Please magic oracle, feed me bullshit. I don't wanna have to read. Or think.

You're not entitled to make manufacturers build what you want.

yeah. regulations are evil. you're not entitled to force manufacturers to make gasoline without lead, or paint without lead, or candy without arsenic (which was very common until it was banned late in the Victorian era), or "medical" products without radium or uranium (e.g. uranium suppositories were an actual product that was sold for many years) or fertilisers without carcinogenic chemicals or any one of the millions of other products controlled by health and safety and pollution etc regulations.

BTW, there are already laws against "peeping toms". there is no way they do not apply to spyware garbage like this. these laws are just not being enforced against corporations because of the power of money and lobbying (although they are enforced in most places against individuals who set up surveillance cameras etc to spy on their neighbours).

also BTW, to all the fuckwits who are blaming consumers for "being stupid" and saying shit like "it's the consumers' fault" - no it fucking isn't, there isn't any option to buy TVs or cars or lots of other stuff *without* spyware built-in any more. Even if the cretinous phrase "vote with your wallet" wasn't cretinous and anti-democratic, it wouldn't fucking work.

but you didn't name any specific examples

Did you not read "health care, education, transport, and utilities like water or electricity"? They're all specific examples.

If you want a detailed specific example, I've written a lot in this thread about Australia's Medicare system, which is many orders of magnitude better than the American private health system. And. BTW, most universal public health systems in other countries operate very similarly to Australia's Medicare, some better, some worse, but all of them better than the American crime against humanity.

The truth is, the US Constitution was written specifically to limit the powers of government, because even 250 years ago, governments were known to do things badly.

How can you not know your own history? The limitation of powers had nothing to do with "governments were known to do things badly" - that wasn't even a common belief until relatively recently, the 1960s and 1970s. And only became a common belief *because* of anti-government propaganda.

For example, the phrase "good enough for government work" now means "barely adequate" or even "sub-par". But it used to mean "excellent, high quality work", up until the 1950s. That change in meaning didn't happen naturally, it happened due to a bombardment of anti-government propaganda. Why the fuck do you think your movies, TV shows, newspapers, etc are constantly telling you that government can't do anything well, government is evil, regulations are bad, and government = communism? It's because government is the only thing powerful enough to rein in corporations (and don't even try to respond with "vote with your wallet" as a means of controlling corporations: a) it doesn't work, and b) it's inherently anti-democratic because it means those with more dollars get more votes). All of this propaganda is designed to make you give up on government, to let corporations take it over and think that that's "normal" and acceptable.

Anyway, the reason for the limitation of powers was because you'd just fought a war of independence against a King, and the constitution was written to prevent the Presidency turning into another monarchy or dictatorship. As Trump is attempting to do now.

It was also written to limit Federal powers so that the States (not companies or individuals, but State *governments*) had a lot of independence from the Federal government. And your Bill of Rights was written to protect citizens from governments abusing their power.

Every country in the world has corporate lobbying and corruption,

Yeah, that's true but some countries have it much worse than others. And the USA is one of the worst, certainly the worst of the rich western countries, and they don't seem to even bother trying to hide it anymore.

[...] the government never does anything *well* over time.

That is just more propaganda.

Governments all over the world do lots of stuff extremely well. Including health care, education, transport, and utilities like water or electricity. What government is especially suited to doing well is stuff that is a) essential and b) a natural monopoly (and to contrast, what the private sector does best is stuff that a) is non-essential and b) has room for lots of competition).

For one thing, governments can do stuff without the inherent inefficiency of profit wasting the money. For another, they avoid the perverse incentives of the profit motive (like cutting corners).

The fact that some governments (I'm looking at you, USA) do a lot of stuff poorly is because of corporate lobbying, because of corruption, because they're not allowed to do things well, because services are deliberately run down and underfunded and crippled (so that either they can be prevented from competing with the private sector or privatised for a fraction of their worth), and because the media accuses them of "socialism!!!!" whenever they try.

