Aceticon

@Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a theoretical limit to profit?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But people do stop believing money has value, or more specifically, their trust in the value of money can go down - you all over the History in plenty of places that people’s trust in the value of money can break down.

  As somebody pointed out, if one person has all the money and nobody else has money, money has no value, so it’s logical to expect that between were we are now and that imaginary extreme point there will be a balance in the distribution of wealth were most people do lose trust in the value of money and the “wealth” anchored on merelly that value stops being deemed wealth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a theoretical limit to profit?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And further on point 2, the limit would determined by all that people can produce as well as, on the minus side, the costs of keeping those people alive and producing.

  As it so happens, people will produce more under better conditions, so spending the least amount possible keeping those people alive doesn’t yield maximum profit - there is a sweet spot somewhere in the curve were the people’s productivity minus the costs of keeping them productive is at a peak - i.e. profit is maximum.

  Capitalism really is just a way of the elites trying to get society to that sweet spot of that curve - people are more productive than in overtly autocratic systems (or even further, outright slavery) were less is spent on people, they get less education and they have less freedom to (from the point of view of the elites) waste their time doing what they want rather than produce, but because people live a bit better, are a bit less unhappy and have something to lose, they produce more for the elites and there is less risk of rebelions so the whole adds up to more wealth for the elites.

  As you might have noticed by now, optimizing for the sweet spot of “productivity minus costs with the riff-raff” isn’t the same as optimizing for the greatest good for the greatest number (the basic principle of the Left) since most people by a huge margin are the “riff-raff”, not the elites.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We dumb⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If one thinks a lot, likes to learn and, maybe more important, thinks about knowledge and learning things, that person will probably get there.

  A certain educational background probably helps but is neither required nor sufficient, IMHO.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We dumb⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s a general thing with highly capable persons in expert and highly intellectual domains that eventually you kinda figure out what Socrates actually meant with “All I know is that I know nothing”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The UK NHI doesn’t work well because the neoliberal parties in successive governments (both the Tories and New Labour) have been defunding it so that they can - like Thatcher did with the railways - oncy it’s quality has fallen due to lack of funds claim that it’s bad because of Public management whilst it would be much better if it was Private because the Private Sector is much more competent, and privatise it.

  Just like the US has fatcats that are perfectly happy to mass murder people for personal profit, so does the UK (and the British Political System is almost as bad as the American) and plenty of those just dream about that country having 13% of its GDP flowing through a Private Healthcare sector like the US so that they can make billions of pounds out of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I’ve seen, treatments not being covered are only the case were those treatments are very expensive and there are other effective treatments (though less effective) which are much cheaper.

  Mind you, I’m talking about Public Healthcare Systems, not the so-called Mixed Systems that have mandatory Health Insurance (usually highly regulated and with a Public Insurance option for the less well off) - Mixed Systems have some of the same problems as the US System at least in my experience living in countries with one and with the other kind of system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m talking about Universal Health Care systems (for clarity: totally free healthcare for residents in that country), not Public Health Insurance systems.

  Europe is unfortunatelly also riddled with the latter system and having lived in countries with one kind and countries with the other, they’re quite different and the system with Insurance is invariably worse in terms of denials of coverage as well as cost (also because nowadays they all have laws that force every resident to have health insurance, which as result is more costlier than before those laws - as I saw first hand when I lived in a country with such a system when such a law came into effect), whilst UHC tends to have longer waiting lists (think 1 or 2 years of wait for some cirurgical procedures).

  Absolutelly, some of the absurdities of the US system are also present in the so-called “Mixed” Systems (i.e. the ones with healtcare insurance but more regulated and with a public option for some) and if you look at the kinds of governments in those countries for the last 3 decades, you’ll notice they’ve been invariably neoliberal mainstream parties (setting up such systems is part of the broader tendency in Europe to privatise just about everything that has been going on since the 80s and was copied from the US).

  IMHO, except for the long waiting times, the problems with Healthcare systems in part of Europe are the result of them having been transformed to become more like the US system in the last 3 decades.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In several countries the mainstream party politicians (who are Neoliberals) have been slowly privatising healthcare by forcing them to outsource part of the work to the Private Sector and using the same technique as Thatcher in the UK used to privatise railroads (of which now, decades later, you can see the horrible results) - defund the Public service and then when the quality falls claim that the a Public Service is always incompetent and the the Private is always competent so the Public Service needs to be privatised.

  On top of that there is the actual genuine problem (rather than artificial meddling with the Public Healthcare System to send more money into the hands of politician’s mates) that populations are aging and older people require much more Healthcare Services in average.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve lived in a couple of countries in Europe and some have Universal Healthcare systems (such as the UK and Portugal) but others such as The Netherlands and Germany have Mixed Systems with Health Insurance but highly regulated and were some people can get Health Insurance from the state.

  You’re not going to go bankrupt from the treatment or get treatment denied in countries with UHC.

