ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Medical care is one of the most inelastic things arounds. If you need something or you will die that's a pretty good thought experiment for what perfect inelasticity looks like. For things that are less inelastic (primary care appointments say) usually not doing it is the actuarially wrong decision and demand should be more inelastic.
Patient's aren't the ones paying. Insurance pays. "Randomly" your insurance or the health system or some weird combination of laws and policies screws you. The government tries to close these but it turns out to be really hard to do for a variety of reasons.
Those sound like arguments for price transparency, not arguments for the impossibility of determining pricing to the end consumer.
Your chance of crashing into one of those cars and somehow being on the hook is one in a million. Major complications of surgery are 1%-10% depending what we are talking about, certainly orders of magnitude more (yes I know I'm missing some things about car insurance for the sake of simplicity)
As long as these are reasonably predictable, you can calculate a price. The specific issue you're talking about might mean that the price is higher, not that it's impossible to give an accurate number.
Also - now insurance companies can use fancy computers and actuarial tables to even things out and stay functional but if you tried to do this directly with health system you may end up with something like: "hey this thing should cost 100 dollars but instead it costs 4000 because that guy over their refuses to stop drinking soda and vodka instead of water." People get pissed by that in the U.S.
That could be an argument against price transparency, but not an argument for the impossibility of providing accurate numbers. Even then, this point can be argued against, it's not like it's unheard of for regulators to tell companies which factors they're allowed to take into account when making their calculations.
Ultimately the problem is that it's hard to give numbers in general, it's harder to make them accurate, nothing the hospital can do can guarantee the numbers are accurate, they are therefore not very useful in the vast majority of situations and also have a very real cost to deliver to a patient.
I might be a simpleton (it is very likely, in fact), but I don't see how this is any different from any other industry that faces uncertainty (which is all of them), where the prospect of telling the end customer "you don't need to know the price" is typically seen as absurd.
For your case to be persuasive, you'd need to do some comparative analysis, and show how the kinds of uncertainty faced by the medical field is much larger or fundamentally different from, say, car manufacturing or agriculture.
If making the numbers accurate being impossible / comes with costs, how can insurance companies function to begin with? Their existence hinges on having reasonably accurate numbers for these things. If they do have accurate numbers, I don't see how passing them to the customer would generate edtra costs - we have computers these days!
And if it's all really so arbitrary, is there any point to this system? Would anyone really notice if the whole healthcare system got nationalized, with Stalin's reanimated corpse in charge?
The fundamental problem with Trek is largely the same one as Star Wars (and to a lesser extent the MCU) - it's running on fumes. It's got a huge fanbase of aging nerds who loved it when they were 12, but a franchise can only live so long on nostalgia, and both Trek and Star Wars are having trouble pulling in the next generation. I think this is something we are starting to see with cape movies as well. How many Zoomers are invested in 60 years of Superman or X-Men lore? Will alphas even read comic books at all?
That's not a fundamental problem. It's something perfectly manageable, and something that was managed competently in the past - there's a reason it's called TNG. All these franchises, in all their media forms including comics, deliberately turned hostile on the kinds of people that enjoyed them, and are now doing a surprised Picachu that the next generation is not picking them up.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
I just noticed he actually linked to the conversation, so you can judge for yourself.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
We had a guy arguing that, I remember ControlsFreak getting into a rather long fight with him over this. I believe the argument is something like "the number is fake anyway, so you don't need to see it".
I take some perverse pleasure in remembering the old arguments about how ditching the EU was good, actually, because it unburdens the new writers by what has been, and enables them to be more creative.
I also seem to remember one of our regular posters had a bit about how nerds need to shut up, because corporate executives know better how to make their product appealing to a wider market.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
I think if you're pro Trump doing this you also need to consider you're implicitly pro Kamala doing this, do you think that sounds good?
That would sound scary, if I didn't see the entire tech and financial sector coordinate to cut off dissident companies way before any of this was ever talked about. If stuff like this is going to happen anyway, I prefer state control to be made explicit, so you know which companies are allied or compromised, depending on the administration.
I don't think that matters much, it still marked a change in Dem rhetoric. Even Bernie himself had to adapt to be more appealing to the rainbow coalition.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
with very long-term focused horizons like governments.
Is 4 years really that long?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?
It's relatively new, but I've seen it around more than one week. What you observe happens with all buzzwords, including "psyop".
