merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Disgusted 1 day ago:
My post was way too long because it goes against the popular sentiment. If you agree with the popular sentiment, you can afford to have a short post. If you disagree and keep it short, people will downvote you for the things you didn’t mention, or will accuse you of not considering X.
Anyhow, I’m in favour of investing in neighbouring countries, or just donating to them. There are problems with donating some things like food. It helps keep people alive, but it also means farmers take a hit because they’re competing with free. But, it’s hard to argue when people need food or they’ll die. Donating training and skills development is a better path. I know someone who works at an NGO that works with local NGOs to train their leadership to be more effective. I think that’s one of the best things I’ve heard of for helping other countries because it just makes the people living there more effective at what they do. But, it’s not a quick process.
- Comment on Disgusted 1 day ago:
I’ve also travelled and that’s why I want borders, at least for now.
We should definitely be working to raise people in the poorer parts of the world out of poverty. I’ve been to some developing countries, and life there is extremely hard. That’s why so many of them want to move to a rich country where they can live a better life.
Yeah, as a rich westerner, borders are an annoyance. It’s great going around Europe and going from the Netherlands to France without needing a passport or anything.
Having said that, in the Netherlands and France, and most other western countries, there is a great social safety net paid for by taxes that makes sure that everybody living in those countries can live a decent life. But, even Europe was put under stress by the fact that some countries in the EU have a GDP per capita that’s half what it is in other places.
A fair number of people migrated to richer countries within the EU for a better life. Most found a job and worked. They contributed more to the countries than they received in benefits. Even then, that was hard on those richer countries because it displaced some of the lower-wage workers, or depressed their wages. Despite this, the EU has mostly held together, other than Brexit, and the majority of the EU regrets Brexit.
The important thing to remember is that the EU vets members before allowing them in, and was slow to allow the poorer Eastern European countries to join.
If the world eliminated borders tomorrow, the richer western countries would be swamped by poorer people from developing countries seeking a better life. There’s no way that the systems in those countries could cope.
The rich might love it. Suddenly there would be hundreds or thousands of people competing for the lowest paying jobs, allowing the bosses to offer the lowest possible wages, the worst possible working conditions, etc. The ultra-rich business owners could get rid of unions and get local workers for next to nothing.
For the slightly less rich, the professional class, it wouldn’t be too bad. Their jobs are protected. You need to pass the bar to be a lawyer. You need to do a residency to become a doctor. Their professional associations would continue to do the work necessary so that say a doctor in Nigeria didn’t have their credentials recognized in the west.
The less wealthy you are, the less protected you would be. For someone whose job doesn’t require any kind of diploma, certificate or degree, there would be no protection. They’d be competing with every unskilled person who came into the country seeking opportunities.
Even if you personally think that chaos is a small price to pay for a more fair world, a lot of people don’t. The rise of far-right and fascist movements in the west is a direct result of increasing immigration. If borders were eliminated, not only would there be a lot more far-right voters, there would probably be violent clashes, even mass slaughters.
A lot of people hate globalization, but it has resulted in raising a lot of people in developing countries out of extreme poverty. It has done that mainly by taking wealth and power away from the poorest people in richer countries by shipping their jobs overseas. That part sucks. But, at least a lot of people in developing countries are no longer in danger of dying if they have a bad few weeks.
Programs like USAID were a better way of doing some of the same things. These were often subsidies for US farmers whose produce was then just donated or sold extremely cheaply to developing countries. There were of course problems with this system too. Often the “farmers” receiving the subsidies were rich corporations. But, it did raise the floor for some of the worst-off people in the world.
If we can continue to find ways to help people in developing countries, we should do that. Hopefully we can find a better way to do it than we’ve done in the past. But, even a less-than-ideal solution does help. Eventually, we may be able to reach a point at which we can remove borders without resulting in a mass migration that overwhelms the systems of the richer countries.
- Comment on The American Dream, minus 60% 2 days ago:
“The bottom 60%” gives more detail than merely saying “the majority”.
- Comment on Park benches don't "open" until 10am 3 days ago:
That might be the optimal solution to you and me, but it isn’t the optimal solution for the rich and powerful. Apparently the average voter hates the sight of homeless people more than they hate hostile architecture too.
