I do not consider myself a libertarian and distrust most libertarians. I know that the only person who suffers over my decisions, if I fuck up, is me, and that matters a lot for almost every decision I make.
With regard to this *particular* thing, I am not sure if kids would change my view, as they're jabbing kids, too, and some areas are making it mandatory for school attendance. Kids can't protect themselves and a government that no longer respects bodily autonomy (with parents acting as the proxy for such for kids) is just as much a threat to kids--more, given the heart risks to young people with these shots.
The issue of either absolute libertarianism or absolute socialism is a false dichotomy. I suspect that of the very many extremely poor in India, if they suddenly woke up and found themselves in a Salvation Army homeless shelter here (just speaking in terms of standard of living) would be overwhelmed with their good fortune.
No, now that I re-read. I think the last comment of “die on this hill - but you couldn’t if you had kids” struck me as either/or, but your context was not.
The vaxx mandates not only destroyed any possibility for me of ever supporting single-payer healthcare, but it also permanently foreclosed any possibility that I would ever support Univeral Basic Income (UBI), which David Graeber and Andrew Yang had previously gotten me to think was potentially a good idea. But the people giving even more centralized control over their livelihoods to a corrupt system and the demagogues that govern it? No way.
I agree entirely. The most I will *ever* support is some kind of subsidy for re-training when it becomes clear that automation is going to kill an industry (if self-driving cars really do start to replace truck drivers, for example). That's it. And like you I thought UBI was one potential solution.
Speaking as a truck driver and a computer jock, I'm extraordinarily skeptical that autonomous vehicles are ever going to replace truck drivers, short of *true* full AI. There are simply far too many ways for truck driving to go wrong that's going to need a truly sapient pilot to deal with. And a real AI probably won't want to drive a truck any more than anyone else does. ;)
Finding out that the state will gleefully and abruptly abridge your bodily autonomy certainly sucks, but it's better than finding out AFTER they have completely taken over medicine, and you have no choices.
The Biden administration (like Trump before him) is doing us all a great service by saying many of the quiet parts out loud. We should listen, and take them seriously.
IKR?!?!? BTW, here's the best response to Biden's vax mandates in existence, as far as I can tell. She released this not long after his September 9, 2021 announcement of the mandates. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k_R3TU1q4Jg
I’ve been gluten free for years! I’m sure there are good nutritionists out there but mostly they are just likely to recommend expensive alternatives to gluten which are just as unhealthy for you. There are so many great books that a person of your intelligence level will be able to read and take action on. I truly think the time you would have spent with a nutritionist would have been wasted time. A couple that I recommend are Dave Asprey’s “Bulletproof Diet” and Dr. Paul Saladino’s “The Carnivore Code”
The Grain Brain was also an excellent informative book by a neurologist, David Perlmutter. Even has a companion cookbook of awesome recipes.
Holly, I wholly concur with Melissa. No need to shell out $$ to a nutritionist if you’re goal is to learn how to eat GF. There is loads of good info available for any discerning consumer, which clearly you are.
While one can look at Western countries that have nationalized medicine to imagine possibilities, one issue that is not typically considered, in things I’ve read, is that these Western countries have the benefit of utilizing the advances in not only “medical breakthroughs “, but the industrialized production of medical “goods” that have developed in capitalist economies. A friend of mine was a surgeon who traveled to Moscow with other docs in the early 90’s, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was shocked to see the primitive level of hospital care there. He said it was just like Kenya. One small for instance: needles were re-used because they lacked the industrial technology to mass produce them. If the Soviet Union still operated as it did then, their poor may have access to similar dental healthcare as the more affluent, meaning they may be able to get extractions, but replacements? Hardly. I’m certainly not of the “let them eat cake” mindset, just saying it’s complex. And I know your issue was freedom versus surrender to the machine (on which I couldn’t agree more), but I do also believe that the poor here have, for the most part, higher standards of living than the average person in very many areas in the world.
This is absolutely true. Ask anyone who left the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
It reminds me of the people who say "Hunter gatherers are happier and healthier." That's because they don't see the horrible childhood mortality or the fact that an unhealthy HG just dies quickly
Thanks to living and working in half a dozen countries, I have experienced a variety of healthcare options. The best (of the ones I've experienced) were France and Japan where the government regulates some of the prices - of both consultations and drugs - and is one of the insurance providers (the medicare etc. equivalent) but where you the patient get to choose what doctors you want to see and there's no BS about being "in network" or whatever.
