If you're good, there are jobs to be had..plenty of them. In this day in age, however, you do need to be prepared to move to where the jobs are, or commute, etc...the day of one job, in one city for life have LONG been over.
Wow, some psych student could write a thesis on those two lines. To misquote Eddie Murphy, "Do you understand the words that are coming out of your mouth?"
There are plenty of jobs, but jobs are so rare you have to be willing to sacrifice your life in their pursuit like an old forty-niner gold prospector.
There's lots of jobs, but you have to be willing to adopt a nomadic lifestyle shorn of family and friends in the hopes of catching one of these wonderfully rare and plentiful things.
Water is plentiful. I can find a lot of it within twenty miles of where I live. Tornados are not plentiful. Barring astoundingly bad luck, you have to be willing to race hither and yon to see one of them up close. Jobs have been documented and made the source of a movie with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, therefore jobs are easily found.
OK, maybe that's not entirely a fair restatement of your argument.:-) How about this? "There are a lot of jobs if you're willing to subjugate your needs to the needs of your employer."
OK, how about this idea? "You should work to live, and not live to work."
I'm a military brat. Every four years -- sometimes less -- new orders came and away we'd go. It's a rootless existence that screws families up, as evidenced by the staggeringly high rates of suicide, divorce and homelessness among the children of the military. If people can't find work without living like Okies in California, then that in itself is a problem that needs to be fixed.
but maybe our power is more reliable here than it is in the big cities.
Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot. Amarillo and Lubbock are the "Real Texas," filled with Capitalist Heroes pf Rugged Individualism while San Antonio, Austin and Houston are the Socialist hellholes filled with lazy, grasping welfare cheats who are too stupid to keep their power on.
Just one thing though. The next time we're fighting for our independence, could you guys up there do me a favor and actually get in the fight? The good people of San Antonio and Houston are tired of carrying your water for you. It's a little like listening to people in Alaska talk about how people in Philedelphia and Boston aren't part of "the Real America."
We never had any brownouts, despite record usage of electricity last year.
Whoops, try again. I got family in Austin, Dallas and Houston. I bought everyone Surefire flashlights last Christmas specifically because of the power outages they'd experienced. Everyone kind of looked at me funny ("Really? You bought me a flashlight for Christmas?") until repeat power outages this spring turned me from a gadget geek into a prophet.:-)
You know how members of the military show genuine respect for some idiot that outranks them?
Because when you salute, you're not saluting the man, you're saluting "the uniform," the office the man holds, not the man. It's kind of a dodge, I'll grant you, but one I think works.
The badge works the same way. I'll follow an officer's instructions in public not because he's a great guy, but because he holds a public office We the People have invested with authority. It's the badge that's important, not the man.
When I was in college, I worked at a very large and successful tourist trap restaurant and bar at a site of great natural beauty. The owner hired two sheriff's deputies for security. In return for hanging out on the weekends and hitting on the waitstaff, the owner provided those two deputies with half of their takehome pay and just a whole lot of booze.
It didn't take long for the corruption to set in. The owner was getting those deputies money, alcohol and sex and sure enough, they very quickly became his personal pet deputies. I saw people get arrested for very little more than "Contempt of Owner," while the DUI patrols that used to hover around the restaraunt mysteriously evaporated.
It's a pretty simple principle. The badge should not be available for rent or sale. Private money should not buy public authority. Doing so is called "Bribery." Our Law Enforcement Officers need to avoid even the appearance of favoritism or bias, and thus should not be taking money from people thay may one day be called upon to testify against or arrest.
If this means we need to pay our LEOs a living wage, so be it.
Capitalism does not NEED to have this problem, as long as all participants are self-determining, self-interested, rational actors.
Think of the best people you know. How many of them -- the cream of the crop, mind you -- can truly be described as actually self-determining, interested and rational? Try to remember that not even Spock fits this description.:-)
Now think of all of the rest of the people you know, and try to remember that as a denizen of Slashdot you probably swim in pretty rarified circles.
Now, contemplate the existence of Sarah Palin and Kim Kardashian and the impact they have on our national attention.
Finally, think about how our world would look if Capitalism had utterly succeeded and contrast that with how our world would look if Capitalism was a vicious Monopoly game written large.
