Obamacare is really an attempt to create the sort of socialism that Americans can stomach. I got a good buddy with some serious health problems who relies on gov't health care (got several actually, because if you have a health problem it isn't long until you die or need help from the gov't unless you're an Heir/heiress).
Anyway, I started asking him what he was gonna do. How would he use private insurance. Wouldn't they insurer just keep raising his rates. He said that would be wrong, and so somebody should do something 'bout that. I asked who, and how and he said there should be a law that the insurance companies could only charge so much.
Basically he, like most Americans, deep down want single payer health care. But we're been taught from cradle to grave that socialism is bad. We're indoctrinated. It's called cognitive dissonance. He knows he needs socialism to live. He knows he needs help, and he knows it's his right (as a human) to live. Not just to have some blind dumb chance at good luck, but to actually have a life. But he's been taught, over and over, lied to and lied to. So he breaks down.
Obama recognized that there's lots of people like that. So he's giving them what they need (socialized health care) but doing it in the only way he can. He's letting the devil have it's due, and he's going to give billions and billions to parasitic insurance companies who's only purpose is to make us feel better about getting something that's a basic human right.
they don't get to decide. Doctors do. It's single PAYER, not single INSURER. It doesn't work the way you're thinking in Europe, Canada, Germany or any of the other single payer systems where people are entitled (whoops used a bad word) to health care. The only purpose of the gov't is to pay doctors. And they can be well paid and still provide great service.
But far be it from me to let a little thing like facts and the failures of the US healthcare system get in thy way of irrational fear mongering perpetuated by a multi-billion dollar insurance industry. Viva la death panels (well, the private ones anyway):).
just do away with insurance companies and switch to single payer. We all need health care to live and stuff. What we don't need is a middle man that adds no value between us and our doctors.
Face it, health 'insurance' made since when the only thing a doctor could do was a) amputate and b) give out aspirin. It didn't matter that they only did a few big things that were mostly comfort before you died. Now we want to _use_ insurance. Insurance can't be profitable if we're all going to use it. The entire _point_ of insurance is that most of us aren't going to use it.
It's like hurricane insurance in Florida. Good luck buying it.
Seriously. The human body needs maintenance, and we have the technology to give it that maintenance. Why do we need a middle man? When There's something we all need to live why wouldn't we just pool our resources. We do it for water and electricity and it works great. Hell, the few times we've 'privatized' basic utilities all we've accomplished is socializing the loses and privatizing the profits.
you're getting dedicated servers. On the PC it's not an issue, because you can run your own pretty easy/cheap. I have several buds that are hardcore PC gamers that pitch in and buy server time with some company to run their Quake/CS games off of so they don't hit performance bottlenecks.
I don't care much for playing online, but most of my friends that do on the PS3 complained about lag. And I can't imagine developers didn't have a hard time running the all net code client side on top of the game...
Just curious. They're such a powerful organization that it's difficult to imagine anything short of a strong Federal Gov't reigning them in. I know the argument is that they can only survive because of a Strong Federal Gov't favoring them, but I really see that as a chicken/egg situation. In this case I think they GS chicken came first. e.g. the gov't is a convenient tool for them but in it's absence they'd have plenty of other ways to exercise leverage on us all. They control a good chunk of all wealth in this country after all, and in general you do what the Rich guy says because if not you get fired, and in America your entire quality of life depends on your job. The golden rule: He with the Gold makes the Rules.
So I say again, any Libertarians gonna step up for 'ole GS?
because people love sports and will gladly pay. As soon as you try to get them to pay for gov't and corporate oversight the corps move in with billions and scare the hell out of everyone.
Yeah, but my point was that now that they're all owned by a few big corporations they've stopped doing that. The Malfeasance and corruption benefits the mega corps. And if you think the mega corps aren't interested in your local politics you're dead wrong. Local elections decide how the districts get drawn for state elections. That's how the corps have locked in the House/Senate. The only election they can't completely own is the Presidential, but since it's just one they can pour so much money into it (over $1 billion last time) it doesn't matter.
Seriously. What information do they have that is at all useful? In the old days we had muckrakers telling us all the awful things our politicians were doing. These days since they're all owned by big corps they don't want to step on any toes. After all, you won't last long if you say bad things about the boss. It feels like all they have left is sports news I can get from the source, some 30 year old comics and classifieds full of H1-B bait:(.
