Burglary is just so low on the pecking order that they're basically ignored. Even the detectives "assigned" to this case probably have 5-6 other cases to work on.
Usually this is the case. There's generally not a whole lot of leads in a burglary case, so a detective might not put a lot of effort into trying to solve a hopeless case.
However, a burglar doing something this stupid, leaving behind such a damning piece of evidence, that's the kind of case a detective would probably want to put a little effort into solving.
I don't think we need to create an exact copy of any other country's system and expect it to translate perfectly to the US, but observing what other countries do can be a useful tool. If nothing else, it can show that other systems of healthcare can provide effective care, and can be less expensive than what we typically pay.
But yes, it all comes down to what our priorities are as a nation, and we have to decide for ourselves what those are. If we have to sacrifice top-shelf, best-of-the-best-for-those-who-can-afford-it care so it brings up the average standard of care for everyone else, a lot of people aren't going to want to do that, and that's understandable.
Given the three facts/assumptions above, what is the better option than compulsory health insurance?
Well, a single-payer system, combined with the availability of private insurance is usually a better option, as we've seen in just about every country that has one.
You are right, of course. It's not that Fox News makes people stupid, it's that stupid people watch Fox News.
That's like looking at a school which consistently produces kids with terrible grades and terrible test scores and saying "Well, it must just be that stupid kids are going to that school." Maybe it's the school that's the problem!
People are using Fox News to learn stuff about the world. If they end up misinformed, chances are it's because of the misinformation that Fox News is providing them.
It was the most profitable relative to the prior year, not the most profitable.
American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.
Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.
And those profits were built on cost cutting (layoffs), not on sales growth. If all company could lay off 100% of its employees and use only offshore labor and robotic labor then their profits would skyrocket... but who would be able to buy their products?
This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth -- which means companies have been able to make more with less-- as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. Economic conditions in the United States may still be sluggish, but many emerging markets like India and China are expanding rapidly.
So a lot of it is coming from layoffs and cost-cutting, but it's also coming from foreign markets with expanding economies. I suppose if automation advanced to the point where we required none or very few workers to produce the necessary goods and services, that would require a drastic overhaul of our economic system, since capitalism would pretty much be obsolete at that point.
In absolute terms it was a bad year.
Likewise, Now that they have gotten the profits by laying everyone off, since sales are down (waaay down for some like Best Buy), how do they grow profits?
A bad year for retail, but apparently a decent year for large companies with a strong international presence. Unfortunately if this trend continues and causes more retailers and small businesses to fail, things could potentially get even uglier as people lose those jobs.
We're in a strange position... It's good for Company A to lay off as many employees as possible, as long as Company B keeps enough people employed to buy A's products... but it's also in Company B's best interest to lay off as many employees as possible to cut costs, as long as they can sell to A's employees. Like you pointed out, both A and B are going to suffer if *no one* is employed, but it won't directly help the bottom line to hire more people. So what's the solution? I don't think there is one.
I think as people retire debt (either by paying it off or by going bankrupt) sales will get better. The tightening of credit might help here, as people aren't able to take on more debt. Of course, this has other drawbacks as well, since so much of our growth has been dependent on borrowing-and-spending.
I'm more concerned about most manual labor jobs disappearing over the next 20 years. Yeah, me too. The common solution offered is "Go to college! Get an education and a better job!" but not everyone has the desire, capability, or means to go to college. Nor could the economy support them all if they did. People doing manual labor jobs are going to have to do *something* when those jobs disappear, but what?
Yes, but in an anarcho-capitalist society you can always opt for a DIY solution.
So say there's a large company that handles private security. A representative of that company comes to your house and demands money. What's to stop them from doing that, and what distinguishes them from a government?
I guess what I'm getting at is- any sufficiently large and powerful group can potentially try to impose their will on you, regardless of the method of social organization, whether it calls itself government or a Mafia family, or say, a future anarcho-capitalist juggernaut Walmart. If you claim a DIY solution would exist against F.A-C.J.W, why is that a different situation than the present-day government? You can choose to align yourself with a better protection racket, but in the end you're only choosing who your master is, and you can pretty much do that now.
Back to present day- if two competing Mafia protection rackets are fighting over your business, you can align with one or the other, or try to DIY defend yourself against both, and they'll squash you.
