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On November 09 2024 07:22 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:33 Impervious 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. 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.
I'm aware. It's not that they have some secret plan to rule the world or whatever. It's that we as people gave them our money to make more money, and they buy into all kinds of businesses as parts of diversified portfolios for us to make us more money. And they're damn good at it.
That doesn't mean that it's always a good thing for us though. You can find shampoos known to cause hair loss created and sold by one brand that is sitting on a shelf, and right next to it you can find another product designed to treat hair loss created and sold by a different brand. But when you start moving up the chain of who owns what brand or company, you end up at some publicly traded company, and somehow, there's a combination of those 3 brokerages that own typically 30+% of that publicly traded company at the top. That's a huge amount of influence over something like 90% of all goods we purchase.....
There's an obesity crisis, and they have influence at an extremely high level to both the companies putting out all the crap foods which are making the crisis worse, as well as the pharmaceutical companies creating drugs and treatments for it. With those competing interests, they would be doing a disservice to their shareholders if they actually tried to manipulate things for the better.
There's lots more examples of competing interests.....
They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, which includes both you and I (I'll admit I have money in funds through Blackrock personally).
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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? They voted for Trump, twice, being crappy people is a reasonably safe assumption to the say the least.
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Norway28466 Posts
On November 09 2024 06:43 L_Master wrote:+ Show Spoiler +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.
It's conceivable that the issue is that you're not able to communicate what you want to communicate, but I don't think so. I think the issue is that you've convinced yourself that lacking homogeneity is a big part of the 'reason why the US is in trouble', to the point where you bring it up in discussions where it's really hard for me to see the relevance. Tbh, there are basically certain issues you've honed in on that tend to repeat themselves - aside from the 'genetic determinism/scientific racism' (your own words), importance of personality traits in determining political preference is another. You make other points too - I'm not trying to turn you into a two-trick pony here, just saying that there are some points you really like to make, even if they're not relevant.
Now, I'll be honest - I'm not basing my replies purely on the posts you made just now. Rather, your history in this thread: You've entered this thread on various occasions, and then you stay around to post for a while before going back to lurking or doing other stuff for some months. Your first post in the thread deals with Trump riots - where you admonish Trump and state that he deserved to be removed from office/not reelected - but ends with a paragraph stating that It's worth noting that if the claim is being made that Trump caused the insurrection, then it absolutely follows that various mainstream organizations pushing CRT narratives caused the BLM riots, which were significantly more damaging and violent'.
Even here - you insert a point about lacking homogeneity hurting America.
The next time you enter, one and a half year later, your point is basically that it would be preferable for smaller communities to be formed of likeminded people who could govern themselves and for people to be able to move freely to their preferred communities. (Again - lacking homogeneity is hurting America). During this stint, you also bring up the importance of personality traits, and seemingly argue that genes make up a bigger portion of 'what makes groups perform differently' than what people are willing to admit to'.
When you returned now (your third visit to the thread), one of your opening posts, again, to explain why Trump was elected, goes 'Pretty much every person I knew isn't especially pro Trump. They are simply disgusted, angry, or afraid of the democrats DEI policies, the rapid shift in demographics' - again, increased diversity being part of the explanation for something negative happening.
And here's the thing - I don't mind this, in general. We all have our preferred topics. Being a teacher, I like talking about education, and also, frequently, about how we should all be nicer to each other and try to interpret each other in the best possible manner, which you might feel like I'm not doing I guess, but I honestly think I'm being pretty fair. If you wanna hone in on something in particular that you feel like you're knowledgeable about and that you think people aren't talking enough about, whatever, do it.
