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White man doesn't realize he's the moocher

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RhodyStruggle
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14 May 2015, 7:46 pm

pezar wrote:
RhodyStruggle wrote:
xenocity wrote:
The free market system if left alone will always a rise in oligopolies and monopolies, without checks from the public and government.


Oligopolies and monopolies don't result from the free market. They result from market distortions emanating from concentrations of capital which have non-market origins. This goes back to the primitive accumulation of capital, the pre-Industrial era enclosures of common lands. Back then would-be industrialists faced a labor shortage. They could not get free men and women living in self-sustaining communities and paying rent to nobody to work on employers' terms. The people would only hire out their labor when and as it suited them. Then came the Enclosure Acts, which made the commons private property, which gave the landlords leave to collect rent from the common people, forcing them to hire out their labor in order to pay the rent.

An excellent essay going into much greater detail on this topic: The Iron Fist Behind The Invisible Hand

The bottom line is, any market where people are required to sell their labor in order to pay the rent is not free.


I call the above the Carnegie Theory of Labor, because I first read about it in Think and Grow Rich, which was written by a protege of Andrew Carnegie. According to Carnegie, in the Industrial Age men went from producing things of value with their time, such as food, blacksmithy goods, etc, to hiring out their time to a capitalist so the capitalist could leverage the time of many people to produce things of value that would be beyond the reach of an individual person. Carnegie noted that the one equal quantity every man owns is his time, thus in a world where men hire out their time, a man must show the capitalist that he brings more to the table than just time. A man who has only his time is an "unskilled laborer", but as one gains more skills, one's time becomes more valuable to the capitalist. Carnegie believed that a man should gain as many skills as possible with the first third of his life, spend the second third building his empire, and spend the final third in philanthropic pursuits. This at a time when men were expected to live around 70-75 years at most.


Carnegie, much like we, lived in a time when private property rights artificially increased the supply of labor available for hire, thus depressing its price.


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Kraichgauer
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15 May 2015, 1:01 am

pezar wrote:
Beating diabetes, especially if you catch it early, isn't rocket science. I have type 2 diabetes, and I managed to get it under control by cutting out fast food, oil soaked foods such as fried food, and wheat, and most sugar. The thing is, I haven't lost a whole lot of weight, I still have an ugly belly, but my diabetes and blood pressure are under control with dietary changes. (I'm still autistic, though. Sorry, goldfish21.) I know that Deep Southerners love their fried chicken, but it's not that good for you.


Good for you! :thumleft:
I had been in the same boat almost two years ago, when I cut out fries and any potato products, most sweets (though I do cheat now and then), and have switched to the Paleo Diet (that is, meat, fruits, and vegetables, though I haven't cut out dairy products like the diet dictates), and have gotten both my blood sugar and weight down significantly.


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beneficii
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15 May 2015, 2:05 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
pezar wrote:
Beating diabetes, especially if you catch it early, isn't rocket science. I have type 2 diabetes, and I managed to get it under control by cutting out fast food, oil soaked foods such as fried food, and wheat, and most sugar. The thing is, I haven't lost a whole lot of weight, I still have an ugly belly, but my diabetes and blood pressure are under control with dietary changes. (I'm still autistic, though. Sorry, goldfish21.) I know that Deep Southerners love their fried chicken, but it's not that good for you.


Good for you! :thumleft:
I had been in the same boat almost two years ago, when I cut out fries and any potato products, most sweets (though I do cheat now and then), and have switched to the Paleo Diet (that is, meat, fruits, and vegetables, though I haven't cut out dairy products like the diet dictates), and have gotten both my blood sugar and weight down significantly.


A true paleo lifestyle would mean you died in your 20s.


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15 May 2015, 3:32 am

White man cant jump, dance, or do anything useful also White man eats cheese!


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15 May 2015, 6:33 am

beneficii wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
pezar wrote:
Beating diabetes, especially if you catch it early, isn't rocket science. I have type 2 diabetes, and I managed to get it under control by cutting out fast food, oil soaked foods such as fried food, and wheat, and most sugar. The thing is, I haven't lost a whole lot of weight, I still have an ugly belly, but my diabetes and blood pressure are under control with dietary changes. (I'm still autistic, though. Sorry, goldfish21.) I know that Deep Southerners love their fried chicken, but it's not that good for you.


Good for you! :thumleft:
I had been in the same boat almost two years ago, when I cut out fries and any potato products, most sweets (though I do cheat now and then), and have switched to the Paleo Diet (that is, meat, fruits, and vegetables, though I haven't cut out dairy products like the diet dictates), and have gotten both my blood sugar and weight down significantly.


A true paleo lifestyle would mean you died in your 20s.


That is why people only do paleo diet, not paleo lifestyle.



Kraichgauer
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15 May 2015, 9:38 am

beneficii wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
pezar wrote:
Beating diabetes, especially if you catch it early, isn't rocket science. I have type 2 diabetes, and I managed to get it under control by cutting out fast food, oil soaked foods such as fried food, and wheat, and most sugar. The thing is, I haven't lost a whole lot of weight, I still have an ugly belly, but my diabetes and blood pressure are under control with dietary changes. (I'm still autistic, though. Sorry, goldfish21.) I know that Deep Southerners love their fried chicken, but it's not that good for you.