Take a look around. ALL around. Which vision fits reality better?
many aspects of the modern world that simply couldn't be done without the kind of resources that a Ford or a General Electric can bring to the table. The government could fill in somewhat
Hi. I'm a child of the 20th Century. You might remember us. We fixed a Depression, killed Adolf Hitler, held Stalin in check, invented the atom bomb, rebuilt Europe and Japan, built a national infrastructure of highways and electricity, got Jim Crow off the books at least, added a Moon rock to our mood ring collection and then watched Al Gore invent the internet -- all without a single corporation as the driving force.
Mozart wrote his operas, Shakespeare wrote his plays, Nobunaga conquered Japan, Genghis Kahn ruled an empire, Rome took Europe, the Mings handled China, and Ogg invented fire all without a single patent or copyright protection to their name.
And when has a corporation EVER been fined out of existence? Go ahead. Feel free to Google. I'll wait.
A long, long time.
Your problem is that judges are specifically barred from fining a corporation into bancruptcy. Oddly enough, that prohibition doesn't exist for your average 18-year-old kid pulling an.mp3 off the net.
"But, but , but, fining the company just hurts the workers more than the executives in charge." Hmm, I somehow doubt that the Court would take the welfare of my kids into account at my sentencing hearing, but OK, how about we just pierce the corporate veil and seize the assets of the directors?
Again, go ahead and find me an example of where this has ever happened to any company the size of say, Massey Energy, Morton Thiokol or British Petroleum?
Something tells me I'll be waiting a long, long time...
"Why are corporations people? Because otherwise, they couldn't own property, and could not be sued."
Sure, because no partnership or sole proprietorship has ever controlled property or been sued... *eyeroll*
Snowgirl then goes on with a convoluted discussion of how the existence of corporations protects workers from illegal actions they undertake on behalf of their employers, while simultaneously ensuring company assets and directors are held responsible for their misdeeds.
The mind just reels...
OK, now for an update from the soft green fields of reality. Workers for corporations are held responsible for their misdeeds all the time -- in fact, they are scapegoated on a regular basis. The system is specifically set up to blame the workers and shield the corporation. See those Fedex Home Delivery trucks? The Drivers -- not FedEx -- carry the insurance and take the hit for accidents. Back when Domino's had their "30 Minutes or Less" suicide jockeys on the road, guess who paid for the accidents? The CEO of Dominos used to brag about how he had a fleet of vehicles he got other people to pay to insure and maintain.
We as a society decide we need fighter pilots, so we spend millions on their education. We decide we need law enforcement of every stripe, so we pay for thier training. We do this because, the argument goes, they contribute to public safety.
I would argue that the average cop and soldier saves fewer lives in their career than an ER doc does in a week. If we're willing to field armies of men with uniforms and guns to preserve life, why are we not willing to do the same for men with stethescopes and lab coats, when Hippocrates gives us such a better bang for our buck than Leonidas does?
When you are a physician holding actual lives in your hands, I think it's insane that we make you consider mundane bookkeeping while you're doing it. Anyone willing to wade into a storm of blood, screams and excrement to try to pull a life out of it shouldn't have to spend a minute of their lives thinking about how to pay their bills. The second you're willing to saw a human head in half in Gross Anatomy, OK, you're good. You've met your end of the social contract. We should take excellent care of you.
I don't think for one second you're overpaid. I think you're overworked, getting molested by insurance companies and undervalued. I want to get you help and support.
Do I remember the Reagan years? You mean Alexander "I'm in Charge" Haig and James "The Environment Doesn't Matter Because of the Rapture" Watt? You mean Ronald "We're Launching the Missies in Five Minutes" Reagan, the guy who once raised taxes on the rich?
Reaganomics worked great at inflating the debt and increasing poverty. Morning in America turned out to be overcast and hazy. You can draw a straight line from that infernal speech, go through the point at Gordon Gecko's "Greed is Good" speech, and draw it right through the ruins of New Orleans and Detroit. You can look at the other side and continue the line back through Nixon and Watergate and back through Eisenhower's farewell address, where he tried to warn us about this.
The only thing sadder than the Right's attempt at revisionist history and canonizing Reagan was their attempt to whitewash Nixon.
I would say that priority no 1 for a civilization is to make sure people don't just go around killing and looting randomly
And who do you think gets killed and stolen from? The strong? Conan the Barbarian doesn't need a strong police presence.
care about the economy enough that at least a majority wont have to starve
Again, who's in danger of starving? Oh, that's right, Oliver Twist and his little buddies.
When the state is there education and some basic negative rights are in order
And as Oliver Wendall Holmes observed more than once, the people who most need their rights are the people least able to assert them on their own.
