Yep- I got the wrong border, as was pointed out by somebody else. But wasn't it Jackson who went up in war against France? Oh, wait, no,you're right- he was just a Colonel for that war...
So, when should he have been locked up? Before or after he was involved in a meth ring? If you say after, we agree.
After, as long as there were no other signs. Meth use seems pretty far down the slide to me.
As to teaching him the value of work and showing him that his problems are his own fault, how do you propose to do that? One of my other friends and I tried to show him that, but he wouldn't listen.
Can't do that without first institutionalizing him.
Perhaps you think he should have been institutionalized (jailed) sooner?
Possibly- you'd think some of this behavior would have showed up in high school long before it got to the point of being part of a meth ring.
There's a difference between a mental illness and stupidity. Some mental illnesses (especially genetic ones) cause stupidity but the vast majority of idiots is clinically healthy in the head, just really badly raised.
Which would argue for, gee, socialized education? And not the form which tries to create a good consumer, but rather a good citizen?
Uh, I thought that would be automatically included in Option #2- if food were priced by the calorie instead of by cost, just about every processed food would be horrendously expensive. That 1500 Calorie burger would be 15 times the cost it is today, minimum- an evening at your local greasy spoon would cost hundreds of dollars.
I'm suggesting that "people who make poor decisions" is usually a symptom of an undiagnosed mental condition- that stupid people are indeed mentally disabled.
And that their stupid decisions are largely, as a symptom rather than a cause, unrelated to the real problem.
I'm not sure you get it. What I got from "a problem with the area between the ears" is that people that make dumb/stupid/misinformed need to live with the consequences of those consciously made decisions.
Where I'm suggesting that there may be something more going on that causes people to make dumb/stupid/misinformed mistakes- and that last bit may be especially low.
have no desire and/or moral obligation to help them out.
Well, let's take them each in turn, shall we? The dumb- well, that's autism right there, a medical condition that is treatable but that we often fail to treat today, mainly because we still don't know what the cause is. The stupid? That's just mental retardation- no fault of their own. The misinformed? Well, who misinformed them? A lack of education is likely their parent's fault, but could be attacked with free education.
I don't care, unless I'm directly impacted, and that will require a different course of action.
You're directly impacted by having stupid people in the same community as you are by the hidden costs of dealing with such people.
Call me selfish if you want, I don't care, but I have never asked, nor do I expect others to bail me out from the poor choices that I have made.
Well, congratulations for being a self-made man, but not everybody was born with your shining amounts of intellect.
Having said that, I don't mind helping those that physically/mentally/economically disadvantaged through no fault of their own.
Which is the grand majority of them; society has left few choices for dealing with it, asking for a handout is a symptom, not a disease.
To those people that want a handout, or through some strange sense of entitlement think that society at large owes them something....FUCK OFF
Well, we are all wanting something from society- it's hard to earn money if nobody will buy what you are selling. But I'd suggest that the mere asking of a handout is a symptom of a larger problem that should be diagnosed and dealt with.
However, I'd like to ask you where we draw the line between someone with "a problem between the ears" and "freedom of thought".
Self-destructive behavior might be a good place to start, at least. Certainly a history of attempted suicide and/or self-medication would be a big indication.
Somewhere between these extremes, somebody needs to draw a line. And that Somebody is a politician. Or, worse, lots of them. Or a politician-appointed board of "experts". History has shown us some mixed results from similar endeavors. Take, for instance, the North Carolina Board of Eugenics [journalnow.com]. I dare say that their (nominal) targets were not too dissimilar, either: people with "a problem between the ears" who were marginalized by the more sophisticated segments of society.
True enough- we've had some problems in the past dealing with such people- though I'd think the solution isn't just to turn them out on the streets....
Um, yes, he explicitly said he thinks poor people are only poor because they're stupid. Being too poor and ergo stupid to have health insurance is just a natural and just consequence.
Stupid indicates low IQ. I'm suggesting that ignorance may also play a part.
No, he clearly thinks that if he hadn't had any advantage and started in the same situation as any poor person, he'd end up in the same place he is today because his natural awesomeness would just shine through. That lazy or dumb poor people exist is all the proof he needs, while the existence of lazy, dumb, but amazingly arrogant rich people isn't proof of anything at all.
If it is as you say, can you explain why medicare / medicaid are paying for diabetes meds, high blood pressure pills and gastric bypass / bandings?
Because Medicare/Medicaid are a single payer socialist health care system for people over 65 or disabled. PRIVATE health insurance can and does screen its applicants with a health exam first and use that to determine coverage premiums all the time. In the last year alone, I was denied coverage with BCBS, Keizer Permanente, HealthCare, and Lifewise based on my Asperger's, my wife's weight, and my son's Cerebral Palsy- despite two out of three of these conditions being unlikely to cause additional costs in our lifetime.
