Tough topics

[Hyper Kinetic]

Aug 19, 2010 20:31:06 GMT Thlaylie said:

Everyone is missing the point that the Megacorporations will eventually replace all governments and their rule will be Dictatorships.

I'm actually sorta on board with this one.
At least over in Australia, but possibly else where, the governments are giving more control to private entities by selling off various services.
Being Australian, I need only mention Telstra to you and you should understand what I am talking about. For those who don't know, Telstra was the government run telecommunications service until it gradually has been sold off and is nearly a Private entity now.
In NSW (if I recall correctly, that's where you are Salamut), you will have noted that the state government tried (and failed) to privatise power... something that has been done in South Australia, to the detriment of the wallets of those people, but possibly to the better of resource use minimisation as well as definitely being a cost cutting exercise for the government.

What happens when the public systems can not cope/aren't working too well? The government gives incentives for Private systems and they start to flourish.
This reduces the demand on the public sector, so reducing/limiting the expense for the government... at the cost of losing a bit of control and potentially (i.e. usually) increasing the cost to the general public.
Government is slowing turning in to something that is being run like a business, with business methods and business bureaucracy... in itself a double edged sword.

Governments will still be there to run things on a Law level, but private entities are increasingly taking up on what was previously once government owned and operated and I do not see the trend stopping until governments realise that they are what they are: Government... not a business. Not everything that they do is intended to make money, it is a service. Alternatively, they will stop only after they realise that they have little else to sell.

Whilst the increasing cost to the general public is a bad thing in terms of hit-to-the-wallet, it may also be a good thing in that it limits their general usage of limited resources. Of course, this may then drive prices up... but at least resource usage is lower than what it might be.
Think of it this way: If you had something for free, or the same thing that cost you to use it, which one would you use more carefully?
As gamers, we should all know the benefit of having unlimited lives/save points: you keep doing the same area over and over until you don't screw up. Remember the days of games where you had only a limited number of lives? RPGs that have only limited save point areas? You played them more carefully than your average FPS, I bet.

---

In short: Goverments are slowly giving away their power, as well as lowering their cost to run, by handing over their services at least in part to the private sector.

[Enigma]

Okay, some of the conversation here is degenerating into unfounded conspiracy theories. HK's got it right; if you're making a point, try to explain why you think it makes sense.

[Fiddlersworth]

How about this one, why was health care for everyone such a hard sell in the U.S.?

I realise it's a form of socialism which may turn some people off right away, but compare it to education in the U.S.

By law all children between the ages of 4 to 17 get free education paid for by taxes. Not just an option, parents can lose custody of their children if they don't see that they are provided with a basic education. Think about the amount of money spent on building and upkeeping schools, teachers' salaries, supplies, buses, etc.

It's an enormous cost but it's there because way back when someone in gov't had the forethought to realise that having an educated population was necessary for a democracy to thrive.

The message that opponents to health care are saying is that eventhough it's crucial that society educate children it is not important to keep them healthy.

Something's really wrong about that argument and it amazes me that there was so much fuss. It seems like a non-issue.

[wormwood]

The lack of a public option made it a tough sell to the public, for reasons that should be obvious.

[salamut2202]

australians have one consistent trait which sums up utilities being privatized, australian companies being owned not by australia and the fact this is the only part of the world where 10 years is a long term investment - australians, financial anyway, are short sighted.

[Jason]

Don't worry salamut, North America is too.

Well, fiddlersworth, in this democratic world, you may notice over the course of time that any bad ideas go through the system like an all-bran bar, but any good idea is met with the highest resistance. The reason is more of an excuse. Whoever is against those ideas, are generally the ones that will lose money, or not make as much. Or the kind of people that like to argue for the sake of arguing.

[Thlaylie]

You guys need to check out the Shadowrun RPG to check out how the world will be with Megacorps.

[Enigma]

Shadowrun is an RPG. With dragons. I don't think it's the greatest source of real world extrapolation.

