happened and whether Biden did a good job combating it; but the fact remains, voters overwhelmingly make decisions on the basis of those kinds of factors. Where can you go with that besides questioning the premise of government based on elections decided by this electorate? If a fairly simple analysis like “why does inflation happen?” is way beyond what we can expect of the average voter, I certainly don’t think you can expect a majority of them to undergo the kind of revolutionary socialist self-education you’re begging everyone in the thread to find time for. But… then what? Are we back to vanguardism? Lenin eventually got somewhere with this stuff, but I’m not particularly thrilled to follow the path of early 20th century Russia (neither how they got to revolution, nor where they when after it). I want to keep this manageable so the rest can wait. Let's take back a step and focus on "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization". I obviously favor Revolutionary Socialism (as developed primarily by Black radicals mostly after WWII) but how about just a socialist org? We could include DSA which still does plenty of voting for Democrats? I get people are busy, but "democracy" in any meaningful sense of the word isn't just voting every couple years based on a party you have no influence on. + Show Spoiler +I mean, I guess the generic answer is “people (including myself) will sign onto a political project if they think it seeks better outcomes than the alternatives and has a reasonable chance of achieving them.” When exactly to focus on ideology (“seeks better outcomes”) and when to focus on efficacy (“has a reasonable chance of achieving them”) is a constant dilemma with no simple solution, and different posters might place their objections to socialist organizations on one or the other (or both), but I’m guessing for most folks around here, they think revolutionary socialists have almost no chance of ever taking power in America (extremely low on the efficacy measure), and if they did, they worry all the quoting Lenin and Stalin and Mao is an indication they would institute some kind of authoritarian regime (presumably low on the ideology measure as well).
But that’s me guessing at what everybody else thinks. For myself I guess I do figure the socialists tend to have somewhat idealistic/naive conceptions about affecting political change (i.e. potentially low on efficacy) but all the hard-nosed cynical Democratic political operatives seem pretty fucking incompetent, too. Feels like nobody knows anything about how to make things happen, and the actual outcomes are decided mostly by chance or circumstance. This is what Democrats robbing their supporters of the actual history of change does smh. Most of what we take for granted today (weekends, overtime, not being locked inside burning buildings, etc) that was achieved (mostly in the first half of the 20th century and before) was won by socialist guided organized labor engaging in organized mass civil disobedience. Democrats are functionally the people that shepherded people away from the functioning socialist approach to change and toward the lib/Dem one you recognize is shit now. On ideology I just don’t feel like I understand what socialists want enough to even say anything conclusively about it. + Show Spoiler +Certainly the realities of Soviet or Maoist rule seem pretty grim, maybe less so than the monarchist or colonialist regimes they were meant to replace but not obviously superior to liberal democracies, either. But also those were/are pretty much entirely undemocratic regimes, and socialist revolutionaries in the US always seem to think their system will be democratic. Which leads me to the question you decided to put off until later: how exactly are you supposed to get widespread support for a program that requires so much challenging self-education, and if you could, why would you need to overthrow liberal democratic governments just to establish a new system that’s apparently still democratic? Like, why are we even still talking about my vote? + Show Spoiler +I didn’t vote for Biden in the primary and it made no difference. I did vote for Kamala in the general and it made no difference. I’m well aware my vote is insignificant, I mostly only bothered to fill the thing out for some of the propositions that apparently are also gonna fail (fucking hell, this state). You and I seem to be in agreement that meaningful change is only gonna come from non-ballot-related activities, so why do we keep talking about whether I bubble in that first question or not? Why do you even care? Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: On November 08 2024 22:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 15:37 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 15:31 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]Sooo the same thing they are doing by handing Trump/Project 2025 control of the most lethal military in the world? That' should work out well /s
We can ignore all the warnings people got that this would happen, and just go with "fool me once, shame on you, fool me 542 times..."
Also, to be fair, the institution of the Supreme Court did give Democrats the power to hold him accountable. Unfortunately, Democrats are even less reliable than Trump's Supreme Court. Dunno why you keep holding this stuff against me as if I'm running the Democrats. ...supporting them. They ostensibly derive their power from you and voters like you. From a liberal democratic pov, you and people like you need to extract better than that from them. Alternatively, you and voters like yourself need to extract them and replace them with people that will do better than make the same mistake for the 543rd time of trusting institutions and norms to control Trump/Project 2025's openly fascist ambitions. I'd prefer you and voters like yourself just join revolutionary socialist orgs and go from there, but if you all insist on keeping your lib-Dem politics, the WORLD needs you to demand better from your leaders RIGHT NOW, EN MASSE, in every venue possible. Which ties into the issue with you and other libs/Dems not having a line for when you'd have to stop supporting Democrats since clearly even genocide doesn't cross it. On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 06:45 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] What is terrifying to me is that libs/Dems are just going to retcon the "Trump is a fascist that will destroy democracy" thing, as we see happening now. Then insist no matter how authoritarian Trump gets, that he's not actually a fascist dictator, because then electoralism wouldn't be worth shit and they are lesser evil absolutists. They'll be the one's explaining " actually this bipartisan mass deportation bill is a win because we got some more weapons for Israel and Ukraine!" Then " Oh, turns out there's no where that will take the ~10,000,000+ people we Democrats and Republicans rounded up, guess we'll have to make these camps a bit more permanent" Then " Oh you know who could do the work? These people illegals we rounded up! It's okay if they don't want to, we can legally force them" and so on....That's just one of the lib/Dem to fascism examples but there's more. Before anyone tells me "oh Democrats wouldn't let Trump enslave undocumented immigrants, put them in work camps, and violently punish those that refuse". Genocidal Democrats are already building the cop cities across the country that could fill/staff the prison camps while actively voting against ending slavery in California in 2024 (Harris NEVER mentioning this being on her ballot is actually unbelievable to me). FOH. This is all happening right in front of our faces and libs/Dems are just like "man this hot tub is nice, smells a bit like spices though...". I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. ... What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point, when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. You voting for someone that couldn't even mention that there was an opportunity to stop enslaving her fellow Californians from her home state when the whole country was looking at her, is emblematic of how problematic that is. + Show Spoiler +Sure, the Democratic Party derives political power and legitimacy from people like me or Kwark or DPB being willing to vote for them. The US government derives power and legitimacy from our labor, tax dollars, etc. If we were to stop being willing to vote for them, they’d pivot to whatever position allowed them to maximize their support from whoever continued to engage with the political system; if we were to stop working or paying taxes the US government would pivot to deriving its power and legitimacy from whoever continued to engage with the economic system.
You’re fundamentally opposed to making moral arguments on a “compared to the alternative” basis, but personally I’m going to be more interested in plans which achieve better outcomes, which requires choosing among available alternatives. Political abstention is one of those available alternatives but I have yet to hear even a theoretical mechanism by which it would achieve better outcomes for anyone. + Show Spoiler + If I didn’t give a shit about achieving better outcomes for people, and just to keep my name or reputation or immortal soul unsullied by association with horrible stuff, I can see how political abstention would help me. But when this stuff has real, enormous consequences for other people’s lives it’s hard for me to feel good about just trying to not get my hands dirty.