So, we shouldn't be worried about caring for the weak, until we've finished caring for the weak? OK, got it.
The reason this upsets me is because of the crusades your likes want to go on in other countries.
OK, "my likes" are ice cream and romantic evenings. If you mean "the likes of me" because I'm arguing we should aid and defend the poor and sick, then I stand in such good company that I blush to be seen with them.
And "other countries?" You mean like Japan, Canada and Sweden? Please, by all means, send me to some more of those hellscapes.
But I'm afraid Team Reaper's been making a bit of a rally of late.
The advances you cite:
washing hands before surgery -- Joseph Lister, 1867 vaccinations -- Edward Jenner, 1796 antibiotics -- Alexander Fleming, 1928
Are from a while back, and I've had time to rally.
The US the highest infant mortality of any civilized nation. Fewer babies die in Croatia than the US. Tuberculosis is once again a major concern in American cities. Drug-resistant strains are becoming a real problem, and the doctors in charge are screaming panicky warnings that we may be approaching the end of the Age of Antibiotics. Life expectancies in the US are actually declining, mostly due to heart disease, diabetes and cancer from the industrialized crap we call food. We're eating beef rinsed in ammonia, product that is literally called "pink slime."
Sarah Palin and Megyn Kelly are actually convincing most Americans that healthcare is a frivolous luxury. I love those two!
Sad to say, Mortality Inc. looks like an "BUY" for the forseeable future.
Yeah, except that not even Laffer agrees with that any more. He's been backpedaling furiously from a bad theory made 30 years ago that's been empirically, wondrously disproven over the past ten. Abondoning his little napkin sketch was the only way he could retain a shred of academic credibility.
You simply cannot provide everyone with all the healthcare they want
Sure, sure, sure, just answer me this.
Why do we give federal subsidies to Harvard Medical School?
Because they threaten to train more doctors if we don't. We grant them a federal subsidy to restrict admission because the American Medical Association says that too many doctors in the field will lead to a lower standard of living for doctors.
And it's not just Harvard. Every medical school is granted subsidies to restrict enrollment.
Hmm. Seems odd, doesn't it? We can't find enough resources to meet America's medical needs in much the same way that companies can't find enough American engineers to fill all the jobs.
But let's assume those nonsense numbers are true. Let's try this. How about we divert all of the resources from the current War on Drugs and War on Terrorism and redirect those trillions of dollars to a War on Illness? Surely we can agree that a few more Harvard-educated medical doctors would do more good then a few thousand more TSA agents.
How about we find all the kids bright enough to become doctors and sponsor them through medical school? How about we devote research dollars to more than just making sure rich guys can screw their trophy wives?
How about we agree with all the drugs companies that government is wasteful and inefficient, and that we welcome their competition when we start opening drug factories they same way we open utility companies. How about when they start whining about horrendous research costs, we tell them we couldn't agree more, which is why we're going to ask them to pay back all the money we gifted to them over the past six decades.
How about we take Manhattan and Apollo project resources for the next 20 years and apply them to healthcare? Then let's see if your nonsense about "We can't afford to take care of our own" falls apart into the same pile of bull that the Laffer Curve and Supply-Side economics did.
OK, you're arguing that we need to do some form of triage because we don't have resources to go around.
I don't believe this is true. When Merck Pharmaceutical tells you it's going to cost tens of millions, you should think of that in the same way you hear cops talk about the street value of the drugs they've seized. It's a self-serving, nonsense number. The same companies that scream "It's horribly expensive to make!" scream "It's not fair to make us compete against the government!" when we threaten to make it for ourselves. Since this is Slashdot, compare the situation to when various municipalities have tried to set up their own ISP. The same telcos that scream they have to charge billions to serve a city suddenly begin screaming that it's not fair for us to find alternatives. I promise you, we'll find we can manufacture this drug for a sliver of what the drug company is claiming.
BUT, BUT, BUT RESEARCH COSTS! I hear you scream. In case you haven't been paying attention, research in this country is done with recycled tax dollars. We The People have already paid the research costs, and if Merck and GalaxoSmithKline want to argue that, then all they have to do is stop taking Federal dollars.
They won't, of course.
Secondly, you're arguing that it's immoral to take money by force from one person to pay for something for another.
