True, true! And tecnology isn’t going to be able to replace millions and millions of years of stored solar, which politicans are led to belive.
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JO, I think there might be a misunderstanding about the post that I deleted. Only my post of a Red Green clip that I found rather humorous but off topic and it could have been misunderstood.
I do not like the concept of insurance companies. Just social rot. But the world was always messed up and it will be in the future. Maybe it needs to be that way. After all everything is just an illusion.
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So this is an interesting twist Steve. It’s a prism to view so many of our problems. We’re running out of the good concentrated stuff that made everything so easy. I dont think kids are any better or worse politicians any more or less crooked people less pure. Cheap energy goes a long way to make everything work smoothly. The cracks are showing more everyday.
Cheers, David
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Thanks for starting this thread Steve it’s a valid forum for discussion, though we aren’t likely to arrive at much more than an exchange of views and expressions of cultural and family values.
My views. In the States you guys are getting ripped off wholesale. Healthcare doesn’t cost nearly what you poor guys are getting soaked for.
The Canadian system is far from efficient, because we leave the pharmaceutical companies as unregulated robber barons to confer over golf games and game it criminally, and left out dental care, and left doctors as private independent contractors inside a single state payer system, but even with all those fatal flaws it’s objectively twice the system the US model is.
Steve talks about social harm from taxation and loss of free choice. In my opinion public health is a joint obligation no different than measles or diptheria vaccination or providing clean water. If a member of society lacks health care all suffer.
There’s a distinct reason why the US is verging on a third world state in terms of public health, particularly infant mortality. That is the hallmark of a failed state, when it can’t provide adequately for the essential and easily accessible needs of the population.
As I had mentioned in another thread, who stands to gain from the status quo? The rich. And following the comparison, if they had to.pay no road tax, they would happily fly in helicopters while they scoffed at the hillbillies below. That is precisely the reality of the present system.
Crabs in a bucket. Get people so poor, and fighting with each other for envy and scant resources that they keep themselves all down. While the elite fly overhead eating caviar with rented women.
America is by far the wealthiest, most productive country the earth has ever known. Then why are there so many people not helped by the collective when the rich live better than the Egyptian kings could have ever dreamed?
I saw a program once called Millennium. The episode documented a young man asking for new livestock from distant kin in Ethiopia. They gave him livestock, though the kinship was questionable. When asked why the answer was, “because a poor man shames us all”.
How corporatized we’ve become. The rich laugh.
Steve is right to say that we should be living locally and morally, sustainably. But to ignore that we are all part of a system laying an elite in beds of gold and diamonds while basic needs of the people who make them fabulously wealthy aren’t met seems to me a triumph of propaganda. Thank you corporate media, and paid intelligentsia.
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Another “flexible” brainteaser…
My health ? who cares… ? Your health ? I care…
I have seen many "social " systems… its all social and well until… profit needs to be made… or that someone try’s to profit from the system…
In the past, i did pay my % on every dime i earned… all overtime included… then came the day that accident changed my life ( not at fault ) , the system was suddenly changed… only benefits from the regular hours… not for all the money % i did pay for… where is the fairness ?
Pharma ? don’t get me started… Social services ? same…
I live in Thailand now… never seen more social … Thanks to the late King, even poor people pay no more then 30 bath per
threatment…
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I think the debate on healthcare in the United States is misdirection. The issue is as Garry pointed out we pay about twice as much as other countries per capita for less. The costs need to be controlled regardless of how the insurance is funded.
The problem I see with healthcare is it is the one area in life where you can’t be an informed consumer and greedy people have seen that and make huge profits off us as a result. When you or your loved ones are dealing with life and death issues you simply shouldn’t be expected to try to decide which hospital will cost less to get care and you couldn’t find that type of information anyway in the usa.
The care system is broken running up costs which has driven up the insurance cost on the care. We need to address the underlying costs for service and meds.
To me the issue is as long as rich companies are allowed to spend money in politics we will get laws that protect their business intrest and the profit margins for drug companies will be protected.
I ran numbers a while back and the top 5 drug companies made $200 profit for every man woman and child in the United States last year. That to me is just wrong and too much greed.