Do you have any numbers on that? Like I said, from what I remember the Disney Star Wars merch didn't move at all. Star Trek had the same problem. Was it actually enough to cover the movie shortfalls, or were they making money with the legacy merch, or something?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Does this represent a leftist turn in the Republican Party's view on the state's role in the economy, leaning more towards a nationalist democratic socialism?
I mean, Trump representing a turn from free markets was something talked about since his first term. If I remember correctly all the Blues were mocking the very idea, even endorsing Rainbow Capitalism, starting with Clinton's "will breaking banks up stop sexism?".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Sequel trilogy merchandise was also a complete dud from what I remember. So where the theme parks (which themselves cost billions to build).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
So they bought Marvel and Lucasfilm and, over the 2010s, got a good many billions of dollars in box office returns from them both.
Did they actually get a return on Lucasfilm? I know they made a decent profit on the first few films, but Lucasfilm cost them 6 billion, IIRC, I don't know if they managed to net that much across all their SW projects.
On point three, I completely agree that America has/had a unique "secret sauce" for getting things done. My contention is that it's part of a feedback loop.
I'm not sure if we're talking about the same secret sauce. The feedback loop idea makes sense to me if the process is: America gets things done -> this attracts people from other countries who want to get things done -> they get things done -> it attracts more people who want to get things done... but what I meant was America's culture being the infrastructure enabling things getting done. "The best and the brightest" don't enter into the picture here, honestly my view of the average IRL American's intellect has been rather dim (and I'm far from the only one)... and yet, when I witnessed their ability to coordinate when a problem arose, it was uncanny, almost like telepathy. Apparently de Tocqueville had a whole bit about that, so it's a phenomenon that's been observed for quite a while.
Under my model immigration might be a force multiplier, but not a feedback loop. You can point to me at all the wonderful goods being transported by trains and trucks, and indeed if they stop coming, my standard of living might decline, but my point is that they're driving over a bridge, which doesn't seem to be doing so well. Halting the traffic to do maintenance might not be pleasant, but far less so than exploiting the bridge to the point of collapse.
If you want to show that your feedback model is more accurate than my base infrastructure model, you'd need to show how immigrants are feeding back into, and maintaining that culture of getting things done, because it's not obvious to me at all. Sure, they can integrate and assimilate, but even in the optimistic "magical dirt" model, first-generation immigrants are usually written off, and it's their children who are expected to integrate. Personally I'm not so optimistic, and I think it's a process that needs to be promoted actively, or else the native culture will become gradually diluted. On top of that, "assimilation" has become a bit of a dirty word to begin with, making it all the harder.
I visited Guangzhou about 10 years ago and saw the opposite problem. Their immigrant population comes largely from very poor areas in Africa. They're treated like second-class citizens, are watched constantly, and frankly, fit Trump’s language about immigrants more than the hard-working people in America.
Doesn't that throw a bit of a wrench in your argument? Of all the countries in the world, China seems to have the best chance for potentially overtaking America,
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
There's your issue, you should have taken me replying under Corvus' response as endoraement of his explanation.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
It's one thing to make inferences. Some inferences are reasonable, in the absence of evidence. But "leaps of logic" land you into assumptions based on the presumption that your inferences are accurate.
I think your Mafia/Zionist comparison is rather specious,
That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. Can you know stop falsely portraying the other side's argument?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
You don't find it tiresome to claim "Someone involved is a Jew, therefore this is Jews being nefarious." But pointing out we have no evidence that the Jew in question was involved at all is tiresome. In the absence of evidence, the public should reasonably conclude "Jews."
Okay.
Are you incapable of accurately stating the other side's argument, or just unwilling?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Regarding b), not letting people charged with a crime leave the country until they've been acquitted is indeed standard operating procedure in any self-respectibg country. Some people have diplomatic immunity, but no one showed that was the case here.
Regarding a), given the above someone dropped the ball, if you want to claim it wasn't the AG, I suppose that's fine, but the "you don't have any evidence for X" argument in a case where the public has no access to all the evidence, is just tiresome.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Is there any evidence that what she did was in any way warrented?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Ok so what do you feel about a member of the Trump admin saying on video that he desires to ban pornography across the entire nation?
I'm happy to discuss this, but you can't expect me to answer another your questions, if you've been dodging mine for half a dozen posts.
but don't carve out the same thing for "them"?
