nickpp

8 ms·

61.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> So then you would expect life expectancy in the US to be higher than in Germany, France, UK? Pretty soon, actually. EU countries are falling further and further behind economically. Health care costs are increasing, taking up an ever i
62.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> Time and time again large competing forces in the market are found to have colluded instead of directly competing with each other to drive price/cost down. Collusion and cartels never work on the long run. It's an unstable eq
63.
by nickpp 10mo ago
The great majority of health care is not emergency health care. Actually, the fact that emergency health is so expensive is quite the incentive for preventive medicine. And for the rest, insurance is necessary. Like for house fires or flood
64.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> you also need to tax it, to deliver benefits to your population The benefits were already delivered by that strong and prosperous economy in form of products and services. Taxation is of course necessary to fund government spending but
65.
by nickpp 10mo ago
I lived under the very system this principle enabled and I can tell you that without the profit motive we were cold and starving since there was no motivation for people to work and sew clothes or grow food.
66.
by nickpp 10mo ago
I live in Eastern Europe and my "news sources" are friends in hospitals asking us to donate for desperate causes. Governments-paid treatments are god-sent but many times the funds are limited so they only cover older, cheaper trea
67.
by nickpp 10mo ago
Expensive health treatments can easily bankrupt any western government. None of those developed countries can afford to spend their money indiscriminately on them. So instead they turn to waiting lists, death panels and very often saying no
68.
by nickpp 10mo ago
Any system needs a resource allocation algorithm. In capitalism it is easy and transparent: price, with the side effect of aligning society interests with those of the selfish individual. Of course the strange and heavily regulated US healt
69.
by nickpp 10mo ago
Capitalism is the reason those treatments exist in the first place. I don't see many cutting-edge cancer treatments coming out of Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela.
70.
by nickpp 10mo ago
I am curious: how else would you fund them? I sometimes donate & follow such cases and cancer treatments are expensive , especially experimental, custom ones. Worse, the rarer and more aggressive the disease - the more expensive the tr
71.
by nickpp 10mo ago
Oh, nothing like a little radiation fear mongering to convince the public they need government approval for every single drop of drink and byte of food we put into our bodies. It's for our own good, after all! Meanwhile, years after
72.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> assuming equivalent efficiency of conversion Is there any case where this is remotely even true?! The way advertising budget is spent always has an enormous impact on the outcome. One competitor spends in print, another on TV. One co
73.
by nickpp 10mo ago
Stats that people like to be chauffeured around and be helped with housework?! Do you also need stats to back up the fact that people prefer using washing machines vs washing by hand?
74.
by nickpp 10mo ago
They’re in a tiny tiny tiny minority then.
75.
by nickpp 10mo ago
Do they want self driving cars or domestic help robots though?
76.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> this should be regulated at least a little bit Don’t you think hotels aren’t already regulated? Just try opening a new one in a popular place and let us know how open the market is. Repeat after me: regulations (no matter how good or w
77.
by nickpp 11mo ago
You just have bureaucrats and politicians doing that instead, securing their comfy jobs and reelection. The equation is simple: tax one productive member of society 1000 euros - lose 1 vote. Redistribute 100 euro each - win 5 votes. The res
78.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> It's unclear exactly what you're arguing Actually, it's perfectly clear to me. > we shouldn't have any regulation Nope, he's not saying that at all. He's just saying that any regulation (no matter how n
79.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> And then? I'll compensate the loss of thousands of dollars I don't earn anymore every month with the profits of a $100 investment in some ETF? Probably most of it at least, because under your supposition that the AGI will rep
80.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> The complete opposite. Freedom of association is the entire foundation of it. There is a saying: you can be communist under capitalism but you can't be capitalist under communism. And it's true: there are plenty of communes,
81.
by nickpp 11mo ago
I've seen mainstream "socialists" (Obama, Sanders, countless Europeans) embracing and sustaining authoritarian communist thugs like Chavez, so... We've seen here in EU socialist policies cripple our economy to the point
82.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> It’s not an utopian idea to try as a society to hedge and distribute returns to all members. It's not utopian, is downright dystopian. Redistribution means forceful confiscation (through taxation) from the most productive members
83.
by nickpp 11mo ago
Because every time I encounter such capitalism haters they turn out to be marxists in disguise. Usually pushed and promoted by people that never lived outside of their comfortable capitalist wealth bubble, written on capitalist devices, he
84.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> a big chunk of USAmericans have been living paycheck to paycheck That doesn't mean they are poor, just poor with their money. Saving is a skill that needs to be learned. > That's bad advice. No. Not investing, when the S&a
85.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> We just have never had an economic system that could offer that Please propose it yourself. > you assume the greedy motivations of a few is the only path towards progress No. I assume the greedy motivations of the many is the best
86.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> All of those things happened because there was a market opportunity, there was a market opportunity because wealth was not just in the hands of the rich. Yet those things did not happen in communist countries (or happened way less in s
87.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> You still need to be rich to partake. Again, you can invest, today, in AI stocks and ETFs, with just $100 and a Robinhood account. No need to be rich. > Super-intelligence will make labor worthless (or very cheap) it won't make
88.
by nickpp 11mo ago
There is absolutely no guarantee that Claude takes your job either. But if you believe so much in AI, investing in it is accessible to pretty much any pocket, you don't have to be rich to partake. And when did "the rich" hoar
89.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> abundance. For those that own stuff and no longer have to pay for other people to work for them. Why are you saying that? Anybody working for a living (but saving money) can invest in AI stocks or ETFs and partake in that potential abu
90.
by nickpp 11mo ago
> a system designed not for human flourishing but pure profit But please, don't be coy: tell us about that other system that is designed for "human flourishing" - we're dying to learn about it. Because I grew up und

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