You won't be able to, because by law they are not allowed to.
Maybe in YOUR state, but not in all states- though rectifying this was both a part of HB 3200 and the current negotiations to make it national.
Well it IS a lifestyle choice, but it doesn't get you denied insurance in the least.
Ever try to get individual insurance as a otherwise healthy male with BMI>30? I guarantee you- you will not be able to find insurance for such a person. Same with diabetes, knee replacement, and gastric bypass.
Why is single payer health care required for the Government to mandate anything? They mandate things for health insurance companies all the time.
And the insurance companies respond by dropping and denying coverage to the people that would be affected most by those mandates, is why.
If we had mandatory nutritional coverage without reform, you could bet that instantly anybody with a BMI > 21 would find that their *entire* insurance policy would disappear.
"So, the friend I had several years ago who was every bit as mentally intelligent as I and gifted with greater mechanical aptitude than I, who got arrested a couple months back as a minor part of a big meth bust and who couldn't hold a job as long as I knew him because he would decide to not show up for work, should be given a free ride because he had "mental" problems?"
No, he should be locked up in a mental institution and his problems should be dealt with.
"He always had an excuse why it was someone else's fault that he wasn't better off. It was never because he was lazy and irresponsible. What kind of therapy do you think is going to help someone like that?"
Perhaps teaching the value of work, and showing that his problems are his own fault instead of externalizing everything?
I've never actually heard of that, what country do they take obese people and put them in an intense diet program? It sounds really interesting to me and I'd like to know. Are they forced into it? Doesn't that violate their civil liberties?
Civil Liberties is an American thing that rarely exists elsewhere. But many countries in Europe do this- though their definition of "obese" varies greatly.
Also, there are simpler solutions to that problem than switching entirely over to a single payer system. Here is one example solution [wsj.com] used by Safeway that worked really well. Incremental changes can work, or at least make things a lot better. I don't know that we will ever get to the ideal situation of the absolute best health care possible for every citizen.
I would point out that too is a system that removes civil liberties for certain behaviors; however, having said that, it would probably work for some.
That is for the most part, linked strongly to the great American Debate- education and mind control vs individual freedom.
I see only two ways out of it: 1. a Single-payer health care system that requires everybody with a BMI > 21 to go to intense nutritional counseling and budgeting classes. 2. Remove food from the free market entirely and give Americans debit cards they can use to purchase food at a rate of no more than 14,000 calories/week, with all food priced by the calorie.
" the portion they're talking about is between Beaumont and Texarkana, right on the border"
Which makes me wonder if this was a study of US Citizens or merely US Residents?
It might be hard to eliminate the illegal population from those areas, without finishing the job that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stopped and annex all of Mexico.
What do you think we should do? I see two ways to attack this problem: 1. Single payer health care with required nutritional counseling. 2. Remove food from the free market and give everybody a calorie-based, instead of dollar-based, budget for food.
This is a non-sequitur, if you really dig into the numbers, you will find that the main reason for lowered life expectancies is obesity
Ok, here's why that is a health care problem- in most single-payer nations, they'd take an obese person, put them into an intense diet program, and treat the problem just like alcoholism. Here in the United States, it's an "individual lifestyle choice" which will get you denied insurance and any coverage whatsoever.
I too would like to see incremental changes- but none of those are likely to pass either- because somebody is making money off of the status quo. And that's what it really comes down to.
If someone in government could come up with a good mechanism to sort out the truly disadvantaged folks from the idiots who make dumbass decisions then i could get behind such a plan to pay for the people who are disadvantaged.
I've got this little theory that when my state decided to stop paying for good mental health institutions to lock up the mentally ill, the number of idiots who make dumbass decisions exploded.
Might I make a suggestion that somebody with "a problem with the area between the ears" is just as disabled as the guy missing an arm or a leg- and needs to be treated as such?
Funny thing is, if we did that- if we treated mental problems as vigorously as we treat physical problems- the number of single parents and idiots going home to drink and play XBox all night would probably go down drastically.
And yes, at one point long ago, back probably before you were born, the United States used to pride itself on being the longest average lifespan in the world.
Finally, not everybody has the chance to "get an education" that you did. Not everybody was taught how to make "good lifestyle decisions". And even if they were- Americans over the past 40 years have been basically thrown out with the trash, including nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep- I got the wrong border, as was pointed out by somebody else. But wasn't it Jackson who went up in war against France? Oh, wait, no,you're right- he was just a Colonel for that war...
Do those things have a measurable cost to the public wellfare?