Who told you that? I'm perfectly willing to do so, if I can see that they actively thought for free speech during progressive dominance the same way I thought for it during the last gasps of conservatism. You'll notice I never criticized FIRE, but if you're going to tell me they're in any way representative of academia writ large... well, that would just be a lie, simple as.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
I remember reading years ago about a survey someone gave to Christians and atheists, asking them what they find to be the most compelling argument for either side. It turned out that the most compelling argument for atheism, as rated by atheists didn't rank all that high for Christians, and the one rated by Christians wasn't all that compelling to atheists, and you saw the same patterns for arguments for Christianity. So what is the steelman argument for atheism? The one rated highest by atheists, since that is presumably what made them lose their faith (as that was in the times when people were Christian-by-default, rather than atheist-by-default), or the one rated highest by Christians, as that is what they consider the most challenging for their faith?
You asked for me to defend these arguments to the best of my ability, and that would indicate that answering in the mode of a Christian giving the best argument for atheism would be ok, but my best argument for the ideas you outlined might contain assumptions that you disagree with so deeply, that you want recognize my defense as defending your ideas anymore. On the other hand, without these assumptions, I won't find these defenses particularly compelling, so how much of a steelman are they then? Still, the best of my ability sounds like I would have to be the one to find them compelling, so this is the perspective I'll be taking, while trying to preserve your core premises as best as I can.
The kinds of arguments that I find the most compelling on these issues are ones that acknowledge that certain things happened that got us to where we are now. Regarding your first point, this would mean reformulating the part about unapologetic racism being suddenly more visible. There was plenty of unapologetic racism before Elon bought Twitter and changed the rules there, what changed is that the list of acceptable targets was expanded. The other part of the argument, about corroding social trust and making it harder to have a unified country is pretty straight forward. It's not sustainable for pretty much the same reasons why unapologetic anti-white racism turned out to be unsustainable. "We don't have to live like this, we can respect each other and work together for the common good" sounds like pretty good deal to me. It's most compelling version is liberals like TracingWoodgrains LARPing as Lee Kuan Yew, even if I don't find them credible. If concessions are made about the things that went wrong in the past, and I get assurances that skulls will be cracked and kneecaps will be broken to set it right, or better yet I get to see some gesture-of-good-faith kneecappings firsthand, I might indeed be compelled to drop the hammer on internet racists from - roughly speaking - my side.
Regarding your second point:
How would you build the case that this isn't just a fringe phenomenon anymore, but a significant and growing force in American life?
That sounds like it's mostly an empirical argument, correct? If so, that's probably the easiest case to argue. If you look at Vivek / Elon / H1B-Gate, such strong pushback would have been hard to imagine even as recently as Trump's first term. The ideas might not be completely dominant on the right, but they're definitely not fringe anymore either.
Your third point is the most difficult to argue, because it requires the acceptance of several premises. First, did the strategic advantage of the US stem from the smartest and most ambitious people coming there, or did they come there because of American strategic advantages? As an americanized by media Europoor, that saw a bit of your country, I can tell you this isn't just a chicken vs. egg thing. My experience of America is that it has (or used to have) an entire culture conducive to making things happen, that you won't find anywhere in Europe (with the possible exception of the UK, where you might get but a glimpse, but not more). I better not get into that too much, because the more I talk about it, the more it will undermine the core premise of your argument, and you asked me to argue for it.
The second part you have to argue is that the US is indeed losing it's economic advantage. That's the part I'm quite open to. A fellow motte-poster made the argument a few times that China's culture is adapting to enable the kind of cutting-edge innovation that was typically associated with America. Again, quite compelling, and all the denials feel pretty cope-y to me.
With the third part we start running into problems again, as you have to show that it's the lack of openness to immigration that would be responsible for the loss of the strategic advantage. I haven't really heard an argument for that, not even an unconvincing one, and I drawing a blank trying to argue for this. I can say what would convince me if you could demonstrate it: if you could see countries like Canada, that imported millions of immigrants, suddenly zoom past it's previous economic performance, that would make a very strong case for your argument.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
But yes I realize that's long ago, so I gave you a current example of something happening right now as we speak by a high level Trump executive.
I've lost count of how many times I asked you how what Trump did violates any of the principles you supposedly hold, and how many times you ignored the question.
But also if we're going about who started it, wouldn't the older examples be better?
Sure. So back then I was pro-Rowling, and helped the left as much as I could. Then the left went full-censor, and now Trump is in power and cutting their funding for practices that are illegal in the left's own framework. How am I the one that started it, and not them?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
Right, so if funding withdrawals exist, they should at least be done in a fair and freedom maximizing manner. How is this not what happened in the discussed case?
I was thinking a lot about that one too.
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