You know, I kind of like this argument. I'd love to make sure not one more penny of mine went to finance Gitmo. But, OK, Death and Taxes. We set up governments, and we pay for them by taxes of some kind. You actually are free to opt out of paying these taxes if you wish. If you don't feel like paying taxes any more, all you have to do is leave, and then tell a representative of the US government that you are no longer interested in being part of the United States. It's easy. Of course, you'll find very shortly that it's cheaper to pay taxes than it is not to pay taxes, but maybe to can join all the other John Galts on that floating ocean platform they're trying to build -- you know the one that's not going to have any building codes, the one we're going to nickname "Rapture" when it finds the bottom of the ocean.
Finally, you're arguing we can't fix everything. Maybe not. But we can fix orders of magnitude more than we currently are.
Well, at least it made an impact on one of your organs.:-)
Choices will be made.
Absolutely. And when we quit paying for billionaire tax cuts by skipping out on grandma's blood pressure medication, I'll be more amenable to hearing about them. Laffer and Stockman have both publicly recanted, and Buffet's with me on this one.
To expect a huge government organ could handle it without turning into a pit of corruption and graft is beyond delusional.
Yeah, because clearly the United States military has never accomplished anything of value. You're making a sophomore's argument for anarchy. Any government large enough to be effective is too large to work.
I could point out that California isn't bankrupt because of healthcare costs. I could do a whole excrutiatingly exhaustive review of just why California's revenues got strangled. I won't, because it won't matter to you.
Since you're doing your thinking emotionally -- the shrinks nickame it the "Just World Hypothesis" -- let me see if I can counterbalance the fear you're suffering from by adding a different one.
If a civilization has any obligations -- any at all -- then caring for the vulerable is the first among them. Any system that can't -- or won't -- care for the very young, the very old and the physically infirm doesn't deserve to continue. I know Sparta sounds cool, but I'm kinda glad a people who threw babies against rocks and committed murder for sport aren't around any more. In fact, I would argue that their brutality is precisely WHY they're not around any more. People who are working together tend to weather crises far better than a group of jackasses standing around screaming "Only the Strong Survive!" Teamwork, you know? Maybe your coach mentioned it? Remember John Wayne screaming back, "That's WHAT I got?" No? OK. didn't think so.
I'm old enough now to have watched a few of my friends and some of my family die. Heart disease is bad. Diabetes is worse. Cancer is flat-out evil. Real "We had to pick up a knife to save you" surgery is damn near the same thing as surviving a stabbing. I know, I know, those are just words to you. Let me put it in terms you may understand. You'd much rather be eaten by a vampire than succumb to cancer. You'd prefer any videgame death to what most fatal diseases have in store for you.
Here's where I'm going to pull back my hood and tap you on the shoulder with a long, bony finger. Eat a perfect diet. Exercise all you want. Revel in whatever gifts youth and good health can provide. I'll still be waiting. I got Steve Jobs. I got Feynman. I got Newton. You think I'm going to miss you? At 35, you'll notice you've lost a step. At 45, you and your doctor will have a little chat. At 55, those chats become discussions. At 65, you begin long talks about the options you have remaining.
Believe me when I say they'll dwindle.
And this is the best possible outcome, assuming some little patch of slippery ice has't gotten you first.
So while you're sitting there blithely saying we should kick the sick and the weak to the curb, I'm smiling. Because I know you'll be among them soon enough.
And people like you always whine the loudest when I come.
"A criminal conspiracy exists when two or more people agree to commit almost any unlawful act, then take some action toward its completion. The action taken need not itself be a crime, but it must indicate that those involved in the conspiracy knew of the plan and intended to break the law. One person may be charged with and convicted of both conspiracy and the underlying crime based on the same circumstances.
For example, Andy, Dan, and Alice plan a bank robbery. They 1) visit the bank first to assess security, 2) pool their money and buy a gun together, and 3) write a demand letter. All three can be charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, regardless of whether the robbery itself is actually attempted or completed."
Slashdot Mirror
If you're good, there are jobs to be had..plenty of them.
In this day in age, however, you do need to be prepared to move to where the jobs are, or commute, etc...the day of one job, in one city for life have LONG been over.
Wow, some psych student could write a thesis on those two lines. To misquote Eddie Murphy, "Do you understand the words that are coming out of your mouth?"
There are plenty of jobs, but jobs are so rare you have to be willing to sacrifice your life in their pursuit like an old forty-niner gold prospector.
There's lots of jobs, but you have to be willing to adopt a nomadic lifestyle shorn of family and friends in the hopes of catching one of these wonderfully rare and plentiful things.