Don't believe the propaganda that government is inherently evil and/or useless. It's YOUR government, that means it's YOUR responsibility (along with your fellow citizens) to fix it. Not just give up and accept the fact that corporations stole it from you. TAKE IT BACK. Demand that political candidates do better. Don't vote based on personality or "charisma" (that's a trap and a distraction), vote for policies that provide for human needs rather than corporate greed.

And in desperate times, like right now, remember that voting against the greater evil is the right thing to do. Even if you hate the lesser evil, just do it because the goal is to prevent the harm that will be done by the greater evil. Right now, you Americans are facing a choice between more-of-the-same Corporate-owned Capitalism (which sucks, I know) and White Supremacist Nazi Theocratic Fascism. These are not the same, don't fall for the "both sides suck" false equivalence bullshit, actual Fascists suck far more than Capitalists. Do the right thing. Refusing to vote at all is not exactly a vote for the greater evil but it *does* increase the chance of it winning.

The government *is the problem* because they have stupid rules like: [...]

You understand those stupid rules only exist because of corporate lobbying and corruption, right?

- You can't buy insurance across state lines.

Don't you already have laws prohibiting restraint of interstate trade? or does this somehow qualify as "regulating" under your Commerce Clause?

I know the CC was a huge manufactroversy around 2011 that went all the way to the Supreme Court because of the "individual mandate", but has anyone ever tried suing either their State govt or the Federal govt for preventing them from buying insurance from another State?

- You can't form insurance groups except through your employer.

Why do you even need "insurance groups"? in fact, what even is an "insurance group"? Googling it makes it sound like it's just a bullshit obstruction mechanism to force people to get their health insurance from their employer and prevent people from just getting insurance as a private individual or family. Tying health insurance to employers is evil.

What's wrong with just paying your premium (or, better yet, having it come out of your taxes like in any sane country) and then having access to whatever healthcare you need? Get sick and just go to the doctor or hospital as needed without worrying in the slightest about what it costs because it's 100% covered.

Here in Australia, the government sends everyone a Medicare card (Medicare is our public health system, not to be confused with your Medicare). Most people carry the card in their wallet like you would a credit card. If you have children under 18, they're listed on it too. Young adults get their own card when they turn 18. Even foreign workers with a work visa get sent one when they start work and start paying income tax.

And if you're a tourist visiting from about a dozen countries that Australia has reciprocal health care agreements with (including the UK and most of Europe and a bunch of other places), you get access to our public health system, just as we get access to their public system (if I was in the UK or Belgium or the Netherlands or any of those countries and got sick or injured I could go to hospital and pay little or nothing, depending on the country. I've visited the US before but the main reason I don't want to travel there again is fear of medical debt).

When you need medical care, you just go to a GP or to the Emergency dept at a hospital. That's it. That's all you need to do. Turn up and show your Medicare card. If you're a repeat patient, they'll already have it in their files. And if you don't happen to have the card with you when you arrive for some reason, there's no need to worry - the paperwork bullshit will happen AFTER you get treated. The priority is on treatment, not payment.

You don't have to worry about what it costs or whether it's "in network" or not (that abomination/absurdity doesn't even exist here) or whether the condition you have is covered or not (no surprises, it IS covered). It's all paid for by the medicare levy part of your taxes - and if you don't earn enough to pay any tax, you're still covered.

THIS is what "universal public health care" means. You can go your whole life without ever needing to care about how much treatment costs. Because it's paid for, by your taxes (even if the net amount of tax you've paid in your life is zero).

BTW, on a personal note: Medicare is why I'm alive right now and not dead for over 20 years. I've been in and out of hospital dozens of times, with 15 major surgeries (i.e. requiring general anesthesia) and numerous other hospital stays. I've paid exactly $0.00 out of pocket for all of that.

I did pay income tax and the medicare levy (see below) for over 30 years while I was still capable of working (and most of that on a well above average income due to working in IT) but it wasn't even noticeable - even at my highest income, it was only about $35 per week. Never once did I ever think "I'm paying too much for Medicare" - mostly I never even thought about it was because it was too trivial an amount to care about.

