ViperMan

What handle does your wife post under on this board?

I'd be interested to see more complete data, but I think our (American) average waistlines have increased by a similar proportion. Expect the cost of healthcare to continue to increase in proportion to how unhealthy we continue to become: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-29220000

Your perspective is interesting, because I think the incentives are there. The incentives and consequences are showing up in our massive and mounting student debt crisis. That *is* the signal. It's a signal our government is sending by virtue of providing effectively unlimited student loan debt for degrees that provide no meaningful ability to receive a higher standard of living. Individuals who attain degrees that provide massive remuneration (CS, engineering, etc) are not having a hard time paying off their student loans. The solution is to get the government out of distorting the market for these other worthless degrees. There is that there is no market for much of what colleges produce. The *only* reason these colleges get away with it is because the government provides a funding stream for what is otherwise valueless. So you're right, while the government can't *mandate* a school produce more engineers, they can certainly shape the incentive structure that these schools inherit.

Yeah, I didn't go into it in enough detail really. My point re: distortion in the system is that many people believe that there is a simple fix to the "pay your fair share" meme that has taken over our (financial) political discourse. Pointing towards the distorting effect that prop 13 has on individuals' relative property tax rates is a way to point at something that is, direct, real, and present which results in a massive differential tax rate between neighbors, but that few people see or understand. I think with as complex as our tax code is, that there are other instances like this that are replete throughout the system. Point being, I don't think it's as simple as just increasing the upper end of the tax rates to compensate for budget shortfalls and shitty planning. It's fine if that doesn't resonate with you. It does with me. My fundamental belief is that our government is the "thing" that we ALL share and participate in which helps to direct and guide our mutual lives. The problem now, is that there are massive and increasing numbers of people who only take. i.e. they participate in it, but they don't share in it. They have no skin in the game, and their only votes are for more stuff for themselves. That is not a path to a sustainable system - I don't care what philosophy says that it is - it just ain't. Plus, if we really believed that these social programs were working, why not just blanket increase taxes across the board, and then would it even matter? I mean they're paying more, but they're getting more, right? Something tells me there's more to it than that, though... Eventually, I'm concerned we will reach a breaking point, where the value of your dollar becomes so diminished that it motivates "capital" to find a different system to participate in - why do you think crypto is such a thing all of a sudden? We need to be very concerned about unwittingly destroying the thing that keeps this whole train rollin'.

You write a lot of words, and have some decent ideas. The core problem with your argument is that it doesn't effectively address people without skin in the game. No matter how much money we print, we will never be able to print enough to deal with a never ending stream of handouts. re: the "wealth" issues you address - the value of labor has declined tremendously over the past number of decades. Or perhaps a better way to couch it is the value of different labor has become wickedly differentiated. Reasons include - globalization, technology, and women entering the work force. No one wants people suffering, but there's also the reality that our country has created plenty of industries and jobs that were never designed to be able to push someone's standard of living beyond the boundaries of their parents' basements (i.e. fast food, Walmart greeter, etc). These jobs are important because they provide avenues to join the labor force that certain groups otherwise would not have. Pour onto that a massive increase in the number of people who can compete for jobs, and what you get is a decrease in the value of the commodity you provide (i.e. labor). That has nothing to do with communism, socialism, or capitalism - it is pure, uncontaminated, economic fact. Note: I don't have a great solution to this problem. There is already widespread agreement about the rich paying more than the poor - it's baked into the core of our system. See, 10% of more is greater than 10% of less. The "graduated" rates we pay as we move up are only incentives to corrupt the system. And I think we can all agree that is what we have. Forcing people to pay their actual "fair" share is a way to ensure no one is getting a free ride. And when we look at the fact that the bottom 50% of "taxpayers" in this country pay about 3% of the taxes that is where the unfairness lies and that is where the distortion is. It ain't fair that there are this many people in the country who extract vastly more than they contribute. As my favorite example of distortion, take a look at the effects of California's prop 13 - the law enacted that protects people's original tax rates back in the 1970s. It has created a class of gilded land owners who can pass their 'heritance down to their heirs. It's fucked up, no matter how you look at it (https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.43748019180391,-122.1928891539574,19). There's a zoom on a random neighbor hood of SF for you. Some people pay upwards of $90,000/yr in property taxes, while their neighbors pay less than $100/yr. I'm pretty right-leaning, but I think even people on the left would think this is wildly unjust. The left's notion that all the "extraction" of value is happening at the top is complete and total bullshit. But hey, I'm sure it'll all get better as we rush to collapse our monetary system - I know of many historical precedents wherein global powers have decided to just print their way to prosperity, eat the rich, and destroy their middle class. Works every time, really.

