Anonymous #1 1d

How about iq tests for voting eligibility

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

How to turn every state blue

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Anonymous #2 1d

I’ve beat the electoral college thing to death lately universal healthcare seems to deny the reality we live in scarcity, you need to incentivize creation and research and development, keep pressure on prices downward, gotta keep in mind there’s only so much medicine, having the government ration it on a national level is a bad idea

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Anonymous #1 1d

Yikes no that would not be the case Maybe only true in trumps elections Also college education does not equal iq

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

IQ strongly correlates with education

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Okay well I haven’t been on here “lately” so no copouts. We do live in scarcity, but especially with regard to things like healthcare, it is artificial. I don’t know where you got the idea that universal healthcare means no innovation, can’t drive down prices, and “makes the government ration it on a national level”

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Gee it’s a good thing every single other developed country doesn’t exist or else this would be a dumb argument

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Anonymous #1 1d

Or, in practice, mean that people with disabilities and Black people don’t get to vote, we’ve done this shit before

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Anonymous #2 1d

Sorry we only have 3 insulins apparently which is why it needs to cost so much money that people die

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Anonymous #4 1d

Yikes joker might be the smartest one here

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Anonymous #3 1d

Oh shit yeah my bad it’s definitely not like the people who made the process were like “wow this is really cheap and easy no one should gatekeep this”

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Anonymous #1 1d

Also depends if it’s retroactive, like if we had iq tests for voting, there is no Obama or Trump

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Anonymous #2 1d

Pretty clear that the south and southwest are non competitive, the northeast stays the same, the west stays the same, rust belt stays the battleground

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Anonymous #3 1d

ugh you only know social media talking points

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Anonymous #3 1d

I doubt your ability to understand how those country’s systems function You couldn’t articulate how they operate of you tried

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Ah my favorite counterpoint, “I think you got this from social media so your argument is invalid somehow”

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Anonymous #2 1d

Understood, I’m not trying to copout Well how do you think it plays out in America, it would have to be implemented nationally, with pretty extreme market supply shocks How is there artificial scarcity in healthcare ??? Maybe in the actual drugs, that could be fixed

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

You have yet to substantively respond to me bud Also, *if and *countries’

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Anonymous #2 1d

Not inherently, but I don’t think the copy-paste approach is a good sign when having to explain the same things constantly

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

Come on you can do better

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

There is artificial scarcity because contraction of supply means higher demand, which means higher prices. Supply and demand. The profit motive. Ya know?

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Anonymous #2 1d

👍

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

He’s not wrong, hate to break it to you but this is kinda a Malthusian argument that you’re making

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Ah, calling someone else stupid instead of making an argument. Truly a sign of an informed opinion.

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Anonymous #2 1d

Why would you say that

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Anonymous #3 1d

What argument would you like me to make Do you promise to understand it?

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

nationalize the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. this would never happen because both parties are lobbied in favor of allowing healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceutical corporations to artificially inflate the costs of their respective industries

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Jesus Christ take the fedora off.

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Anonymous #2 1d

How does a contraction of supply mean higher demand

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

and the electoral college is shit, though i think people are deluded if they think that a multitude of capitalist parties would somehow be better in a more proportional model. the coalition governments in Europe are also notoriously stagnant and rife with disparity, albeit less than here

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Anonymous #3 1d

What about my overalls

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Just fuckin explain why you think America is different from every single other developed country and that’s why we need this godawful healthcare system. Or keep with the smug centrist schtick. Doesn’t really matter to me.

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Anonymous #4 1d

Joker’s a smug weird motherfucker but he at least sometimes has good takes

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

like plurality is ass, but proportionality can be too. what if parties weren’t the primary focus of elections, but policies instead. perhaps we do away with parties in favor of one that actually represents the vast majority of the population

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

What would nationalizing them accomplish

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

The scarcity, again, is artificial, because that’s market logic. Malthus predicted levels of scarcity that would result in disaster, only to be proven wrong time and time again as people innovated and worked around. We don’t even have the actual scarcity in that scenario, the “Malthusian” conditions here are imposed, but people still support this privatized system that results in sky high prices

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

curbing the primary generators of cost in all industries, the private ownership bit, but nationalization is a temporary fix. the economic system lends itself to boom and bust periods, periods of welfare and then austerity

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Technically on its own I suppose it doesn’t in a field with inelastic demand, but lowering supply with the same demand does raise and has raised prices

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Anonymous #2 1d

We do not have a privatized healthcare system I am not sure you are using the terms scarcity and Malthusian accurately

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

Oh we don’t? What do we have then?

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

that’s news to me, and the federal government

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Anonymous #3 1d

I don’t like our current healthcare system I’m not a centrist I find that developed countries have a bad habit of doing the following: ) buying medicine not at market prices, which is bad ) providing as much cheap medicine as possible to keep most people fairly satisfied with basic care ) ration care that eliminates high end options Americans have access to ) sending people fake bills for $0 so they think it’s free ) calling all this “universal healthcare”

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

I mean seems pretty clear that’s a mixed healthcare system with public and private markets trying to coexist on both the supply and demand side with bloated insurance companies stretching into every level

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

“Providing as much cheap medicine as possible” And you’re…against that????

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Anonymous #2 1d

A mixed system. How in the world can you have Medicare and Medicaid and think we have a privatized healthcare system. The market for TVs is private. Not healthcare. If there was a government program making cheap TVs for poor people it would not be a nationally privatized tv market.

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

the public hospitals are VA hospitals. 85% of American hospitals are privately owned. the overwhelming majority of Americans do not have access to VA hospitals, so upwards of 90% of us are forced to finance (not pay for) private healthcare

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

and there you’re recognizing that the “bloat” is the origin point of that scarcity. it is artificial because it is solely driven up by the industries private ownership and necessity to turn a profit

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Anonymous enemyofmyenemy 1d

So. Your argument. Is that it’s not a privatized healthcare system if most of it is private but there’s SOME government assistance? Does that mean that subsidies in industries make those industries not private? Or that because the government owns the national parks tourism in this country isn’t a private industry?

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

but the rate of profit, because of constant reinvestment of capital and the increasing costs of production (BLOAT), has a tendency to fall over time. this is a product of capitalist ownership of production, and production being driven by capital reproduction and profitability

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

Ooh watch out he’ll say you’re stupid now for saying a thing that Marx said because something something Marx bad

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Anonymous #3 1d

It’s an issue of scale. The most efficient way to get Advil to my aunt is for me to give it to her directly. Once I have to give 10 million people Advil it becomes a lot harder. There’s 350 million people in the country. Providing cheap medicine is not inherently bad, outside of a vacuum you have to consider a lot of other factors. In public policy, you are incapable of giving everyone everything they want. You have to decide what you’re going to prioritize.

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Anonymous #3 1d

One of the best things of other countries’ systems is things like cheap insulin, which makes how we handle cheap non-over the counter medicine look insane. But that’s just one part of healthcare. They are choosing that because it’s an easy “fix” Eventually you’re going to have to produce other things, deal with shortages, see how it affects the prices of other non prioritized medicines, etc

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Anonymous #2 1d

Most industries are not subsidized or regulated enough to not be considered private nationally, but yes, by definition tourism on government property is not private There is significant local government involvement in tourism but that’s not really what we’re talking about

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

Private ownership in industry lowers costs relative to consumer needs

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Anonymous _orangutan 1d

I’m not sure that these claims have ever been demonstrated in a peer reviewable way

1