But anyway, haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we already done this? I don’t want to talk about trolley problems, particularly at a moment when it’s already clear to both of us that neither of us have any influence over whether the lever gets pulled or not anyway. Like, I agree that Kamala should have voiced support for the amendment, and more generally that CA liberals are responsible for a state that continues to enact regressive and exploitative policies while pretending everything would be progressive and wonderful if national politics went their way. I have no control over that. Supposedly leftists have proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things, why don’t we talk about those? Doesn’t that sound more productive? + Show Spoiler +"Not voting for Democrats" Isn't political abstention. I know you know that and strawman it that way disingenuously on purpose. You should stop that. Man, “political abstention [from national electoral contests such as the recent presidential election]” is a lot to type! I write my posts on my phone! But yes, I certainly understand that you don’t advocate abstention from all political activity, not even from all electoral politics, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Would “national electoral abstention” be a better shorthand? + Show Spoiler +Or would that still be a strawman since you don’t necessarily advocate abstention from all national electoral contests, just most of them in the current political environment? No, I voted for president days ago. You should have some control over that. There are people that go to the Democrat meetings and make the policies from the local to the national level (though for Democrats it typically flows the other way nowadays). That could be you just as easily as anyone else (but for the whole Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam. problem of electoralism) Just to be sure I’m understanding you right: you want me to work at becoming one of the movers and shakers setting Democratic Party policies? Work my way up from the inside, ingratiate myself to party leaders, win some influence and use it to change things from the inside? That sounds like the kind of thing you’d dismiss as misguided attempts at reforming the current system + Show Spoiler +, and Lenin would dismiss as Revisionism. Surely you’d say I dedicate my energies to something more revolutionary ? It is imo, but if you're insisting on keeping your lib/Dem politics, that's how you stop yourself from having to vote for people that support slavery and genocide. That is, if not supporting slavery and genocide is something that is important to you. I presume it is, but you're slowly working on convincing me otherwise. As to talking about "proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things" being more productive, it is with socialists. It Is with (edit:most some)reasonable social democrats. Not so much with libs/Dems that are primarily just looking to shit on them in order to rationalize their continued support of genocide and the rest. So you’re trying to convince everybody to be socialists, but you don’t want to talk about all the good stuff socialists can do except with other socialists? No, I said it can be done with some social democrats too. It's about how one comes to the conversation and Freire talks about this. + Show Spoiler +Maybe part of the problem here is that the only correct answer to “how should I engage with national politics?” is “Don’t!” but this is fundamentally a thread about US national politics. You’re apparently doing a lot of good engagement with local organizations on local problems, but you don’t want to talk about it here because it’s local stuff nobody in the thread has reason to know or care about. Meanwhile what you actually think the rest of us should do is similarly engage with local organizations on local problems, but you can’t tell us how to do that because you’re not from the same place we’re from. I’m not sure what the answer to that problem is, though; I can think about how to have solidarity with my coworkers but it’s not especially useful to discuss in the thread. That's why I've been telling you to join a socialist org (could even be DSA, very easy to find/join) for years. They are doing local things, with local orgs in your area, tackling local problems. That's how you do it, and I've been telling you specifically (along with everyone else) that for years. The reasonable conclusion for me to draw is that it's one of those “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” type things where you can say opposing genocide/slavery matters to you, but your "budget" (be it time, money, effort, voting, etc) is telling me otherwise. Sure, I’m like anybody else, I work a job and try to take care of myself and my friends and family, and generally be kind to the people around me. If I find any time around the edges to go to a bar with coworkers or play a video game for an hour I count myself fortunate. I like the idea of making more substantial commitments to bigger projects out of a sense of civic responsibility but most of the time (especially in the last year) it feels like I’m barely keeping my head above water. Yes, I generally prioritize that stuff above studying socialist theory or attending city counsel meetings or getting involved with my local DSA. I’m pretty sure that’s normal though. Yet those organizations exist, and are also populated by people like you barely keeping their head above water I’m sure they do, and I’m sure those people have objectively more difficult lives than mine! Perhaps they’re also better people than me, and that’s why they’re able to keep it together and still find room to give back to their community. Who’s to say?Show nested quote +It always feels like you’re threatening to proclaim me selfish and complicit in all the atrocities of the modern world but you’re holding back on actually doing it because you’re hoping I’ll be motivated to scramble and show you you’re wrong. But for me it does the same thing berating myself does – destroy my motivation level and make it even harder to get through the day taking care of myself, let alone find something extra for helping others. I'm reserving judgement, but this is basically the "the libs being mean to me made me a Nazi" thing Republicans do and I think you're better than that. When I describe your politics/engagement and you feel I'm describing selfishness and complicity, that's not about you personally, that's just what liberal/Democrat politics are, selfish and complicit.
Man that’s legitimately a funny concept. “Being mean to me made me become a Nazi” but instead of “become a Nazi” substituting “have low self-esteem” or “go into a depressive episode and struggle to perform basic self-care.” I’m not quite sure how to structure the punchline but there’s something there.
But no, I don’t think you’re making me do anything. I’m just saying if you’re hoping that reminding me of my complicity in global genocide will increase my motivation level, I think you’re mistaken.
Show nested quote +Maybe talking specifics about how joining orgs and volunteering time and energy and money has helped your community (even though I’m not one of the socialists or social democrats you’ve deemed worthy of those conversations) would be more motivating to me? But don’t stress too much about motivating me one way or another, just proclaim my soul lost and move on to someone else you think is still savable if you want to. Maybe when you join an org you can tell me about your experience, we can compare and contrast, and then go from there or you could also just recognize you don't actually care that much about your opposition to stuff like enslaving your neighbors. A major part of the reason the US political system is imploding in front of us is because of this mistaken idea that you can have the level of engagement you describe of yourself and still maintain a democracy with any worthwhile meaning to the word. You simply can't and Trump is proving that to you.
Yeah, you might be right about that. The whole system is designed, for one reason or another, to keep everybody working pretty hard to stay alive and provide for themselves and their family, but the result is an electorate barely able to understand basic questions like “what is inflation?” because they’re so busy overtime and trying to get their insurance to pay for surgery or w/e. The resulting electoral system is doomed to fail because it’s designed to put voters in the driver seat, but they’re too busy texting while driving instead of watching the road.
I’m not 100% convinced of that diagnosis but it does make a lot of sense.
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On November 09 2024 05:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 04:41 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 02:54 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:52 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 02:29 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:06 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 02:01 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 01:32 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 01:29 oBlade wrote:On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
[quote]
If every other country does a thing better than you, why not learn from them and steal one of their systems? If Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are so bad, just steal what Switzerland is doing. Or Japan. Or the Netherlands. Or Denmark. Or whatever. There are dozens of systems out there which deliver radically better than the US system, and they all have one thing in common: They are universal healthcare systems.