[Nightstalker]

Wait there aren't dragons in the real world Next thing you'll tell me there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.

On a more on topic note. National Health Care in the United States is such a hard sell because of well to be honest the single mindedness of the Republican Bureaucrats. Even when it had a public option, they denied it for this or that reason. Until it went from a great bill covering a wide variety of options to the mess it currently is.

[salamut2202]

komodo dragon
water dragon
bearded dragon
spined dragon
(no, some actually call it this) the australian frilled neck dragon

[wormwood]

Legislators need huge amounts of money to win campaigns, they get this money from corporate donors, Political Action Committees, and wealthy benefactors. In exchange for this support legislators do the bidding of lobbyists who represent these moneyed interests. These lobbyists corporate masters don't want a public option, as that would cut into the obscenely profitable business of selling medical insurance. So, they tell their lobbyists to tell the legislators that they need to scuttle the public option to ensure there'd be campaign funds available for getting them re-elected. The legislators respond by removing the public option from the bill.

Much of the evolution of the so called healcare reform act, was guided by corporate interests in this manner.

In its present incarnation, the act requires all private parties to purchase health insurance from private insurers or face steep fines for failure to comply.

While it does require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, it does not require them to cover the pre-existing condition itself or any condition related to it.

There are also no provisions to protect consumers by capping fees, deductibles, or premiums paid by individual consumers for that health insurance.

Why would our government be so hell bent on passing a healthcare reform bill in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the great depression you might ask? Quite simply, to reinflate flagging stock prices to their pre-market correction levels. Health insurance makes its money by investing the premiums it collects from the insured every month in the stock market, and by coercing the entire populace into paying these premiums, they force unwilling investors to put their money into the stock market through the intermediary of the insurance company. Wall Street gets a shot in the arm, insurance companies get a huge boost, and the man on the street gets raked over the coals paying for a service he can't afford.

[Thlaylie]

I meant the Megacorp part.

Like RL Shadowrun is multi-faceted.

[mina]

This has once again degraded. (That's why I am back.)

I read my issue of Time magazine today, and the cover article is about Islamophobia. It was a interesting article, but the idea of debate it brought up for me was over building a a Islamic Worship Place(cannot spell the proper noun) In the area where the twin towers fell. I know most non americans could probably care less, but still how do you feel about it? Is it dancing on dead people's graves or is everyone silly?

[Hyper Kinetic]

Apologies, but I will be making a response in reply to Wormwood here:
The major issue that I see with the sorely needed Health Care reform in the US is that they are using the system that is already broken in an attempt to fix the problems created by said system.
This is something I simply can not fathom.
It is recognised that a large portion of the problem is due to having such a huge portion of the health system privatised... so why force people in to the private system as an attempt to fix the health system?

---

Now... back to Jaka's questions.
As you said, I could care less but...
Why are people crying foul over "dancing over dead people's graves"? We, as in westernised society, have been doing it for centuries. Countries have been founded on such things. Urban Sprawl virtually guarantees it.
It is not entirely silly, of course. It was a great tragedy, as is all terrorism. However, I do think that people should grow up a little.
It is a place of worship. So what if it was the type of religious worship was the same as those who carried out the terrorist attacks? Guess what: the vast majority of the Islamic people did not agree with it either.
If it were a fundamentalist Christian movement that initiated the terrorist cause, would people be up in arms about a church? I sincerely doubt it, largely due to it being the same religion as the state. People would forget what happened much quicker too, I would bet.

[salamut2202]

god, i think i can use my point of view on why they're so sacred of it right here. i think this is the sort of healing that america needs. 3 things i want to establish about the mosque at ground zero.

1. it's not at ground zero, it's like 3 blocks away
2. it's not a mosque, it is a cultural community centre with a prayer room.
3. not all muslims are terrorists, a very very very small extreme minority is. there are irish republicans, fearmongering south american fascist governments, christian fundamentalists and people's socialist movements that can be just as (please do not swear) brutal as they are.