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> Especially considering the U.S. as de facto self-appointed global police, is doing a terrible job of looking after it's own citizens with regard to education,

by serge2k 10y ago

> Especially considering the U.S. as de facto self-appointed global police, is doing a terrible job of looking after it's own citizens with regard to education, healthcare, the war on drugs, shooting black men, mass shootings, etc etc etc. Those things aren't really related, except as far as american attitudes go. For example, a massive amount of money is spent on health care.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
In what way aren't those things related? Can you give this a more thorough treatment to expand why you think this. A massive amount of money in the U.S. is spent on administering healthcare. Not much actually goes towards actual health care. Healthcare could be relatively inexpensive to provide, if we chose to eliminate the profit motive. It's absurd to me that anyone should profit from my being unwell. That's the sort of thing mosquitoes, leeches, ticks, pathogenic viruses and bacteria, thrive on. I don't have a fully-formed whole-system replacement for for-profit-healthcare, but it definitely seems like something we ought to work on. How does it make sense that people's unwellness should be paying for my neighbours Toyota Prado (that's never been taken off the road).
- BadThink6655321 10y ago
  You unwellness takes another person's skill and labor to treat.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Being the global police and having good healthcare are orthogonal to each other. One doesn't really effect the other all that much. I don't really get why are saying they do? I do think US attitudes lead to both things (world police/broken health care system).
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    It shouldn't take much of an effort as a thought experiment to glimpse how having a global authority calling the shots and not keeping it's own affairs in order comes across as hypocritical and undermines that authority. Rather, I think what you've done here is mimic the common HN pattern of saying "X is orthogonal to Y, so I don't get what you're saying", which, as I've try to point out above, lacks imagination. I even went to some length to try to explain why I feel like that.

by serge2k 10y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

In what way aren't those things related? Can you give this a more thorough treatment to expand why you think this. A massive amount of money in the U.S. is spent on administering healthcare. Not much actually goes towards actual health care. Healthcare could be relatively inexpensive to provide, if we chose to eliminate the profit motive. It's absurd to me that anyone should profit from my being unwell. That's the sort of thing mosquitoes, leeches, ticks, pathogenic viruses and bacteria, thrive on. I don't have a fully-formed whole-system replacement for for-profit-healthcare, but it definitely seems like something we ought to work on. How does it make sense that people's unwellness should be paying for my neighbours Toyota Prado (that's never been taken off the road).

BadThink6655321 10y ago
You unwellness takes another person's skill and labor to treat.
serge2k 10y ago
Being the global police and having good healthcare are orthogonal to each other. One doesn't really effect the other all that much. I don't really get why are saying they do? I do think US attitudes lead to both things (world police/broken health care system).
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  It shouldn't take much of an effort as a thought experiment to glimpse how having a global authority calling the shots and not keeping it's own affairs in order comes across as hypocritical and undermines that authority. Rather, I think what you've done here is mimic the common HN pattern of saying "X is orthogonal to Y, so I don't get what you're saying", which, as I've try to point out above, lacks imagination. I even went to some length to try to explain why I feel like that.