I predict that even if Trump doesn't run, the democrats will still frame whoever does as Trump 2.0. We won't be done hearing about Trump for a long time. It's too convenient and powerful a motivator for the left's base to let go of.

Yeah, go back in time and don't sell your house.

An excuse to take it away from you later.

Oh, right. I know every time I draw a line from the US to Ecuador, it crosses through Russia. Someone get me a map. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Everything has a justification, reason, and excuse. "Oh, see, I was on my way to Ecuador, then the big bad US revoked my passport. Darn. Guess I'll just have to spend the next forever hangin' with my boy Putin." We, as military pilots, have a lot of power. That doesn't mean we get to go hog wild. You know there are multiple checks and balances at multiple levels, and in addition to that, people can and are held accountable. Surely you have the imagination necessary to understand that those same checks and balances exist inside the intel community, right? BTW, that system helps protect us. Or do you honestly think its main function is to keep you, Joe The Taxpayer, down?

Eventually (and soon probably, because they are literally almost there), we'll come full circle and recognize that anytime groups of people behave differently (i.e. culture), there are going to be different outcomes. Then, we'll have the left further satirizing itself when it advocates for doling out punishments/requirements/etc based on how a group is behaving. Won't that be fun to watch? Their philosophy is the logical equivalent of dividing by zero. It gives you the power make anything mean anything.

Perhaps my previous post was incomplete. That said, I did say "death penalty" which presupposes due process and a trial IMO. If I had said "hellfired" I'd be on board with you. I don't advocate that he is summarily executed without due process. Of course he should be tried. But let's also not stretch the case either and hold any pretense about what Snowden did. He publicly admits to doing everything. I don't think you need any over-wrought A -> B -> C -> Death for Snowden logic to get there. Doing what he did amounts to treason in and of itself: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/part1/chapter115&edition=prelim Did Bradley Manning deserve the death penalty - certainly not. He's an idiot, and what he did was foolish and I believe came from a place of honest concern. What Snowden did was calculated and executed in precisely such a manner as to undermine our belief in institutions. It was done with the exact purpose to cause people who don't know any better to draw a moral equivalence between the United States and our adversaries. Citizens who think that being a superpower means we don't ever have to get our hands dirty. It's design was to exploit the average American's naiveté about the world, and it continues to do so. Also, the damage was and IS orders of magnitude greater.

"Do we have any examples that worked?" I don't know, but to answer your question with a question: would we? How would you know if there have been successful challenges to things which are otherwise classified to which they have had a moral objection to? If it resulted in a policy change or more restrictive measures put in place does that automatically de-classify what was going on? Nope. But this is a rhetorical exercise. Your question doesn't get us anywhere. To more directly answer your question, though, you address your supervisors, Congress, and perhaps someone on the outside with "generics". What you certainly don't do is take your unrestricted access, download everything you can get your hands on, flee the US, and then give a data dump to a news reporter while then taking refuge with our #1 or #2 adversary. Let me ask you this: do you really think Russia is the only place on Earth Snowden could be taking "refuge"? Really? Where does the dude in charge of Wikileaks hide out? There are numerous other nations out there that have non-extradition policies where he could hide out without perma-access to the Kremlin. Pffft. Scoff those who think he's some national hero. Look at the facts. Access to highly classified info. Stole said info. Released said info. Absconded to Russia with said info. He's playing to people's emotions and feelings that Americans shouldn't be spied on. He's using our system against us, thereby having a two-pronged effect.