Water is plentiful. I can find a lot of it within twenty miles of where I live. Tornados are not plentiful. Barring astoundingly bad luck, you have to be willing to race hither and yon to see one of them up close. Jobs have been documented and made the source of a movie with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, therefore jobs are easily found.
OK, maybe that's not entirely a fair restatement of your argument. :-) How about this? "There are a lot of jobs if you're willing to subjugate your needs to the needs of your employer."
OK, how about this idea? "You should work to live, and not live to work."
I'm a military brat. Every four years -- sometimes less -- new orders came and away we'd go. It's a rootless existence that screws families up, as evidenced by the staggeringly high rates of suicide, divorce and homelessness among the children of the military. If people can't find work without living like Okies in California, then that in itself is a problem that needs to be fixed.
but maybe our power is more reliable here than it is in the big cities.
Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot. Amarillo and Lubbock are the "Real Texas," filled with Capitalist Heroes pf Rugged Individualism while San Antonio, Austin and Houston are the Socialist hellholes filled with lazy, grasping welfare cheats who are too stupid to keep their power on.
Just one thing though. The next time we're fighting for our independence, could you guys up there do me a favor and actually get in the fight? The good people of San Antonio and Houston are tired of carrying your water for you. It's a little like listening to people in Alaska talk about how people in Philedelphia and Boston aren't part of "the Real America."
We never had any brownouts, despite record usage of electricity last year.
Whoops, try again. I got family in Austin, Dallas and Houston. I bought everyone Surefire flashlights last Christmas specifically because of the power outages they'd experienced. Everyone kind of looked at me funny ("Really? You bought me a flashlight for Christmas?") until repeat power outages this spring turned me from a gadget geek into a prophet. :-)
Worse yet, no kryptonite references at all. Sigh. No one studies the classics any more...
You know how members of the military show genuine respect for some idiot that outranks them?
Because when you salute, you're not saluting the man, you're saluting "the uniform," the office the man holds, not the man. It's kind of a dodge, I'll grant you, but one I think works.
The badge works the same way. I'll follow an officer's instructions in public not because he's a great guy, but because he holds a public office We the People have invested with authority. It's the badge that's important, not the man.
When I was in college, I worked at a very large and successful tourist trap restaurant and bar at a site of great natural beauty. The owner hired two sheriff's deputies for security. In return for hanging out on the weekends and hitting on the waitstaff, the owner provided those two deputies with half of their takehome pay and just a whole lot of booze.
It didn't take long for the corruption to set in. The owner was getting those deputies money, alcohol and sex and sure enough, they very quickly became his personal pet deputies. I saw people get arrested for very little more than "Contempt of Owner," while the DUI patrols that used to hover around the restaraunt mysteriously evaporated.
It's a pretty simple principle. The badge should not be available for rent or sale. Private money should not buy public authority. Doing so is called "Bribery." Our Law Enforcement Officers need to avoid even the appearance of favoritism or bias, and thus should not be taking money from people thay may one day be called upon to testify against or arrest.
If this means we need to pay our LEOs a living wage, so be it.
Capitalism does not NEED to have this problem, as long as all participants are self-determining, self-interested, rational actors.
Think of the best people you know. How many of them -- the cream of the crop, mind you -- can truly be described as actually self-determining, interested and rational? Try to remember that not even Spock fits this description. :-)
Now think of all of the rest of the people you know, and try to remember that as a denizen of Slashdot you probably swim in pretty rarified circles.
Now, contemplate the existence of Sarah Palin and Kim Kardashian and the impact they have on our national attention.
Finally, think about how our world would look if Capitalism had utterly succeeded and contrast that with how our world would look if Capitalism was a vicious Monopoly game written large.
Take a look around. ALL around. Which vision fits reality better?
many aspects of the modern world that simply couldn't be done without the kind of resources that a Ford or a General Electric can bring to the table. The government could fill in somewhat
Hi. I'm a child of the 20th Century. You might remember us. We fixed a Depression, killed Adolf Hitler, held Stalin in check, invented the atom bomb, rebuilt Europe and Japan, built a national infrastructure of highways and electricity, got Jim Crow off the books at least, added a Moon rock to our mood ring collection and then watched Al Gore invent the internet -- all without a single corporation as the driving force.
Mozart wrote his operas, Shakespeare wrote his plays, Nobunaga conquered Japan, Genghis Kahn ruled an empire, Rome took Europe, the Mings handled China, and Ogg invented fire all without a single patent or copyright protection to their name.