I live in the live free or die state of NH. That is our state moto. But what I will say with respect to single payer is that our healthcare system is a mix of private and public before the ACA. Being for private choice would require that we also allow hospitals the ability to refuse treatment to those who can’t pay for it. That to me is the pink elephant in the corner we exnore in the USA. Hospitals have to provide emergency room services to everyone which is the single most expensive part of our system. If we want private medical care then go all the way that is the only way capitalism cost controls work. But that also means that some people will go without and they will die from or live with conditions that could be cured. Realize that when you day your for free choice that part of that is the choice of the care provider to refuse to provide treatment.
We have public education in this country providing a baseline education for all citizens we also have social security for the elderly or children who loose a parent.
I think as a society we need to decide if healthcare is a service like buying a car or house or is it a basic human right. We have decided that some issues like roads national defense and public schools are basic human rights the government provides. But healthcare is in a gray area in the United States. We don’t allow hospitals to refuse treatment but we also don’t consider it a human right paid for by the government. Personally I think as a society we probably don’t really want to see dying people because they could not afford care. But that said I just wish as a country we would choose one path or the other then get on to the real problem of addressing the greed that makes it too expensive in the first place.
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Topic has my blessing, with one reservation… Stay out of the politics. Describing the function of a socialistic/communistic/capitalistic society is not what I’m talking about as “politics”. Subjective commentary on current political leaders etc. is what usually leads to heated debates, arguments, and ultimately shutting down the topic.
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Appreciate the clarification on the standard Chris…
I was thinking yesterday after my post here. We were using the terms “socialistic” and “democratic”. The reality is that those two points, however you define them are points on the same scale. Degrees of corporation or collective function. Presumably, at one extreme end of the scale you have pure capitalism/greed/looking-out-for-number one. at the extreme opposite end you have some star trek commune where no one owns anything of themselves.
The political history of the world has pitted those two points against each other and has defined them for us as being two completely different things. Even though the ends of the scale are mutually exclusive, It really isn’t one or the other. It’s a matter of degree, the comfort of which is often defined culturally, familially etc…as has been mentioned.
Jeff says he doesn’t believe in insurance companies…I say Amen. My experience with them here in our context has been just getting ripped off. I remember that Alabama was the last state in the union to have mandatory auto insurance. Most of us in my family were grown before the laws went into affect. We never had it until we were forced to. My dad calculated one time what it cost him for all the wrecks he had to pay for through his whole driving life and all of his children and wife before the law was passed and after. The equation was extremely lop-sided. Insurance cost him way more than paying his own way.
The other side of that I suppose is the fact that there was never any serious high-cost damage. Like someone getting really seriously hurt. I mean like living in a coma for months or years.
The problem is that with most insurance policies in those kinds of situations, you’re pretty much bankrupt and mortgaged before the insurance starts to pay anyway. Tends to make paying for the insurance worthless.
So Gary, I agree, we here in the states are getting ripped off wholesale. But a little known fact among many is that actual doctor bills don’t cost those of us without insurance the same as what insured people get billed. The reality is that uninsured people, who can pay a lump sum cash payment, can negotiate with the hospital or doctor on an individual basis and often reduce the bill by as much as 70%. We have done this many times as a community minded church group. Start out with a huge $200,000. bill and go talk to the billing dept and find out what they are willing to take in cash. Usually they will take much less. I had a friend driving a horse over a bridge. The horse spooked and jumped off the bridge throwing him face first into a rock 40 feet down. Life flight, many surgeries. Long hospital stay. Everyone who worked got paid a reasonable wage, no one went into debt, Everyone got the help they needed. The community stepped up and helped pay off the $60,000 bill. That’s what the hospital and other providers said they actually needed to make money. Which means they don’t have to make the money they are raking in now.
The point is that it’s not just this way or that way. There are other options. Other ways of functioning corporately, and taking care of each other without the money having to be filtered through the corporate insurance company or the government. Not wanting to send our money to the government or the corporation for redistribution does not make us less willing to bear one another’s burden. In fact, I would say that as a Christian, that’s a primary calling. We just don’t think that governments and other bureaucracies tend to make things more efficient.