Snowden is a traitor and should be given the death penalty. If it walks like a traitor, talks like a traitor, and gives secrets to the Russians like a traitor...wait for it...it's a traitor. That it was so seductive a play that it has obviously duped patriots in the military into thinking he's some sort of national hero speaks to how powerful various elements of the information war are. He played Glenn Greenwald like a fiddle, and if you don't think there is a connection between what we've witnessed happen on the world stage over the last 7-8 years and what he did, you need to get your head checked. And if you're in the military and you think that was the "proper" way to voice a concern, you shouldn't be in a position of any responsibility.

Am I the only one who is as taken aback with his statement his to Chinese counterpart that he would let him know if we were coming? WTFO? What happened to surprise and initiative???

Annoying, yes. Consistent, sure. Coherent, nope.

No way they'll give him wings! Are you high? It doesn't matter that he'll have completed all the pilot training "requirements." He'll not be an officer in good standing, and that's a major, perhaps more fundamental component.

Yeah, in our system, money-making is inherently tied to everything. That's just something we need to get over. My overall and most fundamental problem, if I could state it clearly, is the externalization of cost (consequence). This always involves three parties. Two of them are engaged in the actual transaction (healthcare / patient), the third party is a bystander, which is usually you - the taxpayer. This is ultimately why I think there should be fundamental and emergency medical care widely and instantly available, but when we get into things that are services designed to remedy the consequences of a long life of poor decisions, I fall off the wagon. Student loans (school / student) Healthcare (hospital / patient) Homelessness (CDC / renters) It's everywhere. If we could remove the third party from the transaction, we'd actually get people to put their skin back in the game (which is a decent book) and a lot of this would work itself out, since people tend to be the best judges of what risk they're willing to accept. In a lot of these cases this means pulling the government out of the equation. In some, it means keeping them involved, but changing their function.

My entire response to you was about stare decisis. I'm here to discuss ideas, not to argue with internet lawyers about who's got a bigger legal case.

You hit me with so many rhetorical questions I lost focus. I take the theme of your argument to be that trade-offs are required when presented with situations where demand exceeds supply. I agree with that. And honestly, I think trade-offs are being made in hospitals and the healthcare system all the time. Also, this was true before COVID hit (gasp!). It just so happens they were done made in insurance board rooms and on actuary spreadsheets. Perhaps we should outlaw insurance company advertising, since it takes away from the amount of care your insurance can ultimately provide. The bottom line is that no person has lived a perfect life, and doctors, nurses, and hospitals make decisions all the time regarding who gets what care. At some level, every decision you have ever made has resulted in your current health outcomes. Should a young person who voluntarily smokes weed get treatment before someone who has never imbibed anything? Because just today, we learned that among young people, smoking weed doubles your chance of having a heart attack (https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/health/cannabis-heart-attack-young-adult-study-wellness/index.html). Should someone who voluntarily consumed this substance (legally) be put in front of someone who (legally) chose not to vaccinate? These people's choices are in conflict with one another. Doctors do a pretty good job determining who the best candidates are to receive care. Other peoples' choices do affect you. This will always be true. My point is that we need to be careful about becoming too authoritarian. People can make their own choices, and they can be responsible for them. No, healthcare is not a right. If it was, as a corollary, you would have the right to force someone else into medical school. And I know you don't have that right. I don't have a contrary opinion to the decision rendered in that case. But that's only surface-level. I didn't read it and don't really care to because it ultimately doesn't matter. If your point is that you think our government can mandate whatever it wants because there's previously decided case law, that's a weak position from which to argue. And frankly, only dumb people will continue down a path, or justify continuing down a path that they know is wrong just because they started in that direction. Personally, I don't hold out all that much respect for the legal concept of "precedent" in and of itself. People get stuff wrong all the time, including those on the supreme court (newsflash), and we shouldn't be handcuffed to poorly decided cases - which let's be honest, there is plenty of in our country. Now, the motivation behind precedent is good: let's not be so arbitrary in our law-making that we lose collective faith in our laws. Flip side of that is we keep doing dumb shit - it is literally the sunk-cost fallacy permanently embedded into the foundation of our legal system. The more we build upon a rickety foundations, the more likely it is to all come crashing down. The democrats would have us believe that overturning any legal decision is a mortal sin. I think they know they've gotten lucky a few times. If you're saying that since they've already trampled your rights in the past then it's cool they continue trampling them in the future, yours isn't a world I want to live in.

