Like if you’re awake can you say “no I’d rather die on the street and let the city have to clean up my corpse”?

They will disregard that request and charge you anyway, which has led to people literally fleeing from ambulances to avoid the expenses. But it gets even worse.

Many mental health hotlines will contact the police if they think you present a danger to yourself and others. You can then be taken to a hospital and forced to stay there against your will, and by the time you’re able to leave you’ve accumulated a mountain of medical debt. Which, if you’ve been driven to contemplate suicide due to material circumstances, isn’t exactly going to help things.

However, for anyone thinking of calling a helpline, there are ones that don’t contact the police. You just have to look it up.

Like if you can’t afford any of it? And say you’ve already gone bankrupt and have no assets to seize or no job to garnish wages off of? Is it jail time? Do they just expect you to starve to death after?

The whole thing has gotten so inflated that people not being able to pay is pretty normal. What that means is that it is possible to haggle it down somewhat and negotiate on monthly payments. The actual value of these debts to the companies that hold them is a tiny fraction of the actual dollar amount of the debt, because they know a lot of them won’t be repaid. However, the companies will be try to get every drop they can squeeze from you, and even if you negotiate the payments down to something you can afford, the principal will be hanging over your head, likely for the rest of your like.

If you can’t pay, there’s no jail time, but there’s bankruptcy and foreclosures. If you own any significant assets, like say your house or car, that can potentially be seized in the event of bankruptcy, leaving you homeless or forced to pay rent, which is generally more expensive than mortgage payments, and potentially unable to get to work.

They won’t put you in jail (not until you’re homeless and charged with sleeping in public), but they will drain every drop of blood from your body like the vampires they are. In some cases literally, given that some people resort to selling blood to make ends meet.

• Subnautica

>“Atmospheric” game

>Looks inside

>Water.

You don’t just let the rot live and hope you can somehow fix it afterwards with hopes and prayers.

My thoughts exactly. I suppose the difference is that I consider supporting genocide to be rot as well. I believe “hopes and prayers” was the strategy proposed for convincing the Democrats to change their position after demonstrating to them that they could win without doing so and therefore had every incentive to keep doing what they did to win.

Those that thought they had power by not voting killed so many people with their concept of having power, without thinking of the bigger picture.

I didn’t kill anyone. Trump, and Trump voters did. It’s truly bizarre how intent y’all are about not assigning responsibility to the people who are actually responsible for the harm.

a corrupt nation on the other side of the planet that was always dead-set on genocide regardless of who the US puppet is.

I understand it’s appealing to switch the relationship of who’s in charge between the US and Israel for the sake of preserving a fantasy of the US being “the good guys,” but it is nothing more than a fantasy. The US holds every card, it is a larger, wealthier, far more influential nation, it is the most powerful nation on earth, it has military spending higher than the next nine countries combined, and when there was a similar situation before, Ronald Reagan whipped Israel in line with a single phone call.

Israel is the US’s forward base in the Middle East, it’s unsinkable aircraft carrier, and its actions are in accordance to the US’s wishes, because they would not be remotely possible without US aid. The tail is not wagging the dog. Israel is a proxy of the US and not the other way around.

It destroyed everything.

What was there worth preserving? A police state conducting pointless war and genocide? Now we still have that, just as we did before, just as we would have no matter who won the election. If only it had destroyed everything!

RIP critical thinking times a thousand.

Again, I’ll repeat what I just said. You think I’m not engaging in critical thinking only because you’re not aware of the factors I’m looking at, but, if you’re not going to agree with me, then I would prefer you see my as “unreasonable,” because it puts me in a stronger negotiating position with your side.

Liberals view government in terms of disinterested parties coming together to try to work out the most rational policy together. This is completely delusional and always has been. Politics is inherently about self-interested parties fighting for themselves and their own material interests, and those of their allies.

Harris and her ilk spat on our faction and made it completely clear that she had zero interest in giving us anything we wanted. They wouldn’t even allow the purely symbolic move of allowing a Palestinian speaker at the convention. On virtually every issue, it was the same. “Fuck you, vote for me.” This is not how politics works, at all, and to allow such an approach to win would be to demonstrate to everyone that the left is completely powerless and that there is no reason to ever give us anything.

It’s not my fault that the DNC decided to force a candidate down our throats who acted completely unreasonably and absolutely refused to negotiate. After that, my hand was forced. Even if I wanted to compromise, they’re not even at the table.

It’s also worth remembering that the Democrats have literally funded far-right candidates because they know that people will fall in line behind “lesser-evil” candidates that way without having to offer anything we actually want. There is no chance of ever getting out of this mess so long as we allow them to manufacture problems like that and flinch into supporting them anyway. Fighting this war requires thicker skin.