Gary mentions loss of choice/taxation/ whether healthcare is a social obligation…This country has been fighting that battle for nearly its entire existence. The idea of whether or not it is the role of government to redistribute the wealth. Gary, your stated premise is not a forgone conclusion in this society. Many people here don’t necessarily feel it is their obligation to pay for the healthcare of everyone else. Especially when they are not going to get the right to tell the person they are paying for to stay out of the buffet line or to quit smoking or to quit having physical relations with people they shouldn’t etc…Then you get into bigger issues like abortion etc… We even fought a big big war with ourselves over that one.
I believe that God ordained certain obvious laws. One is that gravity pulls things with mass toward the center of the earth. Another is that Responsibility and Authority go hand in had. You can’t have one without the other if you want things to work out right…So, The whole idea of socialized medicine is in question. Not only from a practical “does-it-work-stand point” but from a “is-it-ethical stand point”. I think that’s the point Steve is getting at.
I love the quote about the Ethiopian. I agree with it. A poor man shames us all. To that end we should give of ourselves to better everyone…where it is possible.
Steve is right saying we should live local, sustainable, moral…I would add responsibly to that list. Problem is, there will always be those who refuse to do so. And those, ultimately, have to be allowed to bear the consequences of their actions. SO not every poor man shames us all. Only those poor men who I could have helped but didn’t. Who falls into which category? Well, those are decisions we each have to make every day. Personally I try to use the Bible as a guide to answer to them. You use the premise that medical care is a social obligation. Others use something else. And that determines the degree to which we are willing to engage int the socialized medicine schemes…etc…
The same idea plays into education and many other areas. We have had in this country a notion that seems ludicrous to me. “No child left behind”. Sounds great on the surface. It sounds like we care a lot about our children. But when you get right down to the numbers, some children aren’t going to do what they need to do to keep up. And in such cases, it must needs be that someone get left behind. Or else everyone stops and waits for someone who isn’t planning on going along anyway. And so the average falls. Mediocrity is elevated and people graduate from high school that literally can’t write their name or make change. God did not make all men equal in everything.
I was thinking yesterday about my paradigm and how much of my “cultural” understanding is born in propaganda or not. I agree that cold war era John Wayne movies tended to make us Americans a little less than a “thinking” people at times. But objectively looking at it. At least as objectively as my limited education on the matter will allow…It seems to me that there is a reason why the USSR no longer exists, why China has only prospered to the extent it has by moving on the spectrum away from "socialism: toward free markets, why North Korea is in the shape it’s in, why Venezuela and Bolivia are worse off with their socialism than Ecuador with its free market system. Why Cubans have been getting into refrigerators and trying to float across the Florida straights for 50 years to get to this country. What happened to Yugoslavia. Did their more socialistic system feed into their demise? Russia? etc.?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I am not a hard core “patriot” so to speak. I am a Christian, and I believe God cares about all of us, and therefore so do I. But why do these systems seem to fail so often if they’re not inferior. ??? Like I said, I don’t claim to know enough info about all that to really know why. In fact, I doubt anyone does.
Anyway, The rain has held off for now. Maybe we can get this roof on before it returns.
Later
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Well said Billy,and I agree. I was just about to post when yours popped up. If I can add; personal responsibility is what is lacking in the world today, people want some one else to fix the results of their bad behavior, whether it be “Gov.” or other to blame. First we need to look to history as to why, and how “modern medicine” was started. There use to be actual healers(please look into Gerson therapy, and others that were run out of the country) until gov. got involved in medicine, now we have drugs to mast symptoms, not heal, there is no money in healing. Please watch- the truth about cancer- on you tube, the history will surprise you.
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What did the king do to make all treatments cost no more than 30 Bath. ? Is that the actual maximum cost per treatment, or is it subsidized? If so, by whom?
I disagree.
I would say “socialistic vs capitalistic” on one scale and “democratic vs dictatoric” on another.
We have always had a democracy but at the same time most of the time a socialist government. The party running them governments actually call them selves “The social democrates”.
We have always had mix of small private businesses, big private corporations and collective solutions. I’d say 50/50 private/collective until about 30 years ago. Now it’s more like 90/10.