But then you enter a discussion about health care costs - specifically about health care costs in the US being really high, with the following points to make (again - quoting you)
1) USA population is extremely diverse, the other countries substantially more homogenous 2) All the countries on there are high conscientiousness 3) We see a divergence from all the other countries starting around 1980 give or take, which lines up fairly well with this:
Now, how am I supposed to interpret this in some other way than you thinking the diversity - specifically less white, more asian, and (while not shown by the picture, more hispanic) - is influencing health care costs? Why else would you bring it up as a response to someone posting a link to health care costs in the US being much higher than in other countries? It's not like it's a tangential point either - these are your first three points. And then I'm saying, hey dude, I realize that you have your own schtick here, but the idea that there's any relevance in this particular case is actually bullshit, here, have a look at this graph showing that the immigrant groups that have most contributed to the increased diversity that you lament actually cost less per capita than the white people do.
Like if you wanna bring this up in some discussion around increased polarization or about the hopelessness of trying to achieve equality or different ethnic groups having different experiences with the legal system or whatnot, then you know, I might disagree with you in terms of 'genetic determinism' being the explanation, but at least it's relevant. Here, I just don't understand why you brought it up.
I hope this post clarifies why I made the previous one.
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Northern Ireland22736 Posts
On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master 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....
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.
Most nations have good aspects and flaws to their collective cultural mythos too. I think that’s also a big part of it too.
I’ll need to properly dig it up but there’s some interesting theories and research on Spanish Influenza and subsequent political extremism rising all over the place shortly after. And not just on the right.
It doesn’t take a huge jump to find certain parallels with where we’re at, and not just in the US, all over
Interesting idea, I must confess I’ve yet to actually read up on it, my friend gave me the gist over beers.
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On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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.
That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers.
Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people.
(There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".)
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On November 09 2024 07:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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. That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers. Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people. (There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".)
I think sincerity matters and people didn't believe Harris because she didn't believe it herself. She didn't believe it because she knew it wasn't real. She wouldn't get shit done with a Republican Senate and she had no plan to deal with that.
Paying less attention to her unconvincing lies and manipulative rhetoric than Trump's verifiable vileness was the media reflecting back what libs/Dems wanted to see. That's what the "can't help yourselves" refrain is about, you guys weren't any better than the media about that.
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On November 09 2024 04:20 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 01:55 Uldridge wrote:
No, actual funding could be used to find a cure instead of management, with shitty side effects at that. There is no cure for HIV. There are only treatments. Your objection makes absolutely no sense. It's an effective treatment, so stop fearmongering.
I'm not claiming there's a cure for HIV, I'm claiming there could have been one already.
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On November 09 2024 07:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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. That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers. Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people. (There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".)
What I am referring to is Democrats being unwilling to wield power for the serious material benefit of the working class, it’s actually the sentence immediately after the one you bolded.
Democrats always have lots of stances and what winds up materializing is, at best, stemmed bleeding. Being such technocratic dipshits will never motivate people, and the more people feel slowly bled out the less they’re going to trust their word, and Democrats are real low on people being able to trust their word, lol.
I liked what Harris was saying, but you expect me to think she had any real intention to make that shit happen? When she wanted Republicans in her cabinet? When she was hanging with Dick Cheney? It screamed duplicitous Democrat bullshit, that same intention to maybe try a little bit but give up hard and quick if any mild roadblocks pop up and not be even a little sad about it. To offer infinite concessions to scumbag Republicans for no good reason. Typical Democrat bullshit.
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President Joe Biden addresses the nation after Donald Trump wins presidency
![[image loading]](https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f8145d7/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1813x1020+92+0/resize/1280x720!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fewscripps-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F34%2Fe0%2Fc4ae864f4222a9d9f073d61f6190%2Fscreenshot-2024-11-07-at-10-07-20-am.png)
At least he looks happy as hell.
Also the most coherent speech he’s had in 4 years.
Perhaps Trump and Biden are secretly friends and it was planned all along! 
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On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master 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....
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.
I think there's a flaw in your premise and/or argument here, although I'm having difficulty pointing out exactly what it is.
