Off-Topic:

[zodiac44]

So, you think the current system sucks but you oppose any attempt to fix it? That just confuses me.
I'm aware that the reform is sub-optimal, but at this point it can't be any worse than what we already have and I just want the government to pass the fucking thing so we can get on to other orders of business.

Allow me to clarify then: I hate the current system, and I think the government's reform attempt will be even worse.

The only reason I wanted a public option was to kill the current health insurrance bussiness and get us to a full govt. run health insurance system.  The thing is that the govt. has shown that it can run a health insurance system fairly well see medicare.  Yes it has a few issues.  Mainly the strain of all the baby boombers and the rising cost of medication.

If you look at the numbers behind things, you will find that Medicare/Medicaid are responsible for roughly 50% of the cost increases in health care over the past 20 years.  That doesn't sound like competent management to me.
 

The issue with the tennesse valley project was an issue the special interest behind the creation of the project. Kind of like what is happing with the health insurance reform bill.

The special interest behind the project was FDR's desire to turn the electric utilities industry into a government run business, disguising his attempt by claiming the power industry wasn't expanding fast enough in the South so the government needed to step in.  The Forgotten Man is an excellent history of the era, covering Hoover's and FDR's blunders during the depression - blunders that are hailed today as successes, and are being repeated before our eyes, with the same disastrous consequences.
 

I want to make the distinction clear between health care and health insurance.  Health care is what you get when you go the doctor.  Health insurance pays for this care.

In a single payer system, ultimately, the government will get to call all the shots.  It becomes nearly irrelevant that the health care system is private if all costs are paid by the government.

One of the biggest problems in the health care system today is the disconnect between health care costs to consumers and the total cost of care.  When on insurance plans, health care costs are smoothed out over time, so the perception is that payment for health care is constant regardless of the care received.  Thus consumers have no particular reason to practice preventative medicine, which is a small fraction of the cost of treatment after the fact.  Switching to a single payer system will only exacerbate the problem.

If given absolute dictatorial powers today, I would abolish the health insurance industry and introduce health savings plans, with tax incentives to pay into the plans and a promotional campaign to advocate for preventative medicine and health conscious living.

[letmein]

Allow me to clarify then: I hate the current system, and I think the government's reform attempt will be even worse.

I buy that.  Sad, but true.


My personal view is that governments suck at virtually everything.  They're inefficient, wasteful, full of glory-hounds and corrupt bastards, slow, and incompetent.  Thus, they should be used sparingly, and for things you can afford to suck at/be very wasteful at.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but most of those revert back to crap with time.

Now, some people would claim that democratic government is better than the rest at doing stuff.  To me, it's the opposite; what idiot ever claimed that letting the people decide things was a good idea?  The people that become bureaucrats in such a system are even worse glory-hounds, attuned to being popular, and competence is left at the wayside in exchange for dubiously useful charisma (example:  Obama).  Democracies are even slower, even more wasteful, and even more incompetent.  Thus, these governments trend to the "throw lots and lots of someone else's money at the problem" method of problem solving, which has many obvious faults - but usually manages to get the job done, even if it destroys the country doing it (somewhat less radical example:  the space program, which involved a terrifying amount of S.E's $ for, in the end, very little practical results).

[hewhoispale]

Now, some people would claim that democratic government is better than the rest at doing stuff.  To me, it's the opposite; what idiot ever claimed that letting the people decide things was a good idea?  The people that become bureaucrats in such a system are even worse glory-hounds, attuned to being popular, and competence is left at the wayside in exchange for dubiously useful charisma (example:  Obama).  Democracies are even slower, even more wasteful, and even more incompetent.  Thus, these governments trend to the "throw lots and lots of someone else's money at the problem" method of problem solving, which has many obvious faults - but usually manages to get the job done, even if it destroys the country doing it (somewhat less radical example:  the space program, which involved a terrifying amount of S.E's $ for, in the end, very little practical results).

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Democracies aren't supposed to be efficient, they're supposed to be less prone to corruption and abuse than dictatorships. Which are really the only two options, either you have elected officials/the people or you have one guy with a divine and/or military mandate making the decisions.
Also the space program is science. You do science for it's own sake and you see were it takes you. If we only did science when the outcome was known and practical we wouldn't have penicillin or x-rays or a host of other things.

