Many wars are simply what you’d expect from violent leaders who realize they can order other people into combat for them. But some wars really are for the greater good. There are definitely militaries that I want to see win, and militaries that I want to see lose.
I realize I don’t have any code that would be of any use to any military. If I did, I don’t see how I could write a license to allow the use of my code by only people I agree with.
You can write whatever you want in a license, including something as vague as “you can only use this code if I agree with your moral stances”. (For expediency, it might be worth enumerating the cases.)
The OSI might disapprove, but you don’t have to listen to them.
> 1. A number of other developed countries have UHC while also allowing a private system as well - what is unique about the US that other countries' existing approach couldn't work here?
Mainly, expectations. I understand that UHC in European countries doesn’t cover all the things Americans assume it does.
Japan apparently keeps costs down by not using cutting-edge drugs. That’s not going to happen in the US.
The US Congress just isn’t good at keeping costs down.
> 2. ... why wouldn't providers choose to stop serving medicare patients under the pre-2026 system, where giving up medicare patients would be a far smaller loss than in a world where everyone has medicare?
They absolutely do. Many providers don’t accept Medicare. Very few providers accept Medicaid. The payments just aren’t high enough.
The US is dead last in terms of health outcomes among every developed country (despite spending far more), but you believe expectations will cause every other developed country's system to fail here? I guess your argument is that the propaganda machine pushing the idea that America's healthcare is not the worst in terms of outcomes (while also being about the most expensive), would prevent Americans from accepting no longer having the worst results and the highest costs?
> Many providers don’t accept Medicare. Very few providers accept Medicaid.
1. About the same percent accept Medicare as private insurance (85-90%, while ~70% accept Medicaid - is that "very few"?).
2. "Medicare for all" is one of the primary proposals being discussed.
3. Previous smaller expansions of government healthcare resulted in expanded provider capacity to handle them, not less, but your argument is that we'd see the opposite results from further expansion?
4. And in this new world where everyone had Medicare or similar, your argument is that providers would choose to ignore most patients, where they don't under the existing system where government-sponsored healthcare makes up a significantly smaller portion of the customer base?
5. And your argument is that if the government finds that healthcare providers contract to the point that outcomes remain the worst among every developed country, as they are today, that the government would be unwilling to make any changes (such as reimbursement rates) to address this?
> The US is dead last in terms of health outcomes among every developed country (despite spending far more), but you believe expectations will cause every other developed country's system to fail here? I guess your argument is that the propaganda machine pushing the idea that America's healthcare is not the worst in terms of outcomes (while also being about the most expensive), would prevent Americans from accepting no longer having the worst results and the highest costs?
The argument is that the US system has a much lower floor, which leads to the bad health outcomes, but also generates a lot of people who expect and demand more than most universal healthcare systems would give them. An Uber driver with the cheapest marketplace plan he could find would benefit greatly from any universal healthcare system; a guy with really bad ulcerative colitis (https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-i...) would likely not be able to get a prescription for a cocktail of drugs at non-FDA-approved doses costing $2M/year.
I’m saying the US won’t implement anything like what other countries implement. I honestly think Philip Greenspun’s proposal ( https://philip.greenspun.com/politics/health-care-reform ) makes sense but has no chance of being implemented. Americans asking for some kind of single payer system are expecting something better than basic health care.
I remember when President Obama suggested “maybe you’re better off not getting the surgery but taking the painkiller” ( https://youtu.be/rin4h4cRs6Y ). That seemed to surprise many of the people who wanted a single payer option. He stopped suggesting that kind of cost-cutting that very quickly.
I also remember when a few people received anthrax in the mail. Every news story said that people who had any contact with the letter had received Cipro to avoid developing an infection. After a couple of weeks, the government actually announced that other (cheaper) antibiotics were effective against anthrax, but it was obvious that no company was going to hand their employees something other than Cipro.
Incidentally, my autistic adult son has Medicaid. I don’t think I’ve yet found a doctor who will accept it. Luckily he’s also on my health insurance.
I've seen plenty of restaurants with a disclaimer that they have (often unspecified) allergens in the kitchen, and even if the allergen isn't in the ingredient list, it's possible they came in contact with anything in the restaurant. Most people wouldn't have a problem with peanut dust floating through the store, but apparently some people are sensitive enough that trace contamination like that can be a problem.
When I make, say, meat loaf, at home, I know that I use ground beef, Panko, egg, onion, ketchup, vinegar, oregano, and garlic. If somebody asks whether there's ground beef, wheat, onion, tomato, vinegar, oregano, or garlic in the food, I believe a waiter could give a correct answer. But if somebody asks about yeast, or high fructose corn syrup, the waiter might have to ask the cook, and the cook might need to look at the label for the Panko or ketchup (surprise! packaging for restaurants may not have the same information as consumer packaging).