I really, really tried hard to figure out exactly what it is, but I can't. However, I can point it out pretty easily. I really, really didn't want to point it out this way, but this is taking it to an absolute extreme simply to point it out as a flaw in the premise and/or argument.
Replace "Trump" with "Hitler".
No, I am not comparing the two. I am doing this to point out that there is a flaw in the argument here. Hitler was arguably one of the biggest pieces of human trash that has ever lived, and he was voted into power willingly by Germany, and had an absolutely fanatical following which perpetrated some of the biggest atrocities in history under his direction. While I think Trump is not a good person to be president for a variety of reasons, he's not in the same league as Hitler imo. Not even close. As a Canadian I don't like that he's going to get access to the nuclear codes again, mind you, but him being elected as president again is nowhere near as bad as many people are making it out to be.....
- People in the Germany just don’t care that a person who is all those things runs the country
- People in the Germany don’t think Hitler is those things because, essentially, brainwashing
- People in the Germany think Hitler is those things, but other concerns and other character traits outweigh all of those concerns
- People in the Germany don’t think Hitler is those things, and have genuine reason to believe that
Or some mix of all of those.
Are you convinced Germany folks are absolutely brainwashed, or delusion, or just genuine garbage?
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Hitler is off, and that the sources and information you’ve used is, at a minimum, missing something.
Could you be convinced that the picture you have of him is off, and that information you have is wrong, since so many people did elect him and support him? Are you missing something?
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On November 09 2024 07:24 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 06:38 ChristianS wrote: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:[quote] + 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:
[quote]
...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:[quote] ... 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? 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. 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: Show nested quote +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).
A very small central government as envisioned closer to the founding to coordinate inter-federation disputes, some logical national things like roads and defense...and then seperation into many small federations able to govern at the local level according to the preferences of the people in those local regions?
Federations that enact or go down paths that are untenable will eventually fail and dissolve, allowing much more "testing" of what does and doesn't work. You can have one federation that's staunchly anti abortion for any reason, and another that allows abortion whenever and however. Some can have centralized healthcare, others can have none at all. Some can be very exclusionary, others inclusionary.
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On November 09 2024 08:24 Impervious wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:02 L_Master wrote: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. I think there's a flaw in your premise and/or argument here, although I'm having difficulty pointing out exactly what it is. I really, really tried hard to figure out exactly what it is, but I can't. However, I can point it out pretty easily. I really, really didn't want to point it out this way, but this is taking it to an absolute extreme simply to point it out as a flaw in the premise and/or argument. Replace "Trump" with "Hitler". No, I am not comparing the two. I am doing this to point out that there is a flaw in the argument here. Hitler was arguably one of the biggest pieces of human trash that has ever lived, and he was voted into power willingly by Germany, and had an absolutely fanatical following which perpetrated some of the biggest atrocities in history under his direction. While I think Trump is not a good person to be president for a variety of reasons, he's not in the same league as Hitler imo. Not even close. As a Canadian I don't like that he's going to get access to the nuclear codes again, mind you, but him being elected as president again is nowhere near as bad as many people are making it out to be.....
I'm not advocating either fwiw. I'm not saying more than half the US is good/bad, or brainwashed/not brainwashed.
I'm checking confidence in model of how the world works, in the face of something that model didn't seem to be able to predict based on the confusion of Velr.
This makes me doubt my model when it happens to me.
And my question to Velr/Micronesia is almost the same as your question to me below. What would shift from "US trump voters are brainwashed" to "We had bad information/bad model"?
- People in the Germany just don’t care that a person who is all those things runs the country
- People in the Germany don’t think Hitler is those things because, essentially, brainwashing
- People in the Germany think Hitler is those things, but other concerns and other character traits outweigh all of those concerns
- People in the Germany don’t think Hitler is those things, and have genuine reason to believe that
Or some mix of all of those.
Are you convinced Germany folks are absolutely brainwashed, or delusion, or just genuine garbage?
Or do you consider any possibility that you’re picture of Hitler is off, and that the sources and information you’ve used is, at a minimum, missing something.