I don't see communism as inevitable. That assumption is based on the idea that there's only so much people will put up with. But if you lack the power and resources to do anything about it then you'll put up with anything. You don't have a choice. If 20 guys with riot gear and the training to use it want you to do what they say, you're going to do what they say. No amount of wishful thinking will change that.
Recycling can't really be done on the backend like that. It requires too many chemicals and produces too much waste. You can't get people to design products that either last or are easily recyclable because in a 'Free' market those products cost more. If you subsidize them you've got socialism again, and if you're going to do that I still think you might as well go whole hog and do it right...
it doesn't work on Windows, much less Linux. I know, I know. They'll fix it in software. But that said, right now my shoulders are at rest while I type. The same is true for when I reach for my mouse. Give me one of these and now I end up moving my arms/shoulders into uncomfortable positions. Plus I lose all tactile feedback. If they want to give me a mouse w/o a mouse it might be cool. But I'm still not sold on the whole 'Minority Report' thing.
if we're willing to accept solutions to the problems that creates. I see two problems: 1. lost jobs and 2. price increases when competition goes away.
Basically, the modern capitalist economy breaks down in the face of progress. I realize it's hard to get past that realization. In school I was never taught even the concept that there were alternatives to Adam Smith style 'competition makes everything better' capitalism. I don't mean I wasn't taught competing systems, I mean the notion that there _were_ alternatives wasn't taught. Capitalism was and is a tautology.
Automation is making labor obsolete. It's taking longer than we expected. Some things turned out to be trickier. But it's happening. So what are we gonna do? We still want all this stuff (books, movies, appliances, etc). The first world got by for 20 years or so by sending our slums to China. But we're running out of work. Foxconn's using robots now. China's losing out to poorer East Asian countries. We're all in a race to the bottom.
Given that our entire society is built around a 'if you don't work you don't get to eat' model, I really only see two options. Socialism and redistribution of wealth or abject poverty for all but a lucky few. (BTW, If you're reading/. in your spare time you're not one of those lucky few. ).
I'm open to alternatives, but all the ones I've heard from my libertarian buddies are either pipe dreams where people share their wealth in ways they have no reason too and never have in all of civilization, or just boil down to a round about way of achieving socialism. When I point that out they usually change the subject or just say 'well, screw it, I got mine. Let 'em die'.
I keep hearing this argument. That we shouldn't use the gov't and democracy to better our lives because the corps will abuse it. Newsflash, they already _are_ abusing it. Seriously. You have absolutely nothing to lose here. There's only to possible outcomes there. Does it really matter if the jackboot at your neck is a Free Market Jackboot (tm) or belongs to the gov't. At least with the gov't option you had a chance...
I'm assuming he means Amazon.com. Newegg is big, but hardly a 1000lb gorilla, and there really isn't anyone else major selling anything online. Amazon's investors are basically taking a huge loss right now with the assumption that Amazon will be the next Walmart. e.g. you'll get everything from them and when that happens they'll jack up prices.
Makes me wonder what America's going to do. Amazon and Walmart are putting the last of the mid sized companies out of business. They're already show that when that happens prices go way up (Amazon did it for books, Walmart does it in every market they take over). Are we gonna suck it down and just live worse or will we regulate them with the gov't?
people really don't know what's good for them. And worse they hate being told that. There's too much information out there, and it's too complex. Take traffic jams. In most cities they exists solely because of people speeding to red lights. Experts and Elite have a place. The Renaissance Man's days are over and done. Maybe the trouble is we've lost the ability to tell the difference between a pompous aristocrat and a man of science?
which is the other major cost in producing meat. Also land. Electricity has the potential to become cheap if we can get over our fear of nuclear and keep large corporations from disabling/ignoring safety measures to save a buck (re: Tokyo Electric Power).
In America if a publicly traded company has a huge hit like the Wii and doesn't follow it up they get eaten alive by their investors. We even have a name for it: Bained, after Bain Capital, the company most famous for it.
If I want to play a DM'd dungeon crawler there's tonnes of web apps for that on PC. Same with RTS, and it doesn't even cost much more (Starcraft I and any of the 20+ rts' on Gog with web support run fine an a low end laptop). Heck, for the RTS a Wii U costs more after buying 3 more of those tablet things.