- Comment on Park benches don't "open" until 10am 3 days ago:
And it’s impossible to get a decent night’s sleep outside with all the traffic, pedestrians, noises, cops, etc. unless you self-medicate. If you can’t get a good night’s sleep you go insane.
- Comment on Park benches don't "open" until 10am 3 days ago:
And politicians think removing their best option is a solution?
Because it gets them votes. The politicians aren’t the problem, they merely reflect public attitudes.
- Comment on Park benches don't "open" until 10am 3 days ago:
Sure, commuters with jobs are the bourgeoisie.
- Comment on Park benches don't "open" until 10am 3 days ago:
Cheaper too.
But, it’s probably not the optimal solution. I suppose it’s a step in the right direction. As bad as hostile architecture is, the old way of dealing with the problem was to have cops beat the shit out of homeless or drunk people if they tried to sleep in a place where other people might be offended or annoyed.
- Comment on Forty hours, one life... 4 days ago:
My dude, I live on a hobby farm. Complete with livestock. I have giant blackberry bushes.
That’s great my dude. My dude, what fraction of your yearly calories come from this hobby farm, my dude? My dude, are you able to actually meet your nutritional needs with this hobby? My dude, is this farm just a hobby? If it meets all your needs, why do you work at all, my dude?
- Comment on Forty hours, one life... 4 days ago:
I guess one has spent too much time in church or movies or something, believing that there’s some utopia where berries gratefully fall off bushes into our waiting hands, if only the durn gubmint, or frickin capitalists would get out of our way.
- Comment on Forty hours, one life... 4 days ago:
If we were allowed to do just what is necessary for survival we would spend way, way less time on it than we do working now
Sure, bud.
Picking weeds from a crop just big enough to support a family does not take 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year
Sure, bud. I guess you’ve never met a farmer?
We live in a form of indentured servitude
Sure, bud. That famous form of indentured servitude where you get nights and weekends off, and are free to change bosses at any time.
- Comment on A reminder 4 days ago:
If your $600k house isn’t paid off yet, you don’t get to count its full value towards your net worth, so you might not be as close to $1m as you say. If it is fully paid off, then you shouldn’t have a mortgage to worry about.
But, 3 really bad months could mean a tree fell on your fully paid-off house. It could mean a family member without good health insurance has a medical emergency and you feel like you have to help pay.
It just seems to me that something like $10m makes John Rogers’ point much better. If this is a class war, $1 million dollar millionaires really are in the same class as anybody else who works. I don’t know quite where the dividing line is. Clearly billionaires are in a whole different class. Same with $100m-aires. $10m is almost certainly set for life. What about $3m? $2m? Maybe age comes into it. How long do you have to make it last, and can you still find a job if you need one? $1m net worth at 25 is different from $1m at 65. $1m at 90 probably puts you back in the “set for life” camp, just because “life” is not likely to last much longer.
- Comment on A reminder 4 days ago:
The fact you’re using pounds instead of dollars says you’re probably talking about having 1 million pounds and living in the UK rather than the US.
1 million pounds is still a lot more than 1 million dollars, despite Brexit. In addition, if you live in the UK you’re covered by the NHS so none of your million has to go towards health care / health insurance. The cost of living is also lower in the UK than the US. So, as long as you don’t try to live in London you can get by with a lot less money.
The point is, John Rogers was trying to draw a distinction between two extremes. On one end you’re homeless and extremely desperate. On the other end, you’re a millionaire and are set for life. At this point, $1m USD in the USA really isn’t “set for life” anymore. Someone hitting age 65 with no pension and a total net worth of $1m is really still in the same “class” as the people who work 9-5 every day. They shop in the same stores, have to budget very carefully, worry about the price of gas, etc.
- Comment on Forty hours, one life... 4 days ago:
“A job” is the modern equivalent of “finding enough berries to stay alive for a few more days” or “going through the crops on your hands and knees picking weeds and killing pests”.
It’s insane to think that a job is supposed to be fun. A job is what you have to do to survive.
Some extremely lucky people will actually find something that they love doing, are good at, and that people are actually willing to pay them money to do. If you’re among the richest billion people on the planet, you may be lucky enough to have a job that’s boring, unfulfilling, but not dangerous and doesn’t involve back breaking labour.