Could you be convinced that the picture you have of him is off, and that information you have is wrong, since so many people did elect him and support him? Are you missing something? [/QUOTE]
For Germany, I have no idea on brainwashing. As far as I understand, there was lots of stuff that was pretty messed up then, and domestically Hitler did a good deal of good. Unfortunately, he also went full war (at best a mistake, but probably outright wrong) and then the whole....ya know....extermination thing. I don't know the extent to which Germans were aware that Hitler was going to do those things, and that would influence the degree to which I shift between wrong/brainwashed/just kinda shit.
One difference is that my understanding of this world wasn't shocked by this result. I expected a solid win. My model was a little weak on predicting turn out, I don't have a good pulse or read there in any way, but the result was the one I would have bet upon.
When it comes to Trump, this is one of the big questions I'm thinking about. I don't believe he is going to seize power. I don't believe he's going to go full fascist. So I'm establishing the lines where I would need to admit:
"Yep. I missed that one. Big miss. What did I miss and why did I miss?"
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On November 09 2024 08:03 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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. That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers. Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people. (There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".) I think sincerity matters and people didn't believe Harris because she didn't believe it herself. She didn't believe it because she knew it wasn't real. She wouldn't get shit done with a Republican Senate and she had no plan to deal with that. Paying less attention to her unconvincing lies and manipulative rhetoric than Trump's verifiable vileness was the media reflecting back what libs/Dems wanted to see. That's what the " can't help yourselves" refrain is about, you guys weren't any better than the media about that.
The original accusation was that Harris didn't have a plan for the working class. She did. The fact that there's a good chance Congressional Republicans were going to sabotage the next term and fuck over the working class as much as possible by not letting Harris govern isn't Harris's fault, nor should it be a reason to desert her, nor should it be a reason to vote for Trump who would clearly do worse things.
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On November 09 2024 07:32 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 06:43 L_Master wrote: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:
[quote]
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!
I think you're on the money here, and this is helpful. Especially this:
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.
Something to be said for that, I think the word is dogwhistle or something like that, where the generalizations are made based on past pattern and experiences.
Had it been just a topic like that, I think I'd call it a day...but it's happened on a couple other topics, including the discussion on nutrition that I don't think of as quite such a minefield, and where I'm still pretty sure we all more or less agreed. Maybe it all does come down to that heuristics/rounding off point though, and that's just stronger here than other places I've been.
On November 09 2024 08:13 Uldridge wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 04:20 Magic Powers wrote:On November 09 2024 01:55 Uldridge wrote:
No, actual funding could be used to find a cure instead of management, with shitty side effects at that. There is no cure for HIV. There are only treatments. Your objection makes absolutely no sense. It's an effective treatment, so stop fearmongering. I'm not claiming there's a cure for HIV, I'm claiming there could have been one already.
Could as in might? Or could as in would have been?
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On November 09 2024 08:20 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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. That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers. Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people. (There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".) What I am referring to is Democrats being unwilling to wield power for the serious material benefit of the working class, it’s actually the sentence immediately after the one you bolded. Democrats always have lots of stances and what winds up materializing is, at best, stemmed bleeding. Being such technocratic dipshits will never motivate people, and the more people feel slowly bled out the less they’re going to trust their word, and Democrats are real low on people being able to trust their word, lol. I liked what Harris was saying, but you expect me to think she had any real intention to make that shit happen? When she wanted Republicans in her cabinet? When she was hanging with Dick Cheney? It screamed duplicitous Democrat bullshit, that same intention to maybe try a little bit but give up hard and quick if any mild roadblocks pop up and not be even a little sad about it. To offer infinite concessions to scumbag Republicans for no good reason. Typical Democrat bullshit.
So since Harris wasn't going to make progress fast enough by only moving a little bit forwards, it makes sense to go backwards? Since she was willing to be bipartisan and work with Republicans (who were going to be relevant in Congress, whether we liked it or not), that means she's betraying us, and the only solution is to let Trump continue to undo previously-made progress?
