Really hitting at least one disaster in your life seems almost inevitable, and the system is waiting there to profit from you.
I'm definitely of the more socialist bent, in that I know that if people around me aren't healthy and safe, everyone is more at risk. But I feel in the minority these days.
We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer.
Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut closing 26 points of a 36 point gap by beating the streets with 500 volunteers[1], or Bernie in West Virginia going to town hall after town hall and talking to people about the very real issues that affect their lives.
We can convert the "unwinnable" "red" states if we only dare put in the effort to beat the streets and call people, have one on one interaction and talk about issues that matter. Jobs, healthcare, workers rights, when you connect to people, even if you disagree with a person about "divisive" issues, they can often feel you are out there fighting for a better future for them and their family.
So get out there, go join Wolf PAC, Our Revolution/Woke, go to a Womens Day protest, a BLM protest and fight for a better future. If we take action, we can create change!
0 - http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-...
1 - http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-i...
The US system was ok in the 18th century but now it's a relic. Some things don't age well.
Definitely we need to get rid of First Past the Post, but while our parties are polarized, they are both far to the right of the vast majority of voters.
> What if I like guns but I want universal healthcare?
That is actually fairly common. Gun control can be done in a nuanced way, and we can have more guns with few instances of gun violence esque Switzerland if we train our populace to properly secure and disarm their guns when not being actively used.
Comparatively, people like my great grandfather thought it was fine to leave a dozen or more loaded guns of varying types all throughout the house. Not great when a shotgun falls out from behind the stove and nearly gets ya.
> What if I want a smaller government but I also want great environmental policies?
Hard to do, small gov't = small town corruption if you look at areas that take this approach.
> The US system was ok in the 18th century but now it's a relic. Some things don't age well.
Definitely, we need to update our antiquated political system.
Would a law requiring guns to be safely stored (i.e. in a safe) be acceptable? I assume the gun lobby would scream at the thought, but what would the majority think?
Likewise, would a national register and limits (i.e. every serial number is bound to a person in a national registry, the number of registered weapons to an individual is limited, and carrying a weapon not in the registry is a felony) - would that be acceptable?
I think all these countries with tons of guns e.g. Switzerland, Nordics, Canada, the key is they are to a large part hunting weapons. Hunters are usually completely fine with keeping their guns, or in some cases just vital parts of each gun, in a safe. This however means you can't keep a handgun in your bedside drawer, for example. But that's no problem - no one is using guns for "protection" anyway. I think the difference to the US is that in the US people still believe in using weapons for personal protection. Not being able to carry guns outside or have them lying around the house then sort of removes the ability to use them for protection.
I consider myself a pragmatic Libertarian, so my personal political views don't really align with either of the major parties, but are definitely more conservative in terms of limited federal government than most of the rest of the world view, exceptions to essential infrastructure, which to me includes water, power, communications/internet, transportation, preserving public lands, and education (though in need of some revision). As to corrupt local governments... those are easier for local citizens, and even states to address. Of course historically that hasn't always worked out so well.
In the end, what keeps Germany from being corrupted vs. Belgium... the States in the U.S. are slightly more coupled than the EU nations, but it's not too dissimilar, discounting the same language for the most part here.
And, although it's not mandated by law, gun owners do tend to keep records on private party sales. Nobody wants to be in the situation of "we found this Glock at a crime scene, and it appears to be yours?" and not be able to provide evidence to the contrary.
So a registry doesn't really offer any real utility... except to confiscate those weapons down the road.
If you want to promote safe storage, the best solution would be a tax benefit for buying safe-storage equipment. Gun safes are expensive, at least if you want something that can't be crowbarred open in a few minutes.
Something else that I would love to see, and stealing a page from the Swiss, is universal gun education.
There are more guns than cars in the United States, and I find it negligent that not every American learn not just gun safety, but also how to safely store, handle, and yes, fire a gun -- even if they never plan on owning one.
Yes, a tax benefit seems like something you would probably need to add to a bill requiring safe storage, just to get it past lawmakers and special interest groups.
> Something else that I would love to see, and stealing a page from the Swiss, is universal gun education
That sounds like a good idea. Not sure if having it mandatory even for never-to-be gun owners is the best use of resources, but at least having it as a requirement for a license sounds reasonable - just like driving.