Also, I found it annoying as heck to keep staring down at the tablet while playing Rayman Origins.
I agree with you on sports games, but that basically means EA, and I don't see EA getting behind Nintendo too strongly. Nintendo doesn't have a good track record of playing nice with their 3rd party licenses....
I'd have to ride a filthy bus or subway to do that. I love my car. It's freedom (from my parents, which is the only freedom anyone thinks of in this Country).
they're sales people are legendary, and that's all that matters. IBM doesn't even bother giving IT a thought nowadays. It's all about the sales people. Oracle realized that ages ago.
For all the complaints, the people that matter will still choose Oracle, and techies like you and me will get stuck learning and implementing it.
when was the last time a major newspaper or network broke a political scandal that wasn't sex. When was the last time they drove it home? Where were they when the Weapons of Mass Destruction turned out to be a few dud rockets? Where were they when Glass Steagal was gutted? Where are they when voter suppression is a fact of life in most of the Southern United states?
They don't matter anymore because they're wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate America. Why would I care about anything they have to report? Why would I give a rats ass about the Zimmerman trial if I wasn't in that community? Did it need round the clock coverage while a bill is working it's way through the house that would change how immigration works while adding 10 million new workers to an already depressed economy?
was a bunch of dumb asses who didn't know what they were doing were left in charge of a nuclear power plant. It's pretty well documented that the accident was caused by an unsafe and unnecessary experiment by junior staff. It has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Just good 'ole fashion human arrogance and stupidity.
If you keep profit out of the equation. But with 30 year life cycles I don't know how to do that. Sooner or later someone is going to clamor to privatize it and make it more 'efficient'. And if the plant owner doesn't live anywhere near the potential disaster, and there are no consequences for him whatsoever, why wouldn't he just cut corners? Anyone have any ideas?
the iPhone more or less created the Smartphone market in the US. Prior to that the carriers in the States were holding back development with crappy phones and expensive dev kits ($25k+ for a kit was common).
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Obamacare is really an attempt to create the sort of socialism that Americans can stomach. I got a good buddy with some serious health problems who relies on gov't health care (got several actually, because if you have a health problem it isn't long until you die or need help from the gov't unless you're an Heir/heiress).
Anyway, I started asking him what he was gonna do. How would he use private insurance. Wouldn't they insurer just keep raising his rates. He said that would be wrong, and so somebody should do something 'bout that. I asked who, and how and he said there should be a law that the insurance companies could only charge so much.
Basically he, like most Americans, deep down want single payer health care. But we're been taught from cradle to grave that socialism is bad. We're indoctrinated. It's called cognitive dissonance. He knows he needs socialism to live. He knows he needs help, and he knows it's his right (as a human) to live. Not just to have some blind dumb chance at good luck, but to actually have a life. But he's been taught, over and over, lied to and lied to. So he breaks down.
Obama recognized that there's lots of people like that. So he's giving them what they need (socialized health care) but doing it in the only way he can. He's letting the devil have it's due, and he's going to give billions and billions to parasitic insurance companies who's only purpose is to make us feel better about getting something that's a basic human right.
they don't get to decide. Doctors do. It's single PAYER, not single INSURER. It doesn't work the way you're thinking in Europe, Canada, Germany or any of the other single payer systems where people are entitled (whoops used a bad word) to health care. The only purpose of the gov't is to pay doctors. And they can be well paid and still provide great service.
:).
But far be it from me to let a little thing like facts and the failures of the US healthcare system get in thy way of irrational fear mongering perpetuated by a multi-billion dollar insurance industry. Viva la death panels (well, the private ones anyway)
just do away with insurance companies and switch to single payer. We all need health care to live and stuff. What we don't need is a middle man that adds no value between us and our doctors.
Face it, health 'insurance' made since when the only thing a doctor could do was a) amputate and b) give out aspirin. It didn't matter that they only did a few big things that were mostly comfort before you died. Now we want to _use_ insurance. Insurance can't be profitable if we're all going to use it. The entire _point_ of insurance is that most of us aren't going to use it.
It's like hurricane insurance in Florida. Good luck buying it.