Services like health care, education, public trasportation, electric- water- sewer but also big hydro, mining and part of forestry used to be collective concernes. Any profit went back to finance further services. All the swedish exporting private companies (some partially state owned) like Swedish steel, Stora, Vattenfall, SKF, ASEA, Volvo, Saab, Husqvarna, Electrolux generated loads of tax money to finance even further services. I guess we were spoiled big time back then.
Today most of them companies moved out to low cost forign parts of the world. And I can’t think of one service area that hasn’t at least partially private owners. Profits now end up in the pockets of those few. Even education and health have some private actors, draining the collectivly financed systems.
This is what makes you want to bail out these days.
In the last few years there’s been a lot of plowing down new power cables in my area. Private power company running its business.
The grass just started to grow and then came the optik fiber cables to be plowed down. The private internet/phone/television company running its business.
Not a full year after that new water and sewer pipes.
It would be interesting to know how much an old style Soviet five year plan would be able to cut the costs 
In the old days there were a lot of informal contacts made between government officials and big private business. They traded favours for everyones best.
Even locally that was the way it worked. There’s a story about our town head chairman spending a couple of hours in the sauna every Friday night together with the COs of the paper mill and the steel mill. Unemployed street wonderers and
light retarded got to work in the mills with a proper pay check. In return the mill owners got other favours like public land for expanding or such. Win-win.
Today the mills have slimmed organisations with partially forign owners. The town has huge expenses for care of those unable to fit in.
I know, I know. I start sounding like an old fart already. Always better in the old days. They will never come back, I know. Can’t do much about it. What I can do is go out fire up. I’ll do that now.
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As someone who lives in what most would call a socialist country can I please ask everyone when did brutal authoritarian regimes and socialism become the same thing? Just because those regimes called themselves that does not mean that is what they were. Who sold you that line of propaganda? I vote, have free press, the right to express myself move if I want to and am"free" to the extent of any American if not more so. So for clarity sake I will actually lay out what I pay and what I get for it… My children go to well funded schools that globally are always top ten. Our provincial government administers a province wide insurance program that you would call “health insurance” it covers everyone. Yes they are bureaucrats and suspect but give me a mandarin any day over a private insurer always looking to cut you off or increase profits. I will probably have to pay a supplement this year of about $40 a month because my income should be above $40000. My wife who stays home with the kids who are under 8 will receive a little over 10000 this year as a child benefit package. She or they will not pay any fees for healthcare. When she was first pregnant and working she received 55% of her wages for 6 months after the baby as a leave. I pay into a government run pension plan that covers everyone. It’s a sliding scale based on income over years and I have no idea what the benefits I will receive Right now they are roughly $800 a month for those over 65 in my income bracket. On top of that I get roads, education, dump, community centre, defense, policing, municipal services, provincial services, federal services. My tax bill will be about 20 percent after deductions, etc. On top of that I pay HST (harmonized service tax):of 13 percent on everything except essentials like food. But here is the rub that often gets missed. As I established myself I paid virtually nothing. My college education which gave me a well paying trade cost me $2000 and as an apprentice my wages were covered at 55% the whole time I was at school. I paid no taxes during my low income years and hst was refunded until my income increased. My parents never spent a dime on my healthcare so could afford a lot more in terms of services for us. That to me is what “socialism” means we agree as a democratic society to pool resources on things that are obviously in the common good. A sick person near you costs you more money down the road then offering them services does. A mother rushed back to work for financial reasons cause problems for the child down the road. Kids with bad health never reach their potential. Bad schools means as a country you can’t keep up. Seniors living in squalor hurts us all.That is the conclusion we came to 60 years ago and we reap the benefits from it everyday. We have debt and bureaucratic problems and an aging population just like you but I would not want to trade places for twice the income.
I laid it out here as a conversation piece not as judgement of any kind
Best regards, David Baillie
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Garry, and all,
Well said, but there is more. Infant mortality? Mothers (and hit and run “fathers”) hooked on “Recreational” drugs. Heroin, Meth, other nasty and too cheap stuff. This creates multi-generational dysfunctional families, where the kids are unable to escape. Any Race, Color, Region. These kids are lucky to stay in school and get a meal everyday. Here in the USA.