And when has a corporation EVER been fined out of existence? Go ahead. Feel free to Google. I'll wait.
A long, long time.
Your problem is that judges are specifically barred from fining a corporation into bancruptcy. Oddly enough, that prohibition doesn't exist for your average 18-year-old kid pulling an .mp3 off the net.
"But, but , but, fining the company just hurts the workers more than the executives in charge."
Hmm, I somehow doubt that the Court would take the welfare of my kids into account at my sentencing hearing, but OK, how about we just pierce the corporate veil and seize the assets of the directors?
Again, go ahead and find me an example of where this has ever happened to any company the size of say, Massey Energy, Morton Thiokol or British Petroleum?
Something tells me I'll be waiting a long, long time...
"Why are corporations people? Because otherwise, they couldn't own property, and could not be sued."
Sure, because no partnership or sole proprietorship has ever controlled property or been sued... *eyeroll*
Snowgirl then goes on with a convoluted discussion of how the existence of corporations protects workers from illegal actions they undertake on behalf of their employers, while simultaneously ensuring company assets and directors are held responsible for their misdeeds.
The mind just reels...
OK, now for an update from the soft green fields of reality. Workers for corporations are held responsible for their misdeeds all the time -- in fact, they are scapegoated on a regular basis. The system is specifically set up to blame the workers and shield the corporation. See those Fedex Home Delivery trucks? The Drivers -- not FedEx -- carry the insurance and take the hit for accidents. Back when Domino's had their "30 Minutes or Less" suicide jockeys on the road, guess who paid for the accidents? The CEO of Dominos used to brag about how he had a fleet of vehicles he got other people to pay to insure and maintain.
Need another example? If you're an eighteen-year-old kid waiting tables for the "Tomato-Paste-R-Us" corporation, and you give someone a beer because your manager told you to, and that customer goes out, has an accident, kills someone and blows a 0.0800000001 BAC, YOU will be held criminally responsible while the company is specifically shielded from repercussions by the law.
Either Snowgirl is breathtakingly out of touch with reality, or she's unbelievably disingenuous...
And that is an abomination.
We as a society decide we need fighter pilots, so we spend millions on their education. We decide we need law enforcement of every stripe, so we pay for thier training. We do this because, the argument goes, they contribute to public safety.
I would argue that the average cop and soldier saves fewer lives in their career than an ER doc does in a week. If we're willing to field armies of men with uniforms and guns to preserve life, why are we not willing to do the same for men with stethescopes and lab coats, when Hippocrates gives us such a better bang for our buck than Leonidas does?
When you are a physician holding actual lives in your hands, I think it's insane that we make you consider mundane bookkeeping while you're doing it. Anyone willing to wade into a storm of blood, screams and excrement to try to pull a life out of it shouldn't have to spend a minute of their lives thinking about how to pay their bills. The second you're willing to saw a human head in half in Gross Anatomy, OK, you're good. You've met your end of the social contract. We should take excellent care of you.
I don't think for one second you're overpaid. I think you're overworked, getting molested by insurance companies and undervalued. I want to get you help and support.
You got my vote.
...more and more lucrative "vanity" drugs, and fewer and fewer drugs for anything else.
Funny how that works out.
Come talk to me when the parents of autism and other children's diseases aren't being forced to hold bake sales for even the most cursory of research.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you there.
Do I remember the Reagan years? You mean Alexander "I'm in Charge" Haig and James "The Environment Doesn't Matter Because of the Rapture" Watt? You mean Ronald "We're Launching the Missies in Five Minutes" Reagan, the guy who once raised taxes on the rich?
Reaganomics worked great at inflating the debt and increasing poverty. Morning in America turned out to be overcast and hazy. You can draw a straight line from that infernal speech, go through the point at Gordon Gecko's "Greed is Good" speech, and draw it right through the ruins of New Orleans and Detroit. You can look at the other side and continue the line back through Nixon and Watergate and back through Eisenhower's farewell address, where he tried to warn us about this.
The only thing sadder than the Right's attempt at revisionist history and canonizing Reagan was their attempt to whitewash Nixon.
I would say that priority no 1 for a civilization is to make sure people don't just go around killing and looting randomly
And who do you think gets killed and stolen from? The strong? Conan the Barbarian doesn't need a strong police presence.
care about the economy enough that at least a majority wont have to starve
Again, who's in danger of starving? Oh, that's right, Oliver Twist and his little buddies.
