Why does Sweden has such a stable homogenous society? Because there is very little inequality. Why is there little inequality? because they spend a whole lot of effort (and money) keeping it that way, that's why. But sure, immigrants will bring it all down. Never mind that "Libertarians" have predicted the imminent doom of the Swedish model for fifty years.
- redistribution of wealth by the government so as to create a more egalitarian society
Is quite compatible with personal freedom, except possibly the freedom to spend ALL your money precisely the way you want. That "freedom" is already taken away by taxation, laws against bribery, criminal penalties for neglecting to support your children, and a whole lot of other obvious things.
- collective (i.e. state) ownership of the means of production and distribution OK, try this: Imagine that a legitimate, non-criminal corporate conglomerate was so successful and rich that it managed to take over all significant means of production and distribution. If state ownership infringes on your personal freedom, how come such corporate ownership would not?
Both things are a bad idea for other reasons, but I can't see that personal freedom has all that much to do with it.
- central planning of the economic activity See previous question. If all economic activity was decided from a single corporate boardroom, this would be just as bad as government production quotas. This would be bad indeed, but again, "personal freedom of the individual" has little to do with it. Whether I get my production quota from a corporate boss or a government planner makes little immediate difference for me.
Central planning is also a bad idea for other reasons, but the "individual freedom" mantra doesn't cut it.
I figured out they were Mandarin speakers, although they had never heard that word, and claimed there was just one kind of Chinese (although they spoke "weird" in Hong Kong)
Strange, because the Chinese I've studied with did mix up l and r, or at least had big trouble producing a tapped r in such a way that it could be distinguished from l. Also they had no chance at rolled r's.
Maybe this is not an issue for Chinese learning English, but the prejudice is based on fact. Even so, the OP mocked paid shills for the Chinese Government, not all Chinese.
Attitudes don't form in a vacuum. Your attitudes are come a bit from yourself, and a great deal from the average of attitudes expressed by people around you. When expressions of negative attitudes to government are discouraged and suppressed, and positive ones rewarded (this 50 cent party thing - not something exclusive to China, I'm sure), it will drag up everyone, especially those who like to think that they arrive at their attitudes on their own. It happens and has happened in much worse places than China (East Germany, Burma). Especially if you are a well-off Chinese, it makes a lot of sense to just "not be interested in politics" and defend the government.
To paraphrase Goethe: those who know nothing of foreign systems, know nothing of their own.
I follow American politics pretty closely. I have done that for years. Since I've spent about 1500 hours studying English in school, I might as well get some use out of it, right?
Maybe it's silly of me. Probably there are better hobbies. But I'm going to keep having an opinion about you whether you like it or not.
Nope, I knew that, and didn't get any different impression from the film. Wasn't one of the themes of the film that people wait until they need emergency care, and this costs more in the long run?
Before posting, I did look for people claiming the finger story was bullshit, just in case. I couldn't find any. The closest thing was a pro-industry doctor who claimed that most "responsible" practices would just have amputated both fingers immediately for $1000 instead of saving one for $26000, and that this "severely damaged Michael Moore's credibility" (sure, as if for-profit enterprises will never offer you something expensive you don't need).
I found no one suggesting this guy didn't really exist, didn't really cut of his fingers, wasn't really poor or similar deception a la "Joe the Plumber".
Just blanket sliming Moore won't convince me. I'm from Norway, I know very well that his portrayal of the system here (although comically rosy) was in all particulars honest.
> But they don't credit check you when you're missing an arm or something.
Maybe not an arm. But one of the scenes from "Sicko" that really stuck with me was of the man who accidentally cut off a couple of fingertips, and got a choice of which finger they should reattach (he couldn't afford them both).
That theory seems to match well with the numbers from open secrets. Only recently, as Democrats came to be in power, did they get most health insurance money - for most of the decade, Republicans were in power, and got most.
So people who thought they had insurance, will now actually get insurance, but they will no longer get to pay the "comfort price", the price that only pays for a warm fuzzy feeling.
It's part of the problem, why it took so long to come this far. Most Americans were happy with their employer-provided health insurance - only the small minority that ended up actually needing their health insurance saw how ugly it was.
If you are talking about Democrats like Stupak, in the end, they were reasonable, and didn't. They said they really wanted universal health care, they apparently meant it.
If you are talking about Republicans, who cares. The ones that were pro-abortion/choice still voted against it, so it made no difference either way.