You have stated a conclusion that would follow from my being wrong, but offered no argument.
If you're a taxpayer, and you know your money is going to support something you find intolerable, then you shouldn't pay your taxes. Ultimately we're all responsible for our support of the state, because we're paying for it.
Now, given that it doesn't, how do you get the message across?
Well, I don't think that an emotional appeal is necessarily a bad thing, but whenever Michael Moore comes out with a movie, his detractors are able to come up with a huge list of inaccuracies in the films. Some might be honest oversights or maybe an opinion that's open to interpretation, but there are also plenty of blatant falsehoods which call the entire message into question. That's what I could do without.
However, he's often been described as a left-wing Rush Limbaugh. And what does Rush Limbaugh do? He lies his ass off to support his point, and even when his lies are pointed out to those who listen to him, they will still believe the lies, at least on a visceral level. It will still color their outlook on the world.
So maybe that's what Michael Moore needs to do. Lie his ass off, and poison people's thinking for the greater good? Get them to believe a larger "Truth" by swallowing a few small lies here and there? I don't think I feel entirely comfortable with that, even if it does provide my side with a few more wins.
I think that's a reason why the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world have so much control over the political dialog.
It's the only difference that matters once you realize that the government is a gargantuan protection racket.
Perhaps, but then aren't most descriptions of private police/security forces in an idealized anarcho-capitalist society basically protection rackets as well?
You know, Michael Moore may resort to half-truths and tugging at the heart strings, but if you have a brain you can see beyond that while still finding a valid message.
The thing is, there IS a valid message, and he doesn't need to resort to half-truths to get that message across. The message should speak for itself. Embellishments and falsehoods are only going to cloud the validity of that message.
I'm neither on the left or right. I prefer to stand with the facts. I hate Moore because the dude is a flat-out liar.
Moore and I have pretty similar political views in a lot of ways, and I can't stand him either for the same reasons. I like some of the work he does, but he goes and ruins it all with sloppy journalism and outright lies, and in doing so tarnishes the rest of us who share his political ideology.
So they make the rational decision that cable TV, an Xbox360, a cell phone and/or driving a better car are a wiser use of their limited funds. Well, I don't think you needed to make this strawman argument here, since plenty of poor people aren't blowing their huge stacks of cash on cable TV, XBoxes, cell phones or new cars, but yeah, some are, and if you feel better by demonizing all poor people, go right ahead.
I do agree with the crux of your argument tho- if you're gonna get the same health care and not be penalized in any significant way whether you buy insurance or not, why blow that money on insurance?
> An unwavering faith in the "free market" is the equivalent > of any other type of religious zealotry.
Except of course the small matter that the degree that markets are free in a society almost perfectly correlates to the general wealth of that society and to a pretty good extent to its political freedom. So except for the evidence you are 100% correct. But you should be sure to ignore the evidence when making your own narrow minded zealot remarks.
It doesn't mean "The free market doesn't fix anything." It means "The free market doesn't fix everything." I disagree with the assertion that it's a one-size-fits-all fix for every social ill. It often works well, and on average it does OK, but it's still a flawed system.
Ultimately, my problem with the entire argument is that everyone I know who doesn't have health insurance could easily afford it but for an unwillingness to correct blatant prioritization problems. The latest gadget is far more important than saving for future rainy days.
You must not know a lot of poor people then.
I actually know a lot of people without insurance who in no way could afford even the most basic catastrophic insurance. They're not blowing their money on the latest gadgets- it goes towards rent, food, and bills. There's none left over for rainy days.
Additionally, a lot of them probably could benefit quite a lot from better healthcare coverage, since they often are dealing with depression, anxiety, etc. which make it difficult to get an education or hold down a decent job that might actually help get them out of poverty.
Instead of a system where even poor people can buy catastrophic plans to have access to really good health care when needed
Really? I once looked into buying some catastrophic health insurance. It cost about $100/month, with a $5000 deductible if I remember correctly.
How many poor people have an extra $100/month, and how many have an extra $5000 lying around to cover the deductible in case they get seriously ill or injured? No insurance at all is just as good as catastrophic insurance if you're poor.
Suncoast Community Health Centers for hiring such imbeciles to entrust with the health of you and your relatives!
