if we can just figure out how to wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders
- yes, while we’re doing the wrenching, they’re struggling against us just as hard. It’s not an organizational problem, it’s an adversarial interaction.
- but tbh I suspect some people just really find comfort in there being wealthy people, even if they themselves have to be poor as a result. Not sure how to handle this.
Education.
Everyone save this post, this is how we will rebuild from the rubble. And if it doesnt get to that point its what we will need anyway. An equitable society.
Why eliminate standardized testing?
Because then education ends up being about the damn test instead of developing beings. The goal shouldn’t be passing the test, it should be learning how to learn, plus a good base in general knowledge so that you can apply critical thinking and successfully integrate new knowledge and experiences.
Would you say the same about other tests, like for driving, engineers, doctors, …? Or is this issue unrelated to the concept of tests but instead how they are implemented or done?
“tests”: Bulemic learning by heart of lecture material just to pass the damn exam and forget most of the stuff a bit later anyway. Practical relevance of tests: approximating zero.
That’s why a lot of “younger” companies don’t even look that critically at grades anymore.
Skill tests evaluate a person’s knowledge of that skill. Standardized testing in theory evaluates a student’s knowledge of the material tested, but in practice teachers often focus more on test-taking strategies in order to boost scores and secure funding. In theory these tests should incentivize learning the material, in practice they incentivize learning to take the test.
So we should not remove the standardized testing but how the tests are done…?
We can keep the standardized testing if they unlink the results from school funding. It’s just another weapon that rich (white) people use to keep money from poor (minority) communities.
Is that how it’s done in the USA? Insane.
It doesn’t promote knowledge, it’s gamed, and it’s used to further discriminate against schools that need funds.
Problem of a poorly designed test and and poorly implemented standard. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You need to test but designing tests that test the thing you are looking for is EXTREMELY hard. This is also part of the alignment problem with AI. If we had this stuff nailed down it would be nice.
AI was also what I was thinking about. The ways it can find to get rewards is crazy.
It’s been successfully demonized by teachers unions over the years. While there are limitations, with the medium, it’s far from useless. It can’t fully assess mastery of a subject, but it can determine basic and applied understanding of one. It’s a very simple step to expand from student competency to teacher competency.
Why do teachers not like it, and how are unions part of that issue?
Okay, but have you considered yachts though? Also, what if I spend $100 million on helping people not die but then my business rival beats me at business this year by $99 million? I’d look like a fool!
And the investors! Won’t someone please stop to think of the investors!
Most radicalizing thing I’ve seen in a good while.
Throwing money at public education doesn’t fix it. Some of the worst schools get well above average funding. There are of course outliers on both sides, but in the average case the US spends more for less in pretty much everything, spending even more isn’t going to fix it.
Having been through that system I have to say, it’s inherently more about training students to be ok with having their movements and thoughts constrained, following instructions, being kept safely contained while their parents are at work, and (if you’re trying for academic success) developing a toxic concept of self worth and “success”, than helping them become informed and capable people. I don’t understand how anyone can graduate and conclude, yes, more of this is what our society needs to thrive. Maybe they just choose not to think about what it was actually like because they don’t have to deal with it anymore, or still buy into the idea that putting themselves through that gave them value because the alternative is too painful. There’s a reason so many people have anxiety dreams about being in school even decades later.
Not at all an endorsement of replacing school with child labor like some people seem to want, but we really need an entirely different way for people to have an opportunity to become literate and explore science and history etc. rather than putting more resources into this awful institution.
Schooling definitely has many problems. There’s a lot of competing interests and partially serving all of them is failing spectacularly.
Are you suggesting that the quality of education will go down with more school funding? That doesn’t seem very logical.
I think they’re saying that an increase in school funding doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase or decrease in quality of education. Like maybe it’s essentially uncorrelated above a minimum amount to fund basics (lights, desks, teachers, etc.). There’s a lot more factors than money at play here. In other words, a poorly-run school with bad policies, teachers, etc. is crap whether it has X million dollars or 2X million, and a well-run school is good even with a small budget.
What about throwing money at teacher salary/education/recruitment?
Exactly what I was thinking. 2 teachers for every classroom, highly paid career teachers, make the job attractive
If that’s what they meant, I’m still gonna have to disagree, or at least point out that we are well below that level of funding where there are diminishing returns.
