I don't know what we'll do without the anti-hate party in charge.
I suspect we'll all get along a lot better.
I suspect we'll all get along a lot better.
the most interesting thing about publishing a book is just how hard it is to make money off of it, especially if you hired anyone to help with anything along the way.
A labor of love unless you've got a huge machine behind you.
(I've got my copy)
A labor of love unless you've got a huge machine behind you.
(I've got my copy)
My argument would be that if the US is going to pay enough for universal healthcare they should provide it, and if they're not going to, they should cut spending to be commensurate with the level of services being provided.
The US model is to charge for single payer and not provide it, and so the taxpayers pay twice, once for the public healthcare they don't get, and second for the private healthcare that must replace it. That's why per capita healthcare spending in the US is so much higher than any other country on earth.
Problem with free healthcare such as in Canada is obviously that you remove all limits on demand but you heavily limit supply, so of course you'll have shortages, that's econ 101.
Canada's free healthcare also leads to some perverse incentives with bad outcomes. Drug addicts will clog up emergency rooms so they can pretend to have a toothache to score prescription drugs. In the far north, my mother told me stories of parents making their kids drink drano so the hospital could be a babysitter while they go out drinking.
No dispute that both private and public systems have their problems, but the US specific hybrid is the worst of all possible worlds.
The US model is to charge for single payer and not provide it, and so the taxpayers pay twice, once for the public healthcare they don't get, and second for the private healthcare that must replace it. That's why per capita healthcare spending in the US is so much higher than any other country on earth.
Problem with free healthcare such as in Canada is obviously that you remove all limits on demand but you heavily limit supply, so of course you'll have shortages, that's econ 101.
Canada's free healthcare also leads to some perverse incentives with bad outcomes. Drug addicts will clog up emergency rooms so they can pretend to have a toothache to score prescription drugs. In the far north, my mother told me stories of parents making their kids drink drano so the hospital could be a babysitter while they go out drinking.
No dispute that both private and public systems have their problems, but the US specific hybrid is the worst of all possible worlds.
One thing about the United States is the state of the healthcare system should be a bipartisan scandal.
The thing is, it's not as if the government isn't spending enough money. Per capita public spending on health Care in the United States is comparable to countries with single-payer healthcare such as Canada or the United Kingdom. In other words, American taxpayers are already paying enough for universal health care, and yet they're getting nothing.
The fact that the healthcare industry can have it both ways shows that it doesn't matter who's in charge at the moment, the healthcare system is a corporate health Care system not a people healthcare system. And it really doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right, that should be such a damning indictment of both sides of the political spectrum for letting this continue that it should almost be disqualifying for everyone involved.
The thing is, it's not as if the government isn't spending enough money. Per capita public spending on health Care in the United States is comparable to countries with single-payer healthcare such as Canada or the United Kingdom. In other words, American taxpayers are already paying enough for universal health care, and yet they're getting nothing.
The fact that the healthcare industry can have it both ways shows that it doesn't matter who's in charge at the moment, the healthcare system is a corporate health Care system not a people healthcare system. And it really doesn't matter if you're on the left or the right, that should be such a damning indictment of both sides of the political spectrum for letting this continue that it should almost be disqualifying for everyone involved.
It was pretty good, but we're still defunding the CBC next year (and the rest of the Canadian fake news media as well)
This sounds absolutely nothing like what they've said during every single other bubble in history. Tulips to the Moon!!!
We'll have to keep the fire going until the cockroaches are gone, then we can rebuild the city afterwards.
Yuck.
Yuck.
>If you have cockroaches, do you burn down the house?
Are you kidding? I'd burn down my entire city. That's so creepy and gross. Yuck!
Are you kidding? I'd burn down my entire city. That's so creepy and gross. Yuck!
Even back in the 2000s when I was somewhat lefty, I found Whoopi Goldberg's comedy insufferable. She wouldn't say any jokes, just go up and say "Oh! George W. Bush is bad!" (cheers) "And the republicans are bad!" (cheers) "Conservatives are so bad!" (cheers)
"Before it was just about finding someone to have sex with the horse and hopefully not die. Now we're really focused on trying to help marginalized communities and correct systemic injustices -- through having sex with horses!"
Most Americans (and even many Canadians) don't know this, but Canada adopted a constitution similar to the US constitution, including the right to freedom of speech and expression as the very first freedom on the list on its charter of rights and freedoms (the Canadian version of the bill of rights). The constitution even successfully causes laws to be struck from the books on a semi-regular basis.
The problem is that both constitutions are just pieces of paper in the face of a culture that wants to expand the powers of government. If the constitution is like a safe door, safe doors are only rated to successfully repel attacks for a certain period of time and every safe is capable of being breached given enough time and money.
The problem is that both constitutions are just pieces of paper in the face of a culture that wants to expand the powers of government. If the constitution is like a safe door, safe doors are only rated to successfully repel attacks for a certain period of time and every safe is capable of being breached given enough time and money.
In short, optimizing for brevity in this political and philosophical environment means too much meaning is lost to be meaningful. That's why so many people want to talk to each other but end up talking past each other. (and if you don't like effortposting, you can stop here!)
If the conversation is nothing but platitudes and nobody is understanding each other and everyone is just talking at each other uncritically, then maybe it's a conversation worth killing. The Internet (and places like Twitter in particular) are filled with discussions like that every day, going nowhere except dragging the people involved to Hell.