As someone pointed out earlier in the comments, Suncoast Community Health Centers is a non-profit providing health care to migrant workers, the elderly, and the poor. I'm guessing they don't have a lot of money to blow on getting the cream-of-the-crop IT professionals.
Your view might be different if it was your IT department, or your pay and leave records being dinked with...
This. I used to work at a place with a really shitty asshole of a manager. One of the other employees apparently had the bright idea to create a program that would mess with all of the customer records, since it would somehow make the asshole manager look bad when stuff started to fail.
Apparently he had been screwing around with the customer records for months, which pretty much made all of the backups worthless. One day he went too far, his damage caused the whole system to crash, and he got caught. He was fired, of course, and I'm pretty sure he had charges brought against him, but guess who had to clean up the mess?
My initial response was that "In most of the civilized world, being in prison is only marginally more dangerous than being in jail." But from a brief search for statistics, I find this ("safer-in-prison-death-rates-declining.html") relevant to the US system
Considering the energy requirements for hunting, as opposed to the energy requirements for gathering, there's a reason many modern scientists think that our core energy/dietary needs were met by gathered food, rather than hunted food.
As far as modern hunter-gatherer societies go, "Most (73%) of the worldwide hunter-gatherers derived > 50% (56-65%) of their subsistence from animal foods (hunted and fished), whereas only 13.5% of worldwide hunter-gatherers derived > 50% (56-65%) of their subsistence from gathered plant foods"
It's likely that ancient H-G societies functioned in a similar way.
According to: Cordain L, Brand Miller J, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SHA and Speth JD. 2000. Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2000;71:682-92
It's no coincidence that one of the most important food types for proper nutrition is raw grains like chick peas. I'm curious of why you specified that they are "raw", since raw foods have much less nutritionally available content vs cooked foods. Take those same raw chick peas and cook them, and the human body (and every animal, for that matter) can absorb the nutrients much more effectively.
But you can live quite well eating meat once or twice a week, and getting your protein requirements from grains or eggs. Of course. I mean, you don't even need the meat once or twice a week- people can do just fine on purely vegetarian diets. Another interesting note on grains though- it seems that eating meat allows humans to more effectively eat other types of plant foods as well.
Buffered against nutritional deficiency by meat, human ancestors also could intensify their use of plant foods with toxic compounds such as cyanogenic glycosides, foods other primates would have avoided, said Milton. These compounds can produce deadly cyanide in the body, but are neutralized by methionine and cystine, sulfur-containing amino acids present in meat. Sufficient methionine is difficult to find in plants. Most domesticated grains - wheat, rice, maize, barley, rye and millet - contain this cyanogenic compound as do many beans and widely-eaten root crops such as taro and manioc.
No-kill shelters are good and all, but they generally only accept animals with a high probability of being adopted. A no-kill shelter isn't going to take the three-legged, one-eye pit bull with a history of attacking people. That dog is probably gonna end up in a high-kill shelter.
I don't know much about PETA's shelters other than they have a reputation for killing more animals than most shelters. It could be because they take in animals that are essentially un-adoptable and only have the resources to keep them alive for so long before they have to be euthanized. Or maybe they just do a shitty job of running the shelters, I don't know.
Well, it is a more concentrated form of protein, which leaves you more time from gathering roots and berries, to like, build stuff, like pyramids, dams, hospitals , a civilization and the like.
Well, not quite. The basis of all civilizations has been the ability to grain of some kind, which allows a few people to create a lot of food, to feed enough people to allow a division of labor and the creation of a class structure. It actually takes each member of a civilization much more labor to be able to feed themselves than it does in a hunter-gatherer society. Additionally, whenever humans shifted from a hunter-gatherer society to a sedentary agricultural civilization, stuff like life expectancy and general human welfare dropped rapidly. Civilization actually came at a pretty high price.
I agree with you that eating meat allowed humans to develop large brains, which helped fuel the rest of our evolution. But the gap between evolving into homo sapiens (possibly with the help of eating meat) and developing civilization was a few hundred thousand years.
Slashdot Mirror
Burglary is just so low on the pecking order that they're basically ignored. Even the detectives "assigned" to this case probably have 5-6 other cases to work on.