Being a Swede we have (and had) mandatory gun education. For men at least. Same thing in Switzerland. Conscription! (now everyone is again elgible for conscription but far from everyone will be required). So that problem is at least solved in countries with conscription armies. Obviously, neither Sweden nor Switzerland ever trained everyone in gun safety but there is mandatory training before ever using a gun at least, because the licenses require it. So owning a gun for hunting requires passing an exam, Military obviously includes a lot of training, and owning a gun for sports of personal protection is simply not a concept.
Personally, I think it would do a lot to connect Americans from different walks of life. I know a lot of people in SF that have no idea what rural California looks like, and that works the same way in the other direction.
As far as licensing goes, that's off the table for historical reasons, and also why I say that we should make gun education universal.
Pretty much every gun control law in the United States, starting after the Civil War, and up to and including California's Assault Weapons Ban and Open Carry Ban, have been primarily to limit gun rights for the poor, and for minorities. It's why the laws are so patchwork, and make so little sense.
So, given that history, public education is the most sensible way to promote responsible gun culture and firearms safety, without imposing the licensing burden that is still used today as a means of discrimination.
George Carlin puts it best, "America was founded by a group of Salve owners on the premise that all man are created equal."
My observation is that America is the land of law & order as every illegal & unethical practice becomes law. Its owned by 1% and wages war for the 1% in the pretext of spreading the seeds of democracy.
The thing that worried me the most as a non-American is that people around the world think that America is a democracy and all the "bad dudes"(corrupt self-interested 1%), gain power in America and try to impose their will on rest of the world by using Hollywood, CIA & US defence force.
What are the consequences of each of these choices and who is the right person to make them? There is no perfect voting/political system - all of them have side effects.
Worse is subjective in this arena. So what are your metrics? What do you define as better? I'm not terribly keen on prop rep, for example - I think it actually gives too much power to extreme parties. Maybe you disagree. Maybe you think it would be better? If so, why?
Notably, Brexit was caused by the small party UKIP stealing votes from the Conservatives, and then by Lib-Dem voters fleeing to Labour because they previously teamed up with the Conservatives. So a leftward shift of voters, sent the result rightward, giving the Conservatives a clear victory which meant they had to deliver a referendum that they never thought they'd have to.
Too late now to change it, but it seems likely the UK wouldn't be tearing itself apart at the moment with a better system.
lower quality of healthcare
Not overall, but arguably yes for people with perfect healthcare plans at the moment. I think that everyone having 90% "rated" healthcare is better than a split of 0%/50%/100% by wealth bracket.
Increased government spending
Yes. Absolutely - you have to tax people the money that would otherwise go to insurers and spend it as an insurer. Since the US currently spends the highest proportion of GDP on healthcare for incredibly unequal healthcare you can decide for yourself whether even big government could manage to be less efficient.
Increased chances of corruption
No.
Creating a moral hazard of not working to earn what is consumed
Sure. It's a problem when there's zero cost involved in healthcare - something many systems struggle with. Often in european countries you'll see some kind of excess/copay so people have a little "skin in the game" before using the system. The UK uses waiting lists and gateway doctors (GPs) to assess need.
Rationing of healthcare on a basis of need, rather than wealth seems smarter to me from a population basis.
There are many healthcare systems, all have trade offs. Most of the first world is unconvinced that the current American system is optimal
On the very top end of healthcare? Maybe, but countries with public healthcare aren't doing too bad on that side either. On average? The quality is insanely higher. Until budget gets cut because some dimwit thought it would be a good idea to stretch their resources thin.
>increased government spending
Covering everyone costs money, yes. But considering the amount of money that is already being invested by the US govt. into health care and the abysmally poor results it gives, it can't really be worse.
>increased chances of corruption
Very little. And it solves lobbying, doctors being paid by companies, etc. It's usually a net positive.
>creating a moral hazard of not working to earn what is consumed
Screw that. People have a right to live decently, even without earning it. That's why we made societies. That's why we keep elders alive, and not immediately send them off to the glue factory as soon as they retire, that's why we keep children and feed them and teach them until they're able to be a useful member of that society. In most sensible systems, their education is largely free too.
No. US does not have better health care indicators than other countries with similar development levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o...
> increased government spending
Maybe... But you will spend much less overall on healthcare, so it'll be a net positive for normal working Americans.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP?year_high_de...
> increased chances of corruption
Countries with better healthcare than the US also have less corruption perception. I'm not suggesting public healthcare causes that, but it certainly does not cause the opposite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
> creating a moral hazard of not working to earn what is consumed
Moral hazard "occurs when one person takes more risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks". How does this affect healthcare?