They will, actually. What they passed tonight is a far cry from what we have in Scandinavia, but it at least reduces employer serfdom somewhat. And it gets rid of rescission. (point to clarkkent: most Americans are happy with their health insurance, but that is no surprise. Most insurance holders also pay far more for their insurance than they ever get in return - that's how insurance works, after all. Which company wouldn't be nice to a customer like that? But the moment you become a net liability to your company, you can expect that to change dramatically. Or you could, until tonight.)
> More to the root problem, though, why the hell would they alter the well-established criteria for a dangerous fall to reduce the load on their ambulance network?
Because it's their job to decide how limited resources, in this case emergency response capacity, should be shared. No matter how many ambulances you put on the road, there will always be tough priorities to make.
There are people who spend their entire careers pouring over medical statistics, constructing casual models, looking for patterns and ways to shave off another percentage of bad outcomes. Are you one of them, or are you just an armchair freakonomist seeing an excuse to bash "government"? If the latter, then maybe you should just shut up, because the people who made the decision in all likelihood know more about it than you.
The software was almost certainly designed to be configurable, because having a fixed classification scheme would defeat the point of such system in the first place. Configuring a configurable system is not "messing with it".
The people who decided on the emergency response priorities were almost certainly medical professionals - maybe doctors, but quite likely also something more specialized. Emergency response statistics is a field of its own. People with an education in it would be in an uproar if random bureucrats decided issues like these. If you want to claim they let anyone mess with it, the burden of proof is on you.
Sure, excessive salt can be dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as not enough...
Yes, just as dangerous, you can die from too much salt as well. It's extremely unlikely that anyone not following a super-exotic diet (raw vegans?) would get too little salt, though.
Too much salt in our diets is to all practical purposes a larger problem than too little, although I concede banning it completely is a poor idea for other reasons!
4chan is and crap like that is 100% dependent on anonymity. You don't put goatse on your Facebook profile, and you will also be rather careful what you do to people who are actually standing next to you in real life.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does Sweden has such a stable homogenous society? Because there is very little inequality. Why is there little inequality? because they spend a whole lot of effort (and money) keeping it that way, that's why. But sure, immigrants will bring it all down. Never mind that "Libertarians" have predicted the imminent doom of the Swedish model for fifty years.
- redistribution of wealth by the government so as to create a more egalitarian society
Is quite compatible with personal freedom, except possibly the freedom to spend ALL your money precisely the way you want. That "freedom" is already taken away by taxation, laws against bribery, criminal penalties for neglecting to support your children, and a whole lot of other obvious things.
- collective (i.e. state) ownership of the means of production and distribution
OK, try this: Imagine that a legitimate, non-criminal corporate conglomerate was so successful and rich that it managed to take over all significant means of production and distribution. If state ownership infringes on your personal freedom, how come such corporate ownership would not?
Both things are a bad idea for other reasons, but I can't see that personal freedom has all that much to do with it.
- central planning of the economic activity
See previous question. If all economic activity was decided from a single corporate boardroom, this would be just as bad as government production quotas. This would be bad indeed, but again, "personal freedom of the individual" has little to do with it. Whether I get my production quota from a corporate boss or a government planner makes little immediate difference for me.
Central planning is also a bad idea for other reasons, but the "individual freedom" mantra doesn't cut it.
No! You see, the US is a republic, not a democracy. That means the republicans are good, and the democrats are bad!
Source criticism fail. Honesty win, though.
I figured out they were Mandarin speakers, although they had never heard that word, and claimed there was just one kind of Chinese (although they spoke "weird" in Hong Kong)
Strange, because the Chinese I've studied with did mix up l and r, or at least had big trouble producing a tapped r in such a way that it could be distinguished from l. Also they had no chance at rolled r's.
Maybe this is not an issue for Chinese learning English, but the prejudice is based on fact. Even so, the OP mocked paid shills for the Chinese Government, not all Chinese.
Attitudes don't form in a vacuum. Your attitudes are come a bit from yourself, and a great deal from the average of attitudes expressed by people around you. When expressions of negative attitudes to government are discouraged and suppressed, and positive ones rewarded (this 50 cent party thing - not something exclusive to China, I'm sure), it will drag up everyone, especially those who like to think that they arrive at their attitudes on their own.
It happens and has happened in much worse places than China (East Germany, Burma). Especially if you are a well-off Chinese, it makes a lot of sense to just "not be interested in politics" and defend the government.
Has it become fashionable to not even read TFS now?