The UK which has the government funded and run NHS as the mostly exclusive provider for everyone to use for free (mostly) is horrible. Because it is free to the patient it is rationed by queuing. Which means any number of diseases get worse before treatment can be started (and lets not go int the whole Covidiocy cancel routine screenings thing). And it is hard and expensive to go around. Hard because most medical providers are tied into the NHS - this includes BTW the university medical schools who are capped at the number of doctors they can train and that number is less than the number needed (far less now that doctors are majority female and female doctors tend to take years off for maternity which male doctors do not).
I know people who have had good experiences with the NHS, but I know plenty - including arguably my mother when she died - who haven't.
The root reason why the NHS doesn't work is similar to the reason why US healthcare doesn't work, the incentives are all screwed up. Friedman talked about how we treat our own money vs other people's money and how we spend stuff on ourselves vs how we spend on others (see https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-four-different-ways-to-spend-money-by-milton-friedman/ ) Both the NHS and the US insurance are financed by people spending other people's money on other people. That immediately screws things up. Then the patients (who are also the voters) get upset and insist government does something and, as we all know, government solutions are simply ways to cause more problems. So the voters complain about the new problems ... lather, rinse, repeat. This is particularly true in both countries because the politicians and senior bureaucrats etc. do not get to experience the healthcare offered to the poor because their version is different.
'Can confirm - being a zebra suuuucks. It took me years (and no small degree of tenacity) to finally get my autoimmune condition correctly diagnosed as an adult, nevermind getting it treated.
"I’ve found my hill worth dying on. The grass is nice and green, and I’m not budging."
I consider having control over my own body the yin to the yang of having control over my own mind so I came to the same conclusion myself a while back. What freedom does a pet fish have if someone else is free to crack and drain its tank at will while calling it mercy or care? None.
"...memories of the people I grew up around, nearly all of whom were missing teeth, keep coming to my mind. I don’t look like them anymore. Will I always feel like I’m still one of them?
Will the trailer park ever be fully purged from my mind?"
You know...perhaps this is TMI or maybe even triggering (feel free to let me know if it is) but this prompted a personal connection for me that I don't believe I've considered before. My father also grew up in a trailer park and he's what I believe many call a "class climber". According to every dentist I’ve ever met I have "good genetics" when it comes to teeth...but apparently that can mean “too many teeth in a small mouth that will never fit them all”. A great deal of my memories from "home" involve being in and out of dentist/orthodontist offices.
For up to a week after every braces tightening, tooth pull or other procedure I got to hear almost everyday from my father how: “I was wearing his bass boat on my teeth" and that I "owed him big time" sometimes while still in pain or numbed. This was also sometimes done in front of other visiting family. I'd awkwardly laugh off his "jokes" from ages 9-16 while forming a (on loan, apparently🙄) smile.
I also remember getting shots of novocaine directly into my gums especially hurt - I hope that the current technology for your root canals' offered some sort of alternative to that, especially at $1,300 a pop!
Thank you. As retirees with special genetic health issues I can tell you how frustrating it is to have paid into Medicare all our working lives, only to have Medicaid coverages rise as Medicare is cut. I can't go on an advantage plan because of my specific needs, so we have to pay extra premiums to get the coverage we need. And, we have no dental because that coverage would cost even more! They borrowed from SS and Medicare and haven't paid it back and now claim both will be insolvent by 2030? It wouldn't be if they'd left the money there where it could grow instead of being ransacked! Anything the government is in charge of is ripe for failure, higher costs and confusion. The Federal Government needs to back out of most of what it does! I have no use for government outside of it providing for defense, trade, currency, making laws, court to obtain justice, etc. Their reach has become far too wide and their hands far too deep in our pockets.
SS and Medicare were always a Ponzi scheme doomed to failure. What else could anyone expect with people paying in at 1970s wage rates and contribution percentages, and withdrawing at 2020s costs, from a smaller pool of payers, for people who are living longer. There has never been anything to "borrow from" or "pay back", it's always used the incoming money to pay the benefits of retirees. It worked for the "Greatest Generation" because they had the Baby Boomers to prop it up, and it's worked for the Boomers for this long because the feds have three generations under them to pull funds from, but the thing about pyramid schemes is they have to be pyramid shaped and the Boomers and Gen X had far fewer kids, which means the bottom of that pyramid is sitting on top of a narrow column. Of course it's going to fall over.