Seriously. The human body needs maintenance, and we have the technology to give it that maintenance. Why do we need a middle man? When There's something we all need to live why wouldn't we just pool our resources. We do it for water and electricity and it works great. Hell, the few times we've 'privatized' basic utilities all we've accomplished is socializing the loses and privatizing the profits.
you're getting dedicated servers. On the PC it's not an issue, because you can run your own pretty easy/cheap. I have several buds that are hardcore PC gamers that pitch in and buy server time with some company to run their Quake/CS games off of so they don't hit performance bottlenecks.
I don't care much for playing online, but most of my friends that do on the PS3 complained about lag. And I can't imagine developers didn't have a hard time running the all net code client side on top of the game...
It also competes favorably with hand warmers. Seriously. These things get hot. At least the one I played with did.
Just curious. They're such a powerful organization that it's difficult to imagine anything short of a strong Federal Gov't reigning them in. I know the argument is that they can only survive because of a Strong Federal Gov't favoring them, but I really see that as a chicken/egg situation. In this case I think they GS chicken came first. e.g. the gov't is a convenient tool for them but in it's absence they'd have plenty of other ways to exercise leverage on us all. They control a good chunk of all wealth in this country after all, and in general you do what the Rich guy says because if not you get fired, and in America your entire quality of life depends on your job. The golden rule: He with the Gold makes the Rules.
So I say again, any Libertarians gonna step up for 'ole GS?
because people love sports and will gladly pay. As soon as you try to get them to pay for gov't and corporate oversight the corps move in with billions and scare the hell out of everyone.
Yeah, but my point was that now that they're all owned by a few big corporations they've stopped doing that. The Malfeasance and corruption benefits the mega corps. And if you think the mega corps aren't interested in your local politics you're dead wrong. Local elections decide how the districts get drawn for state elections. That's how the corps have locked in the House/Senate. The only election they can't completely own is the Presidential, but since it's just one they can pour so much money into it (over $1 billion last time) it doesn't matter.
Seriously. What information do they have that is at all useful? In the old days we had muckrakers telling us all the awful things our politicians were doing. These days since they're all owned by big corps they don't want to step on any toes. After all, you won't last long if you say bad things about the boss. It feels like all they have left is sports news I can get from the source, some 30 year old comics and classifieds full of H1-B bait :(.
I don't see communism as inevitable. That assumption is based on the idea that there's only so much people will put up with. But if you lack the power and resources to do anything about it then you'll put up with anything. You don't have a choice. If 20 guys with riot gear and the training to use it want you to do what they say, you're going to do what they say. No amount of wishful thinking will change that.
Recycling can't really be done on the backend like that. It requires too many chemicals and produces too much waste. You can't get people to design products that either last or are easily recyclable because in a 'Free' market those products cost more. If you subsidize them you've got socialism again, and if you're going to do that I still think you might as well go whole hog and do it right...
it doesn't work on Windows, much less Linux. I know, I know. They'll fix it in software. But that said, right now my shoulders are at rest while I type. The same is true for when I reach for my mouse. Give me one of these and now I end up moving my arms/shoulders into uncomfortable positions. Plus I lose all tactile feedback. If they want to give me a mouse w/o a mouse it might be cool. But I'm still not sold on the whole 'Minority Report' thing.
if we're willing to accept solutions to the problems that creates. I see two problems: 1. lost jobs and 2. price increases when competition goes away.
/. in your spare time you're not one of those lucky few. ).
Basically, the modern capitalist economy breaks down in the face of progress. I realize it's hard to get past that realization. In school I was never taught even the concept that there were alternatives to Adam Smith style 'competition makes everything better' capitalism. I don't mean I wasn't taught competing systems, I mean the notion that there _were_ alternatives wasn't taught. Capitalism was and is a tautology.
Automation is making labor obsolete. It's taking longer than we expected. Some things turned out to be trickier. But it's happening. So what are we gonna do? We still want all this stuff (books, movies, appliances, etc). The first world got by for 20 years or so by sending our slums to China. But we're running out of work. Foxconn's using robots now. China's losing out to poorer East Asian countries. We're all in a race to the bottom.