Good for you! :thumleft:
I had been in the same boat almost two years ago, when I cut out fries and any potato products, most sweets (though I do cheat now and then), and have switched to the Paleo Diet (that is, meat, fruits, and vegetables, though I haven't cut out dairy products like the diet dictates), and have gotten both my blood sugar and weight down significantly.


A true paleo lifestyle would mean you died in your 20s.


Actually, the remains of the first identified Neanderthal Man (found in the Neander Valley in Germany) had managed to live into middle age. And it should be recalled that long life span today owes more to medical science than to diet.


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RhodyStruggle
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15 May 2015, 11:28 am

beneficii wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
pezar wrote:
Beating diabetes, especially if you catch it early, isn't rocket science. I have type 2 diabetes, and I managed to get it under control by cutting out fast food, oil soaked foods such as fried food, and wheat, and most sugar. The thing is, I haven't lost a whole lot of weight, I still have an ugly belly, but my diabetes and blood pressure are under control with dietary changes. (I'm still autistic, though. Sorry, goldfish21.) I know that Deep Southerners love their fried chicken, but it's not that good for you.


Good for you! :thumleft:
I had been in the same boat almost two years ago, when I cut out fries and any potato products, most sweets (though I do cheat now and then), and have switched to the Paleo Diet (that is, meat, fruits, and vegetables, though I haven't cut out dairy products like the diet dictates), and have gotten both my blood sugar and weight down significantly.


A true paleo lifestyle would mean you died in your 20s.


Not really. Average lifespan of twenty-something doesn't mean most people died at twenty-something, as a high rate of infant mortality brings the average lifespan down.


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15 May 2015, 4:10 pm

To be a progressive is to advocate for policies that help us as a society. As I see it, universal healthcare should be for everyone and health care should be non-profit. How is it reasonable to profit off my health issues. Perhaps drug development and medical technology might need a modified profit motive. Having said that, these policies must help even those who are or were against the policies, including this man. It should also be single payer...



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15 May 2015, 7:30 pm

pcuser wrote:
To be a progressive is to advocate for policies that help us as a society. As I see it, universal healthcare should be for everyone and health care should be non-profit. How is it reasonable to profit off my health issues. Perhaps drug development and medical technology might need a modified profit motive. Having said that, these policies must help even those who are or were against the policies, including this man. It should also be single payer...


:thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft:


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19 May 2015, 7:08 pm

The man in question, of whom this thread is about, has since realized that being a lifelong Republican has gotten him nowhere with his healthcare, and has switched parties to become a Democrat. Oh, and he likes Obamacare, now.


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19 May 2015, 8:36 pm

Don't you just love the way they try to make it so you pay as much as you can for health insurance when you might not even need to go to the doctor? Just keep paying and paying. Then when you do need it, they trim it down so you have to pay and pay some more, deciding they can no longer pay for this or that, or the premiums and co pays MUST be increased even though insurance companies make obscene amounts of money.

This is why they have an "open enrollment" so they can make people pay more.

If you happen to own an insurance company, you are in luck, because the government will enable your profits to be off the charts.



pezar
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20 May 2015, 1:12 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
The man in question, of whom this thread is about, has since realized that being a lifelong Republican has gotten him nowhere with his healthcare, and has switched parties to become a Democrat. Oh, and he likes Obamacare, now.


Link?



The_Walrus
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20 May 2015, 4:23 am

pcuser wrote:
As I see it, universal healthcare should be for everyone and health care should be non-profit. How is it reasonable to profit off my health issues.

What if it benefits you, because standards are higher or the cost is lower?

xenocity wrote:
It is possibly to get a bad government system like Canada or UK

Here is the lists from the OECD on quality of healthcare by country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OE ... re_outcome

The U.S. is number one only on 5 year survival rates for Breast Cancer, but not by much.
The U.S. is in the top 20 on the other lists but easily out ranked by European countries, Japan and South Korea.

Neither the British nor Canadian systems are "bad" by any means. Britain has historically had a problem with early detection of cancer, and Canada could definitely improve in some areas, but broadly speaking they're both better systems than the US: http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/a ... or_web.jpg



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20 May 2015, 5:46 am

Well, to be fair health insurance is a pretty stupid cncept. I have a better idea, why don't we just provide health care to people need it free of cost?

Health care is about one of the most important things there is. Let's leave health care free and let people pay for other things.

I think Obamacare in principle is a truly horrid idea. And I'm a Liberal.



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20 May 2015, 5:51 am

heavenlyabyss wrote:
Well, to be fair health insurance is a pretty stupid cncept. I have a better idea, why don't we just provide health care to people need it free of cost?

Health care is about one of the most important things there is. Let's leave health care free and let people pay for other things.

I think Obamacare in principle is a truly horrid idea. And I'm a Liberal.

Quite. Single-payer nationalised healthcare is also much more efficient than insurance-based systems.



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20 May 2015, 8:39 am

The_Walrus wrote:
heavenlyabyss wrote:
Well, to be fair health insurance is a pretty stupid cncept. I have a better idea, why don't we just provide health care to people need it free of cost?

Health care is about one of the most important things there is. Let's leave health care free and let people pay for other things.

I think Obamacare in principle is a truly horrid idea. And I'm a Liberal.

Quite. Single-payer nationalised healthcare is also much more efficient than insurance-based systems.


It's about to get even more jacked up if the plaintiffs prevail in King v. Burwell.

Of course, single-payer health care is unlikely to occur in this country because socialism.


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