We didn't just pay in the 70s! We payed from 1970-2021. Yes, it's a pyramid scheme, but it's not our fault. If the Fed. Gov. cared they would encourage people to save instead of taxing them to death for trying to save. Most people I knew in the 50s, 70s and so on had 1-3 kids, so I don't know who you're talking about. I don't care what snopes or wikipedia or you say about SS. There was money and it was moved to the general fund where Congress could take and use it. I was there when it happened. The government wouldn't have a problem taking care of Seniors if they quit sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, or quit funding studies to find out why some fly moved from one area to another, etc. They have more money than they need, they just need to quit bowing down to special interests and quit going to war where we're not threatened...
Dad grew up desperately poor, born in 1937 in very rural NW Louisiana. They were so poor they share-cropped for a very successful black farmer. He retired a number of years ago as vice chancellor of one of the largest land grant universities in the country.
Your past may influence you, but the greatest power known to mankind is the freedom to choose, and you have chosen wisely for a young whippersnapper. You give every indication you will continue to exercise that power with wisdom for the rest of your life.
Like my dad, at some point you decided "there must be something better out there," and you chased it down until you found it. In so doing, you obliterated your past.
Yeah, I have a molar that needs removal and replacing. I went to a place that did the scan for free (and man was that tool a nerd's paradise) and gave me a solid, out the door price of $5500 for everything. So, yeah, that's pricey, but still less than I was quoted before. But there's way more about the healthcare system in this country to look into versus "universal or not". We (as a country) have allowed *far* too much cartelization there. I'd love to see a *truly* free-market system first, before we go the way of other places that have a centralized, government healthcare system.
I'm 100% with you on your reasoning and conclusion. I want to shed some light from a different direction as well.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison
This applies to healthcare too.
If men were angles: Overwhelmingly, the attitudes and skills that would lead one to responsibly treat their body and responsibly utilize a public healthcare system also lead one to be able to provide for themselves. Flawed as it might be, our system still works in this regard.
If we were governed by angles: Our system would have excellent metrics by which the nominal person who genuinely fell on hard times would be accommodated but also those who suck down surged soda and have terribly hygiene would not get the expensive procedure. There would be a backstop for emergency care for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune but those driving recklessly on a motorcycle without a private insurance rider would be wished well and given morphine if they crash.
I do not consider myself a libertarian and distrust most libertarians. I know that the only person who suffers over my decisions, if I fuck up, is me, and that matters a lot for almost every decision I make.
With regard to this *particular* thing, I am not sure if kids would change my view, as they're jabbing kids, too, and some areas are making it mandatory for school attendance. Kids can't protect themselves and a government that no longer respects bodily autonomy (with parents acting as the proxy for such for kids) is just as much a threat to kids--more, given the heart risks to young people with these shots.
The issue of either absolute libertarianism or absolute socialism is a false dichotomy. I suspect that of the very many extremely poor in India, if they suddenly woke up and found themselves in a Salvation Army homeless shelter here (just speaking in terms of standard of living) would be overwhelmed with their good fortune.
No, now that I re-read. I think the last comment of “die on this hill - but you couldn’t if you had kids” struck me as either/or, but your context was not.
The vaxx mandates not only destroyed any possibility for me of ever supporting single-payer healthcare, but it also permanently foreclosed any possibility that I would ever support Univeral Basic Income (UBI), which David Graeber and Andrew Yang had previously gotten me to think was potentially a good idea. But the people giving even more centralized control over their livelihoods to a corrupt system and the demagogues that govern it? No way.
I agree entirely. The most I will *ever* support is some kind of subsidy for re-training when it becomes clear that automation is going to kill an industry (if self-driving cars really do start to replace truck drivers, for example). That's it. And like you I thought UBI was one potential solution.
Speaking as a truck driver and a computer jock, I'm extraordinarily skeptical that autonomous vehicles are ever going to replace truck drivers, short of *true* full AI. There are simply far too many ways for truck driving to go wrong that's going to need a truly sapient pilot to deal with. And a real AI probably won't want to drive a truck any more than anyone else does. ;)
Finding out that the state will gleefully and abruptly abridge your bodily autonomy certainly sucks, but it's better than finding out AFTER they have completely taken over medicine, and you have no choices.
The Biden administration (like Trump before him) is doing us all a great service by saying many of the quiet parts out loud. We should listen, and take them seriously.
IKR?!?!? BTW, here's the best response to Biden's vax mandates in existence, as far as I can tell. She released this not long after his September 9, 2021 announcement of the mandates. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k_R3TU1q4Jg
haha this is great. I remember seeing it when it first came out. About sums up my mental space for the past 3 years...