Reading that Harris is to blame because Republicans are terrible is getting old. That's not how governing works when you have three branches with control split between two parties (especially if two branches are already Republican-controlled, and the only chance at treading water or swimming even a bit forwards - instead of drowning - rests in the hands of the president). The irony, of course, is that for Harris to make every single change that progressives want within a single term, Democrats would need to control all three branches of government, but the whining about how that's impossible has contributed to giving that exact thing to Republicans. No Harris? Cool. Time to see Republicans unilaterally destroy everything without any checks or balances. I hope it was worth it.
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On November 09 2024 08:13 Uldridge wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 04:20 Magic Powers wrote:On November 09 2024 01:55 Uldridge wrote:
No, actual funding could be used to find a cure instead of management, with shitty side effects at that. There is no cure for HIV. There are only treatments. Your objection makes absolutely no sense. It's an effective treatment, so stop fearmongering. I'm not claiming there's a cure for HIV, I'm claiming there could have been one already.
Not by removing available, functioning treatments. No sir. JJR wasn't talking about a cure, he was spreading fear and misinformation about a treatment.
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On November 09 2024 08:26 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:24 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 06:38 ChristianS wrote: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:
[quote] 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.
[quote][quote]Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: [quote]
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.
[quote] 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? 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. 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). A very small central government as envisioned closer to the founding to coordinate inter-federation disputes, some logical national things like roads and defense...and then seperation into many small federations able to govern at the local level according to the preferences of the people in those local regions? Federations that enact or go down paths that are untenable will eventually fail and dissolve, allowing much more "testing" of what does and doesn't work. You can have one federation that's staunchly anti abortion for any reason, and another that allows abortion whenever and however. Some can have centralized healthcare, others can have none at all. Some can be very exclusionary, others inclusionary.
Maybe we could set these federations up underground in special facilities. They could be self-sufficient while protected from environmental and nuclear disaster. They'll probably need some sort of overseer to get started, but then can choose whatever government works for them once they've established themselves. You might be onto something....
+ Show Spoiler + Not helping people's presumptions about you there L_Master...  I think I deserve a freebie, but now I'm going to hold myself accountable and go read a bit of those damn books Biff suggested. They honestly read like even more frivolous and massively more pretentious bickering than any of us could muster on our best day here btw but imma slog through em. I recommend people read If We Burn instead of slogging through either of those. It's not even a "socialist text", it's much more of a traditional journalist reporting style in the same vein as of what happened and why. It would be great for discussion and would inform people on other topics like Ukraine.
On November 09 2024 08:46 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 08:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 07:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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. That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers. Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people. (There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".) I think sincerity matters and people didn't believe Harris because she didn't believe it herself. She didn't believe it because she knew it wasn't real. She wouldn't get shit done with a Republican Senate and she had no plan to deal with that. Paying less attention to her unconvincing lies and manipulative rhetoric than Trump's verifiable vileness was the media reflecting back what libs/Dems wanted to see. That's what the " can't help yourselves" refrain is about, you guys weren't any better than the media about that. The original accusation was that Harris didn't have a plan for the working class. She did. + Show Spoiler +The fact that there's a good chance Congressional Republicans were going to sabotage the next term and fuck over the working class as much as possible by not letting Harris govern isn't Harris's fault, nor should it be a reason to desert her, nor should it be a reason to vote for Trump who would clearly do worse things.
It wasn't, but she didn't though. She didn't even have the concepts of a plan of how to enact her working class policies. It was empty wishcasting rhetoric.
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On November 09 2024 07:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 06:43 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 05:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +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 +) Show nested quote +
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.