I swear, y’all are like, “Because of that damn Churchill fighting back, now I have to deal with my city getting bombed. This is all his fault! Why don’t we just let the Nazis kill all the Jews and take over Poland so we can all go back to brunch? We can’t control what Germany does anyway.” Only worse, because in that example the UK wasn’t actively arming and supporting Germany like the US is doing with Israel.

Yes, they are separate problems that highlight problems with trying to apply the logic of pulling the lever more broadly to other circumstances.

The trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment designed to examine differences in schools of moral philosophy and of people’s moral intuitions. It’s not necessarily about demonstrating that you have to live with the consequences of the choice.

The problem with it comes when people assume that the act utilitarian answer is objectively correct, and that it is broadly applicable to real world problems even when there are huge differences. At that point the trolley problem stops serving as a tool to explore moral philosophy and becomes a rhetorical tool to justify and feel better about throwing people under the bus.

Another thought experiment designed to critique this perspective is as follows: while travelling through the woods, you come across a group of armed men holding prisoner a group of people who were protesting their regime. The leader of the armed men says that if you take a gun and kill one of them yourself, he’ll let the rest go, but otherwise, he’ll kill all of them. From the perspective of act utilitarianism, or trolley problem thinking, taking the offer is morally obligatory.

The problem with that is that you can be manipulated into causing harm by a malevolent actor. All they have to do is threaten some greater harm, and you become their tool, which can increase their power and their ability to threaten larger harm. “You must go out and kill one person, or I will command another of my agents to go out and kill three.” This essentially precludes standing up to any powerful entity in any meaningful way.

Refusing to kill one of the hostages, or pull the lever to run over Palestinians, leaves open the possibility of forming a united front to defeat the people forcing us into such situations in the first place. Keeping one’s own hands clean is not simply a matter of “moral purity,” but rather, an intentional strategy of avoiding actions taken against a particular group.

We can imagine a trolley problem where on the switched track is a foreign diplomat who, if killed, will cause an alliance between two countries to fail, leaving them both vulnerable to a third, and making it essential to save them. This is the hidden cost of pulling the lever to sacrifice Palestinians. But it goes beyond their specific value as allies, it also tells other allies that they can be sacrificed in the same way. In this case, it is better to accept a future where an external force commits a greater immediate harm than to commit a smaller immediate harm ourselves but which jeopardizes alliances and solidarity.

Other countries are not the scope of the US vote. Especially now more than ever.

Conflating internal problems with external ones is just missing the point. Can’t have it both ways. Either the US dictates world policy and you accept that with that will come chaos to other nations, possibly without their consent. Or the US stays completely out of world policy, and you accept that with that will come chaos to other nations, possibly without their consent.

This is the weird take. The decision to arm and support Israel is not “world policy,” it is US foreign policy. Calling on a change of US foreign policy to avoid causing harm and to stay out of other countries affairs is not “dictating world policy” it is the complete opposite of that. I would be perfectly fine with the US staying out of world policy, although you’ve also set up a false dichotomy here, it is possible to have a foreign policy that’s somewhere in between “complete isolation” and “arming and funding genocide.”

To say “other countries are not the scope of the US vote” is utterly bizarre. Obviously US voters can, should, and do consider US foreign policy when casting votes. It’s also relevant to domestic policy because so much of our tax money is being wasted on the military rather than being used to address actual problems.

Now, your own country is in jeopardy, and with that comes jeopardy to all the people in your nation and many other nations. Not just trans rights. Everyone’s rights. Everyone’s lives.

RIP: critical thinking.

Everyone’s rights would be in jeopardy either way. The only question is whether we allow the ruling class to divide us and turn against each other, like crabs in a bucket trying to screw each other over for our own advantage, or whether we attempt to forge a united front. If we betray each other, our defeat is completely inevitable, and all we’re doing is buying our in-group a little time. To stay united means a willingness to pass on some fleeting offer of short-term security for some of us, but in exchange we have an actual fighting chance in the long term.

You think I’m not thinking critically only because you aren’t aware of the factors that I’m basing my analysis on. The immediate, direct outcome is not the only thing that matters. What we are now seeing, only a few years later, is the beginning of a massive shift towards more progressive, more antizionist politics.

The conventional wisdom was always that if you run centrists who are essentially Republicans but like 10% less bad, then you’ll pick up the centrists and the left with fall in line behind the lesser evil, and so there is no reason to ever run progressives from the perspective of winning elections. If everyone followed your logic, then that’s where we would still be. But Harris’s loss is just one more point of data, together with the wave of progressives like Mamdani, that proves that theory false.