Loved this! I thought the same thing when I heard him give the speech. Ugh!
lolol that was hilarious
I’ve been gluten free for years! I’m sure there are good nutritionists out there but mostly they are just likely to recommend expensive alternatives to gluten which are just as unhealthy for you. There are so many great books that a person of your intelligence level will be able to read and take action on. I truly think the time you would have spent with a nutritionist would have been wasted time. A couple that I recommend are Dave Asprey’s “Bulletproof Diet” and Dr. Paul Saladino’s “The Carnivore Code”
Thank you!! I will check them out.
The Grain Brain was also an excellent informative book by a neurologist, David Perlmutter. Even has a companion cookbook of awesome recipes.
Holly, I wholly concur with Melissa. No need to shell out $$ to a nutritionist if you’re goal is to learn how to eat GF. There is loads of good info available for any discerning consumer, which clearly you are.
Or fake cheese if one has a dairy intolerance. No thanks!
A number of people I know have found einkorn wheat to be a good alternative to regular stuff in many ways.
While one can look at Western countries that have nationalized medicine to imagine possibilities, one issue that is not typically considered, in things I’ve read, is that these Western countries have the benefit of utilizing the advances in not only “medical breakthroughs “, but the industrialized production of medical “goods” that have developed in capitalist economies. A friend of mine was a surgeon who traveled to Moscow with other docs in the early 90’s, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was shocked to see the primitive level of hospital care there. He said it was just like Kenya. One small for instance: needles were re-used because they lacked the industrial technology to mass produce them. If the Soviet Union still operated as it did then, their poor may have access to similar dental healthcare as the more affluent, meaning they may be able to get extractions, but replacements? Hardly. I’m certainly not of the “let them eat cake” mindset, just saying it’s complex. And I know your issue was freedom versus surrender to the machine (on which I couldn’t agree more), but I do also believe that the poor here have, for the most part, higher standards of living than the average person in very many areas in the world.
This is absolutely true. Ask anyone who left the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
It reminds me of the people who say "Hunter gatherers are happier and healthier." That's because they don't see the horrible childhood mortality or the fact that an unhealthy HG just dies quickly
Thanks to living and working in half a dozen countries, I have experienced a variety of healthcare options. The best (of the ones I've experienced) were France and Japan where the government regulates some of the prices - of both consultations and drugs - and is one of the insurance providers (the medicare etc. equivalent) but where you the patient get to choose what doctors you want to see and there's no BS about being "in network" or whatever.
The UK which has the government funded and run NHS as the mostly exclusive provider for everyone to use for free (mostly) is horrible. Because it is free to the patient it is rationed by queuing. Which means any number of diseases get worse before treatment can be started (and lets not go int the whole Covidiocy cancel routine screenings thing). And it is hard and expensive to go around. Hard because most medical providers are tied into the NHS - this includes BTW the university medical schools who are capped at the number of doctors they can train and that number is less than the number needed (far less now that doctors are majority female and female doctors tend to take years off for maternity which male doctors do not).
I know people who have had good experiences with the NHS, but I know plenty - including arguably my mother when she died - who haven't.
The root reason why the NHS doesn't work is similar to the reason why US healthcare doesn't work, the incentives are all screwed up. Friedman talked about how we treat our own money vs other people's money and how we spend stuff on ourselves vs how we spend on others (see https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-four-different-ways-to-spend-money-by-milton-friedman/ ) Both the NHS and the US insurance are financed by people spending other people's money on other people. That immediately screws things up. Then the patients (who are also the voters) get upset and insist government does something and, as we all know, government solutions are simply ways to cause more problems. So the voters complain about the new problems ... lather, rinse, repeat. This is particularly true in both countries because the politicians and senior bureaucrats etc. do not get to experience the healthcare offered to the poor because their version is different.
'Can confirm - being a zebra suuuucks. It took me years (and no small degree of tenacity) to finally get my autoimmune condition correctly diagnosed as an adult, nevermind getting it treated.
"I’ve found my hill worth dying on. The grass is nice and green, and I’m not budging."
I consider having control over my own body the yin to the yang of having control over my own mind so I came to the same conclusion myself a while back. What freedom does a pet fish have if someone else is free to crack and drain its tank at will while calling it mercy or care? None.
"...memories of the people I grew up around, nearly all of whom were missing teeth, keep coming to my mind. I don’t look like them anymore. Will I always feel like I’m still one of them?
Will the trailer park ever be fully purged from my mind?"
You know...perhaps this is TMI or maybe even triggering (feel free to let me know if it is) but this prompted a personal connection for me that I don't believe I've considered before. My father also grew up in a trailer park and he's what I believe many call a "class climber". According to every dentist I’ve ever met I have "good genetics" when it comes to teeth...but apparently that can mean “too many teeth in a small mouth that will never fit them all”. A great deal of my memories from "home" involve being in and out of dentist/orthodontist offices.