(I did, however, resent being forced to pay for private health insurance from 1999 onwards by Johnny "Fucking Scumbag" Howard...that rapidly increased from around $600 pa in 1999 to over $2500 pa in 2020 when I opted out due to not having a taxable income. It's probably around $3000 now. and those prices are after the 30% subsidy.)

Australia's Medicare isn't perfect - far from it - but Jesus Fucking Christ! Even after being undermined and whittled away for decades by the so-called "conservative" (actually radical right-wing extremist) side of politics, it's so much better than what you Americans have to suffer. What you have is an abomination, an actual crime against humanity (and I mean that in the most literal sense, without any exaggeration).

And to pre-emptively rebut the inevitable Pavlovian "but that's socialism!!!" programmed reflex - Australia is a Liberal (i.e. Capitalist) Democracy. Not even remotely close to Socialist. Just like the rest of the "Western" world, all of our major political parties are, unfortunately, very firmly neo-Liberal Capitalists in the Reagan/Thatcher mold. The major difference between the US and AU on this issue is that almost all voters here would absolutely slaughter (in the ballot box, not physically) any party that tried to take away our Medicare. And the parties know this - elections have been won and lost over Medicare, we will not tolerate the destruction of an essential service like this.

- Medicare isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices, by law they must pay whatever the drug manufacturer says the price is, except for 10 specific drugs.

yeah, that's a result of lobbying and corruption. Surprisingly, pharmaceutical companies don't want your Medicare to be able to negotiate drug prices. And your government obeys.

You Americans need to learn to start blaming those who PAY the bribes as well as those who accept them. And fix your campaign finance laws too.

---

BTW, if you're wondering what this actually costs in terms of the tax you pay, it's 2%(*) of your taxable income ("taxable" income is an important distinction - some kinds of income, e.g. carer allowance or child-care subsidy or child support payments. also various scholarships and grants and disaster relief payments and insurance payouts. These are all exempt from both income tax and the medicare levy).

An example on the ATO's web site is of a single guy earning $76,000. His Medicare levy is a total of $1500 for the entire year. That comes out of his pay along with his PAYE income tax, so about $28 per week, or $4 per day. It would be less if he had children or other dependants.

That's way less than what private insurance costs even here in AU, let alone the extortionate monthly premiums you pay in the US.

(*) unless you're eligible for a reduction due to low income, between $26000 and $32,500 - or $41K-$51K if you're a Senior (retiree) or other pensioner, or an exemption due to, e.g. earning less than $26000 ($41K for Seniors/pensioners) or being on a blind pension or a veteran or serving in the Defence Force. Also, some very high income earners pay an additional medicare levy surcharge up to 1.5% (but many of them are tax-dodging scum who manage to avoid it through creative accounting chicanery).

---

Anyway throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not the solution. The solution is to get rid of those 3 stupid rules, and all the other stupid rules.

Or, better yet, replace it entirely with something modeled on the best of what other rich, western countries do with public health. Show the rest of the world that you CAN do better than us if you try.

When it comes to essential services like health, government is the only good option. Profit, and all the perverse incentives that go along with it (plus the fact that profit is an inherent inefficiency), should not be the driving force behind the provision of health-care. Profit motive = death panels.

The government *is* the problem, not the solution to the problem.

Government is absolutely NOT the problem, that's just what corporate lobbyists and propagandists want you to think so you don't get any uppity communist ideas like taking back control of your government.

Lobbying and corruption are the problem. Corporate greed is the problem. Corporations are the problem.

If there's any shred of truth in this then it'll be some lunatic speaking shit, or they just tricked someone into carelessly saying something stupid that could be twisted into this bullshit.

and your media did their job and spammed it for a few days until it became "fact" that everybody knows. i.e. an alternative fact AKA bullshit.

woo! scary socialist boogie-men with their death panels and euthanasia!!!

This propaganda also serves as a good distraction from the American practice of just sending the poor home (or back to homelessness on the streets) to die without treatment. or people deciding against treatment so they don't bankrupt their family.