You must be new here.
Feed for nerds. Stuffing that matters.
I thought it was only on friday?
To paraphrase Goethe: those who know nothing of foreign systems, know nothing of their own.
I follow American politics pretty closely. I have done that for years. Since I've spent about 1500 hours studying English in school, I might as well get some use out of it, right?
Maybe it's silly of me. Probably there are better hobbies. But I'm going to keep having an opinion about you whether you like it or not.
Nope, I knew that, and didn't get any different impression from the film. Wasn't one of the themes of the film that people wait until they need emergency care, and this costs more in the long run?
Before posting, I did look for people claiming the finger story was bullshit, just in case. I couldn't find any. The closest thing was a pro-industry doctor who claimed that most "responsible" practices would just have amputated both fingers immediately for $1000 instead of saving one for $26000, and that this "severely damaged Michael Moore's credibility" (sure, as if for-profit enterprises will never offer you something expensive you don't need).
I found no one suggesting this guy didn't really exist, didn't really cut of his fingers, wasn't really poor or similar deception a la "Joe the Plumber".
Just blanket sliming Moore won't convince me. I'm from Norway, I know very well that his portrayal of the system here (although comically rosy) was in all particulars honest.
> But they don't credit check you when you're missing an arm or something.
Maybe not an arm. But one of the scenes from "Sicko" that really stuck with me was of the man who accidentally cut off a couple of fingertips, and got a choice of which finger they should reattach (he couldn't afford them both).
That theory seems to match well with the numbers from open secrets. Only recently, as Democrats came to be in power, did they get most health insurance money - for most of the decade, Republicans were in power, and got most.
So people who thought they had insurance, will now actually get insurance, but they will no longer get to pay the "comfort price", the price that only pays for a warm fuzzy feeling.
It's part of the problem, why it took so long to come this far. Most Americans were happy with their employer-provided health insurance - only the small minority that ended up actually needing their health insurance saw how ugly it was.
If you are talking about Democrats like Stupak, in the end, they were reasonable, and didn't. They said they really wanted universal health care, they apparently meant it.
If you are talking about Republicans, who cares. The ones that were pro-abortion/choice still voted against it, so it made no difference either way.
They will, actually. What they passed tonight is a far cry from what we have in Scandinavia, but it at least reduces employer serfdom somewhat. And it gets rid of rescission. (point to clarkkent: most Americans are happy with their health insurance, but that is no surprise. Most insurance holders also pay far more for their insurance than they ever get in return - that's how insurance works, after all. Which company wouldn't be nice to a customer like that? But the moment you become a net liability to your company, you can expect that to change dramatically. Or you could, until tonight.)
> More to the root problem, though, why the hell would they alter the well-established criteria for a dangerous fall to reduce the load on their ambulance network?
Because it's their job to decide how limited resources, in this case emergency response capacity, should be shared. No matter how many ambulances you put on the road, there will always be tough priorities to make.
There are people who spend their entire careers pouring over medical statistics, constructing casual models, looking for patterns and ways to shave off another percentage of bad outcomes. Are you one of them, or are you just an armchair freakonomist seeing an excuse to bash "government"? If the latter, then maybe you should just shut up, because the people who made the decision in all likelihood know more about it than you.
The software was almost certainly designed to be configurable, because having a fixed classification scheme would defeat the point of such system in the first place. Configuring a configurable system is not "messing with it".
The people who decided on the emergency response priorities were almost certainly medical professionals - maybe doctors, but quite likely also something more specialized. Emergency response statistics is a field of its own. People with an education in it would be in an uproar if random bureucrats decided issues like these. If you want to claim they let anyone mess with it, the burden of proof is on you.
(mandatory xkcd: Long light)
I wish slashdot mods would see that you're not insightful just because you're blindly bashing government.
There is still the possibility of minority shareholder lawsuits. It's just a matter of time before someone tries throwing one at Google.
If you're going to be strict enough, monopolies don't exist. Everything has substitutes, except maybe water.
But Microsoft was and is a monopoly, because in many situations, the costs of substitutes are prohibitive.
> This boils down the the average consumer preferring "cheap crap" to anything of quality.
Not quite. IME fancy chefs use a lot more salt than your average mom and dad.
4chan is and crap like that is 100% dependent on anonymity. You don't put goatse on your Facebook profile, and you will also be rather careful what you do to people who are actually standing next to you in real life.
Second Life is coming to the first. The furries will win at last, oh no!