Random political thought thread.

[The Cat]

Ironically the first billionare who recognizes his sickness for what it is and gives up their fortune to those in need and bring the world to a better place would be idolized like gods of old and perhaps even attain the status of forever rememebered in the human heart and mind...But they never will. It is not in their nature. And they are empty hollow things so ruled by what they lack.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Ok, but I will now give you my POV that is also culturally heavy as yours.
I understand your logic but I simply see all of this in completely different manner.


Yes, the government shouldn't over react to every detail regarding vices and addictions. However if things get out of hand in wider population I think it is legit that the government tries to ease that. Especially if that undermines universal healthcare, which is one of the most vital system in any country. Your country looks as it looks exactly since it doesn't have such a system. Since the lack of such system makes everything much more "unstructured" basically by default. However in Slavic world something like that can easily turn into a major problem. Which is because Slavs have the tendency to invade those that seem weak at the moment (and that includes other Slavs as well). What is right now going in Ukraine is just centuries old tradition of explicit conquest.


Therefore here is the problem, if your population is on various substances will that water down the system enough that you seem as weak and vulnerable ? If things go far enough it probably will. This is why I facepalm when people from English speaking world start to talk about "nanny state" on the issue. To such people it just isn't clear that Universal healthcare is vital element of national defense. First, it allows you that in every just a little bit bigger settlement you have someone that can treat hurt troops at the spot (as the front lines are moving across the landscape). In other words quick reaction is vital to insure survival. Another major element is that in the case that the place is invaded that causes economic collapse. What means that someone has to continue to cure people even if the economy is in shambles (perhaps even literally). Therefore if various addictions and substances water down the system that can be serious problem on top of everything. I probably wouldn't survive my childhood diseases in the case that there wasn't universal healthcare while bombs were falling on the city. What wasn't some random episode. The war lasted for 4 years and that was a third war in the region since my grandfather was born. While even today I have 4 Russian proxies on my borders (that are outnumbering my country multiple times). Therefore if Trump messes up NATO the only thing between me and the foreign troops is the stamina of me and my own countrymen. That is all there is in between. What means that undermining that is very bad idea.

You're not wrong, but try explaining that to people who have lived in the suburbs of some particular U.S city their entire life, have never left the country, and try to avoid thinking about the wrong parts of town, let alone ever traveling there.

This is why I systematically reject explicit individualism. For me that is deeply impractical ideology that can't provide results when you live in these kind of environment. The Slavic world of Eastern Europe can be unforgiving and therefore any kind of explicit wandering isn't really smart thing to do. Your country has for centuries relied on the oceans to keep this problem at bay. However with modern transportation, internet and assets overseas the logic of individual desires probably wouldn't work anymore. The downturn in just about everything suggests that pretty clearly. Therefore your country will either adapt or implode under all pressures and related debts. Not a pretty thing to say but I am pretty sure I am more correct about this than wrong. Life has thought me to not take survival and social order for granted, therefore I stick to that conclusion.

Hey, you don't have to tell me. I'm the one who thinks we're maybe in a collapse of the Roman Empire type situation here (and perhaps entering a new phase). The reasons, moreover, have nothing to with those kinds of vices. But, I can assure you that you'll never be successful selling anything to Americans if you tell them they have to reject individualism. Even people who pride themselves on not being Republicans will get upset by that. I mean, even I got kind of turned off by that.

Anyway, the core problem here isn't even individualism to begin with. It's that people prefer charismatic figures over evidence and logic. The level of contempt people have for learning is astounding. What's most important is that they feel good and believe! This explains why we have the leaders we have and the kind of policies we have. I suspect much of this is not just an American problem.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Guys, preventive medicine is not about outlawing alcohol or marihuana. It is about education, regular checkups and early diagnosis through screening.

In the US community healthcare centers are directed at the poor, uninsured and medically underserved, but in quite a few countries they are there for everybody and do a good job of it too.

My position was worth defending, IMO. The War on Drugs was a city-sized dump truck full of bullshit. I regret nothing!

I like VG, but I don't change my positions unless I have a good reason, as you may have surmised. Give me reasons, give me evidence. I can provide examples of when I have done that, if needed.

 

[Red Herring]

My position was worth defending, IMO. The War on Drugs was a city-sized dump truck full of bullshit. I regret nothing!

I like VG, but I don't change my positions unless I have a good reason, as you may have surmised. Give me reasons, give me evidence. I can provide examples of when I have done that, if needed.