I don't really care about the details within the US system, because i don't explicitly know what Medicaid, Medicare or the VA do exactly. What i do know is that as a whole, the US system is just bad, (except for the superrich of course, it provides quality care for those who don't care about the price). My assumption here was that "Medicare for all" basically means "We want universal healthcare in the US in some way". Then how could you know the Netherlands would not be more expensive and worse outcomes if implemented in the US? On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
Meanwhile, there are zero countries which do private/non-universal healthcare which do better than the US. You couldn't even name one. If you define "better" a certain way, there will be no countries that do healthcare better than the US. If you define "better" another way, there will be private and public countries that do it better. If I then name one of them and you change the definition of "better" after the fact it will have been a waste. Explain what you mean by "better" because you showed a graph of cost which means India must have the best most affordable healthcare in the world. What are we valuing, with what weights, when we say one of these is "better." On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
But instead of seeing that and recognizing that you should really, really just move to a universal healthcare system, you are so blinded by ideology that you think that you really should do more private stuff instead, because that has been working so well so far. And trying to deflect to other reasons is just another weird push for US exceptionalism. The US is not so unique that it cannot compare with and learn from other countries. Sure I'm open to moving to a universal healthcare system if it's the best option. How would that shift occur and what problems unique to the US that cause its bar on that graph to be 50% higher than Switzerland's would it specifically fix? What would convince you a universal healthcare system is the best option? Well, the first thing that pops out is "best". Best for whom? Under what circumstances? Or is the argument that on every single vector for every single individual it is best, which seems implausible? If that isn't defined clearly, we can have crazy arguments fighting with imagined shadows of the other persons position. That aside, assuming a clear definition of best, for me it's the only thing that matters: Results. And right now, the results look pretty favorable to universal. How could those results look even better? Need more test cases with very homogenous populations for me. US racial demographics are very, very different to other countries listed. If you start getting parts of the US doing universal and other parts doing our current system, and the universal keeps crushing....then it goes from "Yea, universal looks pretty good" to "Universal GOAT status" for me. Why do populations have to be homogenous? Certain ethnic groups do have slightly different medical needs, but those aren’t giant hurdles You can make very simple, IMO correct arguments that certain political systems work best, or less well depending on how politically and culturally homogenous a nation is. I think it’s a much harder sell with healthcare It's just the classic "black people are ruining our country" argument that he's trying to mask as being rational and somewhat politically correct. Except the country isn't "being ruined". And you're right, men like Thomas Sowell are just total human pieces of garbage and we should just deport all of them. eyeroll.jpeg In your own words, tell me what homogenity has anything to do with the efficiency of different healthcare systems. If you mean tell you why I think it *might*, then both genetic factors in longevity and then differences in personality. E.g. less impulsive -> less risk taking behavior -> plausibly longer lifespan. My eye roll is for the out of nowhere value judgement in there. I think you’re implicitly assigning “good” or “bad” with certain differences in personality to come to that idea. I can imagine you going “oh he thinks certain races are more or less impulsive and thus they are bad”. Maybe I’m wrong, if so apologies. In either case, I find that statement nonsense. I see tradeoffs in personality traits. High impulsivity/low conscientiousness for example might take more risks and engage in certain harmful behaviors more often…but flip side is those also tend to be the traits of brilliant people that take the crazy risks in entrepreneurship or research that push or society forward. Or take trait neuroticism. High neuroticism sounds “bad” to most people. Like oh you’re just more susceptible to negative emotions than other people. But when you consider the superorganism it’s beneficial. You’re higher neuroticism people are your canaries in the coal mine. They are the people that are first to notice things getting bad, and make noise that gets everybody else aware. You’re low neuroticism would just go “it’s fine” as things go wrong around them until they hit a point where they realize “oh shit were fucked” but now it’s too late. Considering how this part of the discussion started with you stating that health care went to shit around the time more asians and hispanics started living in the US, what you should do is demonstrate that Asians and Hispanics cost the health care system more than people of other races. I have a relevant link for you: The estimated age-standardized total health care spending per person in 2016 was $7649 (95% UI, $6129-$8814) for American Indian and Alaska Native (non-Hispanic) individuals; $4692 (95% UI, $4068-$5202) for Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) individuals; $7361 (95% UI, $6917-$7797) for Black (non-Hispanic) individuals; $6025 (95% UI, $5703-$6373) for Hispanic individuals; $9276 (95% UI, $8066-$10 601) for individuals categorized as multiple races (non-Hispanic); and $8141 (95% UI, $8038-$8258) for White (non-Hispanic) individuals, who accounted for an estimated 72% (95% UI, 71%-73%) of health care spending. After adjusting for population size and age, White individuals received an estimated 15% (95% UI, 13%-17%; P < .001) more spending on ambulatory care than the all-population mean. Black (non-Hispanic) individuals received an estimated 26% (95% UI, 19%-32%; P < .001) less spending than the all-population mean on ambulatory care but received 19% (95% UI, 3%-32%; P = .02) more on inpatient and 12% (95% UI, 4%-24%; P = .04) more on emergency department care. Hispanic individuals received an estimated 33% (95% UI, 26%-37%; P < .001) less spending per person on ambulatory care than the all-population mean. Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) individuals received less spending than the all-population mean on all types of care except dentalSo clearly that argument is just utter bullshit. I'll grant you that there can be elements where a more homogenuous society outperforms a less homogenuous one, but the notion that american health care costs are caused by immigration from Asia and Latin America (which are the groups that increased at the point you said health care started going bad) isn't grounded in reality. Tbh this, to me, sounds like something I'd expect to find at tylervigen's great webpage, next to 'the number of secretaries in alaska correlates to the distance between jupiter and the sun'. ( + Show Spoiler +)
It’s the little things that make this group so….difficult for me to “get”.
I didn’t claim that health care went to shit. And it’s pretty friggin subtle. I jumped into a discussion that was about American healthcare costs being MUCH higher. And in particular that inspite of that lifespans are shorter in the US.
I can see how the frame there is “US health care sucks/went to shit”. And I pointed at the exact point where cost/lifespan went wrong. Ergo “the point where US healthcare went to shit”.
Yet, I wouldn’t feel confident saying US Health Care went to shit. I would feel even less comfortable saying “US health care is solid system”, but that’s neither here nor there.
I don’t believe I claimed that either.
To me, my post was writing a list of observations/questions that came to mind. A few of which would be in the direction of “are we sure US health care is bad/went to shit?”
Your comment reads to me like you think I’m attributing the decline in health care to the arrival of Asians/Hispanics.
From my point of view, I’m wondering if there even *is* a decline in healthcare. Or, more than that, is healthcare change the driving factor behind lifespan decline?
From my POV, this thread feels like an alien culture. It’s similar to mine , but it feels like there are a myriad of little assumptions about people’s intent, about reality itself, about general heuristics, that cause my posts to fail to convey what I’m attempting to convey. It’s like a minefield, and I’m walking to all these mines, that when they go off distorting my message.
It feels to me vaguely like joining a new group, with some unspoken customs that I don’t get and I keep offending people doing what I think is friendly behavior but is seen as rude. It’s that kind of “I’m missing something in a big way, yet it’s subtle”
(Or maybe I just suck at communication. Skeptical of that as I’ve done my fair share of writing in various places without this)
Much like the little tangent into nutrition. I wasn’t experiencing “these guys disagree with me”.