This is not a thing in the real world.

This is grotesque manufactured "watch out for the evil socialist boogie-man" propaganda.

You're just repeating nightmarish propaganda spread by the corporations who want you to keep paying for private health. The same people who told you that "public health = death panels"

What's sensible to YOU is not necessarily sensible to others.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY in the world except for Americans thinks that it's not only normal to be raped by private health insurance (and private hospitals and big pharma and all the middle-men parasites and the rest of your fucked up system) but actually thinks it's good.

You poor brainwashed dumbfucks are the only ones who think that.

Yes, "universal" means everyone, but that in itself is no argument that "universal" *should be* the goal.

Of course universal health care should be the goal.

Anything else is just saying that people should die from easily treatable diseases just because they're poor. Or don't have the right kind of job. Or got sacked (and lost their insurance) for taking a sick day.

Which is another thing that only Americans believe.

You people are just not fucking normal. There's something very, very wrong with you. You've been brainwashed into being psychopaths and thinking that that's "normal".

What that really means is that you think there should be only one way that healthcare is delivered to people, that they should have no choice but to get it from the government.

When did I ever say that? I never said it, and I don't even think it.

AFAIK, there's not even one country in the world with a public health system that doesn't ALSO have private medical practices and hospitals and pathology labs etc as well. Certainly not now. Was maybe/probably the case decades ago in some of the Eastern bloc countries when the USSR still existed.

And some people think that gets them better service or more frills or better meals while in hospital or whatever, and are willing to pay for it. Go for it, waste your money, nobody cares. You won't be getting better health care (in fact, you'll probably be getting worse because decent health care eats into profits), but you'll get great stuff like a "free" fancy chocolate on the pillow.

However, the existence of a parallel private health system should NEVER be allowed to undermine the universal public health care system - as has happened here in Australia, e.g. the Liberals (our major right-wing conservative party) back in 1999 forced people into private health insurance by taxing them[1] the same amount private insurance would cost if they didn't join a fund by the age of 30...and also subsidised 30% of the insurance premiums. So pay 70% of $X to a private company or pay 100% of $X in extra tax. Great choice. That's real freedom, corporation style.

(I know you're American and will lay 100% of the blame on the government because "gubmint is evil" and all that. but, you know, the government wouldn't be doing it if they weren't following the orders of their corporate masters. the majority of the blame goes to whoever ordered the crime - the ones who not only lobbied for but actually wrote the legislation - not just to the servants who carried it out)

Fucking John Howard, Australia's worst ever Prime Minister. The guy, who amongst his many other crimes, pissed away hundreds of billions on corporate welfare during our mining boom just so he could say "we can't afford better or more public services. and we're really poor so we need to privatise everything". He earned the nickname "Honest John" because he wasn't.

At the time that private health insurance swindle cost less than 10 billion a year because private insurance premiums were only about $600 or so per year[2]. And, of course, those premiums have ballooned to $2500 or more per year, which means the govt is subsidising private health insurance by tens of billions every year - money that SHOULD go to the public health system.

And to add insult to injury, the private insurance doesn't cover anything that isn't already covered by Medicare and, outside of a public hospital, usually doesn't even cover everything that Medicare covers.

The only thing it adds is that you can choose to go to a private hospital instead of a public hospital. You wont get better care in private hospital, but you will walk out with a huge bill because those fuckers can charge whatever they like while the insurance only pays the same set fees to the private hospital that Medicare pays to a public hospital for the procedure/medication/anesthetics/bed/whatever.

Oh, and you might end up spending time in an ambulance going to and from the nearest public hospital for various tests because public hospitals generally have more and better equipment.

(technically, it doesn't even add that. you can always choose to go to a private hospital without insurance and pay the entire bill yourself. this is not a popular option for some strange reason)

Or you can use your private insurance in a public hospital and get the same care as anyone else in the public system. with no bill or out-of-pocket expenses same as anyone else. Oddly enough, most people who were forced into private insurance choose to go to public hospital. Because it's better. And doesn't cost them anything.