For most people on the planet, a job is whatever you have to do to get a roof over your head and enough to eat for the next meal. Of course it’s going to suck, and it’s probably going to be a lot more than 40 hours a week. But, the alternative is death.
If you are one of those richest billion people and you have a job you hate, but you could do a job that’s only unfulfilling and boring, by all means, switch.
- Comment on A reminder 5 days ago:
That’s true, but if you have $10m, you can live off the “work” your money does for the rest of your life. If you have decent, conservative financial planning, you are in no danger of homelessness no matter how bad 3 months are.
Billionaires are today’s emperors, but someone with $10m is at least a member of the aristocracy and is living off the labour of others, rather than having to live off their own work.
- Comment on A reminder 5 days ago:
Being “a millionaire” is outdated. There are plenty of people who are both millionaires and working class. Because the US doesn’t do pensions anymore, people have to invest in 401(k)s and the like. It’s pretty likely that someone can hit $1m through a combination of a retirement fund and a house, but still be working class. In fact, you can be a millionaire on paper but still be vulnerable to homelessness.
It’s certainly possible to retire on $1m, but it’s not going to be a lavish lifestyle if you’re playing it safe with your retirement fund. If you want to live near family, or if you have any medical issues, or if you might need to support someone else, it might really be impossible to retire with only $1m.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 6 days ago:
I think, by this point, most Americans who are willing to listen to reason know that emergency medicine is 1000000x better in basically every other developed country, and even in many less developed countries. It can be a country where the entire medical system is publicly funded, like the UK. Or it can be one where it’s all privately funded but insurance is mandatory and the lowest-cost plans are controlled and subsidized by the government like in Switzerland.
But, what’s hard to convey is how much freedom and peace of mind this all gives you. So many Americans are locked into a specific job because it has good health insurance, or because if they switched jobs they’d have to find new health insurance while having a pre-existing health condition. Being unemployed is terrifying because your health insurance is tied to your job. And, even if you have insurance, there’s the fear that they won’t honour a claim or will weasel out of a payment.
Even if someone has good insurance and isn’t afraid of losing it, there’s all the bureaucracy. There’s in-network doctors and out-of-network doctors. There’s co-pays. There’s trying to decide which spouse goes on the other’s health plan. There’s filing forms. There’s even sometimes stuff like wondering if the doctor is prescribing something because it helps with their bottom line, or if they genuinely think that you need it.
Then there’s the billing. If you have good insurance you might never actually have to pay anything other than a nominal co-pay, but you often can’t escape the billing paperwork. At best that’s just time consuming and annoying. At worst it’s a constant source of terror and stress. This is especially true with serious health issues that are expensive to treat, and where your time, energy and effort should really be about getting well.
I’m in Canada but I’ve lived in the US, and I hated every second of their health care system, despite having effectively a Rolls Royce insurance plan. In Canada can be fired, quit my job, retire, join a start-up, or do anything I want and my health insurance is completely unaffected. If I had a spouse, they’d be on the same plan, there’s not second spent thinking about strategizing about that, or about anything else. There are no co-pays. There are no forms to fill out. I never worry about a doctor upselling me on something I don’t need. Behind the scenes doctors still bill for their work, someone pays for the medicine, the hand sanitizer, the bedding, the wheelchairs, and everything you might see in a hospital, but the patient (and their family) never sees any money change hands, it’s just so much more simple that way.
Oh, and I just forgot another example of where the US system fails in ways that Americans probably wouldn’t notice: airborne illnesses. In most countries, people get flu shots. If they feel sick they have sick leave, and if they want to see a doctor they can. If you’re on public transit in Switzerland you don’t often see someone coughing or sneezing because if they’re not feeling well they’re not out in public. In Japan they take that even further and people put on masks when they feel like they might be coming down with something so that they don’t spread it. In the US, a lot of people don’t have healthcare coverage. They can’t see a doctor if they’re feeling ill. They expect to be charged for vaccinations and maybe flu shots. So, if you’re on public transit in the states, you’re more likely to be sharing a cabin with people who are coughing or sneezing or sniffling because they can’t get it looked at, and they can’t afford to miss work (and there are no guaranteed sick days).
This made the pandemic so much worse in the US. Even before you throw in the anti-vaxx misinformation and “the gubmint can’t control my body” idiocy, you still have people who probably have COVID out in public spreading it around because they can’t miss work, and don’t believe they can get tested or treated for free.