We know that a lot of diseases have a strong genetic factor, so moral hazard isn't an issue there.
Of course, behavior is also an important factor. But working insured Americans are already subject to moral hazard (since they're on a group policy, their disproportionate costs are already supported by others). Medicare and Medicaid recipients are also already subject to moral hazard.
So moral hazard will be created for uninsured people and people on an individual policy, for behavior induced health problems. If that's a deal-breaker for you, you should be against federally funded healthcare.
Would likely have cost less, reduced redundant agencies and staff, and had a chance at making things better.
While our emergency system is often at the point of creaking it at least isn't anywhere close to American levels of having to deal with what should be primary care problems. There's also the massively real hazard of what happens when you have a large proportion of the population who can't access basic healthcare, for instance a greatly increased communicable disease risk. Then there is the economic cost of people unable to work, or work as well, due to potentially treatable medical conditions or bankrupted by medical bills. On a purely economic basis there is a case for universal healthcare.
How much of this "creaking" is intentional underfunding or political meddling by politicians looking for a payday from American medical insurance companies when they ruin another nations healthcare is debatable.
It's very similar to recent Trump moves of putting people who hate what a government department does in charge of that same government department. Jeremy Hunt the former Health Secretary previously called for the NHS to be replaced with an insurance system. So how can you trust that he's not trying to achieve that goal by crippling the existing system?
The Lyft story of a driver who still takes rides while in labor wouldn't be "controversial" in Europe, it would be universally appalling. I don't think any corporate PR, however clueless, would even think of telling it.
It was never a right in the US, although it's true that Obamacare brought us closer to that ideal.
The crazy thing is that if you want one of those high paid jobs where you work all day and all night then you don't even get those first 18 years.
I worked at such a job and an easy majority of my colleagues went to universities that require high achievements at the school level.
In the best case you get your first 14 years.
A large minority of my colleagues went to secondary schools with highly competitive admissions and another minority had achievements that require a very early start (olympiads, olympics, college sports, etc.).
Many of these people started when they were between 6 and 10 years old.
This was fine in America for a long time, but
1) As colleges degenerate from being an intellectual addition, to a pre requisite for jobs well paying or not
2) several classes of jobs disappear, especially those which could be done by common sense and training
It results in posers. People who are high functioning, cynical and clear about what it takes to live a decent life.
I probably point it out a lot on HN and other places - but you see this in action in India and China (and other developing nations).
Very few people actually are interested in doing math or math derived work all the time, but if they don't society and the jobs market will be unmerciful.
So they pretend. They hate it, assume everyone else is pretending, and go through the basic motions required to get to the other side.
These are the people who are badly affected by the whole process. The ones who would not have been happy becoming engineers, lawyers or olympiads.
But that's the game, and people will always play it.
At least in the Anglosphere, elite colleges were elite finishing schools before they were tickets to middle class elite jobs. I'm not sure that they are degenerating in the way that you imply.
It's also not clear to me that academic pursuits are somehow better than commercial pursuits. They're certainly not better for society.
> Very few people actually are interested in doing math or math derived work all the time, but if they don't society and the jobs market will be unmerciful.
I feel like I know more people who are interested in doing math, but are not doing math because the job market is not kind to those who do math. Indeed I am one of those people. I do agree that I took a somewhat cynical approach.
Replacing math with CS would make more sense in the context of the conversation. There are many 18 year olds today who are saying "I guess I'll study computer science".
When I took the first semester CS course at my alma mater the class size was roughly 300 students. Now it's regularly 1200+.
I disagree -- if money was truly worshiped, why would discussing salary be taboo? I think it has more to do with things like a just-world hypothesis [0] run amok, a long-term political trend in decreasing union power, and a lack of awareness about exactly how much surplus value is being siphoned away before the average person sees any of it.
I mean, "stop worshiping money" almost feels like victim-shaming. To the extent that the average person worships it, it's because they didn't have it in the first place.
Your employer, however, is happy to keep all that money.
This is why we need unions. Because as a single person, you have absolutely zero leverage over your employer. Sadly, fear on each side is what makes the agreement work, properly.
* Applies more as you go down the chain of responsibility, or salary. Needless to say, software developers are not doing that badly in the grand scheme of things.
Perhaps worship isn't the right word- it's more akin to fetishization. The religious right does a similar thing with sex, with similar results.
A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford.
Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime.
It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).