And all this was touted as being "good" because it would "relieve the strain on the public system by shifting private patients to private hospitals". When what we needed was more public hospitals and more money allocated to public health, not welfare for insurance companies.

BTW, I can tell you from personal experience that using private insurance in a public hospital gets you exactly two things that you don't get as a public patient in public hospital. Free TV (otherwise it costs a few dollars per day) and a free daily newspaper. TV is trash, so I wouldn't pay for it anyway and there's already way too much noise in hospitals. And the paper was the fucking Herald-Sun (a tits-on-page-3 right-wing propaganda and sports Murdoch tabloid) not even suitable for wiping your arse with let alone reading.

[1] conservatives somehow find it in themselves to love taxes if they're going to give the money to their corporate masters rather than "waste" it on the plebs.

[2] yes, you yanks get seriously raped on your premiums too. From what I've read, it's not at all uncommon for you to pay more per month for insurance than anyone here pays per year.

Wishing to kill off the .01% is also an extreme position.

Yes, that one actually is extreme, which is a shame, the world would be a lot better if it was much more common.

There's less than 3000 of the parasitic cunts in the world, fucking everything up for the remaining ~8 billion. Even at a leisurely pace it wouldn't take more than a few months to guillotine the lot.

Would probably be more entertaining to cage them all in a sports stadium field with a bunch of knives and say "only one of you gets out of here". They'll eagerly do the job themselves. Surprise twist ending: the "winner" gets out to be rewarded with their choice of a gallows or guillotine.

Which license is more restrictive

The one that allows more restrictions to be added. Duh.

If you truly didn't care you wouldn't be doing all the cursing

"cursing"? what are you, a child?

And I fucking told you what I was objecting to - the cretinous assertion that being able to restrict the freedom of others is somehow "more free".

Feel free to go into detail

Feel free to go fuck yourself, ya sealioning cunt.

showing how spitting mad about it you clearly are.

nah, I'm just entertaining myself yelling at some dumb cunt on the internet and laughing at the moronic shit they're saying.

Yeah, you are just casually commenting.

Stop putting words in my mouth. I never once said or even implied that I was "just casually commenting".

That one got to you, eh?

No, it was just fucking stupid. "Cringe" as the kids say these days.

More freedom is generally better.

The ability to take away freedom from others is NOT freedom.

I have no objection to people choosing to license their code under BSD, GPL, or any other license. If it's your code, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it. I do, however, object to the cretinous assertion that being able to restrict the freedoms of other people is "more free" because it fucking is not.

BTW, everything is political you fucking moron. Including your hyperbolic straw-man bullshit about the Wright brothers. You sound like yet another Libertarian retard.

Microsoft's and Apple's etc customers don't get the original version.

They get the chained version. And that chained version probably has proprietary hooks into Apple's OS that can't be re-implemented in the open source code, even if they somehow get a copy of the original source themselves.

So, yes, you're absolutely right. The downstream versions of BSD-licensed software can be and often are used to fuck over the end users. That's why companies like Apple and Microsoft love the BSD license and hate the GPL - BSD allows them to fuck over their users, GPL does not.

Dumb. And you're obviously American, because sarcasm is an incomprehensible concept to you. So, just another dumb american.

A public health system has to be for everyone. That's the fucking point you fucking cretin.

And, no, that is NOT an extreme position. It's an entirely sensible and completely rational position, boringly mainstream and not in the least bit controversial anywhere but in the the land of the brainwashed slaves.

And, yes, i realise that you're just a moronic arsehole who thinks that twisting what I said ("Because "universal" means "universal". Universal health-care is for everyone no matter their income or wealth.") makes for a really clever point....but as with everything else you've said, you're absolutely and utterly wrong.

Also, the fact that I think the world would be better off if the .01% were guillotined ASAP, that doesn't mean I think that "universal" somehow doesn't include them. If they're a citizen (or a citizen of a country with a reciprocal health care agreement), they can come to hospital to get a paracetamol tablet or whatever for their headache on the way to the guillotine queue (and the tablet will, of course, be free...not $500 as it is in your shithole hell-world private hospital system).