Usually this is the case. There's generally not a whole lot of leads in a burglary case, so a detective might not put a lot of effort into trying to solve a hopeless case.
However, a burglar doing something this stupid, leaving behind such a damning piece of evidence, that's the kind of case a detective would probably want to put a little effort into solving.
I don't think we need to create an exact copy of any other country's system and expect it to translate perfectly to the US, but observing what other countries do can be a useful tool. If nothing else, it can show that other systems of healthcare can provide effective care, and can be less expensive than what we typically pay.
But yes, it all comes down to what our priorities are as a nation, and we have to decide for ourselves what those are. If we have to sacrifice top-shelf, best-of-the-best-for-those-who-can-afford-it care so it brings up the average standard of care for everyone else, a lot of people aren't going to want to do that, and that's understandable.
Reason. Linux users refuse to pay for their software so it's not worth targeting it as a platform.
I thought it was because no-one cares about Linux besides a small handful of nerds who seem to enjoy feeling like a persecuted minority.
That is not an argument.
It was an observation, not an argument.
Given the three facts/assumptions above, what is the better option than compulsory health insurance?
Well, a single-payer system, combined with the availability of private insurance is usually a better option, as we've seen in just about every country that has one.
You are right, of course. It's not that Fox News makes people stupid, it's that stupid people watch Fox News.
That's like looking at a school which consistently produces kids with terrible grades and terrible test scores and saying "Well, it must just be that stupid kids are going to that school."
Maybe it's the school that's the problem!
People are using Fox News to learn stuff about the world. If they end up misinformed, chances are it's because of the misinformation that Fox News is providing them.
From
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=e53627da-30c4-4a6a-a953-c8681291a966
It was the most profitable relative to the prior year, not the most profitable.
And those profits were built on cost cutting (layoffs), not on sales growth. If all company could lay off 100% of its employees and use only offshore labor and robotic labor then their profits would skyrocket... but who would be able to buy their products?
So a lot of it is coming from layoffs and cost-cutting, but it's also coming from foreign markets with expanding economies. I suppose if automation advanced to the point where we required none or very few workers to produce the necessary goods and services, that would require a drastic overhaul of our economic system, since capitalism would pretty much be obsolete at that point.
In absolute terms it was a bad year.
Likewise, Now that they have gotten the profits by laying everyone off, since sales are down (waaay down for some like Best Buy), how do they grow profits?
A bad year for retail, but apparently a decent year for large companies with a strong international presence. Unfortunately if this trend continues and causes more retailers and small businesses to fail, things could potentially get even uglier as people lose those jobs.
We're in a strange position... It's good for Company A to lay off as many employees as possible, as long as Company B keeps enough people employed to buy A's products... but it's also in Company B's best interest to lay off as many employees as possible to cut costs, as long as they can sell to A's employees. Like you pointed out, both A and B are going to suffer if *no one* is employed, but it won't directly help the bottom line to hire more people. So what's the solution? I don't think there is one.
I think as people retire debt (either by paying it off or by going bankrupt) sales will get better.
The tightening of credit might help here, as people aren't able to take on more debt. Of course, this has other drawbacks as well, since so much of our growth has been dependent on borrowing-and-spending.
I'm more concerned about most manual labor jobs disappearing over the next 20 years.
Yeah, me too. The common solution offered is "Go to college! Get an education and a better job!" but not everyone has the desire, capability, or means to go to college. Nor could the economy support them all if they did. People doing manual labor jobs are going to have to do *something* when those jobs disappear, but what?
I thought it was because Q3 2010 was the most profitable quarter for American companies in history.
Yes, but in an anarcho-capitalist society you can always opt for a DIY solution.
So say there's a large company that handles private security. A representative of that company comes to your house and demands money. What's to stop them from doing that, and what distinguishes them from a government?
I guess what I'm getting at is- any sufficiently large and powerful group can potentially try to impose their will on you, regardless of the method of social organization, whether it calls itself government or a Mafia family, or say, a future anarcho-capitalist juggernaut Walmart. If you claim a DIY solution would exist against F.A-C.J.W, why is that a different situation than the present-day government? You can choose to align yourself with a better protection racket, but in the end you're only choosing who your master is, and you can pretty much do that now.