I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. I was talking to both you AND VG (therefore the"guys") because I think you were both off. And I didn't try to convince you of any policy, I was clarifying a definition (because you were both wandering off, in different directions).

That being said, I am well aware of the role individualism plays in American society. In fact, if you look at how different cultures compare around the world on different value scales (Hofstede model of cultures ) the US is relatively similar to other Western nations except for one thing: American individualism is absolutely off the charts and clearly sets the US apart from every other culture on the planet. And this usually applies to both the left and the right. I also hear the "it wouln't work here because we are so different and special" (a.k.a. American exceptionalism) from both the left and the right. You guys (that is "you Americans", this time) often forget how much you have in common despite your differences.

I also hear you guys criticize and defend similar Population groups without maybe even noticing, but that is another story for another day.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. I was talking to both you AND VG (therefore the"guys") because I think you were both off. And I didn't try to convince you of any policy, I was clarifying a definition (because you were both wandering off, in different directions).

The problem is that your definitions are kinda biased towards normal everyday life problems. What is fine, I am just saying that there is more to the genuine universal healthcare than catches the eye. In the other words the only case where you could see that there is more to it was during COVID. When the medical system had to become a form of military that is holding country together (fighting against misinformation included). Plus they had to coordinate plenty with other layers of the government. Therefore when things get evidently out of hand this system can do all kinds of things in a genuine emergency. Yes, on average day they treat your kid and give you pills but there is more to it than meets the eye. Since their job is to preserve health in ALL conditions. Even in extra ordinary circumstances.

 

[Virtual ghost]

That being said, I am well aware of the role individualism plays in American society. In fact, if you look at how different cultures compare around the world on different value scales (Hofstede model of cultures ) the US is relatively similar to other Western nations except for one thing: American individualism is absolutely off the charts and clearly sets the US apart from every other culture on the planet.

I went to study this for a moment and to be honest I don't think that individualism is the tricky part here. In other words US has very low score on "Long term orientation". What in my book is the real problem here. Yes this gets mixed with individualism but I think this is the actual problem. Since this indicates that there is no working back up when things go wrong.

 

[Virtual ghost]

You're not wrong, but try explaining that to people who have lived in the suburbs of some particular U.S city their entire life, have never left the country, and try to avoid thinking about the wrong parts of town, let alone ever traveling there.

Hey, you don't have to tell me. I'm the one who thinks we're maybe in a collapse of the Roman Empire type situation here (and perhaps entering a new phase). The reasons, moreover, have nothing to with those kinds of vices. But, I can assure you that you'll never be successful selling anything to Americans if you tell them they have to reject individualism. Even people who pride themselves on not being Republicans will get upset by that. I mean, even I got kind of turned off by that.

Anyway, the core problem here isn't even individualism to begin with. It's that people prefer charismatic figures over evidence and logic. The level of contempt people have for learning is astounding. What's most important is that they feel good and believe! This explains why we have the leaders we have and the kind of policies we have. I suspect much of this is not just an American problem.

If course you aren't going to say to the people that they have to give up "individualism". Especially since that isn't even the point. The argument is simply that if people don't go into WW2 style social alert that it may not be possible to keep things together. My point is simply that extra ordinary measures are needed in the times like these.


Plus there are much more gentle ways how to hold mass addiction problems at bay. If you are mentioning war on drugs that means that you have probably missed the whole picture. The very reason I want to keep universal healthcare system in charge of that effort is exactly to avoid what was done in your country. Especially since the problem wasn't even fixed at the end of all that. However the problem is that mass addictions of all kinds have their practical problems. The obvious one is how do you compete with countries that have 20 times lower wages, longer working hours and they don't have mass addiction problem on top of everything. The problem is simply that "I will do what I want to do" probably wouldn't get the job done. Even the tariffs probably wouldn't do the trick because such country can grab markets in third countries that you probably can't. What means that you have remove addiction problem to even have a shoot at this.

 

[Kephalos]

This has nothing to do with the ongoing conversation, but a very interesting (and brief, somewhat incomplete as it doesn't mention Spain's inland colonies) blog post about the history of the Spanish Loyalists in the era of the Spanish-American independence movements (analogous to the Loyalists from the American Revolution):

Throughout the Age of Revolutions, displaced loyalists applied for aid based upon their status as fellow Spanish subjects, yet their petitions indexed dissonance. Cuba and Puerto Rico were not foreign (extranjero) destinations, but the displaced often characterized them as strange and unfamiliar countries (paises extraños) where they lacked property and the personal connections that might lead to employment or charity. The feeling that emigrados did not belong was often mutual. Some local residents and authorities in Cuba and Puerto Rico regarded them, if not quite as “foreigners,” as “forasteros” or “transients,” Spaniards with permission for temporary residence who should return to the places from where they emigrated once order was restored.