I was experiencing “I’m failing to communicate what I want with these guys, and I don’t know why. It’s like they hear 90% of my message, but a critical 10% was lost and now they have the wrong understanding”
It’s a little frustrating that so many of the interpretations that are just off then assume the absolute worst, but more than anything I’m confused yet curious.
I’m probably engaging 85% now to try and get a sense of what’s causing that.
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United States24469 Posts
On November 09 2024 05:31 Velr wrote:
I'm actually still personally wrestling with the fact that a person like Donald Trump got voted in. With a majority of the vote, no electoral college bullshit.... Over half of the voting population of the US thinks a convicted felon, rapist, conman, reality tv-star.... .... that can't string 5 sentences together is the figurehead (again).
I mean... There is plenty of bullshit going around in tiny switzerland but this?... How do you cope? I couldn't....
Really the Trump supporters just voted in repeat fashion, whereas the opposition didn't turn out as much as four years ago.
Nothing changed much from last time except turnout for voting for the democratic nominee was lower. I don't think the country has really become more supportive of Trump despite all the evidence that it should become less supportive.
The situation is depressing, sure, but you can probably take some solace in that.
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On November 09 2024 05:31 Velr wrote:
I'm actually still personally wrestling with the fact that a person like Donald Trump got voted in. With a majority of the vote, no electoral college bullshit.... Over half of the voting population of the US thinks a convicted felon, rapist, conman, reality tv-star.... .... that can't string 5 sentences together is the figurehead (again).
I mean... There is plenty of bullshit going around in tiny switzerland but this?... How do you cope? I couldn't....
I can say for myself, when something happens that completely surprises me, as in “this goes counter to anything my vision of the world expected” my response is almost always “Is my model of the world badly flawed, something I cannot or have not allowed myself to see or accept”
It seems you’re left with:
- People in the US just don’t care that a person who is all those things runs the country
- People in the US don’t think Trump is those things because, essentially, brainwashing
- People in the US think Trump is those things, but other concerns and other character traits outweigh all of those concerns
- People in the US don’t think Trump is those things, and have genuine reason to believe that
Or some mix of all of those.
Are you convinced US folks are absolutely brainwashed, or delusion, or just genuine garbage?
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Trump is off, and that the sources and information you’ve used is, at a minimum, missing something.
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United States24469 Posts
On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master wrote:
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Trump is off
Maybe by like 2-3% in either direction, max? Not enough to meaningfully change anything at this point.
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On November 09 2024 06:49 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:31 Velr wrote:
I'm actually still personally wrestling with the fact that a person like Donald Trump got voted in. With a majority of the vote, no electoral college bullshit.... Over half of the voting population of the US thinks a convicted felon, rapist, conman, reality tv-star.... .... that can't string 5 sentences together is the figurehead (again).
I mean... There is plenty of bullshit going around in tiny switzerland but this?... How do you cope? I couldn't....
Really the Trump supporters just voted in repeat fashion, whereas the opposition didn't turn out as much as four years ago. Nothing changed much from last time except turnout for voting for the democratic nominee was lower. I don't think the country has really become more supportive of Trump despite all the evidence that it should become less supportive. The situation is depressing, sure, but you can probably take some solace in that.
I can only speak to my bubble, suburban middle class neighborhood in CO and (mostly) engineers at my company.
People are significantly more pro Trump here. That shifted a TON in the last 18 months. Minimum 10% shift. Max 25%.
Women in particular very angry about migrants and feeling unsafe.
Men mostly anti heavy DEI stuff, onerous governments laws and regulations. Peanut shifted, overnight, at least two men I know well.
I taught at a slightly below average urban school, minority white, for two years. HS math. The guys were shocking to me. 70-80% conservative. Many of them what you would call radical. Heavy genetic determinism/race stuff. Even heavier on cognitive sex differences and men/women behavior. Not majority, but no hesitation being vocal about it.
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On November 09 2024 05:59 Vindicare605 wrote:Looks like the Democrat leadership is laying the blame for Kamala's botched nomination process entirely on Biden. I don't blame them, from the outside looking in it really did look like he engineered the timeline of events to occur in such a way that trying to get an open primary done in time for the election was all but impossible. If he wasn't going to be allowed to run again, then he wanted his hand picked VP to take the nomination and no one else. Welp. Thanks a lot Joe. Ya done fucked us.
Not a terrible take imo. There are other factors to blame too, but if Biden doesn't run for re-election, then there's actually enough time for an open primary. Regardless of whether or not Harris wins that hypothetical primary, we get more hype and galvanize the base more and fewer people are left with the notion that it's unfair for Harris/whoever to be the nominee.
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On November 09 2024 07:07 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master wrote:
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Trump is off
Maybe by like 2-3% in either direction, max? Not enough to meaningfully change anything at this point.
Hmmm. Did I leave out an explanation in my list, or is it fair to say you favor US pop being substantially brainwashed and/or just kinda crappy people?
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On November 09 2024 07:15 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:07 micronesia wrote:On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master wrote:
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Trump is off
Maybe by like 2-3% in either direction, max? Not enough to meaningfully change anything at this point. Hmmm. Did I leave out an explanation in my list, or is it fair to say you favor US pop being substantially brainwashed and/or just kinda crappy people?
That is the conclusion one has to come to.
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United States24469 Posts
On November 09 2024 07:15 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:07 micronesia wrote:On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master wrote:
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Trump is off
Maybe by like 2-3% in either direction, max? Not enough to meaningfully change anything at this point. Hmmm. Did I leave out an explanation in my list, or is it fair to say you favor US pop being substantially brainwashed and/or just kinda crappy people?
I think it's hard to boil it all down to one reason.
Also, to your other post, I understand your anecdote, but is it turning into more votes for Trump in 2024 compared to 2020? I'm not sure how many votes are left to count but I don't think so.
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United States41470 Posts
On November 09 2024 05:33 Impervious wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:Universal or public health care isn't a panacea for all health problems or obesity, obviously. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with the problem that people are overweight, and frankly, there are probably other explanations outside the health care system - specifically - that cause the difference in degree. Cities being designed for driving instead of walking seems like a pretty big one: They found that adults who live in walkable neighborhoods were 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity, and 0.76 times less likely to have obesity, compared to adults living in neighborhoods with low walkability.The other major one is food. Looking solely at caloric intake, the US is #2 on the list for 2018, food energy intake per capita by country, and couple that with the sedentiary lifestyle, and yea, no shocker. The difference - as alluded to by several other posters - is that a country which pays for the health care of its inhabitants - where health care thus is an expenditure, and not a source of profit - is greatly incentivized to try to make some efforts towards preventing health issues rather than treating them, as that is a much less costly way of doing it. Meanwhile a profit-driven system will have actors involved who benefit from the population being unhealthy. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't have intricate data on this, and the following is more of a 'it is my impression that' - coupled with 'I'm too lazy to really study it in depth at the moment but damn this is kinda interesting to me' - but it is my impression that the big american health care companies will in at least some instances have shareholders/parent companies (I don't even know the terminology of this stuff tbh) who are also involved in, for example, the beverage industry, who have lobbied against, for example, sugar taxes. Kinda like how the opioid epidemic has been driven by profit-based health care benefiting from people being addicted to opiates, a profit-based health care system has perverse incentives to have an unhealthy population, and without being all conspiratorial, lobbyism in the US seems like a pretty tangled somewhat clandestine web of different actors who don't always have the best interests of the public in mind. So it's complicated, and it's not that 'public health care' by itself solves everything - but a profit-based system does, kinda by default, offer some perverse incentives compared to one run by the government. And while the competition inherent to capitalism can sometimes produce great results (hey, I'll admit that even as a self-described socialist), the combination of a) profit-driven b) impossible to opt out of and c) naturally monopolistic (in many cases your option of hospitals to go for treatment is 1) tends to create situations where capitalism at the very least requires some pretty strict regulation. Whereas if health care is government funded, the approach to health care will logically drive itself more towards a holistic solution of all sorts of prevention-based incentives or disincentives because these are less costly than treating health care problems is - for example through adding sin taxes, or building bike lanes and publicly available exercising options, or mandating/incentivizing work places to offer some exercise options during working hours. Blackrock. Vanguard. State Street. They seem to have their fingers in everything.....
