I mean there has to be a specific logical fallacy of deciding that entire groups of people don't know what's best for them.
It's established fact that people, by and large, are irrational, tend to make poor decisions, or make the best decisions they can based on the information they have available, but that information is incorrect, incomplete, or inaccurately interpreted.
It seems everytime we take decision making power away from people prices skyrocket.
Again, American healthcare is ridiculously fucked up, and if Obamacare had been straight-up single payer, things would have been different. Like every other country that does it. There's a reason Americans want cheap Canadian drugs. And I'll admit, there's a reason Canadians sometimes go to America to pay for non-critical surgery rather than wait their turn.
Nevertheless, in Canada, needing surgery never involves sitting down and deciding if you can afford the procedure, or if you need to just suffer whatever the surgery would correct.
It most likely is, indeed, far more complicated than that. It still doesn't justify felonious behavior.
I get what you're saying, that in utterly shucking all social mores, societal constraints, and even a desire to live, he's finally, truly 'free' to act purely on volition, with no 'rules.' I don't agree that this is somehow laudable or a noble goal.
No offence, but that's PHB logic. It's not that straight forward, it's not that simple, and if nothing else, you probably don't have the anechoic chamber required for a proper hearing test.
Sounds like you've never had a proper hearing exam done.
I'm not claiming he's never said anything stupid or wrong, just that in this particular case, I think his quote is being misconstrued.
And out of curiosity, what is with the Internet idea that if a given person ever says a single thing that's later proven wrong, that person is instantly a useless git?
All you need to do is look at outcomes in insurance-optional regimes; say, American healthcare, versus outcomes in non-optional regimes, say, every other first-world country's healthcare.
Answer: in the non-optional countries, costs are lower, effectiveness is higher, lives are longer.
Optional insurance would either a) leave people unprotected, either because they're too stupid to buy insurance, or because they can't afford it, b) increase prices because you have a smaller pool of people to spread it out across, and c) probably result in higher prices because in practice, it would be treated like emergency care is now; they HAVE to treat you, but somebody's still gotta pay, and if it's not you, it's everybody else who IS paying for it.
The postulate here is that BECAUSE EVERYBODY will need emergency services at some point in their life, be it directly (your house is on fire) or indirectly (your neighbour's house is on fire, it would be awfully nice if it got dealt with before it spread to the whole neighbourhood) it's both cheaper, more efficient, and more humane, to just have everybody pay a bit into the fund to pay for those services, and for everybody to have access to them.
They do get paid, via taxes, in a group insurance setup.
Because things like fire, police, and health care are something that are commonly needed, but nobody quite knows when or where, it makes FAR more sense to charge everybody a little bit, then to charge rich people a lot, and deny service to people who can't afford it, or worse, to require them to provide the service anyway, forcing them to recoup their costs in other ways.
Mandatory insurance? Or when people call in to 911 for police or fire insurance, do they need to have their credit card ready?
If the former, well, we already have that, it's called 'taxes.' If the latter, well, it already works that way in quite a few places in America, and it's terrible.
It's difficult to use an item that has never been unwrapped.
You're right that 'used' might not be the correct word, but just because it's 'unopened' doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't been bent, folded, spindled, mutilated, submerged, baked, fried, whatever. And that's Bethesda's point.
Sure, but in this case, the condition is 'used - unopened,' not 'new.'
If I go to a local car dealership, buy a car, turn around, and sell it to a third party, having never even unlocked the door, am I selling the a 'new' car? Nope. I'm selling them a previously owned car. Perhaps one in great condition, but still not a new car.
Ok, so get rid of the EC, and I fail to see why any given state suddenly gets an advantage. Yes, the US of A was originally conceived as a UN type coalition of sovereign states, kinda, sorta, nod nod, wink wink. In reality, it never has been, and the Civil War really put a nail into that particular idea.
So, for federal positions, move to a straight-up vote, not a vote for shares of your state.
But in the modern EC, why can the nation be ruled by Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin?
Given that most of the rural states take in more federal money than they give, why would that be a 'disaster' for the Union as a whole?
So here's an honest question for you: in the modern era, does the EC still make sense, or does it simply change which states become battlefield states?
Want to see something funny? Look at the voting requirements the US uses in places where it's running elections that aren't the US, then ask yourself why they're so much more rigorous in other places than in their own home country.
What this we shit, American? I'm from a sane country that believes that ballots should be verifiable, rather than a country that believes it's OK for people to poke buttons on a screen, then a machine decide who should get the vote.
Paper ballots have all kinds of problems, though, including people marking two different candidates,
This at least shifts the source of the problem to 'idiot who marks two candidates' and away from 'random programmer somewhere unknowable, who can do unverifiable things to the software.'
and sometimes needing recounts.
This is a feature, and a very desirable feature at that.
They can state they log no activity all the want. I've just never understood the logic of 'I don't want anybody snooping on my traffic, so I'm going to send ALL my traffic to a third party company, that sounds safer.'
Well, given that Alabama is 312 KM wide by 436 KM long, and Missouri is, oh, 441 by 453, both very rough approximations, but still, population density is meaningless without also knowing total area.
Slashdot Mirror
None of your examples are from Canada, because, guess what, they do it differently than Canada.
So why does socialized healthcare work in so many other countries?