Thus, the movement of emigrados around the empire triggered encounters that highlighted differences among Spanish subjects. Many displaced by revolution lamented their sense of not belonging but the feeling was especially intense for those born and raised in the Americas, who had abandoned their homeland (patria) and felt unwelcomed in what they envisioned as the larger Madre Patria.

Perhaps what's most tragically paradoxical is that, at the time, the universalistic rhetoric in the Spanish Empire, that had always been present as rhetoric although not as fact, was even more pronounced than it had been before under the influence of the ideologies of the French Revolution (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and all that) and the incipient 19th-century Liberalism, and even to this day is brought up in Spanish Nationalist circles and among Hispanophiles Latin America. The lesson of all this is, maybe, don't make universalistic claims you're not prepared to back up:

Article 1.- The Spanish nation is the re-union of all the Spaniards of both hemispheres.

Jesús Ruiz de Gordejuela Urquijo. "La tragedia del exilio los españoles expulsados de México y su destino incierto (1821/1836)." PhD diss., Universidad del País Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, 2004.

 

[Coriolis]

I think VG is quite correct in that one way or another Liberalism as we know it is dead already. It's ghost just hasn't accepted the truth yet.

What frustrates me, is that there could be something better to take its place, but that wont happen as long as people keep clinging to the decaying corpse.

We have not had real liberalism since FDR.

 

[The Cat]

Dip Shit tool.​

 

[The Cat]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. I was talking to both you AND VG (therefore the"guys") because I think you were both off. And I didn't try to convince you of any policy, I was clarifying a definition (because you were both wandering off, in different directions).

That being said, I am well aware of the role individualism plays in American society. In fact, if you look at how different cultures compare around the world on different value scales (Hofstede model of cultures ) the US is relatively similar to other Western nations except for one thing: American individualism is absolutely off the charts and clearly sets the US apart from every other culture on the planet. And this usually applies to both the left and the right. I also hear the "it wouln't work here because we are so different and special" (a.k.a. American exceptionalism) from both the left and the right. You guys (that is "you Americans", this time) often forget how much you have in common despite your differences.

I think I agree. Thinking about it more recently, I don't even think this is bad thing. The problems I have with American culture aren't about individualism per se; I dislike intensely the idea that people should always be subject to the whims of a group. It's more this narrowly constructed concept that is perceived as individualism, but really isn't. It's this idea of being into competition as the highest virtue, of sacrificing yourself for profits (very uninvidualistic, really), concealing income inequality by glorifying the resulting need to have multiple jobs as "side hustles", stuff like that. The funny part is that I think people are only into that because they are told that's what they are supposed to be. It's not individualistic at all! They didn't get there by thinking for themselves; they are just thinking precisely what they are supposed to think.

I also hear you guys criticize and defend similar Population groups without maybe even noticing, but that is another story for another day.

Actually, I'm very curious about this. If you are thinking about things I have said, I'm not really typical of anything in any particular group. I'm a weirdo who occasionally makes a decision to flock to specific banners and declare loyalty for houses in one domain or another.

 

[The Cat]

Well there's a big surprise.
This is incredible.
I think I'm gonna have a heart attack and die of not surprise.
I'm so ticked off I'm molting.​

 

[ceecee]

Guys, preventive medicine is not about outlawing alcohol or marihuana. It is about education, regular checkups and early diagnosis through screening.

In the US community healthcare centers are directed at the poor, uninsured and medically underserved, but in quite a few countries they are there for everybody and do a good job of it too.

They should be there for everybody. Community healthcare is the best way to keep the community healthy, doctors know their patients, patients know their doctor. If people (in the US I mean) want to wax nostalgic about the old family doc that made house calls - this is exactly what that is.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

If course you aren't going to say to the people that they have to give up "individualism". Especially since that isn't even the point. The argument is simply that if people don't go into WW2 style social alert that it may not be possible to keep things together. My point is simply that extra ordinary measures are needed in the times like these.