  However if you lose your job or never find a job in the first place due to illness related issues or disabilities you’ll almost certainly end up on benefits which again can be better or worse depending in the country.

  I would say things have been getting worse all over Europe (personally I think it’s exactly because there’s been too much copying of shit from the US), especially when it comes to the level of benefits for poor people being sufficient (the house prices bubbles all over the place and the lack of building of social housing have made this a massive problem in most countries), but in countries with UHC you’re not going to go bankrupt from medical bills.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So it’s literally something that’s not legally supposed to happen, unlike in the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Mate, as I’ve said it’s not one but TWO countries I lived in with Universal Healthcare, and you can’t be a Nationalist (as you’re trying to imply) for TWO countries.

  If you’re comparing like to like - i.e. the average poor disabled person in both a country with Universal Healthcare and the US - you’re going to get some cases of those having insufficient treatment in countries with UHC (especially in those were neoliberal governments have been defunding their UHC systems to try and privatise Healthcare even against popular will, like the UK), whilst the vast majority of those people will be fucked in the US (unless they’re Veterans).

  I’ve lived in several countries and it’s just an enormous piece of mind living in a country were you know that if you’re involved in an accident and end up getting costly treatement in an emergency ward, you’re not going to be ruined.

  I think you’re seeing the problems relative to a specific baseline and you think that there are massive problems there (which I’m sure there are) but the thing with the US system is that the baseline itself is way worse and all those problem you see would also be problems there but much worse (or maybe not, as those people would die a lot faster) and on top of that in the US there are way more people with even worse problems with in comes to Healthcare than the “poor disabled person” in a country with UHC.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  For every case of a disabled persion on benefits having to wait 1.5 years for a non-urgent operation because they can’t afford private healthcare, there are a million of cases of people who get a common problem like Diabetes or Cardio-Vascular problems and get treated for free (down to getting the medicine for free, which for a person below the poverty line will be true even for the worst countries).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ohh ...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Having lived in two countries with universal healthcare, that meme is absolutelly true and you’re the one bullshitting.

  The most “extreme” it can get in such systems is that they won’t pay for very expensive treatments (i.e. the kind of stuff that costs a million dollars per shot) if a person can keep going with cheaper ones even if they’re not as good.

  That’s “your quality of life won’t be as good if you have a chronic disease that makes your life miserable and the best treatment in the market is insanelly expensive because they’ll only pay for a not as expensive one”, not “death panels”.

  People in those countries absolutelly aren’t going bankrupt due being denied life-saving treatment and having to pay for it from their own pocket.

  As for any complains you might have heard from people in countries with universal healthcare, them complaining about it is like people in Scandinavia complaining about public services: relative to what they have there are bad parts, which is something altogether different than it being bad relative to the World and when it comes the healthcare the US is 3rd World when it comes to results delivered relative to the amount spent in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Making money from merely owning things that others need and have to pay you to use as they can’t get them otherwise (because you and people like you took them first) - something know in Economics as rent seeking, though it doesn’t apply only to housing - is pure parasitism because that person is producing no value whatsoever, merely extorting money from others because they removed free access to a resource from them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Whilst I would be wary of saying AirBnB is the main cause (more likely it’s a big one but not the only one), keep in mind that when realestate prices go up in major cities that pushes out people who go to cheaper places, pushing prices up in those places which in turn might push some out from those places and into even cheaper places.

  So housing bubbles centered in main cities do naturally spread out from there to places were the original cause of the bubble is not present.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In my own Portugal, which is a very turistic country and also towards the bottom of the GDP-per-capita scale in the EU, things that would likely work very well would also be:

  • Crack down on AirBnB
  • Forbid ownership for non-residents.

  Portugal currently has a massive house inflation problem (extra massive because of how low average incomes are) and a lot of it has to do with residential housing being removed from the housing market and turned into short term turist lets (for example, over 10% of housing in Lisbon has been turned into AirBnB lets) and foreign investors (not just big companies but also individuals, such as well off pensioneers from places like France) pulling prices up by being far less price sensitive than the locals.

  Having lived in both Britain and Portugal during housing bubbles, what I’ve observed was that the politicians themselves purposefully inflate those bubbles, partly because they themselves are part of the upper middle class or even above (especially in the UK) who can afford to and have Realestate “investments” and hence stand to gain personally (as do their mates) from Realestate prices going up and partly because the way Official GDP (which is supposedly the Real GDP, which has Inflation effects removed) is calculated nowadays means that house price inflation appears as GDP “growth” since the effects of house price increases come in via the “inputted rent” mechanism but the Inflation Indexes used to create that GDP do not include house price inflation, so by sacrificing the lives of many if not most people in the country (especially the young, for example the average age for them to leave their parent’s home in Portugal is now above 34 years old and at this point half of all University graduates leave the country as soon as they graduate) they both enrich themselves and can harp in the news all about how they made the GDP go up.