You want to knock the “rich” down a peg? Stop buying their products, using their services, reading their papers and watching their programs. Vote with your wallet and your feet. I know I am preaching to the choir here.
Health care costs? Limit malpractice awards, hard to put a value on a human life, though…
Encourage more drugs to go generic sooner, but without big profits there will be less basic,new. research done. The public universities research should be available to other research groups, not just big pharma who is funding the particular work.
Offer to pay for medical education, and other much-needed skills. That might be a better use of some tax dollars.
My Brain Hurts! 
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My main concern about insurance companies isn’t the cost but the personal damage that it does. With insurance I can buy shiny car that cost ten times what I have saved and drive it with rage because if I smash it they will fix it. I can now buy a house that cost a 1000 time what I have and if I burn it down they will fix it. Say, can I bum a cigarette from you? So the real cost is a dumbed down spoiled brain. I am not a church goer but I think Billy’s church is one good insurance policy.
Why do countries fail in time? Same reason winter turns to spring and babies are born and the old die.
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JO, lets not forget the likes of Gransfors Bruk ! !
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Too true on the aging population bulges working its way down through many countries.
I have one world atlas that shows this very well graphically.
This will be handled better or worse depending on the societal culture ethic.
True stories here locally of the expenses debates to try and give-a-life to a child needing a combo heart&lung transplant versus how much indigent free pre-natal care could be done. State of Oregon health care plan said No to the one-child transplant experiences. Yes, to expanded free pre-natal care. Case went to the Supreme Court - they had to reverse themselves. Pre-natal then got done with a higher income tax raising, wider professional advertising for their State Lottery… Same State a decade later botched their Affordable HealthCare Plan (Obama-Care) roll out. Spent $63,000,000 on a system that still had not signed up by Internet a single person. First cost the Program manager his position. Then the state Governor was out too.
Oregon and California have by far worst on-street homeless problems versus Washington State, Idaho, Nevada.
Some say as magnets for their social network programs.
Some very credible evidence that housing cost and taxes versus declining livable job wadges have driven more residence out of their rental and owned houses on to the streets.
Hard to make out the real causes due to meth, and opiate problems.
Some old in the USof A are fantastic. Were worker-bee Ants. Set up to take care of themselves - financially. These the ones making the I’ll Pass decisions. MRI’s do not cure - only give pictures.
Too many other now next tier-down aging USofA oldsters were party-ant Grassphoppers.
The BigCorperate Fears-Sellers like the PharmaCorps, InsuranceCo’s, we-will-keep-you-young-looking just love those they can shake votes out of.
Mine will be the last generation able to pay as you go for health care. Follow-on generation never accumulate the resources monthly bleeding out to “stay connected”. Smart phones. Super-duper gamer high speed internet.
In the 70’s, 80’s, early 90’s I was able to cash buy the level of testing, suturing, broken bone resolutions and dental care that I wanted. Neurologist. Orthopedic surgery. Internist. Urology. Even $16k of ART (Advanced Reproductive Technology).
I decided want was worth it. I decided which professional was worth his/her pay. Cash talks.
The above is a bit out of the flow now.
Started writing it yesterday, and got cut off from my daily Net access time.
SEE. When you admit and accept to an addiction your only choices are to:
One; drown in it; die of it.
Two: divert the urges with substitutes - (these the folks who claim that they stopped cold turkey)
Three: submit to a no-appeal limit turning it back from an abuse to a limited fun thing again
I did edit my yesterday above based on AdminChris’s guidelines.
American freedom means the freedom to try and fail. Then have to take responsibility for that failure. Just as you would have benefited from successes.
In-America 1820-1880: stay in an east coast shit-city with rampant vice, poor sanitation and real annual outbreaks of disease? Or, move out west to clean air and water? Have to learn to NOT go idly poking around under bushes, rocks due to consequence snakes and scorpions. That water? Mismanage quantity/quality needs and you will die horribly. Shelter? Summer will kill you. Winter kill you quicker. So you really want to be American Free, that means you WILL be held responsible for your free choices. Or stay in a shit-city subjected to what others will choose for you. 1880 to early 1930’s that meant Rich Elits decisions. 1930’s theron shit-cities became more progressive-social Elits deciding for you. Just a different set of the same class of Have’s deciding for have-less’s.