Those are brokerages. They don’t own everything, they hold everything on behalf of other people. The money isn’t theirs. The idea that brokerages are secretly buying up the world as part of a secret plan always infuriated me. They’re publicly buying up the world on the instructions of US retirees who have requested that the brokerage buy assets for them.
It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a 401k. Take off the mask and you’ll find it was you all along.
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On November 09 2024 06:38 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 06:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 05:46 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 05:00 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 04:15 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 03:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 01:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 01:18 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] You had to skip "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" to get to the edit about voting. You should have started there. But the “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” besides being a bit of a transmutation, is a decades old question that precedes us. You speak to the timeliness as if I haven't been putting that question in one form or another to you and libs/Dems here for years without you all ever having anything resembling an answer. Most people just lob childish insults, or talk about any inane/bad faith thing (even on reasonable topics) they can with the oBlade types because as we know, they can't help themselves. You and the person you tried to elect President had the chance to discuss ending the enslavement of your fellow Californians and neither of you mentioned it 1 time afaict. I don't think people appreciate how fucked up that is on so many levels. I don't mean that as a personal indictment of you (I absofuckinglutely do of Harris), but of such deep systemic problems that it probably barely crossed your radar. It'd be bad enough if it was passing despite Harris NEVER mentioning how she was voting on ending the enslavement of her fellow Californians (let alone pushing for it), but it is failing. That makes it so much more unforgivably bad. + Show Spoiler +Maybe it would be helpful to pivot a bit to a related subject: a word socialists often like to use is “revisionism.” As I understand it, it dates back to a late 19th century German socialist named Eduard Bernstein, and the concept is “we don’t need a revolution, we’ll just form political parties, win votes, and enact legislation to bring about socialism.” Socialists don’t exactly use the term as a compliment; indeed, it’s the punchline to the joke about socialists that Drone posted a while back: + Show Spoiler [Drone’s joke] +There's also this joke, which comes in various ways - just copy pasting the first one I found: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "The proletariat love you. Do you believe in the proletariat?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a communist or a socialist?" He said, "A communist." I said, "Me, too! Marxist-Leninist or anarchist?" He said, "Marxist-Leninist." I said, "Me, too! What kind of thought?" He said, "Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Intersectional Trotskyist or Classical Trotskyist?" He said, "Intersectional Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Action (United States), Socialist Alternative (United States), or Socialist Equality Party (United States)?"
He said, "Socialist Action (United States)." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Resurgence splinter group, or Socialist Action mainline?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence splinter group." I said, "Me, too!"
"Socialist Resurgence committee of 2019, or Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021." I said, "Die, bourgeois revisionist!" And I pushed him over. Lenin spends no small amount of time in What is to be Done tearing into Bernstein and Revisionism, and yet for all his sarcasm and scorn, I have trouble enumerating what exactly would be his explanation of why socialism cannot be enacted by electoral campaigns in a liberal democracy. He’s not a vanguardist, he doesn’t think the proles are too dumb to get it and you need a small cadre of radicals to stage a coup and give them their dictatorship against their will. So if you’re going to have to convince the masses of your program, why would it be an unacceptable route to elect representatives who pass bills and amendments? To be clear, I’m not asking this because I think the conclusion is wrong. Now especially, but even after 2020 I didn’t have a ton of faith in our democratic process as an effective engine for change or political decision-making. Kwark et al. are going on about how dumb it is that voters would blame Biden for inflation and such when it’s trivial to analyze why inflation happened and whether Biden did a good job combating it; but the fact remains, voters overwhelmingly make decisions on the basis of those kinds of factors. Where can you go with that besides questioning the premise of government based on elections decided by this electorate? If a fairly simple analysis like “why does inflation happen?” is way beyond what we can expect of the average voter, I certainly don’t think you can expect a majority of them to undergo the kind of revolutionary socialist self-education you’re begging everyone in the thread to find time for. But… then what? Are we back to vanguardism? Lenin eventually got somewhere with this stuff, but I’m not particularly thrilled to follow the path of early 20th century Russia (neither how they got to revolution, nor where they when after it). I want to keep this manageable so the rest can wait. Let's take back a step and focus on "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization". I obviously favor Revolutionary Socialism (as developed primarily by Black radicals mostly after WWII) but how about just a socialist org? We could include DSA which still does plenty of voting for Democrats? I get people are busy, but "democracy" in any meaningful sense of the word isn't just voting every couple years based on a party you have no influence on. + Show Spoiler +I mean, I guess the generic answer is “people (including myself) will sign onto a political project if they think it seeks better outcomes than the alternatives and has a reasonable chance of achieving them.” When exactly to focus on ideology (“seeks better outcomes”) and when to focus on efficacy (“has a reasonable chance of achieving them”) is a constant dilemma with no simple solution, and different posters might place their objections to socialist organizations on one or the other (or both), but I’m guessing for most folks around here, they think revolutionary socialists have almost no chance of ever taking power in America (extremely low on the efficacy measure), and if they did, they worry all the quoting Lenin and Stalin and Mao is an indication they would institute some kind of authoritarian regime (presumably low on the ideology measure as well).