It's established fact that people, by and large, are irrational, tend to make poor decisions, or make the best decisions they can based on the information they have available, but that information is incorrect, incomplete, or inaccurately interpreted.
Again, American healthcare is ridiculously fucked up, and if Obamacare had been straight-up single payer, things would have been different. Like every other country that does it. There's a reason Americans want cheap Canadian drugs. And I'll admit, there's a reason Canadians sometimes go to America to pay for non-critical surgery rather than wait their turn.
Nevertheless, in Canada, needing surgery never involves sitting down and deciding if you can afford the procedure, or if you need to just suffer whatever the surgery would correct.
It most likely is, indeed, far more complicated than that. It still doesn't justify felonious behavior.
I get what you're saying, that in utterly shucking all social mores, societal constraints, and even a desire to live, he's finally, truly 'free' to act purely on volition, with no 'rules.' I don't agree that this is somehow laudable or a noble goal.
Yes, clearly sending somebody a soundproof box to wear over their head is a far simpler solution than going to a trained specialist.
No offence, but that's PHB logic. It's not that straight forward, it's not that simple, and if nothing else, you probably don't have the anechoic chamber required for a proper hearing test.
Sounds like you've never had a proper hearing exam done.
I'm not claiming he's never said anything stupid or wrong, just that in this particular case, I think his quote is being misconstrued.
And out of curiosity, what is with the Internet idea that if a given person ever says a single thing that's later proven wrong, that person is instantly a useless git?
Ah, now we're into the ad hominems. Excellent.
All you need to do is look at outcomes in insurance-optional regimes; say, American healthcare, versus outcomes in non-optional regimes, say, every other first-world country's healthcare.
Answer: in the non-optional countries, costs are lower, effectiveness is higher, lives are longer.
I do believe he was talking about the need for a stylus as a requisite input device, not a stylus as an optional accessory for specific uses.
Optional insurance would either a) leave people unprotected, either because they're too stupid to buy insurance, or because they can't afford it, b) increase prices because you have a smaller pool of people to spread it out across, and c) probably result in higher prices because in practice, it would be treated like emergency care is now; they HAVE to treat you, but somebody's still gotta pay, and if it's not you, it's everybody else who IS paying for it.
The postulate here is that BECAUSE EVERYBODY will need emergency services at some point in their life, be it directly (your house is on fire) or indirectly (your neighbour's house is on fire, it would be awfully nice if it got dealt with before it spread to the whole neighbourhood) it's both cheaper, more efficient, and more humane, to just have everybody pay a bit into the fund to pay for those services, and for everybody to have access to them.
They do get paid, via taxes, in a group insurance setup.
Because things like fire, police, and health care are something that are commonly needed, but nobody quite knows when or where, it makes FAR more sense to charge everybody a little bit, then to charge rich people a lot, and deny service to people who can't afford it, or worse, to require them to provide the service anyway, forcing them to recoup their costs in other ways.
Mandatory insurance? Or when people call in to 911 for police or fire insurance, do they need to have their credit card ready?
If the former, well, we already have that, it's called 'taxes.' If the latter, well, it already works that way in quite a few places in America, and it's terrible.
You're right that 'used' might not be the correct word, but just because it's 'unopened' doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't been bent, folded, spindled, mutilated, submerged, baked, fried, whatever. And that's Bethesda's point.
Sure, but in this case, the condition is 'used - unopened,' not 'new.'
If I go to a local car dealership, buy a car, turn around, and sell it to a third party, having never even unlocked the door, am I selling the a 'new' car? Nope. I'm selling them a previously owned car. Perhaps one in great condition, but still not a new car.
Ok, so get rid of the EC, and I fail to see why any given state suddenly gets an advantage. Yes, the US of A was originally conceived as a UN type coalition of sovereign states, kinda, sorta, nod nod, wink wink. In reality, it never has been, and the Civil War really put a nail into that particular idea.
So, for federal positions, move to a straight-up vote, not a vote for shares of your state.
But in the modern EC, why can the nation be ruled by Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin?
Given that most of the rural states take in more federal money than they give, why would that be a 'disaster' for the Union as a whole?
So here's an honest question for you: in the modern era, does the EC still make sense, or does it simply change which states become battlefield states?
So clearly now that the Rs control all three branches of the government, there's change incoming?
Canada, actually.
Want to see something funny? Look at the voting requirements the US uses in places where it's running elections that aren't the US, then ask yourself why they're so much more rigorous in other places than in their own home country.
What this we shit, American? I'm from a sane country that believes that ballots should be verifiable, rather than a country that believes it's OK for people to poke buttons on a screen, then a machine decide who should get the vote.
This at least shifts the source of the problem to 'idiot who marks two candidates' and away from 'random programmer somewhere unknowable, who can do unverifiable things to the software.'
This is a feature, and a very desirable feature at that.
You also get issues like thermal ducting increasing the noise floor.
They can state they log no activity all the want. I've just never understood the logic of 'I don't want anybody snooping on my traffic, so I'm going to send ALL my traffic to a third party company, that sounds safer.'
Well, given that Alabama is 312 KM wide by 436 KM long, and Missouri is, oh, 441 by 453, both very rough approximations, but still, population density is meaningless without also knowing total area.
Well, the VPN services are probably also subsidizing your monthly fees by selling your activity data to interested parties.