Anyhow, I hope that the more obvious benefits of socialized medicine, like being treated for free no matter what are becoming more clear to Americans. But, really, they should understand that that’s just the big, obvious thing. The massive social and mental health drag their system puts on their entire society is something that’s hard to appreciate if you haven’t lived in both systems and felt how different they are.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 6 days ago:
That’s more “injury” than “accident”. And what about illness? Surely people also go there if they have a high fever, or are unable to stop vomiting, these illnesses may not rise to the level of an emergency, but they’re not something you feel like waiting a while for an appointment for. So, you could still classify them as a mild emergency, but they’re certainly not an accident. If you want to keep a list of things you might end up in that room for, it would be accident, injury, illness and emergency. I may be forgetting other things though. “Emergency” just seems cleaner because it can cover anything that’s urgent enough that you need to stay in the waiting room and have it treated today-ish.
And really, it’s not the job of the NHS to push back. It’s the job of the voters, the people who use the NHS and don’t want to see it destroyed. In Canada we have provincial level care, and they keep trying to starve that too. Fortunately, it isn’t working very well. In fact, there has been a very slight expansion of the care the government provides lately in that some dental care is now covered too. But, idiots keep thinking that a partially private system can work. As soon as something becomes partially private, the rich people start using it and then lobby the government to try to avoid having to pay taxes on the thing they’re no longer using.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 1 week ago:
Yeah, my experiences weren’t that bad. But, I remember recently sitting there for hours awkwardly trying to support my shoulder with my other arm so whatever was broken didn’t have to bear the weight of everything else. Of course, one of the first things they did after assessing me was to give me a sling… that would have helped hours earlier.
I dunno, maybe they need a “first pass treatment” triage where they hand out slings, ice packs, compression bandages, etc. The sort of things that a nurse can “prescribe” that might make things feel better, can’t really make it worse, and will tide you over until the doctor can take a better look.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 1 week ago:
in a&e
I’ve never understood why Brits feel the need to add “accident” to emergency. Are there people who are waiting there because they’ve had an accident but there’s no emergency?
We still have some private medicine. The existence of the NHS keeps their prices and practices in check. It’s no longer “pay or die” instead its “pay for convenience”.
This is how it may start. But, be careful because as more people start using the private option, the public option starts getting starved for funds, and then bit by bit there is no public option.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 1 week ago:
Certain things like non-emergency (but important) surgeries could take longer to schedule in Canada.
Yeah, hip replacements and that sort of thing have a months-long or even years-long waiting list. But, most people waiting for those things can still live pretty much normal lives. IMO the wait is too long. But, people can get by walking with a limp until their turn comes up.
If the trade-off to get treated more quickly for that sort of thing is to accept the for-profit medical system of the USA, there are virtually no Canadians who would accept that deal.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 1 week ago:
Seven heart attacks? Youch.
Anyhow, IMO, the worst experience in the ER is when you have a bone or muscle injury. You’re triaged pretty low because it’s not getting worse so there’s no urgency to treat you quickly. OTOH you’re in a lot of discomfort, you often can’t find a way to sit so you’re not in pain. And yet, you really do have to stay in the ER. It’s not like if you have a bad cold or flu or something that will probably get better on its own, or where you might be able to leave and come back the next day if it’s really busy.
- Comment on Waiting and getting treated is better than waiting and going bankrupt 1 week ago:
you are probably there for a runny nose or something equally silly.
It’s silly to go to the ER for a runny nose if you have better options, like a family doctor with whom you can get appointments within a few days. Sadly, a lot of Americans don’t have health care coverage and have to go to the ER for “silly” things because they don’t have other options.
- Comment on This is what happens when AI trains on Instagram shitposts 1 week ago:
Some “Actual Real Human Facts” related to how many months there are:
Ever wondered why SEPTEMber starts with the common prefix for the number seven, and is followed by OCTOber, NOVEMber and DECEMber? but those are the 9th to the 12th month, rather than the 7th to the 10th?
That’s because the Romans started numbering the months starting in March, so it was the first month. But, the really crazy bit is that between December and March… there weren’t any month names. I don’t get how that worked. Say you wanted to order some marble in December and asked when it would be delivered. They couldn’t say “January 15th” because January didn’t have a name yet. So, what. “Two weeks after the end of December”?