It's funny that you use an analogy of compromising over someone stealing your land.

I deliberately used that example because I knew it would be one of the few you'd have a chance of understanding. I even fucking said that to preface the example.

but yeah, that's a real gotcha - you're so smart to have spotted it. there's no fooling you, is there?

What you don't seem to realize is that your position on government healthcare is an extreme political view. Few people agree with you.

No, it is NOT an extreme political view. It's a completely normal view in most of the world - pretty much everywhere except for the USA where you so fucking brainwashed that you think medical debt and school shootings are normal and acceptable.

Personally, I'm a centrist. I think the government should be involved, but not to the point of being a single payer.

No, you're not a "centrist". You're a brainwashed American who thinks that extreme right-wing positions are in the centre. Your Overton window has been pushed so far to the right that you think your Democrat party are communists.

Let the rich pay for their own healthcare, why should the government pay for theirs? I'm surprised that you would want them to be free of that cost.

Because "universal" means "universal". Universal health-care is for everyone no matter their income or wealth.

Why the fuck is that so difficult to understand?

didn't make up the study about economic mobility.

What study? You posted a link to wikipedia with a table produced by the World Economic Forum - who are not in any way a trustworthy, independent source of information about anything. They're a right-wing think tank / lobby group whose members are almost entirely multi-billion dollar corporations.

Amusingly, America ranks only 27th on the "Global Social Mobility Index (2020)" table - and every single country ahead the the US has single-payer universal public health and OK-ish welfare and public services. They're all countries that you brainwashed Americans routinely deride as "socialist" when none of them are even close to socialist.

You fail to understand the difference between:

1. doctors deciding whether you need a specific treatment or medication for whatever condition you have, and

2. a business deciding whether they want to spend the money on a treatment you actually need.

The former is medicine being practiced. The latter is a death panel.

"How it works" in civilised countries is: if you need treatment and it's effective for the condition you have, you get it.

In crazy countries without universal public health care, you get treatment only if penny-pinching scumbags (who care only about "shareholder value" and not at all about medical necessity) think they can't get away with not honouring the insurance contract you've been paying into for years - and even then you'll only get the bare minimum that they want to give.

This is very interesting. You start by saying that it's not about politics, and then you proceed to discuss how the political sides differ. And then you threw in some swear words because apparently you don't know how to emphasize a point without them. I think you made my point nicely.

What the fuck is so difficult to understand about "It is an observable fact that one side of politics does its utmost to destroy the public health system whenever it gets elected"?

They may have ideological reasons for doing so but that doesn't change the fact that it is exactly what they do - every fucking chance they get.

Actions matter far more than ideology or rhetoric. And their actions are easily observable and completely predictable.

Politicians fucking lie. Especially when they're doing something they know the majority of the electorate would fucking hate if they knew/understood what was going on. They distract and dissemble and make false equivalences and grand claims and just fucking lie. You can never trust their words, you can only judge them by their actions and the results of their actions.

As for your whine about swearing (as if it's not a completely fucking normal part of speech): fuck you, you're an idiot.

The trick is to find a compromise solution that neither side fully likes or fully hates.

Some things should never be compromised on. Here's an example you might understand since you seem to be a right-winger (with, presumably, typical property worship values):

Your neighbour says "I want to steal all of your land". You say "Fuck off, it's mine". A centrist, compromise position would say "OK, your neighbour can only steal half your land - that's fair, you both only get half of what you want".

That's the kind of idiocy your "compromise solution that neither side fully likes or fully hates" results in, but when it comes to things like public services and the health care systems it's not just some land that's at stake, it's people's lives and livelihoods.

If economic mobility comes at the cost of having a small group of ultra-wealthy people, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

"Economic mobility" is a lie for the vast majority of the population (and most of what little mobility exists is downwards for the majority because the .01% are hoovering up everything they can). Using it as justification for the existence of billionaires is just repeating the self-serving propaganda of billionaires.