You refer several times to argument and debate but you're tilting at windmills. The OP didn't make an argument. The closest thing is "Such is the state of medicine for profit, I guess." which is more of a resigned, bitter observation than overt indictment of capitalism.
If you want to use that as a prompt to say why no other funding model is better, then ok fine. But there are polite ways to do it which acknowledge the legitimacy of the person's feelings.
What's different about my comments is that they address things actually in the text and are in the spirit of bystander intervention and setting the tone of the commons.
I’ll pose an argument to the rationalist crowd that I feel likes to think and feed deeply off these types of discussions:
say I’m destined to create the cure for cancer or bring about the singularity or whatever. I’m not, but let’s say I was. And I fall and hit my head one day and die because some billionaire decided that my condition wasn’t worth investing a miniscule fractional percentage of his wealth.
would that be wasteful?
Being sick doesn't make a person free of possibly feeling entitled or coming to unreasonable conclusions, nor does it make it wrong to question their feelings. I did so fairly politely. In my comment above, I was honestly asking for them to clarify who they think is worth being angry at, and why. I also explained reasonable reasons for why it's misdirected to claim as unfair a very general thing that's removed from you specifically only because it hasn't yet gotten around to creating relief for a problem you have, in a complex world full of problems that can't all be solved all at once or in just the way any one person desires.
This is a reality that all of us live with, so how the hell is it insulting if someone points it out?
>The parent didn't go on a screed and rage at the world. They didn't try to claim their anger is righteous. And they certainly didn't ask you to play two bit therapist
No, but they commented about their problem in a comment thread where people comment back and debate randomly. I don't give shit one about being anyone's therapist, but if you mention something personal, in a comment thread of all things, expect the possibility of someone responding with questions or opinion, like you yourself are doing. Should I feel insulted too?
I too have a long-term, very tedious and problematic health condition I need to deal with day by day, and it has no real medical remedy yet. I try to temper my frustration though. I understand that some things just aren't easy to fix.