Interesting 1st hand perspective about Sweden J.O. Thanks. Same US, Canada, UK. Globalazation sucks us all who actual work and produce real things.
Kristian I listen too. Yep. Yep. USof A has used the very best of our Advertising men and techniques since 1917 to convince us to go bail out the Great Imperial Powers of Great Brittan and France against the great Imperial powers of Germany and Hungery-Austria. How? We were fed posters of German/Hun solders eating Belgium babies. Dirty Hun solders raping Belgium and French woman.
Ha! I have to edit this next about our 2st great S-P Pres who pushed through anti-sedition laws jailing Irish-American and German-Americans who woulds street protects these lies. They both sailed away from these Empires and owed no going back.
Hitler had some damn fine propagandist too.
Lenin and the early revolutionists did a mighty fine job too.
For us current Americans it really was not the John Wayne spin made us question the ideals of communism. It was first a few hundreds thousand from Vietnam paying with their lives to escape going-communist. Then followed up with a few hundred thousands more dieing to escape Pol-Pot Cambodia. Then a wave of another hundred thousand more from Castor’s worker-paradise Cuba.
These waves plus a dribble out, ran away constant streams from pre-collapsed East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Romania all became real hard working I-want-to-be Americans. I/we work with them. Live with them. Eat with them. These are an easy one million influence on us since the mid 1970’s. Two to three million more legally from other societies come here for as can be summed up to say, “In American I get to make my own money, AND KEEP IT”
Ha! Ha! I frustrate the short-white-bread (redneck) sides of my families by maintaining that the very best of American’s I know speak with accents because they really want to be here.
By the third generation here, born here, “entitled” that too much seems to get lost.
Ponder this.
If their was no American to escape to for these “greedy capitalist” you all would be stuck with them insisting on changing your societies even more.
Great Brittan fought mightily to keep the America in the fold for the natural resources. Great Brittan used Australia as their dumping ground for malcontents.
Back onto American health care revising - you will know progress when one party in-power insists one or more of the BIG players must profit less. Or ALL of the big Players ALL profit less.
Ain’t ever going to happen.
Both major parties indebted us to too-big-to-fail bailout debts in 2008-10. In previous “Great” America heads would have been chopped, many, many spin-doctor financiers gone to prison.
The party of the Donkey and the Elephant are the same Elits drunken on the their life styles spin-finced by lies.
I remember back when America was “Great”. The Stock Markets were NOT hourly, nightly news segments. Back page of the newspaper IF you really wanted to know.
We live in a time that values the height, shape, color of the foam head on the beer more than the replenishing real dense actual food-liquid in the glass.
J-I-C Steve Unruh
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David, I do see what you are saying that socialist doesn’t mean North Korea necessarily. Like I said before, the reality is that the US is a socialist nation more than it was 100 years ago. It a spectrum. The fact is, the more mandatory redistribution that occurs, the less “freedom” one has. Even if one is allowed to move around freely, free speech etc. Every society has its limitations on autonomy. I think there was as tribe in Ecuador jungle that had no real limitation on autonomy and the murder rate was enormous. But my point isn’t that because one has a socialist society they are living in a dictatorship. I just meant that more socialism = less personal control over one’s own resources (“freedom”). And Americans love their perceived autonomy. Perhaps it is propaganda that has convinced me of this…
I would also say that, Probably, if you could give an American family health coverage for $40 a month and a college education for $2000, you wouldn’t hear much out of the average citizen complaining about their “loss of freedom”. The fact of the matter is that that’s not what we’re paying. The reality, for better or worse, is that it is American tax dollars that have been subsidizing the world for the past 80 years. Liberty ships etc, UN funding and actions, NATO, Japan’s defense, South Korea’s defense, Israel, African infrastructure funding and debt forgiveness, NASA and the Space race, Peace Corps, Rebuilding Europe, Middle East, drug wars, natural disaster relief, subsidized agriculture foreign and domestic, peace keeping forces Yugoslavia, Korea, Israel, Egypt, all over Africa, Central America, Haiti, on and on…
Now I’m not saying we should or should not be doing all that stuff. You could get as many opinions as people on that list. But from the taxpayer’s perspective, folks get tired of paying for everything, everywhere. So there’s a lack of trust in those (politicians/systems) who would want to take and redistribute more of their income. I’m not arguing with you that there couldn’t be a system that’s more efficient. It’s just not very likely going to happen here. It hasn’t yet. The perception of the people here (maybe you could call it propaganda) is that when the government wants to involve itself more in our lives, it costs us more and gets less efficient. And sends our boys into more fights, and etc…
After all, why have just one when you can get two for twice the price. haha
I still don’t understand why I never hear of people immigrating from here to those more efficient countries with the old Soviet style 5-year plan. They all seem to be headed this way not the other… Maybe I’m not looking in the right places.