But that’s me guessing at what everybody else thinks. For myself I guess I do figure the socialists tend to have somewhat idealistic/naive conceptions about affecting political change (i.e. potentially low on efficacy) but all the hard-nosed cynical Democratic political operatives seem pretty fucking incompetent, too. Feels like nobody knows anything about how to make things happen, and the actual outcomes are decided mostly by chance or circumstance. This is what Democrats robbing their supporters of the actual history of change does smh. Most of what we take for granted today (weekends, overtime, not being locked inside burning buildings, etc) that was achieved (mostly in the first half of the 20th century and before) was won by socialist guided organized labor engaging in organized mass civil disobedience. Democrats are functionally the people that shepherded people away from the functioning socialist approach to change and toward the lib/Dem one you recognize is shit now. On ideology I just don’t feel like I understand what socialists want enough to even say anything conclusively about it. + Show Spoiler +Certainly the realities of Soviet or Maoist rule seem pretty grim, maybe less so than the monarchist or colonialist regimes they were meant to replace but not obviously superior to liberal democracies, either. But also those were/are pretty much entirely undemocratic regimes, and socialist revolutionaries in the US always seem to think their system will be democratic. Which leads me to the question you decided to put off until later: how exactly are you supposed to get widespread support for a program that requires so much challenging self-education, and if you could, why would you need to overthrow liberal democratic governments just to establish a new system that’s apparently still democratic? Like, why are we even still talking about my vote? + Show Spoiler +I didn’t vote for Biden in the primary and it made no difference. I did vote for Kamala in the general and it made no difference. I’m well aware my vote is insignificant, I mostly only bothered to fill the thing out for some of the propositions that apparently are also gonna fail (fucking hell, this state). You and I seem to be in agreement that meaningful change is only gonna come from non-ballot-related activities, so why do we keep talking about whether I bubble in that first question or not? Why do you even care? Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: On November 08 2024 22:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 15:37 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
Dunno why you keep holding this stuff against me as if I'm running the Democrats. ...supporting them. They ostensibly derive their power from you and voters like you. From a liberal democratic pov, you and people like you need to extract better than that from them. Alternatively, you and voters like yourself need to extract them and replace them with people that will do better than make the same mistake for the 543rd time of trusting institutions and norms to control Trump/Project 2025's openly fascist ambitions. I'd prefer you and voters like yourself just join revolutionary socialist orgs and go from there, but if you all insist on keeping your lib-Dem politics, the WORLD needs you to demand better from your leaders RIGHT NOW, EN MASSE, in every venue possible. Which ties into the issue with you and other libs/Dems not having a line for when you'd have to stop supporting Democrats since clearly even genocide doesn't cross it. On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. ... What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point, when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. You voting for someone that couldn't even mention that there was an opportunity to stop enslaving her fellow Californians from her home state when the whole country was looking at her, is emblematic of how problematic that is. + Show Spoiler +Sure, the Democratic Party derives political power and legitimacy from people like me or Kwark or DPB being willing to vote for them. The US government derives power and legitimacy from our labor, tax dollars, etc. If we were to stop being willing to vote for them, they’d pivot to whatever position allowed them to maximize their support from whoever continued to engage with the political system; if we were to stop working or paying taxes the US government would pivot to deriving its power and legitimacy from whoever continued to engage with the economic system.
You’re fundamentally opposed to making moral arguments on a “compared to the alternative” basis, but personally I’m going to be more interested in plans which achieve better outcomes, which requires choosing among available alternatives. Political abstention is one of those available alternatives but I have yet to hear even a theoretical mechanism by which it would achieve better outcomes for anyone. + Show Spoiler + If I didn’t give a shit about achieving better outcomes for people, and just to keep my name or reputation or immortal soul unsullied by association with horrible stuff, I can see how political abstention would help me. But when this stuff has real, enormous consequences for other people’s lives it’s hard for me to feel good about just trying to not get my hands dirty.
But anyway, haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we already done this? I don’t want to talk about trolley problems, particularly at a moment when it’s already clear to both of us that neither of us have any influence over whether the lever gets pulled or not anyway. Like, I agree that Kamala should have voiced support for the amendment, and more generally that CA liberals are responsible for a state that continues to enact regressive and exploitative policies while pretending everything would be progressive and wonderful if national politics went their way. I have no control over that. Supposedly leftists have proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things, why don’t we talk about those? Doesn’t that sound more productive? + Show Spoiler +"Not voting for Democrats" Isn't political abstention. I know you know that and strawman it that way disingenuously on purpose. You should stop that. Man, “political abstention [from national electoral contests such as the recent presidential election]” is a lot to type! I write my posts on my phone! But yes, I certainly understand that you don’t advocate abstention from all political activity, not even from all electoral politics, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Would “national electoral abstention” be a better shorthand? + Show Spoiler +Or would that still be a strawman since you don’t necessarily advocate abstention from all national electoral contests, just most of them in the current political environment? No, I voted for president days ago. You should have some control over that. There are people that go to the Democrat meetings and make the policies from the local to the national level (though for Democrats it typically flows the other way nowadays). That could be you just as easily as anyone else (but for the whole Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam. problem of electoralism) Just to be sure I’m understanding you right: you want me to work at becoming one of the movers and shakers setting Democratic Party policies? Work my way up from the inside, ingratiate myself to party leaders, win some influence and use it to change things from the inside? That sounds like the kind of thing you’d dismiss as misguided attempts at reforming the current system + Show Spoiler +, and Lenin would dismiss as Revisionism. Surely you’d say I dedicate my energies to something more revolutionary ? It is imo, but if you're insisting on keeping your lib/Dem politics, that's how you stop yourself from having to vote for people that support slavery and genocide. That is, if not supporting slavery and genocide is something that is important to you. I presume it is, but you're slowly working on convincing me otherwise. As to talking about "proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things" being more productive, it is with socialists. It Is with (edit:most some)reasonable social democrats. Not so much with libs/Dems that are primarily just looking to shit on them in order to rationalize their continued support of genocide and the rest. So you’re trying to convince everybody to be socialists, but you don’t want to talk about all the good stuff socialists can do except with other socialists? No, I said it can be done with some social democrats too. It's about how one comes to the conversation and Freire talks about this. + Show Spoiler +Maybe part of the problem here is that the only correct answer to “how should I engage with national politics?” is “Don’t!” but this is fundamentally a thread about US national politics. You’re apparently doing a lot of good engagement with local organizations on local problems, but you don’t want to talk about it here because it’s local stuff nobody in the thread has reason to know or care about. Meanwhile what you actually think the rest of us should do is similarly engage with local organizations on local problems, but you can’t tell us how to do that because you’re not from the same place we’re from. I’m not sure what the answer to that problem is, though; I can think about how to have solidarity with my coworkers but it’s not especially useful to discuss in the thread. That's why I've been telling you to join a socialist org (could even be DSA, very easy to find/join) for years. They are doing local things, with local orgs in your area, tackling local problems. That's how you do it, and I've been telling you specifically (along with everyone else) that for years. The reasonable conclusion for me to draw is that it's one of those “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” type things where you can say opposing genocide/slavery matters to you, but your "budget" (be it time, money, effort, voting, etc) is telling me otherwise. Sure, I’m like anybody else, I work a job and try to take care of myself and my friends and family, and generally be kind to the people around me. If I find any time around the edges to go to a bar with coworkers or play a video game for an hour I count myself fortunate. I like the idea of making more substantial commitments to bigger projects out of a sense of civic responsibility but most of the time (especially in the last year) it feels like I’m barely keeping my head above water. Yes, I generally prioritize that stuff above studying socialist theory or attending city counsel meetings or getting involved with my local DSA. I’m pretty sure that’s normal though. Yet those organizations exist, and are also populated by people like you barely keeping their head above water I’m sure they do, and I’m sure those people have objectively more difficult lives than mine! Perhaps they’re also better people than me, and that’s why they’re able to keep it together and still find room to give back to their community. Who’s to say? Show nested quote +It always feels like you’re threatening to proclaim me selfish and complicit in all the atrocities of the modern world but you’re holding back on actually doing it because you’re hoping I’ll be motivated to scramble and show you you’re wrong. But for me it does the same thing berating myself does – destroy my motivation level and make it even harder to get through the day taking care of myself, let alone find something extra for helping others. I'm reserving judgement, but this is basically the "the libs being mean to me made me a Nazi" thing Republicans do and I think you're better than that. When I describe your politics/engagement and you feel I'm describing selfishness and complicity, that's not about you personally, that's just what liberal/Democrat politics are, selfish and complicit. Man that’s legitimately a funny concept. “Being mean to me made me become a Nazi” but instead of “become a Nazi” substituting “have low self-esteem” or “go into a depressive episode and struggle to perform basic self-care.” I’m not quite sure how to structure the punchline but there’s something there. But no, I don’t think you’re making me do anything. I’m just saying if you’re hoping that reminding me of my complicity in global genocide will increase my motivation level, I think you’re mistaken. Show nested quote +Maybe talking specifics about how joining orgs and volunteering time and energy and money has helped your community (even though I’m not one of the socialists or social democrats you’ve deemed worthy of those conversations) would be more motivating to me? But don’t stress too much about motivating me one way or another, just proclaim my soul lost and move on to someone else you think is still savable if you want to. Maybe when you join an org you can tell me about your experience, we can compare and contrast, and then go from there or you could also just recognize you don't actually care that much about your opposition to stuff like enslaving your neighbors. A major part of the reason the US political system is imploding in front of us is because of this mistaken idea that you can have the level of engagement you describe of yourself and still maintain a democracy with any worthwhile meaning to the word. You simply can't and Trump is proving that to you. Yeah, you might be right about that. The whole system is designed, for one reason or another, to keep everybody working pretty hard to stay alive and provide for themselves and their family, but the result is an electorate barely able to understand basic questions like “what is inflation?” because they’re so busy overtime and trying to get their insurance to pay for surgery or w/e. The resulting electoral system is doomed to fail because it’s designed to put voters in the driver seat, but they’re too busy texting while driving instead of watching the road. I’m not 100% convinced of that diagnosis but it does make a lot of sense.