For up to a week after every braces tightening, tooth pull or other procedure I got to hear almost everyday from my father how: “I was wearing his bass boat on my teeth" and that I "owed him big time" sometimes while still in pain or numbed. This was also sometimes done in front of other visiting family. I'd awkwardly laugh off his "jokes" from ages 9-16 while forming a (on loan, apparently🙄) smile.
I also remember getting shots of novocaine directly into my gums especially hurt - I hope that the current technology for your root canals' offered some sort of alternative to that, especially at $1,300 a pop!
Thank you. As retirees with special genetic health issues I can tell you how frustrating it is to have paid into Medicare all our working lives, only to have Medicaid coverages rise as Medicare is cut. I can't go on an advantage plan because of my specific needs, so we have to pay extra premiums to get the coverage we need. And, we have no dental because that coverage would cost even more! They borrowed from SS and Medicare and haven't paid it back and now claim both will be insolvent by 2030? It wouldn't be if they'd left the money there where it could grow instead of being ransacked! Anything the government is in charge of is ripe for failure, higher costs and confusion. The Federal Government needs to back out of most of what it does! I have no use for government outside of it providing for defense, trade, currency, making laws, court to obtain justice, etc. Their reach has become far too wide and their hands far too deep in our pockets.
SS and Medicare were always a Ponzi scheme doomed to failure. What else could anyone expect with people paying in at 1970s wage rates and contribution percentages, and withdrawing at 2020s costs, from a smaller pool of payers, for people who are living longer. There has never been anything to "borrow from" or "pay back", it's always used the incoming money to pay the benefits of retirees. It worked for the "Greatest Generation" because they had the Baby Boomers to prop it up, and it's worked for the Boomers for this long because the feds have three generations under them to pull funds from, but the thing about pyramid schemes is they have to be pyramid shaped and the Boomers and Gen X had far fewer kids, which means the bottom of that pyramid is sitting on top of a narrow column. Of course it's going to fall over.
We didn't just pay in the 70s! We payed from 1970-2021. Yes, it's a pyramid scheme, but it's not our fault. If the Fed. Gov. cared they would encourage people to save instead of taxing them to death for trying to save. Most people I knew in the 50s, 70s and so on had 1-3 kids, so I don't know who you're talking about. I don't care what snopes or wikipedia or you say about SS. There was money and it was moved to the general fund where Congress could take and use it. I was there when it happened. The government wouldn't have a problem taking care of Seniors if they quit sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, or quit funding studies to find out why some fly moved from one area to another, etc. They have more money than they need, they just need to quit bowing down to special interests and quit going to war where we're not threatened...
Your choices define you, not your past.
Dad grew up desperately poor, born in 1937 in very rural NW Louisiana. They were so poor they share-cropped for a very successful black farmer. He retired a number of years ago as vice chancellor of one of the largest land grant universities in the country.
Your past may influence you, but the greatest power known to mankind is the freedom to choose, and you have chosen wisely for a young whippersnapper. You give every indication you will continue to exercise that power with wisdom for the rest of your life.
Like my dad, at some point you decided "there must be something better out there," and you chased it down until you found it. In so doing, you obliterated your past.
Medical tourism, if you can afford it for a lot of things is a blessing. Mexico's private doctors are no. b.s.
Yeah, I have a molar that needs removal and replacing. I went to a place that did the scan for free (and man was that tool a nerd's paradise) and gave me a solid, out the door price of $5500 for everything. So, yeah, that's pricey, but still less than I was quoted before. But there's way more about the healthcare system in this country to look into versus "universal or not". We (as a country) have allowed *far* too much cartelization there. I'd love to see a *truly* free-market system first, before we go the way of other places that have a centralized, government healthcare system.
I'm 100% with you on your reasoning and conclusion. I want to shed some light from a different direction as well.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison
This applies to healthcare too.
If men were angles: Overwhelmingly, the attitudes and skills that would lead one to responsibly treat their body and responsibly utilize a public healthcare system also lead one to be able to provide for themselves. Flawed as it might be, our system still works in this regard.
If we were governed by angles: Our system would have excellent metrics by which the nominal person who genuinely fell on hard times would be accommodated but also those who suck down surged soda and have terribly hygiene would not get the expensive procedure. There would be a backstop for emergency care for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune but those driving recklessly on a motorcycle without a private insurance rider would be wished well and given morphine if they crash.