“I would say “socialistic vs capitalistic” on one scale and “democratic vs dictatoric” on another.”
I take this point. It was not my intent to necessarily equate the two…thanks…
back to work now… Later
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Immigration no matter the local conditions is quite rare. The hordes of cubans vietnamese, eastern europeans were a drop in the bucket compared to those who stayed at home. I would say that the very small percentages of people who understand how to immigrate are also in the small minority who are better off where they are. Of those few people then you remove those whose skill sets are not in demand at that time. With great trouble and expense I could probably move to the us or you here but it would not be worth it. I assume by 5 year countries you mean communist Era countries still holding out? We get many more applicants then we take in I’m sure the US is the same.
Global policing over the last 75 years is an interesting one. Pure altruism was rarely the sole motivation. It cost the US a fortune but also reaped huge fortunes. Those who paid and those who profited were not the same of course.
Best regards, David Baillie
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Ha! DavidB, good to hear from you. I value your objective outlooks.
I figure you are responding back collectivley to both Billy North and me?
Societies and cultures can be funny things just like critters and machines.
Amazingly hard to change or kill. Or one-step easy to put down.
The back half of the New Carisa ship gone aground off of the Oregon Coast at a designated wildlife refuge as an example.
Old “Great” American way would have just been to off-pump the fuel oil and leave it as a sight-seeing tourist attraction. Like all of the ships of old. Postcard material.
NO-o-o-o. US Federal laws and Oregon State laws said owners were responsible for removal and site restoration to pre-event conditions. Six months. Three, larger and larger Tugs attempts just to get half torn off for sinking. Then many 5 inch naval shells and that half still obstinately floating. Finally a multi-million dollar torpedo from a nuke-sub to put that half down. The other half? By then the shifting sand bars had swallowed it mostly up.
The decades of AIDs in too many of the trying to climb up African contires shows well how devastating taking out just a small percentage of the skilled work force can be. The power line workers. The telecommunications folk.
More than a few sociologist books out there claiming out-migration from Europe took away a lot of innovation energy.
Been plenty of screaming about sent-to-college “brain draining” to the US/Canada/UK by India, Arabian and other countries.
One, two, three North American EMP’s let off and the US and southern Canada is going dark David.
Head shot. Heart shot. Kill the spark, and the engine stops. A RPG to stop an engine is just so over-kill crude.
J-I-C Steve Unruh
Hi Steve, Canada and the US both have a predatory approach to immigration. It’s much cheaper to import then train. Not much talk about that here or there I would guess. We export aid to places like Haiti and various African nations while importing their highly skilled people fleeing the ship. We talk about them wanting a better life but it’s a practice that robs their home country of the tools to rise up again. It’s a complex world isn’t it.
Emp:
I read 1 second after which I found very interesting but as is usually the case in American sci fi myopic to the rest of the world. The other thing funny was the complete absence of woodgas, solar panels, wind turbines, steam anything you would expect to come to the fore in a post emp world. Everyone happily went about dying. There is a sequel but it seemed even more obsessed with issues of government then the first so I passed. Emp is real but everything I have read lays out a scenario of unpredictable localised outages not mass blackness. I did invest in emp rated surge suppressors though both on my dc and ac sides…
Best regards, David Baillie
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