When the state is there education and some basic negative rights are in order
And as Oliver Wendall Holmes observed more than once, the people who most need their rights are the people least able to assert them on their own.
So, we shouldn't be worried about caring for the weak, until we've finished caring for the weak? OK, got it.
The reason this upsets me is because of the crusades your likes want to go on in other countries.
OK, "my likes" are ice cream and romantic evenings. If you mean "the likes of me" because I'm arguing we should aid and defend the poor and sick, then I stand in such good company that I blush to be seen with them.
And "other countries?" You mean like Japan, Canada and Sweden? Please, by all means, send me to some more of those hellscapes.
But I'm afraid Team Reaper's been making a bit of a rally of late.
The advances you cite:
washing hands before surgery -- Joseph Lister, 1867
vaccinations -- Edward Jenner, 1796
antibiotics -- Alexander Fleming, 1928
Are from a while back, and I've had time to rally.
The US the highest infant mortality of any civilized nation. Fewer babies die in Croatia than the US. Tuberculosis is once again a major concern in American cities. Drug-resistant strains are becoming a real problem, and the doctors in charge are screaming panicky warnings that we may be approaching the end of the Age of Antibiotics. Life expectancies in the US are actually declining, mostly due to heart disease, diabetes and cancer from the industrialized crap we call food. We're eating beef rinsed in ammonia, product that is literally called "pink slime."
Sarah Palin and Megyn Kelly are actually convincing most Americans that healthcare is a frivolous luxury. I love those two!
Sad to say, Mortality Inc. looks like an "BUY" for the forseeable future.
"Enlightened self interest" is one of the best jokes I've ever heard.
That, and since this is Slashdot after all, the basis of Sith philosophy...
Laffer has been proven correct thus far
Yeah, except that not even Laffer agrees with that any more. He's been backpedaling furiously from a bad theory made 30 years ago that's been empirically, wondrously disproven over the past ten. Abondoning his little napkin sketch was the only way he could retain a shred of academic credibility.
You simply cannot provide everyone with all the healthcare they want
Sure, sure, sure, just answer me this.
Why do we give federal subsidies to Harvard Medical School?
Because they threaten to train more doctors if we don't. We grant them a federal subsidy to restrict admission because the American Medical Association says that too many doctors in the field will lead to a lower standard of living for doctors.
And it's not just Harvard. Every medical school is granted subsidies to restrict enrollment.
Hmm. Seems odd, doesn't it? We can't find enough resources to meet America's medical needs in much the same way that companies can't find enough American engineers to fill all the jobs.
But let's assume those nonsense numbers are true. Let's try this. How about we divert all of the resources from the current War on Drugs and War on Terrorism and redirect those trillions of dollars to a War on Illness? Surely we can agree that a few more Harvard-educated medical doctors would do more good then a few thousand more TSA agents.
How about we find all the kids bright enough to become doctors and sponsor them through medical school? How about we devote research dollars to more than just making sure rich guys can screw their trophy wives?
How about we agree with all the drugs companies that government is wasteful and inefficient, and that we welcome their competition when we start opening drug factories they same way we open utility companies. How about when they start whining about horrendous research costs, we tell them we couldn't agree more, which is why we're going to ask them to pay back all the money we gifted to them over the past six decades.
How about we take Manhattan and Apollo project resources for the next 20 years and apply them to healthcare? Then let's see if your nonsense about "We can't afford to take care of our own" falls apart into the same pile of bull that the Laffer Curve and Supply-Side economics did.
OK, you're arguing that we need to do some form of triage because we don't have resources to go around.
I don't believe this is true. When Merck Pharmaceutical tells you it's going to cost tens of millions, you should think of that in the same way you hear cops talk about the street value of the drugs they've seized. It's a self-serving, nonsense number. The same companies that scream "It's horribly expensive to make!" scream "It's not fair to make us compete against the government!" when we threaten to make it for ourselves. Since this is Slashdot, compare the situation to when various municipalities have tried to set up their own ISP. The same telcos that scream they have to charge billions to serve a city suddenly begin screaming that it's not fair for us to find alternatives. I promise you, we'll find we can manufacture this drug for a sliver of what the drug company is claiming.
BUT, BUT, BUT RESEARCH COSTS! I hear you scream. In case you haven't been paying attention, research in this country is done with recycled tax dollars. We The People have already paid the research costs, and if Merck and GalaxoSmithKline want to argue that, then all they have to do is stop taking Federal dollars.