However, if you think I’m being unreasonable, I don’t mind. A “reasonable” person (by your standards) would fall in line behind whatever garbage candidate was placed in front of them. To win in an electorate with enough “unreasonable” people means that you have to start caving to their demands.

“I’m going to vote to help the vast majority of people the majority of the time,” Vindman told the crowd, according to the Advocate. “Is it going to help everybody? No.”

Dang, this reminds me of what I was saying two years ago:

If a minority group like Palestinians can be sacrificed for the sake of winning an election, then the same can and will be done for any minority group that becomes seen as an electoral liability. The only way for any minority, but especially one as small as trans people, to really achieve security is through solidarity, an alliance of the vulnerable that treats an offense against one as an offense against all. Right now, there might be cis gays watching the democrats blame trans people and thinking that they’ll be safe, but that’s not guaranteed at all.

I’m just saying, if you’re willing to accept excuses like, “Palestine isn’t on the ballot this year” then you’ll readily accept excuses like “trans rights aren’t on the ballot” and so on, until there’s no one left to stand up for you.

Reject trolley problem thinking.

Tbf he’s just a senator, he’s not writing policy, he just signs whatever the relevant industry puts on his desk.

What part of any of that am I supposed to be scandalized by, exactly? Because I read the whole article and I didn’t see a single reason I shouldn’t be touting the 96% home ownership rate.

Shout-out to the dude on the right going into cryosleep with a trans flag shirt in 1990.

housing absolutely isn’t affordable typically you need an entire families worth of income that goes to the son to afford a home, and on top of that, when you buy a home in China, you are given 70 year lease on the land, so not sure how many Americans would want that sort of thing.

Weird how despite all that, the home ownership rate in China is 96%

A sound argument is better than a reasonable one. Don’t use terms you don’t understand.

Relaity is China got out of poverty in spite of CCP not because of it. If they had democracy like Taiwan they’d be more rich AND more free.

Non sequitor, that’s also false and not supported by anything. Didn’t you just get done making the point that you can’t compare countries with very different conditions? You’re contradicting your own claims. How did you put it? “Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?”

How did I move the goalposts? Justify the accusation or take it back, otherwise you’re just full of shit. Don’t just try to move on after getting called out for the fact that you have nothing to back it up.

Btw, the original criticism was over China having billionaires. Now you’re saying it should be more like Taiwan, which… also has billionaires. This demonstrates that the criticism that China is bad because it has billionaires is unfounded.

I’ve made very well reasoned arguments backed by data and sources, you just randomly scream that I’m “moving the goalposts” somehow with absolutely zero explanation for how I’m supposedly doing it and just repeat that and throw insults at me. It’s obvious that you’re just a troll.

Where do you think the goalposts are supposed to be? What did I say that set the goalposts there? You have nothing, you’re just slinging shit against the wall and hoping something sticks.

Boring troll.

Wtf are you even talking about? My first comment was about this, and that’s all I’ve been saying this entire conversation. The goalpost has always been exactly where it’s at.

It is entirely you and others who have tried to move the goalposts from “This one policy was successful” to “China is the best country in the world,” which was never my position, because it’s easier for you to argue against that.

You’re completely full of shit. You’ve just defaulted to random accusations and insults based on nothing because you know you can’t argue with the facts.

That’s completely absurd. This is the dumbest thing anyone’s said this conversation.

The sample size isn’t “n=1” it’s n=800,000,000. It’s clearly visible from the graph that I posted that the reduction in poverty began immediately after the reforms, and then continued extremely consistently on an extremely large scale.

In case you need a refresher on what the data looks like:

You’re just so committed to shitting on every single thing that China does that you’re willing to throw out all reason and logic, completely ignore obvious facts, and throw out any means of evaluating any policy just to avoid the conclusion that China may have done a single thing right.

What other possible explanation even is there? You’re just very objectively wrong.

As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?

I’m so confused by this conversation. Let’s recap.

Originally, OP asked why China has billionaires if it’s aiming to be socialist. I replied that the reforms that allowed billionaires also resulted in 800 million people escaping extreme poverty. WoodScientist randomly started drawing comparisons between the PRC and Taiwan, and I said that it’s apples and oranges, and that I didn’t see the relevance to what I had said. Then you started providing even more reasons why the comparison isn’t really valid, acting as if that contradicted my position in some way, which was even more confusing. You added that you didn’t like looking at other possible routes China could have gone, because it’s untestable.

Now, having established that you don’t like comparing China to other countries (calling it “dick measuring”), and also that you don’t like comparing other historical possibilities (calling them “untestable”) you’re now accusing me of being unwilling to attribute failure to Chinese policy.