It's conceivable that the issue is that you're not able to communicate what you want to communicate, but I don't think so. I think the issue is that you've convinced yourself that lacking homogeneity is a big part of the 'reason why the US is in trouble', to the point where you bring it up in discussions where it's really hard for me to see the relevance. Tbh, there are basically certain issues you've honed in on that tend to repeat themselves - aside from the 'genetic determinism/scientific racism' (your own words), importance of personality traits in determining political preference is another. You make other points too - I'm not trying to turn you into a two-trick pony here, just saying that there are some points you really like to make, even if they're not relevant. Now, I'll be honest - I'm not basing my replies purely on the posts you made just now. Rather, your history in this thread: You've entered this thread on various occasions, and then you stay around to post for a while before going back to lurking or doing other stuff for some months. Your first post in the thread deals with Trump riots - where you admonish Trump and state that he deserved to be removed from office/not reelected - but ends with a paragraph stating that Show nested quote +It's worth noting that if the claim is being made that Trump caused the insurrection, then it absolutely follows that various mainstream organizations pushing CRT narratives caused the BLM riots, which were significantly more damaging and violent'. Even here - you insert a point about lacking homogeneity hurting America. The next time you enter, one and a half year later, your point is basically that it would be preferable for smaller communities to be formed of likeminded people who could govern themselves and for people to be able to move freely to their preferred communities. (Again - lacking homogeneity is hurting America). During this stint, you also bring up the importance of personality traits, and seemingly argue that genes make up a bigger portion of 'what makes groups perform differently' than what people are willing to admit to'. When you returned now (your third visit to the thread), one of your opening posts, again, to explain why Trump was elected, goes 'Pretty much every person I knew isn't especially pro Trump. They are simply disgusted, angry, or afraid of the democrats DEI policies, the rapid shift in demographics' - again, increased diversity being part of the explanation for something negative happening. And here's the thing - I don't mind this, in general. We all have our preferred topics. Being a teacher, I like talking about education, and also, frequently, about how we should all be nicer to each other and try to interpret each other in the best possible manner, which you might feel like I'm not doing I guess, but I honestly think I'm being pretty fair. If you wanna hone in on something in particular that you feel like you're knowledgeable about and that you think people aren't talking enough about, whatever, do it. But then you enter a discussion about health care costs - specifically about health care costs in the US being really high, with the following points to make (again - quoting you) Show nested quote + 1) USA population is extremely diverse, the other countries substantially more homogenous 2) All the countries on there are high conscientiousness 3) We see a divergence from all the other countries starting around 1980 give or take, which lines up fairly well with this: Now, how am I supposed to interpret this in some other way than you thinking the diversity - specifically less white, more asian, and (while not shown by the picture, more hispanic) - is influencing health care costs? Why else would you bring it up as a response to someone posting a link to health care costs in the US being much higher than in other countries? It's not like it's a tangential point either - these are your first three points. And then I'm saying, hey dude, I realize that you have your own schtick here, but the idea that there's any relevance in this particular case is actually bullshit, here, have a look at this graph showing that the immigrant groups that have most contributed to the increased diversity that you lament actually cost less per capita than the white people do. Like if you wanna bring this up in some discussion around increased polarization or about the hopelessness of trying to achieve equality or different ethnic groups having different experiences with the legal system or whatnot, then you know, I might disagree with you in terms of 'genetic determinism' being the explanation, but at least it's relevant. Here, I just don't understand why you brought it up. I hope this post clarifies why I made the previous one.
This clarifies a few things for sure.
For clarification, I don't think lack of homogeneity itself is a problem.
I do think the degree to which biology influences everything, from preference to behavior to politics to whatever, is at a minimum underestimated, and often ignored. I'm not entering the thread to say "Hey, I think this is what's going on and this is what we should do"
I'm entering and saying "Hey, I see a lot of confusion here, let me share some experiences of how people I know around me were feeling, and oh by the way given the confusion have you considered that biology might be playing a role here and is being overlooked?"
It's not "Here let me tell you guys what to believe about this"
It's a "The people who incorporate this in there models seem to me to be outperforming those who ignore or reduce it's impact in their models."