You had it easier than most to just clear the democratic engagement bar of "vote for someone not engaged in genocide".
I'm not trying to break you down, I'm trying to build you up. I promise there's plenty of people in this thread and beyond that I wouldn't waste my time engaging with like I am with you, and you can tell that by just looking at what/who I do and don't engage with. But I'm also not going to sugarcoat it, people are fucking dying and suffering indescribable injustices because of people you and other libs/Dems vote for. This in the modern era where we can't write it off as impossible for us to know about.
We can't just shrug and be like "busy bro". Or rather we can, but then we also own the righteous indignation of all those people suffering beneath our complicity. As tough as being an engaged socialist is (nothing ever feels like enough) it's a helluva lot easier for me than going to sleep with a "busy bro, try me in the next life" text to countless innocent people suffering unimaginable atrocities because of the people I vote for and their contemptuous incompetence (at fucking best).
This though, this is good: The resulting electoral system is doomed to fail because it’s designed to put voters in the driver seat, but they’re too busy texting while driving instead of watching the road.
There's also, kids screaming in the back, an angry spouse in the passenger seat, a check engine light, a Trumper rolling coal in their window, a Prius with a COEXIST and Ridin with Biden sticker doing 50 in the left lane, and 100 other things going on with ads literally everywhere trying to sell us solutions for all of that and none of it at the same time for money we'll never be able to acquire. Oh and the car has that "feature" where the car itself becomes increasingly hostile until you drive where your told. Should you ignore that it eventually drives itself back to the lot and you are removed by police and not allowed to drive anymore (presuming you survive the encounter).
Liberal democracy as it is inevitably subsumed by capitalism is exhausting its usefulness to the human experience and a transition into SOMETHING else is required. Socialism is the best option I think is out there and if there was something better I'd support that in a heartbeat. To be clear, that doesn't mean "adjective capitalism". Doesn't matter what words you put around it, if capitalism is in there, it will dominate it until it is all that remains. Then cannibalize itself and its adherents. Don't make me convince you to check out socialism, use your common sense to recognize it's socialism or bust for humanity unless you find/create an alternative (and aint nobody got time fa dat).
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On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:59 Vindicare605 wrote:Looks like the Democrat leadership is laying the blame for Kamala's botched nomination process entirely on Biden. I don't blame them, from the outside looking in it really did look like he engineered the timeline of events to occur in such a way that trying to get an open primary done in time for the election was all but impossible. If he wasn't going to be allowed to run again, then he wanted his hand picked VP to take the nomination and no one else. Welp. Thanks a lot Joe. Ya done fucked us. https://x.com/selinawangtv/status/1854968427854635409Nancy Pelosi to the NYT: “had the president [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.” “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. “ “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/us/politics/pelosi-harris-biden-open-primary.html Not a terrible take imo. There are other factors to blame too, but if Biden doesn't run for re-election, then there's actually enough time for an open primary. Regardless of whether or not Harris wins that hypothetical primary, we get more hype and galvanize the base more and fewer people are left with the notion that it's unfair for Harris/whoever to be the nominee.
If this is the extent of their introspection then it is totally terrible lol, while having a primary probably would have helped some I don't think it actually flips to a Harris win. Democrats need to (but will not) learn that they have to advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class. Aggressive use of the systems of governance to make shit happen.
Theyre the disadvantaged party in the Having To Do Some Shit factor but they also have a higher cap for success. Instead of pursuing that success though they're gonna continue to hope they can appeal to Republicans and maybe scrape out a meagre win here or there that will surely pale in comparison to the bad shit Republicans will be getting done in that same time.
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Northern Ireland22735 Posts
On November 09 2024 06:43 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:On November 09 2024 04:41 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 02:54 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:52 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 02:29 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:06 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 02:01 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 01:32 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 01:29 oBlade wrote:
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Then how could you know the Netherlands would not be more expensive and worse outcomes if implemented in the US?
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If you define "better" a certain way, there will be no countries that do healthcare better than the US. If you define "better" another way, there will be private and public countries that do it better. If I then name one of them and you change the definition of "better" after the fact it will have been a waste. Explain what you mean by "better" because you showed a graph of cost which means India must have the best most affordable healthcare in the world. What are we valuing, with what weights, when we say one of these is "better."
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Sure I'm open to moving to a universal healthcare system if it's the best option.