If somebody orders, say, ribs, and mentions they are allergic to spices that are found in some barbecue sauces or spice rubs, the waiter isn't going to know (and the cook might not know) if those spices are in the dish, and especially won't know if they're present in a large enough amount to cause a reaction.
The FDA does require manufacturers to keep track of the most common allergens ( https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica... ), but if somebody has an uncommon allergy, they're on their own. Restaurants are regulated by state health departments instead of the USDA. California, I believe, has some allergen labeling requirements for its restaurants. Most large restaurants worry enough about liability that they disclose the information (for common allergens) voluntarily.
This is an interesting detail to learn about history. However, like the article mentions near the end, the Gregorian calendar was adopted at different times in different countries. The Anglican Church didn’t trust the Catholics, so Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750 ). And they did their best to hide the fact that they were adopting a Catholic invention: it’s the “New Style Calendar” and they came up with a different way to choose the same date for Easter.
1752 is late enough that Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others were born before that change.
I think that’s the reason that programming languages tend to adopt the proleptic Gregorian calendar and leave it up to the programmer to figure out when the calendar was adopted in the countries they care about.
Except that countries apparently had to answer various questions when they adopted the Gregorian calendar, and they didn’t all chose the same answers. Ideally, we’d have something like tzdb but for calendar adoption. But I guess the need doesn’t come up all that often.
1752 is before the invention of timezones, but that adds another curiousity about "what date did X happen?". On the calendar of Country A it could've been October 31, 1752, and on the calendar of Country B it would've been October 21...
The British (including the American colonies) also did an arguably even more confusing calendar change in 1752, by switching the start of the new year from March 25 to January 1.
“Despite the unification of the Scottish and English royal crowns with the accession of King James VI and I in 1603, and even the union of the kingdoms themselves in 1707, England continued to use Annunciation Style while Scotland used Modern Style. This led to the act being recorded at the time in England as 6 March 1706 (rather than 1707), because in England (unlike Scotland) it fell before the new year began (on 25 March).”
“WHEREAS the legal Supputation of the Year of our Lord in that Part of Great Britain called England, according to which the Year beginneth on the 25th Day of March, hath been found by Experience to be attended with divers Inconveniencies, not only as it differs from the Usage of neighbouring Nations, but also from the legal Method of Computation in that Part of Great Britain called Scotlond, and from the common Usage throughout the whole Kingdom, and thereby frequent Mistakes are occasioned in the Dates of Deeds, and other Writings, and Disputes arise therefrom.”
Although, I think “common usage” in that statement implies that it was common to just do what other countries did, except when filling out legal documents.
Yeah, and why not? There's nothing special about January 1. It's kinda like the international date line: you have to choose somewhere. Although it does seem quite practical to have the year begin on the first day of a month.
I remember seeing advice, years ago, to let lettuce sit in a weak bleach solution before use. But I doubt that’s ever been followed by many people. Current advice (at least at home) seems to be to rinse lettuce to remove dirt ( https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/safe-handling-of-lettuce-... ). Apparently most health problems from lettuce are on the surface and not particularly hard to get off.
I wouldn't classify bagged salad as an ultra processed food as it's usually just cut and cleaned leaves from the various ingredients. It's not like they pour all the leaves into a machine and get soylent green out of the other end.
I don’t understand the problem. Police saw something they thought was suspicious, took a closer look, and then decided there was nothing illegal happening.
I don’t think there’s a constitutional right to know when you’re being tailed. Or to be notified every time a police officer does a double-take.
> The cop, Lamar Roman, wasn’t trying to pull over a suspected criminal. He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey, which he had worked a security detail shift on a few weeks prior to pulling her over. After meeting the woman, catcalling her and harassing her for her full name and Instagram details, the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID, a Florida Department of Motor Vehicles database for law enforcement. He then put her license plate details on a surveillance “hotlist,” meaning he would get a notification in real time anytime she drove by an AI-powered license plate surveillance camera.
> The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn. On August 21, Mayor Alioto advised the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that they should concede to the strikers' demands. The Supervisors unanimously refused. Mayor Alioto immediately then declared a state of emergency, assumed legislative powers, and granted the strikers' demands.
Again, you sound like someone who has never read an ounce of political philosophy. The policing of behavior will exist in any society, whether it is held by the state, the church, private security firms, organized crime, or vigilantes. The entire point of putting the police under the authority of a democratic public is because the alternatives are all much worse.
The policing arm of the executive branch can be difficult to manage, the point is once it leaves the purview of the state, it is impossible to manage.
> The entire point of putting the police under the authority of a democratic public is because the alternatives are all much worse.
Yes, I agree.
I just think we're in that "much worse" scenario now, with police unions, qualified immunity, pardons for brutality, and police punishing attempts to rein them in.
American cops are out of control, and emboldened by their success.
Of course, the example chosen for the article didn’t involve anybody abusing their authority. It involved police doing what I’d expect them to do. But I’ll acknowledge that if all of the relevant details were different, then I’d also be concerned.