[Zeus]

Politikal Discuss SUX! it makes best friends to worst Enemy... ^^''

[Solo761]

I wouldn't say that space program had very little practical results. Directly, yes, moon rocks, while interesting from geological point of view, aren't all that useful. But a lot of things we now take for granted came from research that was done for space program.

[delta224]

Zodiac what numbers, because I don't believe that 50% of the increase is due to medicare.  Our over use of medical services, paper work,lake of preventive care and such.  As for everything else I do agree pretty much, except for the comment on the space program.  They are making gains, just nothing that the public sees as gains.  Lets put it this way modern communications would not be possible without the space program and putting all those comm satellites into orbit, and making sure that they can work for a long time. 

Once I figure out how zodiac or whoever came up with the 50% it will let it go.

[Alugere]

A large amount of items were developed by nasa. Probably the most obvious would be foam matresses. The material used there was originally developed for nasa. Also, there are a significant number of experiments that require low gravity conditions. Also, if you don't like nasa, how about we get rid of all of our satilites and thus shut down all communication between the Americas and the rest of the world. Not to mention, most tv would go away. Also:

Earth won't last forever. Period. End of statement.

At the rate things are going, it may become impossible to reach space and thus advance our ability to go there and go to other planets within the next century as the world's oil supplies run dry. Simply put, the space program is do or die. Once we lose the ability to go to other worlds or to asteroids in order to keep parasitically drawing on resources, we'll collapse back into a pre-industrial revolution society.

[DocClox]

There's something that always bothers me about the "governments always suck" line of debate:

The argument generally goes that government is is prone to corruption, which means that well meaning legislation inevitably gets perverted so that ends up channelling public funds into corporate accounts without any benefit to the taxpayer.

But then, since (we are told) this is an inevitable flaw of government, the proposed solution is inevitably to leave whatever the problem may be to the corporate sector who just a paragraph ago were hell-bent on corrupting the government in the first place.

That seems odd to me. If it was the police force that was inefficient or corrupt, you would hardly propose to give police powers to criminals. Yet it appears to me that this is exactly the strategy that free market libertarians propose time after time.

[The Alpacalypse]

@DocClox:

Agreed.  No reason to believe a corporate-run bureaucracy would be any better than a government-run one.

[/one liner]

ETA:  Shit, while I'm posting, may as well ask this: anyone know of a good, free-to-upload uploading site where I don't need to sign up?  Made a few girls, and I'd like to share them, but I don't have any accounts with any filesharing sites, nor money to join one.

[letmein]

Oh, I'm not a fan of the corporate sector either.  I'm not saying there's an easy solution.  In any case, I'm not going to get caught up in an argument on any of this; I was simply tossing in my two cents.  A way to burn time while I wait for our programming buddies to get to the point where I can start bug-testing.

[Zeus]

Alpa : Try Mediafire, its a good site with no time wait for free user, the most in here use it ^^

[delta224]

You do have to sign up for a mediafire account, but they have a free account up to a certain limit of space.

[Solo761]

I think most filehosting sites have free account. Only premium one (one that gives you unlimited, or less limited, DL is what you pay for).


Funny thing about corporations, yesterday I had similar chat with my friend. What I concluded was that since corporations "came to power" there wasn't any real progress technology wise. Everything we have now is just another flavor of same old story. Power and engines would be most obvious examples. There was steam engine, then came internal combustion engine. Corporations came to power while internal combustion engine was in use, and that was it. Nothing really new arrived.

Maybe someone will say "what about electric motors", well, they're not exactly free of "old ties". When we'll be able to produce electricity for all our needs without fossil fuels then yes, but until that... If I remember correctly electrical cars are almost like regular cars in the sense of pollution. Sure, there's no smog, gas or smoke behind them. But it's simply elsewhere, that electricity that powers them comes from power plants that also pollute.

[letmein]

See, now *that*, to me, is a very hard position to defend.  I don't have the time ATM to name specifics, but perhaps someone else will until I can get around to it? 

[The Alpacalypse]

As an aside to the off-topic thread (Going off-topic in an off-topic thread?  Whodathunkit?), mediafire was being a bit of an asswipe, but I managed to rein in its horseshit, and have successfully (I think) uploaded my pack.  Any problems, let me know (as opposed to Steve.  He won't know *what* to do).  Oh, file is in the obviously-named thread in the User Mods section.  Have fun