What. The. Actual. Fuck. We're losing the plot. Perhaps all those musket balls should have been labelled "potentially harmful." Maybe it would have been sufficient warning to the Brits and we could have avoided a lot of akshual harm.

You live in America dude. That means there are people who are going to do things you don't like and can't control, for reasons that are wrong, and you don't agree with. Some of those things are going to have actual, real, negative consequences on you and/or people you love. As awful as that reality is, it's not an excuse to trample on people's rights. It's a reality check that you need to take care of yourself and be responsible for your actions. Note also, that if you lived under any other system, people would still be doing things you don't like or agree with. There is not a single nation on this planet that COVID isn't "ravaging." So no matter where you live or under what system you (a human) are stuck with, your experience of this situation won't be different, so try to keep perspective on that. Let's not destroy America, or lose our conception of what freedom means.

I agree with you except in regards to the framing. That's not a tenet of liberal thought. Maybe it was in terms of what would traditionally be thought of as enlightenment liberalism, but certainly not modern liberalism that we see enacted by modern democrats and the like. That tenet you cite is much more closely aligned to what modern conservatives and libertarians believe than what democrats think. And to your "catch," the imagined conflict evaporates when you actually realize the truth: that healthcare is a resource (as you put it), but your argument actually stems from an assumption that it's a right - which is a tenet of modern liberal thought.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but yes, to answer your question. Had Fauci stood up at the beginning and told everyone not to buy masks because the people who need them more than you would not be able to get them, then yeah, I would trust him more, and so would a lot of other people. For many people, trusting the government in a situation like this probably figures pretty heavily in their decision matrix. Instead, he lied to us. It was a "noble" lie, but it was a lie none-the-less. At the end of the day it's hard to trust someone who secretly thinks you're stupid, but is also simultaneously and constantly stepping all over their own dick. For me it's about not one more fucking inch. Vaccine passports in NYC? Get fucked.

Dude, Polio is significantly worse than COVID - significantly. Like, your chances of dying or being maimed by Polio do make it a non-starter. Consequences matter. And seat belts have no adverse, or potentially adverse affect on you. Vaccines do. It's not more complicated than that, so don't try to make it so. Leaving aside the fact that Sam Harris is a total pseudo-intellectual, hell yeah, the vaccine is going to diminish your symptoms and the chances you wind up in the ER substantially, so there really is no question from a risk perspective which you should do. Consideration of long-term affects are unknown for both the disease itself and the vaccine, so arguments that rest on that distinction are null. We don't know in either case, and there is no reason to think one would be worse than the other. All these numbers. A couple things. One, as precise as that "total" number looks and feels, the total number of infections is unknown and we have good reason to think it is MUCH higher - note that many infections are asymptomatic. Note that there was a recent study that found the presence of COVID antibodies to be 2x as prevalent than expected. 2X is huge. That's the denominator. For the numerator, plenty of context is missing - what % of these people had 1, 2, 3, or more underlying conditions? What percent were obese? COVID has been way more dangerous and detrimental to our politics, economy, and society than Fauci would have us believe.

Point of order. Just because they've been out of their lane for 10 years doesn't mean it's not a power grab. It is. They clicked the burner on way back then and now the temperature is being turned up. Organizations exercising authority outside of their mission statement is abusing power. Now we can argue whether or not all those things should fall under the umbrella of the CDC. Some would say yes, others (me) would say no. In fact, I think the very attempt to classify these things as "diseases" is overloading our language and is meant to be able to create an avenue to exercise power where there is no other clear means to do so. That, I would say, is the definition of "power grab."