So, when should he have been locked up? Before or after he was involved in a meth ring? If you say after, we agree.
After, as long as there were no other signs. Meth use seems pretty far down the slide to me.
As to teaching him the value of work and showing him that his problems are his own fault, how do you propose to do that? One of my other friends and I tried to show him that, but he wouldn't listen.
Can't do that without first institutionalizing him.
Perhaps you think he should have been institutionalized (jailed) sooner?
Possibly- you'd think some of this behavior would have showed up in high school long before it got to the point of being part of a meth ring.
And I am suggesting that there is no appreciable difference.
There's a difference between a mental illness and stupidity. Some mental illnesses (especially genetic ones) cause stupidity but the vast majority of idiots is clinically healthy in the head, just really badly raised.
Which would argue for, gee, socialized education? And not the form which tries to create a good consumer, but rather a good citizen?
Sometimes you can't- but you can at least lock them up and keep them away from the rest of society.
Uh, I thought that would be automatically included in Option #2- if food were priced by the calorie instead of by cost, just about every processed food would be horrendously expensive. That 1500 Calorie burger would be 15 times the cost it is today, minimum- an evening at your local greasy spoon would cost hundreds of dollars.
I'm suggesting that "people who make poor decisions" is usually a symptom of an undiagnosed mental condition- that stupid people are indeed mentally disabled.
And that their stupid decisions are largely, as a symptom rather than a cause, unrelated to the real problem.
I'm not sure you get it. What I got from "a problem with the area between the ears" is that people that make dumb/stupid/misinformed need to live with the consequences of those consciously made decisions.
Where I'm suggesting that there may be something more going on that causes people to make dumb/stupid/misinformed mistakes- and that last bit may be especially low.
have no desire and/or moral obligation to help them out.
Well, let's take them each in turn, shall we? The dumb- well, that's autism right there, a medical condition that is treatable but that we often fail to treat today, mainly because we still don't know what the cause is. The stupid? That's just mental retardation- no fault of their own. The misinformed? Well, who misinformed them? A lack of education is likely their parent's fault, but could be attacked with free education.
I don't care, unless I'm directly impacted, and that will require a different course of action.
You're directly impacted by having stupid people in the same community as you are by the hidden costs of dealing with such people.
Call me selfish if you want, I don't care, but I have never asked, nor do I expect others to bail me out from the poor choices that I have made.
Well, congratulations for being a self-made man, but not everybody was born with your shining amounts of intellect.
Having said that, I don't mind helping those that physically/mentally/economically disadvantaged through no fault of their own.
Which is the grand majority of them; society has left few choices for dealing with it, asking for a handout is a symptom, not a disease.
To those people that want a handout, or through some strange sense of entitlement think that society at large owes them something....FUCK OFF
Well, we are all wanting something from society- it's hard to earn money if nobody will buy what you are selling. But I'd suggest that the mere asking of a handout is a symptom of a larger problem that should be diagnosed and dealt with.
However, I'd like to ask you where we draw the line between someone with "a problem between the ears" and "freedom of thought".
Self-destructive behavior might be a good place to start, at least. Certainly a history of attempted suicide and/or self-medication would be a big indication.
Somewhere between these extremes, somebody needs to draw a line. And that Somebody is a politician. Or, worse, lots of them. Or a politician-appointed board of "experts". History has shown us some mixed results from similar endeavors. Take, for instance, the North Carolina Board of Eugenics [journalnow.com]. I dare say that their (nominal) targets were not too dissimilar, either: people with "a problem between the ears" who were marginalized by the more sophisticated segments of society.
True enough- we've had some problems in the past dealing with such people- though I'd think the solution isn't just to turn them out on the streets....
Um, yes, he explicitly said he thinks poor people are only poor because they're stupid. Being too poor and ergo stupid to have health insurance is just a natural and just consequence.
Stupid indicates low IQ. I'm suggesting that ignorance may also play a part.
No, he clearly thinks that if he hadn't had any advantage and started in the same situation as any poor person, he'd end up in the same place he is today because his natural awesomeness would just shine through. That lazy or dumb poor people exist is all the proof he needs, while the existence of lazy, dumb, but amazingly arrogant rich people isn't proof of anything at all.
You're right- I doubt I will sway such arrogance.
If it is as you say, can you explain why medicare / medicaid are paying for diabetes meds, high blood pressure pills and gastric bypass / bandings?
Because Medicare/Medicaid are a single payer socialist health care system for people over 65 or disabled. PRIVATE health insurance can and does screen its applicants with a health exam first and use that to determine coverage premiums all the time. In the last year alone, I was denied coverage with BCBS, Keizer Permanente, HealthCare, and Lifewise based on my Asperger's, my wife's weight, and my son's Cerebral Palsy- despite two out of three of these conditions being unlikely to cause additional costs in our lifetime.