The quality of the ‘basics’ matter, I believe teacher salary has a direct correlation to the quality of teachers. My current school (a community college), which is well-run is being forced to cut programs right now because they cant afford it. Our bookstore is closed. One of my professors needs to also work at a different school to support her child. Another of my professors was in a panic when his heater broke and he had to figure out to get it fixed cheap.
I get that there are a lot more factors than money at play, but when you start taking a look at these problems, money is the common denominator and bottleneck for a lot of schools.
The quality doesn’t go down l, but it doesn’t go up either.
Nah, unfortunately OOP is thinking too high level.
Sure you could in theory fix societies with that. But you can’t do that because of how society works at a lower level. Capitalism.
The way the economy works where there is vastly more money in options, which is basically gambling on the stock market, than there is money in the actual economy. Billionaires and massive investment firms essential hold the global economy to ransom.
So even if you do decide to throw money at the problems to make society better. The rich people wether intentionally coordinated, or through the emergent effects of I dividual decisions, will crash the economy if things aren’t going there way, and force you to either give them what they want or deal with a recession or massive inflation.
As though wealth hoarding hasn’t been what people have done since the dawn of time.
People have been abusing each other since before they were people, too; that doesn’t mean we just let them keep doing it.
Oh sure, I just get the sense that there are a lot of people who think this state of affairs is something new.
The concept is old, the scale is new
I don’t even think the scale is new. There’s plenty of examples through history of aristocracy drowning in wealth while most people were scratching the hard ground. It’s even said that Mansa Musa was so wealthy and generous that his presence in foreign lands upset entire economies.
I have come around to the view that you do not need to “wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders”. You could also disappear that wealth.
Healthcare cannot be free as long as there are humans in the loop. Either you pay for yourself or you pay for everyone.
If you want your labor to be paid for, then you have to pay for the labor of others. Doctors, nurses, medical office assistants, etc., all put in significant hours of work. And many of them are in massive educational debt. And there’s no way we can guarantee that the government will allocate the money they take from us in the way we wish.
Other problems can be solved, yes. As an example, there are homeless people, and there are abandoned homes across the country. The sooner we bring the two groups together, the sooner we’ll see improvement.
But we can’t expect construction or contracting companies to do the necessary labor for free, either. The money will have to come from somewhere - and governments have repeatedly shown that they’re not equipped for the task. Either you pay for yourself or you pay for everyone. My experience says that I don’t have the money to pay for everyone who won’t be able to pay me back. So I’ll pay for the things I need and use, and let everyone else do the same.
Libertarian brain rot.
You are being willfully ignorant. Governments collect taxes to pay for those things. Taxes can be targeted towards those who can afford to pay.
Problems can be solved, you just don’t want to because you think it will leave you with less than you have. You are a scaredy-cat, afraid to try and improve the system because you are selfish. Ironically fixing the system would improve your life too.
TLDR Fuck you, pay your taxes.
My experience says that I don’t have the money to pay for everyone who won’t be able to pay me back. So I’ll pay for the things I need and use, and let everyone else do the same.
You quite literally pay for everyone when you pay private health insurance anyway. The math works out that either you are unfortunate enough to need care and everyone else pays for you, or you don’t need extensive care and you pay for people that need it more. This is the same for privately funded or publicly funded healthcare.
The difference is that under the private healthcare system you also pay a whole bunch of salesmen, managers, investors, and executives, who can choose to delay or deny your care based on their
professional medical opinionparasitic whim. Oh, and you also pay into all the super PACs and marketing agencies that reinforce the myth that the system is currently working for anyone.So I’ll pay for the things I need and use, and let everyone else do the same.
I’ll ask a question: How much of your premium do you think goes towards profits, insurance-related bureaucracy (both on the company and hospital side) and other non-care insurance items? Hint: More than a quarter of a hospital’s employees are only there to handle insurance. Hint2: Some doctors—particularly in the field of mental health—find the whole thing so ridiculous that they straight up do not accept insurance.
I’m sadly aware of how ridiculous the insurance situation is. In our current legal (and legislative) environment, the fact that we don’t have firm tort limits is problematic. It means that doctors who might be accused of malpractice either will do so flagrantly, or refuse to act without massive barriers (provided, of course, by the insurance companies). There are a lot of things that need to change to upset it and I think any of them would be valuable.