Back to present day- if two competing Mafia protection rackets are fighting over your business, you can align with one or the other, or try to DIY defend yourself against both, and they'll squash you.
You have stated a conclusion that would follow from my being wrong, but offered no argument.
If you're a taxpayer, and you know your money is going to support something you find intolerable, then you shouldn't pay your taxes. Ultimately we're all responsible for our support of the state, because we're paying for it.
Now, given that it doesn't, how do you get the message across?
Well, I don't think that an emotional appeal is necessarily a bad thing, but whenever Michael Moore comes out with a movie, his detractors are able to come up with a huge list of inaccuracies in the films. Some might be honest oversights or maybe an opinion that's open to interpretation, but there are also plenty of blatant falsehoods which call the entire message into question.
That's what I could do without.
However, he's often been described as a left-wing Rush Limbaugh. And what does Rush Limbaugh do? He lies his ass off to support his point, and even when his lies are pointed out to those who listen to him, they will still believe the lies, at least on a visceral level. It will still color their outlook on the world.
So maybe that's what Michael Moore needs to do. Lie his ass off, and poison people's thinking for the greater good? Get them to believe a larger "Truth" by swallowing a few small lies here and there? I don't think I feel entirely comfortable with that, even if it does provide my side with a few more wins.
I think that's a reason why the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world have so much control over the political dialog.
. He can take actions that run directly counter to the wishes of the voter. How can the voter be held morally responsible for those actions?
If you feel strongly enough, you have an ethical duty to resist paying taxes and stop supporting the state.
It's the only difference that matters once you realize that the government is a gargantuan protection racket.
Perhaps, but then aren't most descriptions of private police/security forces in an idealized anarcho-capitalist society basically protection rackets as well?
You know, Michael Moore may resort to half-truths and tugging at the heart strings, but if you have a brain you can see beyond that while still finding a valid message.
The thing is, there IS a valid message, and he doesn't need to resort to half-truths to get that message across. The message should speak for itself. Embellishments and falsehoods are only going to cloud the validity of that message.
I'm neither on the left or right. I prefer to stand with the facts. I hate Moore because the dude is a flat-out liar.
Moore and I have pretty similar political views in a lot of ways, and I can't stand him either for the same reasons. I like some of the work he does, but he goes and ruins it all with sloppy journalism and outright lies, and in doing so tarnishes the rest of us who share his political ideology.
So they make the rational decision that cable TV, an Xbox360, a cell phone and/or driving a better car are a wiser use of their limited funds.
Well, I don't think you needed to make this strawman argument here, since plenty of poor people aren't blowing their huge stacks of cash on cable TV, XBoxes, cell phones or new cars, but yeah, some are, and if you feel better by demonizing all poor people, go right ahead.
I do agree with the crux of your argument tho- if you're gonna get the same health care and not be penalized in any significant way whether you buy insurance or not, why blow that money on insurance?
> An unwavering faith in the "free market" is the equivalent
> of any other type of religious zealotry.
Except of course the small matter that the degree that markets are free in a society almost perfectly correlates to the general wealth of that society and to a pretty good extent to its political freedom. So except for the evidence you are 100% correct. But you should be sure to ignore the evidence when making your own narrow minded zealot remarks.
It doesn't mean "The free market doesn't fix anything." It means "The free market doesn't fix everything." I disagree with the assertion that it's a one-size-fits-all fix for every social ill. It often works well, and on average it does OK, but it's still a flawed system.
Ultimately, my problem with the entire argument is that everyone I know who doesn't have health insurance could easily afford it but for an unwillingness to correct blatant prioritization problems. The latest gadget is far more important than saving for future rainy days.
You must not know a lot of poor people then.
I actually know a lot of people without insurance who in no way could afford even the most basic catastrophic insurance. They're not blowing their money on the latest gadgets- it goes towards rent, food, and bills. There's none left over for rainy days.
Additionally, a lot of them probably could benefit quite a lot from better healthcare coverage, since they often are dealing with depression, anxiety, etc. which make it difficult to get an education or hold down a decent job that might actually help get them out of poverty.
Instead of a system where even poor people can buy catastrophic plans to have access to really good health care when needed
Really? I once looked into buying some catastrophic health insurance.
