It's a show of power that, for the US, is lessening that power.
Most of the US's power is from being a land of opportunity and of high ideals, with military power being secondary backup. As the US lessens opportunity and openly betrays its ideals, that power disappears. The Greenland and Canada threats alone probably require $500B-$1T/year in additional military spending to try to gain through force wha was previously given freely to the US. Add in the huge cost to the US from the tariff idiocy and cutting things like USAID and we could never spend enough militarily to make up for it.
Look at Putin's weakness in Ukraine. He tried to take by force what was not his, and ended up costing himself far more in lost trust than he could ever have gained with the war, and he has gained so little in the war. Putin had a better chance by continuing to try to divide Ukrainian society internally and have the majority of society side with Russia. Much like what is happening in the US right now.... but attack with bombs and the charade disappears. The US is going to discover the same loss of power through its attempts and threat of force.
Power is real. Powerful people get to do what they want to do. We can only hope that they have a conscience (otherwise known as the Alignment Problem).
It's not backwards. We can and do label people as powerful before they do things because we know that they can. The POTUS is powerful because he can do things like bomb things (legally and illegally it turns out) and pardon people. Elon is powerful because he can buy companies, media platforms, and politicians. I, as a regular person, have no where near this kind of power or influence. I have at best a diluted power where I can vote, or decide not to buy from certain companies, but that's about it.
Nope, it's nowhere near a race that determines who succeeds. It might have been back in cavemen times.
In modern times, the chances to "do what you want" and make society do what you want, are already very different for different people based on their generational wealth, family connections, ties to powerful men and power structures, etc.
A tiny minority coming from nowhere might be admitted to this exclusive club, and be celebrated as "meritocracy" wins. But actual power goes to people who inherited it from powerful people or to people propped up and favored by powerful people.
A power lifter who puts 400 lbs over his head is not a person we call strong only in retrospect. It’s not a dice roll that determines whether the slim girl or the muscled man can do that.
The comment does not say that EU does not have greed, rather that it recognizes this basic human tendency and puts up regulations to mitigate it where it can. The US on the other hand just lets it run rampant.
I feel this way about government sponsored sports stadiums. But not research. Public funded research is is a net benefit, even when some of it is wasted.
I've certainly experienced this. The 'stay in your swim lane' mantra is often misapplied to people who are being curious and creative. Some (not all) managers feel undermined if people below them do anything more than exactly what they are told to do.
The big banks also get a cut when they launder these funds. There are more profits to be made by enabling (or at least not stopping) scams then there is in preventing them. Market forces at work.
> real numbers are simply too powerful to be resolved in the physical world
In a sense "real" numbers are in fact not real at all because they can't physically exist. I think we got it wrong when these numbers were named. What we now call the 'whole' numbers should be called 'real', and vice versa. pi is a whole (in the sense of complete) number because it includes ALL decimal places, but because of infinite precision it can never be realized. 2 is a real (as in it is realizable) number because we can have two of something in reality.
>Perhaps we could just have a 'poor people incinerator' for those whose expected medical expenses exceed their net worth?
Thanks for putting that out there. Give it 10 years, and I'm thinking we'll see the first "bio-repurposing vats". Never mention crap like that on HN. Too many closet psychopaths looking for a big break.
Understand the attempt at shaming. But there are likely a non-trivial number of readers here with such Methuselan inclinations.
I mean you called to just let 80 year olds die. If they can't care for themselves, can't move around, and are left in constant pain, they end up just dieing.
Then you gave the wisdom 'older people use more medical care than younger people'. Like yeah, that is how life/the universe works. My old car requires more maintenance then when it was new. But funny thing about young people, they too will one day be the old person.
No, I said palliative care. That's to ease suffering. So you're telling me we should forego cancer treatments for young cancer patients so 80-year-olds can get hip replacements? Is that what you think? Are you crazy? I never said just let people die. That's insane. It's about cost. In America, they don't just give healthcare for free, like wherever you probably live. I wish they did.
You may not have realized it but leaving an 80 year old bedridden and unable to care for themselves is a death sentence. Any doctor sending an 80 year old home with a shattered hip and not a replacement knows that.
I live in red state America, like one of the super red states. The American healthcare system decided it didn't make sense financially for our small community to have ambulance coverage. You know what we in red state America did? We taxed ourselves and have much better ambulance coverage/care then we ever had before.
If medical care is a for-profit industry, wouldn't it be in their interest to reduce preventative care, especially for children, so they will have overall greater health care needs (and bills!) later on?
Individual doctors and nurses etc may very well want people to get good treatment, especially children. But they are just the hired labor, the owners of the medical services and insurance industries just want the money and so likely lobby for the worse outcomes. It also has the bonus of further tying people to their employers who offer health plans making them more pliant workers.
No, health insurers are motivated to keep their premium payers healthy and have a long track record of funding programmes to improve the health of the population. Think about how insurance works. Where I live they paid for the creation of outdoor gyms.
> Individual doctors and nurses etc may very well want people to get good treatment, especially children
It's individual doctors and nurses who are most incentivized to over-treat. They make more money the more healthcare is consumed. It's insurers who have an incentive to keep healthcare costs under control. A big part of the reason US health insurance is so expensive compared to the rest of the world is that Americans stage a massive freakout every time insurers try to control costs. It's a cultural thing and done by both Democrats and Republicans, look at how they call the UK's NICE committee a "death panel".
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