Reduce the public financial aid availability - schools will lower their tuition costs and fees eventually, or they’ll find themselves with far less students. That way, doctors & lawyers don’t end up saddled with a lifetime’s worth of education debt (and side benefit - neither does anybody else).
Instate firm lifetime tort limits, so that a doctor (who’s already saddled with debt) doesn’t have to fear for his career with every patient. That will sharply lower insurance loss rates and payouts, which should impact premiums. Less fear for doctors, less work for lawyers, less work for actuaries.
Those two broad changes alone would fix a lot of issues.
If you do need some form of public insurance, don’t insure the patients. Everyone is a patient, supporting them might not pay back. Instead, set up a government funded malpractice insurance fund for all medical (dental/psych/etc) doctors. That encourages more people to become doctors, sets a de facto limit on the insurance plan and premium, and supports the skilled and educated people we actually want.
There are a lot of things that need to change to upset it and I think any of them would be valuable.
You’re missing the point. Insurance adds fat that—even setting aside the economies of scale and negotiating power inherent in a government-funded system—overshadows the amount of money you’d save by forcing poor people to go without care, to say nothing of the knock-on effects of doing so (preventive care costs less than emergency care). All your talk of torts and malpractice overlooks the inherent problem of for-profit insurance being a pointless middleman that only makes money by denying people care. There are third world countries with better healthcare access than America because of this nonsense. I’d know; I live in one of them. Americans can sustain this system because they’re filthy rich, but it’s inherently wasteful and in a poorer country people would already be rioting.
Reduce the public financial aid availability - schools will lower their tuition costs and fees eventually, or they’ll find themselves with far less students.
Then even fewer students will be able to go to university. It’s basic supply and demand.
If I understand your position, it sounds like you’re hoping that the impacts of reduced benefits will somehow trickle down to the people who are currently most affected
Either you pay for yourself or you pay for everyone.
Yes. That’s called a single payer healthcare system. The government, who gets its money from taxes.
Cool, I choose pay for everyone because of the people who won’t be able to pay me back.
That’s entirely your right. I wholeheartedly encourage you to do what you feel is best for yourself and continue your charitable work. Don’t force me to do so because you believe in it.
You’re already paying for everyone else to have healthcare you’re just doing it in the dumbest, most inefficient way possible. Hospitals cannot turn away patients who need lifesaving care. Guess what happens when someone without insurance ignores a fixable problem until it can’t be ignored any longer? They get treatment and you pay for it in the form of higher costs and insurance premiums.
Alternative : we kill you for being anti-social. Get fucked.
You may attempt to do so,
WhO’s GoNnA pAy FoR aLl ThIs StUfF?
iF We make ThE biLLIOnaIRES Pay taXes, theY’ll leAvE the CoUnTRy!
Gonna send you my next medical bill. Oh wait! I already do! It’s your W-2
Rather than directly pissing on your post, I just have two questions (that I don’t necessarily expect you to reply to):
Would you be okay with people who can’t pay you back benefiting if it cost you less overall?
How does this compare to other systems you do consider the government competent enough to manage?
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There would have to be hard and fast proof that those who pay in would see a significant benefit. I’m not opposed to voluntary charity - so long as the doctor has the final say in how they get paid and the rate they set for their labor. I have donated to Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross/Red ‘Crystal’, and some of the groups who’ve helped out in stopping the spread of malaria and ebola. I chose the groups to whom I gave that money when I had it to give, and the amount which I felt I was willing or able to give. That’s the fundamental difference between charity and taxation. I’ve also given to the American Bald Eagle Foundation, Save the Manatee Foundation, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. I chose to do those things. It was not taken by force.
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There is no such system. The government is, and generally always has been (so long as there’s been a thing called ‘the government’), made up of warmongering narcissistic lunkheads whose priorities are disconnected from any form of common reality. I will support focused, local, voluntary charity over mandatory taxation and government waste for any community task you might imagine. I even find my City Council to be horribly out of step with the common people where I live. Maybe my ward council would be reasonable, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re a bucket of political crabs trying to create careers of taking money from the public coffers. I wouldn’t consider our current pack of political figures (top to bottom, globally) fit to manage a McDonald’s, let alone a complex system accountable to the public.
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We aren’t expecting any companies to do anything for free. We aren’t looking to preserve the existence of companies as they are part of why we have these problems.
Then how do you face the issue that all doctors are functionally companies? And certainly that all doctors’ offices are?
Nationalization of the healthcare industry