It cost about $100/month, with a $5000 deductible if I remember correctly.
How many poor people have an extra $100/month, and how many have an extra $5000 lying around to cover the deductible in case they get seriously ill or injured? No insurance at all is just as good as catastrophic insurance if you're poor.
Suncoast Community Health Centers for hiring such imbeciles to entrust with the health of you and your relatives!
As someone pointed out earlier in the comments,
Suncoast Community Health Centers is a non-profit providing health care to migrant workers, the elderly, and the poor. I'm guessing they don't have a lot of money to blow on getting the cream-of-the-crop IT professionals.
Your view might be different if it was your IT department, or your pay and leave records being dinked with...
This.
I used to work at a place with a really shitty asshole of a manager. One of the other employees apparently had the bright idea to create a program that would mess with all of the customer records, since it would somehow make the asshole manager look bad when stuff started to fail.
Apparently he had been screwing around with the customer records for months, which pretty much made all of the backups worthless.
One day he went too far, his damage caused the whole system to crash, and he got caught.
He was fired, of course, and I'm pretty sure he had charges brought against him, but guess who had to clean up the mess?
My initial response was that "In most of the civilized world, being in prison is only marginally more dangerous than being in jail." But from a brief search for statistics, I find this ("safer-in-prison-death-rates-declining.html") relevant to the US system
Interesting, thanks for the info.
But you might be right that between the US and the Russians, a Swedish prison might be his best option.
I don't know what Swedish prisons are like, but in the US and elsewhere it doesn't seem that difficult to have someone killed in prison.
Considering the energy requirements for hunting, as opposed to the energy requirements for gathering, there's a reason many modern scientists think that our core energy/dietary needs were met by gathered food, rather than hunted food.
As far as modern hunter-gatherer societies go, "Most (73%) of the worldwide hunter-gatherers derived > 50% (56-65%) of their subsistence from animal foods (hunted and fished), whereas only 13.5% of worldwide hunter-gatherers derived > 50% (56-65%) of their subsistence from gathered plant foods"
It's likely that ancient H-G societies functioned in a similar way.
According to:
Cordain L, Brand Miller J, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SHA and Speth JD. 2000. Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2000;71:682-92
It's no coincidence that one of the most important food types for proper nutrition is raw grains like chick peas.
I'm curious of why you specified that they are "raw", since raw foods have much less nutritionally available content vs cooked foods. Take those same raw chick peas and cook them, and the human body (and every animal, for that matter) can absorb the nutrients much more effectively.
But you can live quite well eating meat once or twice a week, and getting your protein requirements from grains or eggs.
Of course. I mean, you don't even need the meat once or twice a week- people can do just fine on purely vegetarian diets. Another interesting note on grains though- it seems that eating meat allows humans to more effectively eat other types of plant foods as well.
from http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html:
Now, I much prefer the idea of No Kill shelters, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-kill_shelter , I dont know how practical they are in real life.
No-kill shelters are good and all, but they generally only accept animals with a high probability of being adopted. A no-kill shelter isn't going to take the three-legged, one-eye pit bull with a history of attacking people. That dog is probably gonna end up in a high-kill shelter.
I don't know much about PETA's shelters other than they have a reputation for killing more animals than most shelters. It could be because they take in animals that are essentially un-adoptable and only have the resources to keep them alive for so long before they have to be euthanized. Or maybe they just do a shitty job of running the shelters, I don't know.
Well, it is a more concentrated form of protein, which leaves you more time from gathering roots and berries, to like, build stuff, like pyramids, dams, hospitals , a civilization and the like.
Well, not quite. The basis of all civilizations has been the ability to grain of some kind, which allows a few people to create a lot of food, to feed enough people to allow a division of labor and the creation of a class structure. It actually takes each member of a civilization much more labor to be able to feed themselves than it does in a hunter-gatherer society. Additionally, whenever humans shifted from a hunter-gatherer society to a sedentary agricultural civilization, stuff like life expectancy and general human welfare dropped rapidly. Civilization actually came at a pretty high price.
I agree with you that eating meat allowed humans to develop large brains, which helped fuel the rest of our evolution. But the gap between evolving into homo sapiens (possibly with the help of eating meat) and developing civilization was a few hundred thousand years.