When you returned now (your third visit to the thread), one of your opening posts, again, to explain why Trump was elected, goes 'Pretty much every person I knew isn't especially pro Trump. They are simply disgusted, angry, or afraid of the democrats DEI policies, the rapid shift in demographics' - again, increased diversity being part of the explanation for something negative happening.
I can see how this would come across as you describe. In this case, I'm sharing my experiences and conversations. I could have shared nothing, but this is the main driver for the people I knew that either shifted Trump, or were more motivated to turn out for Trump amongst friends and coworkers.
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Northern Ireland22736 Posts
On November 09 2024 09:00 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 08:20 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:54 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 09 2024 07:30 Zambrah wrote:On November 09 2024 07:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: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. That was literally Harris's entire campaign, but okay lol. Lowering taxes, lowering the price of groceries, lowering healthcare and medical costs, increasing the minimum wage, creating more jobs, strengthening unions, making housing more affordable, making childcare more affordable, and so on. Those were Harris's plans, while Trump was obsessed with identity politics and pretending that universal tariffs won't end up leading to taxes passed on to American consumers. Perhaps what you're referring to is the media's decision to keep Trump in the limelight, by focusing on his felonies, fascism, sexism, racism, sexual misconduct, and all his other scandals that should have been ethically disqualifying for a presidential candidate, instead of amplifying Harris's pretty solid economic stances. A side-by-side comparison of Harris's economic vision and Trump's economic vision unequivocally show that Harris's is far superior for the working and middle classes. Unfortunately, all of those plans either weren't communicated well or communicated at all to the American people. (There are likely other non-economic reasons for Harris's loss as well, but this is just addressing the misconception that Harris didn't "advocate and achieve active improvement in the lives of the working class".) What I am referring to is Democrats being unwilling to wield power for the serious material benefit of the working class, it’s actually the sentence immediately after the one you bolded. Democrats always have lots of stances and what winds up materializing is, at best, stemmed bleeding. Being such technocratic dipshits will never motivate people, and the more people feel slowly bled out the less they’re going to trust their word, and Democrats are real low on people being able to trust their word, lol. I liked what Harris was saying, but you expect me to think she had any real intention to make that shit happen? When she wanted Republicans in her cabinet? When she was hanging with Dick Cheney? It screamed duplicitous Democrat bullshit, that same intention to maybe try a little bit but give up hard and quick if any mild roadblocks pop up and not be even a little sad about it. To offer infinite concessions to scumbag Republicans for no good reason. Typical Democrat bullshit. So since Harris wasn't going to make progress fast enough by only moving a little bit forwards, it makes sense to go backwards? Since she was willing to be bipartisan and work with Republicans (who were going to be relevant in Congress, whether we liked it or not), that means she's betraying us, and the only solution is to let Trump continue to undo previously-made progress? Reading that Harris is to blame because Republicans are terrible is getting old. That's not how governing works when you have three branches with control split between two parties ( especially if two branches are already Republican-controlled, and the only chance at treading water or swimming even a bit forwards - instead of drowning - rests in the hands of the president). The irony, of course, is that for Harris to make every single change that progressives want within a single term, Democrats would need to control all three branches of government, but the whining about how that's impossible has contributed to giving that exact thing to Republicans. No Harris? Cool. Time to see Republicans unilaterally destroy everything without any checks or balances. I hope it was worth it.
Republicans control all three branches come January, dominate the Supreme Court, either in action or rhetoric I don’t recall a huge amount of compromise with Democrats.
This doesn’t mean that I’d love to see them emulate everything the Republicans do, nor is this the only way to do things, as a caveat. As I’ve said numerous times I think the bases and their respective appeals are sufficiently different to perhaps require different approaches.
I think there’s a fundamental problem of mixed messaging here though. Perhaps mechanically rather than conceptually. Donald Trump and by extension much of the GOP are shitbags, also were willing to work with them!