The problem is that police misuse every single power they have been given and public trust is very low for years now.
I do not want to live in a world where random drones/cameras control my every move, and if your response to that is "I don't understand the problem" then we cannot live in the same society. It has been proven for thousands of years now that more laws do not fix society, and especially the problems we have now. Usually the laws increase in size and absurdity proportionally to how close said society is to its fall. Yet people never learn, and we just add one more line to the list.
Yes, it is true that police have powers that can be abused, and police have abused them.
It’s also true that they have those powers because we’ve decided the alternative is worse. The example used in the article was a case where police did not obviously abuse their authority. If you want to get me worked up about police overreach, you’ll need a different example.
> I do not want to live in a world where random drones/cameras control my every move
How did the drone control anybody’s move in the example? It seems that the drone wasn’t even noticed.
> It’s also true that they have those powers because we’ve decided the alternative is worse.
I don't ever remembering getting the option to vote on whether my police department could use drones and surveillance tech or not. We can't possibly conclude that society has decided the alternative is worse – society never got a choice, the police departments are just spending their budgets on cool military shit and then going on to abuse it like they always do.
When I drive on the freeway, any time a police car gets behind me and turns on its lights, I have to stop. If I don't stop, I can ultimately be charged with evading arrest, or fleeing police, or some similar offense. I can be fined and even put in jail, even if a judge decides that the officer didn't actually have a valid reason to stop me.
If a police officer approaches me (when I'm not in a car) and tells me that I'm under arrest, I don't have the legal permission to leave. Even if I know I didn't break any laws. Even if I happen to know why the officer wants to arrest me and I know that it's not a valid reason for an arrest.
Why? Why does the law require me to obey without question, especially when honest mistakes that I might make are treated very differently from honest mistakes the trained officer might make? Fundamentally, because we have decided that the alternative is worse.
Do officers abuse their authority? Of course they do. But we've decided that toothless police departments aren't worth anything (and, in fact, lead to more vigilantism and crime). And we've decided that "self help" solutions (e.g., giving people the right to violently resist arrest if the officer is in the wrong, while punishing people who resist valid arrests) are worse.
The videos in question are full of actual crimes being committed and criminals being arrested.
San Francisco used to not investigate or prosecute any of those crimes. Laptop stolen out of a car? Nothing to do. Now they catch video of it happening, follow the license plate, arrest the perpetrators. Catalytic converter stolen? We don’t investigate that.
Yes, police have shitty track records of abusing authority and technology. Does that mean we throw out all authority and technology? If you do we get the chaotic lawlessness San Francisco experienced for years.
So what’s the middle way?
1) Use the tech to fight crime. (Check! They’re doing it)
2) prevent abuses of that technology and authority (in progress, let’s see how it goes)
I think it's an important distinction whether crime stops happening after all criminals are locked up or after preventative measures are taken to prevent criminal activity happening in the first place.
When criminals are locked up, they will get released and many of them don't have anything else to do other than returning to do crimes, with gained experience from the previous failures.
But it's possible to reduce crime by preventing it. Do not let dangerous districts form, build communities, reduce access to weapons and so on.
This is one of those ideas that gets thrown around and fits into one of two categories:
- Massive money sink that shows no results: See SF during covid and a bit after
- Dystopian policies that tank crime but flagrantly violate peoples rights: see stop and frisk, El Salvador, etc
Some people are going to be criminals no matter how much money you give them. I would argue that especially in functioning countries, the returns on carrot approaches to crime reduction are magnitudes weaker than stick ones.
What made the police think they were “suspicious”? Anybody can be suspicious if you want to tail them for another reason. When you leave the judgement entirely to the person who gets to initiate the surveillance, then you are saying anyone can be surveilled.
Yes, that’s what police do. They drive around and use their judgment to match known criminal activity to behaviors they see around them. Hopefully instances of false positives like two kids going to play basketball get dropped without undue interruptions of the lives of people just going about their lives. (As happened in this case)
Police drive around in patrol cars. They don’t call judges every time they look at other cars. There may be problems with this system, but adding drones hasn’t created a new loophole.
if you were a minority in America, you'd understand where suspicious leads to murder. so kinda understand where _you_ dont see a problem and so many other people will.
Generating false positives is not something society should actively cultivate, nor does it make anyone safer.
This is a very common position. But I’ve never understood the argument that police should have to do some amount of busywork for things to be fair.
Warrants aren’t required so the police are sportsmanlike. Warrants are required because interacting with the police can be inconvenient or hellish, depending on the interaction.
It's because ignoring rights happens faster than they can be protected.
Move fast enough with sufficent scale and you can eliminate peoples ability to protect their own rights before they even realise they are under threat.
Sometimes friction in government is necessary for individual liberty.
I realize I don’t have any code that would be of any use to any military. If I did, I don’t see how I could write a license to allow the use of my code by only people I agree with.