The problem is a rhetorical tactic called dialectic, initiated by Hagel and promoted by Marx, but today used widely because we're all living in a post-Marx civilization, which requires all words to have a double meaning, so you can say a sentence with words that are designed to have different connotations to different groups listening. It means you need to lay out your argument in its entirety because if you're relying on words meaning to carry shorthand, you're not communicating effectively with anyone outside of your tribe.
An example of this is the word "hate". To the non-left, we've been trained to think of it as the robotic recitation of the isms and phobias. "racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic" as we've been 'educated'. To the left, it's understood that you can hate all sorts of people and it's not hate. Men? Toxic! Whites? Privileged! Heterosexual? Just plain evil! Conservative? Nazis you should immediately punch! It's amazing how liberating it must be to reject hate by hating almost everyone! Of course, you might think "ok so the right can just use the same definition!" no, it doesn't work that way.
One thing I noticed a lot and eventually stopped listening to is experts who would take an innocuous thing Trump for example says, and they'd say with authority "When he says this he really means" and then lays out a completely different, usually bigoted thing he didn't say. Eventually I had to stop listening to those "experts" because they were lying and trying to rewire my language centers. Their statements were baseless, but people listening to them uncritically nodding along and then would hear people outside their tribe and assume the worst, and no conversation could actually take place without long form explanation.
An example of this is "Make America Great Again". While imperfect particularly for marginalized groups, the postwar period was a great time for the average American working class family. They were able to own a home, buy a car (or even two cars), their homes were constantly seeing amazing new technologies that were making the average person's life better -- 75% of refrigerators on earth were owned by Americans, for example. A single earner could support a family, and households could afford several kids and had the space to raise those families. It was also a high trust society. People felt like they could let their kids play outside alone, keep their doors unlocked, and knew their neighbors, and often had social connections such as friendships. By contrast, today most young people feel like they'll never own a home, most young people can't afford cars or fuel, technology is relatively stagnant and the last major new technology was decades ago, two earners are required just to make ends meet and households feel like they can't afford kids at all, let alone several, and even if they thought they could afford several they don't have the space for kids often living in crowded apartments, and people feel atomized, anonymous, and uncared for, often not having many or any friendships. Wages as % of GDP are lower every year, and individuals pay most income taxes. When Trump says he wants to "Make America Great Again", he isn't saying he wants racism and sexism back, he says he wants the ordinary American worker to be empowered again, and yet the left spits on that phrase. The knee-jerk assumption that everyone who wants to "Make America Great Again" actually wants to make America white supremacist again shows the strong de facto disconnect between the left and the working class.
If the conversation is nothing but platitudes and nobody is understanding each other and everyone is just talking at each other uncritically, then maybe it's a conversation worth killing. The Internet (and places like Twitter in particular) are filled with discussions like that every day, going nowhere except dragging the people involved to Hell.
The problem is a rhetorical tactic called dialectic, initiated by Hagel and promoted by Marx, but today used widely because we're all living in a post-Marx civilization, which requires all words to have a double meaning, so you can say a sentence with words that are designed to have different connotations to different groups listening. It means you need to lay out your argument in its entirety because if you're relying on words meaning to carry shorthand, you're not communicating effectively with anyone outside of your tribe.
An example of this is the word "hate". To the non-left, we've been trained to think of it as the robotic recitation of the isms and phobias. "racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic" as we've been 'educated'. To the left, it's understood that you can hate all sorts of people and it's not hate. Men? Toxic! Whites? Privileged! Heterosexual? Just plain evil! Conservative? Nazis you should immediately punch! It's amazing how liberating it must be to reject hate by hating almost everyone! Of course, you might think "ok so the right can just use the same definition!" no, it doesn't work that way.
One thing I noticed a lot and eventually stopped listening to is experts who would take an innocuous thing Trump for example says, and they'd say with authority "When he says this he really means" and then lays out a completely different, usually bigoted thing he didn't say. Eventually I had to stop listening to those "experts" because they were lying and trying to rewire my language centers. Their statements were baseless, but people listening to them uncritically nodding along and then would hear people outside their tribe and assume the worst, and no conversation could actually take place without long form explanation.
An example of this is "Make America Great Again". While imperfect particularly for marginalized groups, the postwar period was a great time for the average American working class family. They were able to own a home, buy a car (or even two cars), their homes were constantly seeing amazing new technologies that were making the average person's life better -- 75% of refrigerators on earth were owned by Americans, for example. A single earner could support a family, and households could afford several kids and had the space to raise those families. It was also a high trust society. People felt like they could let their kids play outside alone, keep their doors unlocked, and knew their neighbors, and often had social connections such as friendships. By contrast, today most young people feel like they'll never own a home, most young people can't afford cars or fuel, technology is relatively stagnant and the last major new technology was decades ago, two earners are required just to make ends meet and households feel like they can't afford kids at all, let alone several, and even if they thought they could afford several they don't have the space for kids often living in crowded apartments, and people feel atomized, anonymous, and uncared for, often not having many or any friendships. Wages as % of GDP are lower every year, and individuals pay most income taxes. When Trump says he wants to "Make America Great Again", he isn't saying he wants racism and sexism back, he says he wants the ordinary American worker to be empowered again, and yet the left spits on that phrase. The knee-jerk assumption that everyone who wants to "Make America Great Again" actually wants to make America white supremacist again shows the strong de facto disconnect between the left and the working class.
I imagine someone pointing a finger at the they/them who wrote the order and saying "Bad. Bad dog." and then doing literally nothing else.
"Extreme measures"
"Extreme measures"