Plus there are much more gentle ways how to hold mass addiction problems at bay. If you are mentioning war on drugs that means that you have probably missed the whole picture. The very reason I want to keep universal healthcare system in charge of that effort is exactly to avoid what was done in your country. Especially since the problem wasn't even fixed at the end of all that. However the problem is that mass addictions of all kinds have their practical problems. The obvious one is how do you compete with countries that have 20 times lower wages, longer working hours and they don't have mass addiction problem on top of everything. The problem is simply that "I will do what I want to do" probably wouldn't get the job done. Even the tariffs probably wouldn't do the trick because such country can grab markets in third countries that you probably can't. What means that you have remove addiction problem to even have a shoot at this.

I don't know that I would place addiction in the top 10 of problems this country faces. Would you have any articles I can read suggesting it's that serious?

Anyway, the problem we really need to be concerned with is how to sell universal healthcare to people.

 

[ceecee]

We have not had real liberalism since FDR.

I would agree with that. The real liberal decline in the US started right after the war. The Mont Pelerin Society, Milton Friedman and so on. But it was Pinochet and Chile that took Friedman's ideas and well, we all know what happened with that. Regan, Thatcher, it's the same song that gets played over and over. Austerity, often combined with right wing repressive authoritarian governments has never ended well except for the wealthy and corporations. I would look to what happened in Chile during the Pinochet and the Chicago Boys years to see what is in store for the US.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I would agree with that. The real liberal decline in the US started right after the war. The Mont Pelerin Society, Milton Friedman and so on. But it was Pinochet and Chile that took Friedman's ideas and well, we all know what happened with that. Regan, Thatcher, it's the same song that gets played over and over. Austerity, often combined with right wing repressive authoritarian governments has never ended well except for the wealthy and corporations. I would look to what happened in Chile during the Pinochet and the Chicago Boys years to see what is in store for the US.

I was thinking of Pinochet as a trial run for this (if Trump won) before the election. I guess I can think of one book I need to read, if I can find it.

 

[The Cat]

Watershed Moments.
Dont be on the wrong side of history...again Donny boy.​

 

[The Cat]

>_<​

 

[Virtual ghost]

I don't know that I would place addiction in the top 10 of problems this country faces. Would you have any articles I can read suggesting it's that serious?

Anyway, the problem we really need to be concerned with is how to sell universal healthcare to people.

I told you what I did exactly since you don't see it as a top problem. Since you don't see pretty evident logic that is visible on it's own from my words.


Yes, you need universal healthcare, absolutely. However since I have it I know that such system can't really co-exist too much with some of the ideas that you have about society in general. Since they will be visibly rising the number of various treatments and because they are undermining global competitiveness of your country. What means that the money problem will get even worse. Just if there is universal healthcare that doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for it eventually on some way. They will treat you for "free" if you are in need (even if you are broke at the moment), but all of that you must pay through taxes eventually. In other words if enough people fails to do that the system crashes. My whole point is that universal healthcare isn't forever by default and that it can't survive just about anything. Because that system simply requires some serious maintenance (financial and physical). What means that it requires discipline to work properly. What then means that if the general population isn't capable to keep infrastructure running, keep public debt under control, keep their health generally under control .... the odds are that they will not be able to run universal healthcare on the long run. Because such system stands on those 3 pillars. Without them working universal healthcare can't happen even in theory.


I know that I am not saying pretty things but I think that some things need to be said. For me this "holy grail" approach to the topic is simply wrong way how to think about any of this. Since there is a million details in the mix and logistics of socialized medicine (if you want it to work properly). From where exactly will you get all the herbs and chemicals needed to make 1500 types of meds (and that the price is reasonable). How to treat people if the government is already heavily in debt. Where exactly to put community health center and who exactly will build them. If construction is lousy that means extra financial pressure on the system and poorer treatments. As I already said this can't really work without having free college as well (that will keep the costs down or disperse them across the population). Since medical staff that doesn't have large student debt is vital in keeping the costs of your universal healtcare reasonable (what is kinda the whole point). What means that you need universal access to med schools as well. As I said you also need to keep general population away from bad foods and various addictions. Since without that you are openly risking that the system is physically overwhelmend, since chronic medical problems in the population can do that easily (even if you find the the money to cover everything). ...... etc.


Therefore if you are really into selling idea to the people and buidling such system these are just some of the topics you need to think about. What means that just to sort this out you will evidently need clear head (what includes those that will listen to you). This simply isn't something that you can sell to the people and after signing a few papers you will have your universal healthcare for the rest of your life. Working universal healthcare is absolutely worth it but making it work isn't simple. It just isn't.



Just saying.