First of all, which failure are you talking about? There are plenty which I’m willing to acknowledge. But also, on what basis could you call any policy a success or failure? You’ve thrown away all your epistemology. If we discount comparisons to other places, and also discount comparisons to other possibilities, then what can we look at to determine if a given policy was a success or failure?

I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you.

Do you? What’s your point of reference for that? Some hypothetical ideal that exists only in your mind?

Citing one of my favorite philosophers, Aristotle, and the one that is my favorite book of ethics, Nicomacus Ethics, virtue is the just (or point) half between two vices, one by excess and one by default.

What defines the standards of what is considered excess? Go back a thousand years, and nearly any modern government would be considered “excessively” democratic. Or, look at the debates over slavery in early America. The idea of immediate abolition of slavery was the most extreme position then, yet it’s considered a given today. Looking back at all the compromises made to “keep the peace,” it seems like they only served to prolong the institution of slavery, and that conflict was necessary and unavoidable.

If we really want to play with the idea, I wonder if the Golden Mean implies that nonbinary people are better than everyone, because ideally you want to be balanced between masculinity and femininity. It’s pretty clear that we cannot apply the Golden Mean uncritically to all possible qualities.

If the objective is to guarantee the best possible conditions for its population, which I do not understand why they do exactly the opposite

They don’t. You’re painting a one-sided picture that only looks at the negative. They have eradicated extreme poverty, they invest in massive high speed rail projects and develop green energy. The average Chinese person has seen massive improvements in their material conditions in their lifetime.

Much of what you’re discussing are political freedoms. It’s true that I have more freedom to talk shit about my government than people in China do about theirs. But all I can really do is talk shit. The politicians aren’t going to care how much I criticize them, they’re bought out by corporate interests, and many of them are in safely gerrymandered districts. At the same time, economic conditions can restrain one’s freedom as well. My right to shit-talk my boss doesn’t mean much if my boss can fire me on a whim and I need the job to survive. Is being able to whine impotently about politics really worth having to follow whatever rules a landlord sets for you because you can’t afford your own home? Meanwhile, home ownership in China is over 90%.

With all that being said, China’s system is not my ideal. However, I do believe that China’s existence is necessary for more ideal systems to emerge around the world. Without China, the US’s status as global hegemon would be completely unchallenged, and it would be all the more free to ruthlessly suppress any remotely left-leaning political projects, anyone on the globe, through sanctions and coups. But, the more ruthless and aggressive they are, the more countries turn to China, because it exists as an alternative. Even if China were as bad as the US, it would still be preferable to have power divided between two superpowers than one.

I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest.

What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?

If you’re criticizing China’s policies, surely the point of that criticism is that you think different policies would have been more effective.

It’s also not entirely an untestable counterfactual because we can examine every other political faction that had a reasonable chance of controlling China, and see what their leadership looked like in practice, and make reasonable extrapolations based on that.

• The Nationalists did absolutely nothing to help the rural poor, embezzled foreign aid, and were more preoccupied with hunting down their domestic enemies than repelling the genocidal fascist invaders. Chiang Kai-Shek literally had to be captured by his own bodyguards to be pressured into defending the country. Life expectancy remained completely flat during his rule.

• The fascist, genocidal Japanese invaders weren’t a good option for obvious reasons.

• How about having no centralized authority at all? That’s what they had during the warlord period, a time of chaos and conflict that left the country vulnerable and did nothing to improve things for anyone.

• Before that, there was the Qing dynasty, an authoritarian monarchy which was so assured of its superiority that they completely failed to adapt to foreign innovations and technologies, out of pride, even when it was clear that those technologies were superior.

• Then you have the various European powers, carving the country up to divy up the resources between each other, while getting half the country addicted to opium.

• And, returning to how things played out historically, we have the one and only faction that had any intention whatsoever of helping the hundreds of millions of starving farmers, which doubled life expectancy within a generation and then adapted to changing conditions and enacted policies which, again, brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty. And the whole reason they won the revolution was because the starving Chinese peasants could tell that they were the only ones who gave two shits about helping them.

Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?

I’m the one trying to avoid this pointless dick-measuring contest between countries with vastly different conditions, despite everyone else trying to draw me into it. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know why we’re comparing countries. Why don’t you ask WoodScientist whose dicks we measure, since he’s the one trying to measure dicks?

Which variables are allowed in the math depends on what the point of the comparison is. And as I said, I’m not really sure what the point of comparing these countries is. It’s pretty apples to oranges and doesn’t really tell us anything about the efficacy of China’s reforms in the context of their specific conditions.

The fact that there’s such a difference in landmass is just another reason why it doesn’t make sense to compare the two. If you want to compare China to another country for some reason, it would probably make sense to compare it to a country with more similar conditions, like India perhaps.