You won't be able to, because by law they are not allowed to.
Maybe in YOUR state, but not in all states- though rectifying this was both a part of HB 3200 and the current negotiations to make it national.
Well it IS a lifestyle choice, but it doesn't get you denied insurance in the least.
Ever try to get individual insurance as a otherwise healthy male with BMI>30? I guarantee you- you will not be able to find insurance for such a person. Same with diabetes, knee replacement, and gastric bypass.
Why is single payer health care required for the Government to mandate anything? They mandate things for health insurance companies all the time.
And the insurance companies respond by dropping and denying coverage to the people that would be affected most by those mandates, is why.
If we had mandatory nutritional coverage without reform, you could bet that instantly anybody with a BMI > 21 would find that their *entire* insurance policy would disappear.
"So, the friend I had several years ago who was every bit as mentally intelligent as I and gifted with greater mechanical aptitude than I, who got arrested a couple months back as a minor part of a big meth bust and who couldn't hold a job as long as I knew him because he would decide to not show up for work, should be given a free ride because he had "mental" problems?"
No, he should be locked up in a mental institution and his problems should be dealt with.
"He always had an excuse why it was someone else's fault that he wasn't better off. It was never because he was lazy and irresponsible. What kind of therapy do you think is going to help someone like that?"
Perhaps teaching the value of work, and showing that his problems are his own fault instead of externalizing everything?
I've never actually heard of that, what country do they take obese people and put them in an intense diet program? It sounds really interesting to me and I'd like to know. Are they forced into it? Doesn't that violate their civil liberties?
Civil Liberties is an American thing that rarely exists elsewhere. But many countries in Europe do this- though their definition of "obese" varies greatly.
Also, there are simpler solutions to that problem than switching entirely over to a single payer system. Here is one example solution [wsj.com] used by Safeway that worked really well. Incremental changes can work, or at least make things a lot better. I don't know that we will ever get to the ideal situation of the absolute best health care possible for every citizen.
I would point out that too is a system that removes civil liberties for certain behaviors; however, having said that, it would probably work for some.
That is for the most part, linked strongly to the great American Debate- education and mind control vs individual freedom.
I see only two ways out of it:
1. a Single-payer health care system that requires everybody with a BMI > 21 to go to intense nutritional counseling and budgeting classes.
2. Remove food from the free market entirely and give Americans debit cards they can use to purchase food at a rate of no more than 14,000 calories/week, with all food priced by the calorie.
Neither does the McDonalds on every street corner.
" the portion they're talking about is between Beaumont and Texarkana, right on the border"
Which makes me wonder if this was a study of US Citizens or merely US Residents?
It might be hard to eliminate the illegal population from those areas, without finishing the job that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stopped and annex all of Mexico.
Is that the same "Death Panel" that never really existed in the first place?
What do you think we should do? I see two ways to attack this problem:
1. Single payer health care with required nutritional counseling.
2. Remove food from the free market and give everybody a calorie-based, instead of dollar-based, budget for food.
This is a non-sequitur, if you really dig into the numbers, you will find that the main reason for lowered life expectancies is obesity
Ok, here's why that is a health care problem- in most single-payer nations, they'd take an obese person, put them into an intense diet program, and treat the problem just like alcoholism. Here in the United States, it's an "individual lifestyle choice" which will get you denied insurance and any coverage whatsoever.
I too would like to see incremental changes- but none of those are likely to pass either- because somebody is making money off of the status quo. And that's what it really comes down to.
If someone in government could come up with a good mechanism to sort out the truly disadvantaged folks from the idiots who make dumbass decisions then i could get behind such a plan to pay for the people who are disadvantaged.
I've got this little theory that when my state decided to stop paying for good mental health institutions to lock up the mentally ill, the number of idiots who make dumbass decisions exploded.
Might I make a suggestion that somebody with "a problem with the area between the ears" is just as disabled as the guy missing an arm or a leg- and needs to be treated as such?
Funny thing is, if we did that- if we treated mental problems as vigorously as we treat physical problems- the number of single parents and idiots going home to drink and play XBox all night would probably go down drastically.
And one of those stupid things, apparently, is to be too poor for health insurance..
And yes, at one point long ago, back probably before you were born, the United States used to pride itself on being the longest average lifespan in the world.
Finally, not everybody has the chance to "get an education" that you did. Not everybody was taught how to make "good lifestyle decisions". And even if they were- Americans over the past 40 years have been basically thrown out with the trash, including nerds.
WEAK! How hard is it to code a switch statement into your bot based on names of restaurants?