Given that our entire society is built around a 'if you don't work you don't get to eat' model, I really only see two options. Socialism and redistribution of wealth or abject poverty for all but a lucky few. (BTW, If you're reading
I'm open to alternatives, but all the ones I've heard from my libertarian buddies are either pipe dreams where people share their wealth in ways they have no reason too and never have in all of civilization, or just boil down to a round about way of achieving socialism. When I point that out they usually change the subject or just say 'well, screw it, I got mine. Let 'em die'.
I keep hearing this argument. That we shouldn't use the gov't and democracy to better our lives because the corps will abuse it. Newsflash, they already _are_ abusing it. Seriously. You have absolutely nothing to lose here. There's only to possible outcomes there. Does it really matter if the jackboot at your neck is a Free Market Jackboot (tm) or belongs to the gov't. At least with the gov't option you had a chance...
I'm assuming he means Amazon.com. Newegg is big, but hardly a 1000lb gorilla, and there really isn't anyone else major selling anything online. Amazon's investors are basically taking a huge loss right now with the assumption that Amazon will be the next Walmart. e.g. you'll get everything from them and when that happens they'll jack up prices.
Makes me wonder what America's going to do. Amazon and Walmart are putting the last of the mid sized companies out of business. They're already show that when that happens prices go way up (Amazon did it for books, Walmart does it in every market they take over). Are we gonna suck it down and just live worse or will we regulate them with the gov't?
people really don't know what's good for them. And worse they hate being told that. There's too much information out there, and it's too complex. Take traffic jams. In most cities they exists solely because of people speeding to red lights. Experts and Elite have a place. The Renaissance Man's days are over and done. Maybe the trouble is we've lost the ability to tell the difference between a pompous aristocrat and a man of science?
which is the other major cost in producing meat. Also land. Electricity has the potential to become cheap if we can get over our fear of nuclear and keep large corporations from disabling/ignoring safety measures to save a buck (re: Tokyo Electric Power).
In America if a publicly traded company has a huge hit like the Wii and doesn't follow it up they get eaten alive by their investors. We even have a name for it: Bained, after Bain Capital, the company most famous for it.
If I want to play a DM'd dungeon crawler there's tonnes of web apps for that on PC. Same with RTS, and it doesn't even cost much more (Starcraft I and any of the 20+ rts' on Gog with web support run fine an a low end laptop). Heck, for the RTS a Wii U costs more after buying 3 more of those tablet things.
Also, I found it annoying as heck to keep staring down at the tablet while playing Rayman Origins.
I agree with you on sports games, but that basically means EA, and I don't see EA getting behind Nintendo too strongly. Nintendo doesn't have a good track record of playing nice with their 3rd party licenses....
I'd have to ride a filthy bus or subway to do that. I love my car. It's freedom (from my parents, which is the only freedom anyone thinks of in this Country).
they're sales people are legendary, and that's all that matters. IBM doesn't even bother giving IT a thought nowadays. It's all about the sales people. Oracle realized that ages ago.
For all the complaints, the people that matter will still choose Oracle, and techies like you and me will get stuck learning and implementing it.
when was the last time a major newspaper or network broke a political scandal that wasn't sex. When was the last time they drove it home? Where were they when the Weapons of Mass Destruction turned out to be a few dud rockets? Where were they when Glass Steagal was gutted? Where are they when voter suppression is a fact of life in most of the Southern United states?
They don't matter anymore because they're wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate America. Why would I care about anything they have to report? Why would I give a rats ass about the Zimmerman trial if I wasn't in that community? Did it need round the clock coverage while a bill is working it's way through the house that would change how immigration works while adding 10 million new workers to an already depressed economy?
was a bunch of dumb asses who didn't know what they were doing were left in charge of a nuclear power plant. It's pretty well documented that the accident was caused by an unsafe and unnecessary experiment by junior staff. It has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Just good 'ole fashion human arrogance and stupidity.
If you keep profit out of the equation. But with 30 year life cycles I don't know how to do that. Sooner or later someone is going to clamor to privatize it and make it more 'efficient'. And if the plant owner doesn't live anywhere near the potential disaster, and there are no consequences for him whatsoever, why wouldn't he just cut corners? Anyone have any ideas?
the iPhone more or less created the Smartphone market in the US. Prior to that the carriers in the States were holding back development with crappy phones and expensive dev kits ($25k+ for a kit was common).