They won't, of course.
Secondly, you're arguing that it's immoral to take money by force from one person to pay for something for another.
You know, I kind of like this argument. I'd love to make sure not one more penny of mine went to finance Gitmo. But, OK, Death and Taxes. We set up governments, and we pay for them by taxes of some kind. You actually are free to opt out of paying these taxes if you wish. If you don't feel like paying taxes any more, all you have to do is leave, and then tell a representative of the US government that you are no longer interested in being part of the United States. It's easy. Of course, you'll find very shortly that it's cheaper to pay taxes than it is not to pay taxes, but maybe to can join all the other John Galts on that floating ocean platform they're trying to build -- you know the one that's not going to have any building codes, the one we're going to nickname "Rapture" when it finds the bottom of the ocean.
Finally, you're arguing we can't fix everything. Maybe not.
But we can fix orders of magnitude more than we currently are.
Well, at least it made an impact on one of your organs. :-)
Choices will be made.
Absolutely. And when we quit paying for billionaire tax cuts by skipping out on grandma's blood pressure medication, I'll be more amenable to hearing about them. Laffer and Stockman have both publicly recanted, and Buffet's with me on this one.
To expect a huge government organ could handle it without turning into a pit of corruption and graft is beyond delusional.
Yeah, because clearly the United States military has never accomplished anything of value. You're making a sophomore's argument for anarchy. Any government large enough to be effective is too large to work.
Of course, because clearly money is the end-all, be-all of existence.
Not unless you've lived and worked on four different continents. :-)
I could point out that California isn't bankrupt because of healthcare costs. I could do a whole excrutiatingly exhaustive review of just why California's revenues got strangled. I won't, because it won't matter to you.
Since you're doing your thinking emotionally -- the shrinks nickame it the "Just World Hypothesis" -- let me see if I can counterbalance the fear you're suffering from by adding a different one.
If a civilization has any obligations -- any at all -- then caring for the vulerable is the first among them. Any system that can't -- or won't -- care for the very young, the very old and the physically infirm doesn't deserve to continue. I know Sparta sounds cool, but I'm kinda glad a people who threw babies against rocks and committed murder for sport aren't around any more. In fact, I would argue that their brutality is precisely WHY they're not around any more. People who are working together tend to weather crises far better than a group of jackasses standing around screaming "Only the Strong Survive!" Teamwork, you know? Maybe your coach mentioned it? Remember John Wayne screaming back, "That's WHAT I got?" No? OK. didn't think so.
I'm old enough now to have watched a few of my friends and some of my family die. Heart disease is bad. Diabetes is worse. Cancer is flat-out evil. Real "We had to pick up a knife to save you" surgery is damn near the same thing as surviving a stabbing. I know, I know, those are just words to you. Let me put it in terms you may understand. You'd much rather be eaten by a vampire than succumb to cancer. You'd prefer any videgame death to what most fatal diseases have in store for you.
Here's where I'm going to pull back my hood and tap you on the shoulder with a long, bony finger. Eat a perfect diet. Exercise all you want. Revel in whatever gifts youth and good health can provide. I'll still be waiting. I got Steve Jobs. I got Feynman. I got Newton. You think I'm going to miss you? At 35, you'll notice you've lost a step. At 45, you and your doctor will have a little chat. At 55, those chats become discussions. At 65, you begin long talks about the options you have remaining.
Believe me when I say they'll dwindle.
And this is the best possible outcome, assuming some little patch of slippery ice has't gotten you first.
So while you're sitting there blithely saying we should kick the sick and the weak to the curb, I'm smiling. Because I know you'll be among them soon enough.
And people like you always whine the loudest when I come.
Findlaw's Definition of Conspiracy to Commit
"A criminal conspiracy exists when two or more people agree to commit almost any unlawful act, then take some action toward its completion. The action taken need not itself be a crime, but it must indicate that those involved in the conspiracy knew of the plan and intended to break the law. One person may be charged with and convicted of both conspiracy and the underlying crime based on the same circumstances.
For example, Andy, Dan, and Alice plan a bank robbery. They 1) visit the bank first to assess security, 2) pool their money and buy a gun together, and 3) write a demand letter. All three can be charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, regardless of whether the robbery itself is actually attempted or completed."
Maybe not, but then again no one is filing a lawsuit against them either. This is more about ethics than legality.