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> This might be something that UK/EU folks might not be able to empathise with You are absolutely correct. As long as the US is unwilling to socialize its heal

by bitops 14y ago

> This might be something that UK/EU folks might not be able to empathise with You are absolutely correct. As long as the US is unwilling to socialize its health care, there is very little sympathy for people putting up with soul-sucking jobs because they are against some half-baked notion of "socialism". (And I would argue that many Americans do not know what socialism is - they often conflate it with communism, which is entirely different).

kian 14y ago
> As long as the US is unwilling to socialize its health care, there is very little sympathy for people putting up with soul-sucking jobs because they are against some half-baked notion of "socialism". Things aren't so simple as just 'socializing health care'. For a country in which the majority of medical spending is state subsidy, it's hard not to think we already have. And while I might personally be a closer fit to your unsympathetic libertarian strawman, I recognize that I'm a tiny minority in the American population at large. It seems rather harsh to deride a population of people for having to put up with a regulatory environment that clearly isn't of their choosing.
- bitops 14y ago
  >It seems rather harsh to deride a population of people for having to put up with a regulatory environment that clearly isn't of their choosing. I used to believe this also but changed my mind after the 2004 elections in the US. We are living in an environment that clearly is of our choosing - we either voted for it or didn't care enough to vote against. While it's true that some people don't like how the current system works, very few people in America seem to believe that it would be worthwhile throwing everyone out of office or demanding real discourse in politics. It's true that the world is dominated by sound-bytes, etc. but there's a reason that stuff keeps showing up on TV and other media - it sells. When people value thinking about the world they live and realize that good solutions usually are not "partisan" things might change for the better. But that seems unlikely.

by bitops 14y ago

kian 14y ago

> As long as the US is unwilling to socialize its health care, there is very little sympathy for people putting up with soul-sucking jobs because they are against some half-baked notion of "socialism". Things aren't so simple as just 'socializing health care'. For a country in which the majority of medical spending is state subsidy, it's hard not to think we already have. And while I might personally be a closer fit to your unsympathetic libertarian strawman, I recognize that I'm a tiny minority in the American population at large. It seems rather harsh to deride a population of people for having to put up with a regulatory environment that clearly isn't of their choosing.

bitops 14y ago
>It seems rather harsh to deride a population of people for having to put up with a regulatory environment that clearly isn't of their choosing. I used to believe this also but changed my mind after the 2004 elections in the US. We are living in an environment that clearly is of our choosing - we either voted for it or didn't care enough to vote against. While it's true that some people don't like how the current system works, very few people in America seem to believe that it would be worthwhile throwing everyone out of office or demanding real discourse in politics. It's true that the world is dominated by sound-bytes, etc. but there's a reason that stuff keeps showing up on TV and other media - it sells. When people value thinking about the world they live and realize that good solutions usually are not "partisan" things might change for the better. But that seems unlikely.