You can see this whenever someone claims that they individually were able to climb out of poverty but know other people who, through their own stupidity or ignorance or bad luck, were not able to- and therefore less sympathy should be garnered to the whole of impoverished americans as there exists a subset that is comfortable leeching off the extremely poor social safety net that exists.
In short, a poor person egging a rich person's car would be seen as an aggressive, unprovoked action on the poor person, and the poor person should focus their efforts on being less poor instead. That the egger is focusing instead on protesting is an evidence of their screwed up priorities.
That is not "US culture". Those are the beliefs of an unfortunately sizeable minority. Even then, it is generally only directed at "the other" and is really veiled racism. Do not take the rhetoric of certain political factions at face value or as a representation of "US culture".
For instance, the values of meritocracy and self-determination are deeply ingrained in the US mythos, beginning from "All men are created equal" and "the pursuit of happiness" in the declaration of independence.
Since moving to Europe, the difference in the concept of individual credit/responsibility is one of the largest cultural differences I have felt.
Shades of Meritocracy, by Alain de Botton
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=320002...
Poverty, in the US, is a personal shame, not a systemic failure. The successful end result of centuries of propagandizing in favor of the Individual, and against organizing. We're a fractured people, to our detriment.
> You can see this whenever someone claims that they individually were able to climb out of poverty
Oh yes. Horatio Alger (0) stories are commonplace within capitalist societies. It's one of the bedtime stories we tell each other, that with enough hard work, and some luck, you will succeed... Except for that mound of people whom worked till they died. We'll just ignore them. They were, uhh, lazy, and didn't deserve to live with the fruits of their labor.
> ...but know other people who, through their own stupidity or ignorance or bad luck, were not able to- and therefore less sympathy should be garnered to the whole of impoverished americans
Yep. Nailed it. Because there's a person who with combination of hard work, community/friendship networks, and luck, was able to climb out. So everybody who isn't, is just lazy and dumb and doesn't deserve to be helped.
> as there exists a subset that is comfortable leeching off the extremely poor social safety net that exists.
I'd also argue that the very "poor social safety net" doesn't even accomplish helping people. It only maintains a very sad, horrible, brutish life. And given its tremendously regressive practices, also enforces either illegal actions OR keeps people down in poverty.
That's how you end up with dead people. It's the difference between journalism/civilised discussion and cesspools like twitter/fb threads, we should present facts, not opinions or call for violence.
No matter how fucked up these things are you don't want to lower yourself to their standards, you'll lose all grounds for discussion.
To be clear I am not advocating vigilante mobs of any sort. I would like to see these people's homes with protesters in front though.
What I'm saying is that we should be careful about how we do it, because in fine the "how" is as import as the "why". Things don't happen in a vacuum, you have to deconstruct them and get to the root causes, otherwise you're just rushing to another failed system. Let's say you manage to get the execs out, what do you think will happen ? The new ones will turn everything 180 degrees and sell drugs at loss ? No, why ? Because the whole system is tweaked for profit.
Every time health pops up on HN, the majority of Americans defend their system and criticise the European way. There is a bit of a cognitive dissonance here, people can't expect a private/for profit company to do the right thing when it comes to public health. On top of that the demographic of people who voted Trump very much intersects with the one needing cheap health care, it clearly indicates that people are voting against their own interests in term of health, that alone would hint that there is a much bigger thing going on than "greedy execs control everything".
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2016/11/19/illness-a...
But yes, I agree with the rest of what you're saying at least partially. Root causes are important, I just think there's a danger of going from that principle to never actually doing anything because we're looking for one more link in the chain and ignoring the assholes right in front of us.
The only solution that works every time is for enough of us get angry and voice that anger in concrete ways that shame and vilify those captains of industry (and henchman politicians) who blithely choose to harm other people because there's more profit in it than giving a damn.
Tell them to act in a civilised way and to not vote for Trump who clearly stated his stance on public health.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2016/11/19/illness-a...
I would also suggest asking yourself why you view protests outside of peoples houses less civilized then them condemning people to death to make a bigger profit.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
Bossnapping and other militant protest forms are well known to French protest culture and it's rare that people die there.
There is no points of comparison between the US and France when it comes to protests. LA riots, black panthers, vs may 68 and yellow jackets...
We already have dead people, friend.
This is the classic centrist liberalism argument that we have to maintain civility at all costs.
The time for civility was back when the drug companies were doing things like pushing bad legislation (that didn't directly hurt people) or the like.
The time for civility is over. People are dying because drug companies are too greedy and unregulated. The only way to get them to stop being utter vacuous wastes of oxygen is, in the long term, regulation. But in the short term? Harass the fuck out of them. I have exactly zero sympathy for the pharma execs that are profiteering off human misery.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Anything specific?
For profiteering off generic medication, I think some sort of subsidized natural monopoly producing and selling generics would work. Clearly, there isn't enough profit in the generics to make money off them without acting in a malicious anti-competitive manner, so incentivizing it otherwise must be necessary in a market system.
Alternatively, have a purely nationalized "company" that's funded by taxpayers and "sells" generics at cost. I think the value to society of cheap, readily available generics make this worth it even if it's not something that could survive in the market.
>Alternatively, have a purely nationalized "company" that's funded by taxpayers and "sells" generics at cost. I think the value to society of cheap, readily available generics make this worth it even if it's not something that could survive in the market.
Well, maybe.. I'll keep an open mind but when has the government done anything cheaply or efficiently? They will have to sub-contract at-least some parts of it out just like they do with weapons or infrastructure or other projects. Government contractors are going to milk the system with their '$100 screwdriver' invoices.
Is this the step 1 of the identity politics game ? Paint someone as X Y Z and be done ? In what world being civilised is constrained to "classic centrist liberals" ?
My point still stands. Remaining civilized at all costs in the face of incivility is as insane as trying to calmly debate someone as they are in the process of murdering you.
Honestly that would be letting them off too easy, they need to be dragged in front of a court and be made to explain their behavior to the loved ones of victims that had died from this. They also need to be sentenced to a few thousand hours of first hand volunteer work that directly deals with people impacted by this. Seeing first hand the cost of their greed might knock some sense in to these people, if that won't I'm not sure what will.
I would expect there to be a leaked list of names of the executives responsible for this, with pictures and home addresses. I would expect people protesting in front of their homes 24 hours per day. And covering their cars with rotten eggs when they went out.
That's the kind of thing that would have happened in France.