- Comment on Rich people don't understand us at all. 1 week ago:
So, someone who is fluent enough in English that they would use a colloquialism like “killed the argument” somehow doesn’t know the difference between “roommate and house maid”?
And, even if you make that swap, who is making a “need a house maid” argument? Is there anybody who argues (with whom?) that they need a house maid because making a bed is too difficult? Yes, a maid might make a bed, but the bigger service they provide is cleaning: laundry, dishes, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, scrubbing the bath / shower, cleaning the toilet. A live-in housekeeper will probably also cook meals and do some childcare too.
A robot might be able to do some of that, but a robot that capable will be tens or hundreds of thousands. You’re not going to save money by switching to a robot.
- Comment on Capitalism is an unrealistic death cult. 1 week ago:
Yes, there’s some advantage to the survival of the community, not just the genes. But, it’s sort of an expensive gamble. Not just sharing with an individual that might out-compete you later, but also the energy / effort / “programming” etc. required to act in an altruistic way. That’s why you sometimes see altruism in nature, but it’s not the rule.
- Comment on That's just science 1 week ago:
Still, the sun is white. Sun light is white.
That’s why I said “appears to be yellow”.
Are you saying the blue light is removed from the spectrum when it’s passes through the atmosphere?
The light from the sun is made up of a whole variety of wavelengths. You can see that when there’s a rainbow and every wavelength from red to orange to yellow all the way to violet is represented. This light arrives in a continuous stream of individual photons.
When short wavelength photons (blue wavelengths down to violet wavelengths and below) hit the atmosphere, they’re more likely to be scattered by air in the atmosphere. Because of that, they still hit the ground, but they’re no longer coming from a direct line from the sun. That’s why when you look up at the sky you see it as being blue, because photons that weren’t originally heading toward you were scattered and come towards you from a random direction.
The longer wavelengths, from green on up aren’t as likely to be scattered by the atmosphere, so they mostly come in a direct line from the sun to your eye.
As a result, if you look directly at the sun (which you generally shouldn’t do) it will appear to be more yellow than it actually is. Astronauts above the atmosphere see the sun as appearing fully white. But, on the surface we see it as white minus all the blue that was scattered. The result is that the sun appears to be yellow when you’re on the surface with the atmosphere scattering things.
At sunrise and sunset there’s even more scattering. Now even larger particles are involved, and there’s more atmosphere to shine through. The blue is removed, but so is a lot of the green and yellow, leaving only the red, which is the least likely to be scattered since it has the longest wavelengths.
So, at sunrise and sunset the sun can appear reddish. At noon it can appear yellowish. But, if you go above the atmosphere so the blue doesn’t get scattered, you’ll see that it’s actually white.
- Comment on Capitalism is an unrealistic death cult. 1 week ago:
Evolution only cares about passing on genes. It’s rare in the animal kingdom for menopause to exist. For the most part there’s no point in an animal living if it’s unable to mate. Scientists have the “grandmother hypothesis” for why this happens in a few whales, humans and some chimps: in a species where the grandmother might help care for a baby that has some of her genes, the grandmother can be useful to the mechanism of passing on genes even if she’s no longer able to pass on her own.
That means that a creature might care about how the world looks maybe 25 years past the point where it can have offspring. Caring about environmental degradation that takes place on a multi-century scale is just not something that evolution prepared us for. Why would it? No creature in history has ever been able to modify its environment the way humans can.
Viruses are actually a good analogy. A virus depends on a living host. But, viruses often kill their hosts. Like humans, it can actually modify its environment in a way that that environment becomes toxic to the virus’s existence. That seems bad. For any individual virus though, its “life” is so short compared to the life of the host that any mechanism that made it try to avoid killing the host would just be a useless genetic trait that would not be optimal.
Humans have these immense brains, and they allow us to do things that aren’t simply the result of evolutionary drives. But, we’re still animals. Those drives really structure everything we do.
- Comment on Capitalism is an unrealistic death cult. 1 week ago:
Power not derived from the movement of animals is very new. The industrial revolution is what greatly changed the damage humans can do to the environment. The industrial revolution led to capitalism, not the other way around.
- Comment on one step closer to 100%'ing life!! 1 week ago:
But, not you.