I think most with a vague knowledge of civics know that, ultimately you do have to either dominate, which is rare with the other side. You don’t necessarily have to make a big virtue of it. A nod to it perhaps.
Or, alternatively you can go all in on being bipartisan and trying to heal the country. I don’t think that’s easy, indeed I’m not even sure it’s actually possible. But 6 of one, half a dozen of the other gets rather messy
Brass tacks, you’ve got to consider who you potentially gain with certain messaging, and who you potentially lose and how that tradeoff works.
I said it at the time, GH and I’m pretty sure others did as well. It was an election to galvanise one’s base. If there was a big cohort of undecided independents, or a soft edge of Trump’s following that could be picked away at, that was significantly bigger than the potential progressive vote, then I may not like it but pragmatically that makes some sense.
But no polling data I’ve ever seen indicated that this was a smart, pragmatic move. Trump’s ratings amongst designated Republicans have been borderline bulletproof since he entered the scene. Nor did this see any gains whatsoever with designated Independents.
I think there’s a misconception that progressives aren’t happy unless you do everything they want. They just want you to at least try. Or, more accurately that perception has to exist. I do think Harris’ platform and by extension her time in Biden’s administration does have some of those policies, but we actually read policy platforms and records.
Not really on her or her campaign this one, but perception is well, most of electoral politics.
To give a semi, but not quite directly equivalent example, Labour has pivoted centre in recent times. We’re not quite as one party, and usually x party has enough to basically govern unilaterally.
It still pissed plenty of people off when Keir Starmer took a defector from the Conservatives. Yes it’s another vote in Parliament, but it was done in a rough epoch where basic lifelong left-leaning Labour stalwarts had been booted out of the party.
I am fully aware that an extra vote goes some way, but equally you have to consider the impact of further pissing off a left wing of your own base that already isn’t exactly enthusiastic about you. I don’t think it’ll tank his government or anything, but I think it was an absolute net loss
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Northern Ireland22736 Posts
On November 09 2024 08:50 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 07:32 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 06:43 L_Master wrote: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:
[quote]
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! I think you're on the money here, and this is helpful. Especially this: Show nested quote +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. Something to be said for that, I think the word is dogwhistle or something like that, where the generalizations are made based on past pattern and experiences. Had it been just a topic like that, I think I'd call it a day...but it's happened on a couple other topics, including the discussion on nutrition that I don't think of as quite such a minefield, and where I'm still pretty sure we all more or less agreed. Maybe it all does come down to that heuristics/rounding off point though, and that's just stronger here than other places I've been. Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 08:13 Uldridge wrote:On November 09 2024 04:20 Magic Powers wrote:On November 09 2024 01:55 Uldridge wrote:
No, actual funding could be used to find a cure instead of management, with shitty side effects at that. There is no cure for HIV. There are only treatments. Your objection makes absolutely no sense. It's an effective treatment, so stop fearmongering. I'm not claiming there's a cure for HIV, I'm claiming there could have been one already. Could as in might? Or could as in would have been?
A reverse dog-whistle if you will. If someone else has a better, snappier term please let me know!
To clarify that’s not quite what a dog whistle is just if you were unaware. A dog whistle is ‘I want to say something racist so that my fellow racists know what I mean when I’m being racist, but other people either don’t recognise the coding and thus don’t recognise it in this case, or I can plausibly deny what I meant.’
It’s quite an effective metaphorical term, as only dogs can hear dog whistles.
Yours is perhaps the essential opposite. You’re not meaning to make a racist point, but, by phrasing it in a way that people who use dog whistle language also do, people who recognise dog whistles will construe it as a dog whistle.
So if a dog whistle is I’ll use x language sneakily so that I can say heinous shit and my intended audience gets it, you’re using language earnestly to not make a bigoted point, and your intended audience doesn’t get it.
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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)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/XEIYPuf.png)