How would that shift occur and what problems unique to the US that cause its bar on that graph to be 50% higher than Switzerland's would it specifically fix? What would convince you a universal healthcare system is the best option? Well, the first thing that pops out is "best". Best for whom? Under what circumstances? Or is the argument that on every single vector for every single individual it is best, which seems implausible? If that isn't defined clearly, we can have crazy arguments fighting with imagined shadows of the other persons position. That aside, assuming a clear definition of best, for me it's the only thing that matters: Results. And right now, the results look pretty favorable to universal. How could those results look even better? Need more test cases with very homogenous populations for me. US racial demographics are very, very different to other countries listed. If you start getting parts of the US doing universal and other parts doing our current system, and the universal keeps crushing....then it goes from "Yea, universal looks pretty good" to "Universal GOAT status" for me. Why do populations have to be homogenous? Certain ethnic groups do have slightly different medical needs, but those aren’t giant hurdles You can make very simple, IMO correct arguments that certain political systems work best, or less well depending on how politically and culturally homogenous a nation is. I think it’s a much harder sell with healthcare It's just the classic "black people are ruining our country" argument that he's trying to mask as being rational and somewhat politically correct. Except the country isn't "being ruined". And you're right, men like Thomas Sowell are just total human pieces of garbage and we should just deport all of them. eyeroll.jpeg In your own words, tell me what homogenity has anything to do with the efficiency of different healthcare systems. If you mean tell you why I think it *might*, then both genetic factors in longevity and then differences in personality. E.g. less impulsive -> less risk taking behavior -> plausibly longer lifespan. My eye roll is for the out of nowhere value judgement in there. I think you’re implicitly assigning “good” or “bad” with certain differences in personality to come to that idea. I can imagine you going “oh he thinks certain races are more or less impulsive and thus they are bad”. Maybe I’m wrong, if so apologies. In either case, I find that statement nonsense. I see tradeoffs in personality traits. High impulsivity/low conscientiousness for example might take more risks and engage in certain harmful behaviors more often…but flip side is those also tend to be the traits of brilliant people that take the crazy risks in entrepreneurship or research that push or society forward. Or take trait neuroticism. High neuroticism sounds “bad” to most people. Like oh you’re just more susceptible to negative emotions than other people. But when you consider the superorganism it’s beneficial. You’re higher neuroticism people are your canaries in the coal mine. They are the people that are first to notice things getting bad, and make noise that gets everybody else aware. You’re low neuroticism would just go “it’s fine” as things go wrong around them until they hit a point where they realize “oh shit were fucked” but now it’s too late. Considering how this part of the discussion started with you stating that health care went to shit around the time more asians and hispanics started living in the US, what you should do is demonstrate that Asians and Hispanics cost the health care system more than people of other races. I have a relevant link for you: The estimated age-standardized total health care spending per person in 2016 was $7649 (95% UI, $6129-$8814) for American Indian and Alaska Native (non-Hispanic) individuals; $4692 (95% UI, $4068-$5202) for Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) individuals; $7361 (95% UI, $6917-$7797) for Black (non-Hispanic) individuals; $6025 (95% UI, $5703-$6373) for Hispanic individuals; $9276 (95% UI, $8066-$10 601) for individuals categorized as multiple races (non-Hispanic); and $8141 (95% UI, $8038-$8258) for White (non-Hispanic) individuals, who accounted for an estimated 72% (95% UI, 71%-73%) of health care spending. After adjusting for population size and age, White individuals received an estimated 15% (95% UI, 13%-17%; P < .001) more spending on ambulatory care than the all-population mean. Black (non-Hispanic) individuals received an estimated 26% (95% UI, 19%-32%; P < .001) less spending than the all-population mean on ambulatory care but received 19% (95% UI, 3%-32%; P = .02) more on inpatient and 12% (95% UI, 4%-24%; P = .04) more on emergency department care. Hispanic individuals received an estimated 33% (95% UI, 26%-37%; P < .001) less spending per person on ambulatory care than the all-population mean. Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) individuals received less spending than the all-population mean on all types of care except dentalSo clearly that argument is just utter bullshit. I'll grant you that there can be elements where a more homogenuous society outperforms a less homogenuous one, but the notion that american health care costs are caused by immigration from Asia and Latin America (which are the groups that increased at the point you said health care started going bad) isn't grounded in reality. Tbh this, to me, sounds like something I'd expect to find at tylervigen's great webpage, next to 'the number of secretaries in alaska correlates to the distance between jupiter and the sun'. ( + Show Spoiler +) It’s the little things that make this group so….difficult for me to “get”. I didn’t claim that health care went to shit. And it’s pretty friggin subtle. I jumped into a discussion that was about American healthcare costs being MUCH higher. And in particular that inspite of that lifespans are shorter in the US. I can see how the frame there is “US health care sucks/went to shit”. And I pointed at the exact point where cost/lifespan went wrong. Ergo “the point where US healthcare went to shit”. Yet, I wouldn’t feel confident saying US Health Care went to shit. I would feel even less comfortable saying “US health care is solid system”, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t believe I claimed that either. To me, my post was writing a list of observations/questions that came to mind. A few of which would be in the direction of “are we sure US health care is bad/went to shit?” Your comment reads to me like you think I’m attributing the decline in health care to the arrival of Asians/Hispanics. From my point of view, I’m wondering if there even *is* a decline in healthcare. Or, more than that, is healthcare change the driving factor behind lifespan decline? From my POV, this thread feels like an alien culture. It’s similar to mine , but it feels like there are a myriad of little assumptions about people’s intent, about reality itself, about general heuristics, that cause my posts to fail to convey what I’m attempting to convey. It’s like a minefield, and I’m walking to all these mines, that when they go off distorting my message.
It feels to me vaguely like joining a new group, with some unspoken customs that I don’t get and I keep offending people doing what I think is friendly behavior but is seen as rude. It’s that kind of “I’m missing something in a big way, yet it’s subtle”
(Or maybe I just suck at communication. Skeptical of that as I’ve done my fair share of writing in various places without this)
Much like the little tangent into nutrition. I wasn’t experiencing “these guys disagree with me”.
I was experiencing “I’m failing to communicate what I want with these guys, and I don’t know why. It’s like they hear 90% of my message, but a critical 10% was lost and now they have the wrong understanding”
It’s a little frustrating that so many of the interpretations that are just off then assume the absolute worst, but more than anything I’m confused yet curious.
I’m probably engaging 85% now to try and get a sense of what’s causing that.
Aight, I’ll have a crack at this.
It can be a minefield, it’s not always your fault, sometimes it may be. Over time one may learn where those mines are buried.
One must also consider that, perhaps your audience may have heard a similar argument made many times before you, perhaps with those with bad faith intentions. You may have good faith intentions, but this can very easily get people making those assumptions based on past experiences. Humans can’t really function properly without a degree of generalisation forming, but there may be downsides too.
In the case of this particular one, genetic racial differences is one of the biggest possible minefields you can hope to negotiate.
It’s not impossible, but even certain language can have the same intended meaning as another phrasing, but be perceived very differently.
So firstly it’s a pretty sensitive, dicey topic. As it is thus, this also pushes the barrier higher from ‘I’ve got a theory’ towards needing some kind of tangible evidence to back it up. Or some kind of logical extrapolation.
It is uncontroversial that Sub-Saharan Africans or those descending from there have a much higher prevalence of sickle cell anaemia than other ethnic groups. Or that Asians are much more lactose intolerant.
I’ve just said that and put it out there that there are genetic differences between ethnic groups. I am going to wager that this will not get me a huge amount of pushback.
This isn’t meant to be particularly critical at all, purely advisory and hopefully you can stick around and contribute. As I’ve said many a time I’d welcome more voices that aren’t obviously of the left, but many fall into the same pitfalls. It’s not always super friendly, sometimes it is, but also that’s what lively, show your working critical discourse actually tends to look like.
Happy hunting!
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EPT![[image loading]](https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious/correlation/image/2733_the-distance-between-jupiter-and-the-sun_correlates-with_the-number-of-secretaries-in-alaska.png)
