Liberal view of Government.

[alexjrgreen]

You think that just because the US is undefeated in wars (recently), your people wont fall for opium just like the Chinese did?
You are currently experiencing a really bad economic situation, with no end in sight. Something that can happen any time. You think that this wont be enough for your people to fall for the drug?

Actually I'm British. For the record, Britain managed to kick it's Victorian opium habit...

About 2% of men and 1% of women in the UK try heroin at some time, and perhaps a third of a percent become addicted.

Prescribing heroin: what is the evidence?

[Skipjack]

You may wish to learn how to look beyond the knee-jerk into the cause. Punitive damages cost so much to the medical profession because LAWYERS can make a LOT of money going after them. Remove that incentive, and the urge to punish for your profit goes away too. Besides, if you believe that it is right that grossly neglegent doctors should be able to pay someone else to take their punishment, you must believe that it is ok for rich folk to pay poor folk to go to jail for them when they kill someone. And that is just sick. How can you be so sick?

These cases are the rarest of the rare. I do agree with you that quacks (and gee dont even get me started on those) should not be doctors. BUT, most cases in the US are not about that. If they were, you would have to have A LOT more quacks than we do.
But dont get yourself fooled, doctors are only human too and they will make mistakes, like everyone. Especially if they are overworked after over hours in the operation room, mistakes can happen and they will happen. You will have very, very few doctors left, if you kick every doctor that made a mistake ever.

The insurance company has to make a certain amount of money each year to please their share holders.

Yeah not the kind of people I want to make decisions regarding my health.

They may get away with charging premiums of $500M given a profit margin of 10%. But then along comes the knee jerker and says "they make too much profit margin. We will limit them to 5% maximum". So what happens? They arrange to have expenditures that cause the premiums to raise to $1000M to get the same job done (can you say lawsuit?), and the premium payer (me, and you if you lived here) pays twice as much as they need to for the same service. REAL beneficial there dude.

I cant follow your logic here.

Actually I'm British. For the record, Britain managed to kick it's Victorian opium habit...

It was never legal there.

About 2% of men and 1% of women in the UK try heroin at some time, and perhaps a third of a percent become addicted.

So you have a 33% chance of getting addicted (if those numbers are correct) if you try it once.
You would bet the existance of your country on that? Maybe you have a gambling problem or something?

[Skipjack]

Oh and I actually got prescribed one dose of morphium while I was in the hospital for my heart attack. It was administered under surveillance by doctors and they would only give me one small dose, once.
Honestly, I did not really like it. It knocked me out and made the pain go away, but I did not like the feeling at all.

[alexjrgreen]

Actually I'm British. For the record, Britain managed to kick it's Victorian opium habit...

It was never legal there.

Recreational use of opium wasn't made illegal in Britain until the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act, although the 1868 Pharmacy Act restricted its sale to professional pharmacists. It has always been legal for medicinal use.

About 2% of men and 1% of women in the UK try heroin at some time, and perhaps a third of a percent become addicted.

So you have a 33% chance of getting addicted (if those numbers are correct) if you try it once.
You would bet the existance of your country on that? Maybe you have a gambling problem or something?

(1/3)/(2+1) gives about 11%

I'm not comfortable with a third of a percent of the population addicted to Heroin, but it's not about to cause the collapse of society.

[Diogenes]

Not slavery, Diogenes. That would be an association fallacy. After all, there is nothing stopping you from walking away and living off the land except the fact that you like all those little modern convinces that society provides.

I was born here. This is my home. I will resist and die here before I am forced to leave to die elsewhere. (Antarctica ?)

And I do agree that freeloaders are a problem. I just think that if we're going to have a cost, it would be better to have the cost of freeloaders than the human cost of people dieing because they don't have enough money.

I see freeloaders at the Top (Government Bureaucrats, Officials, etc. ) and at the bottom, (shiftless welfare recipients, alcoholics, drug addicts,etc) I am in the middle between these two classes of idiots with both demanding that I give up the fruits of my work for them and their opposite counterpart.

And as for your opinions of me, well, you got two things right. I'm young, and my parents are upper middle class. That said, I've broken bones, destroyed joints, been in a car accident on the highway and suffered a hernia (that really sucked). I also have two friends who suffer from schizophrenia and clinical depression, so I've encountered a good range of medical options in this country. Oh, and I pay my own way through university. Which costs enough to make me part of the working poor. You know, those guys who are freeloading off that government healthcare. You know what they say about assumptions...

I admire your gumption in paying your own way through university. That is what I did. I believe you will develop a better understanding of the opposition view point once you've had sufficient experience at trying to get ahead in the world despite the constant demand of government for more money.

[Skipjack]

Your calculation is flawed. You are assuming that the number of people that would try heroin would stay stable even when it becomes legal.
I think that the fact that it is illegal is what is limiting the number of people that try it to those 1.5% or so. This is of course assuming that the statistics are correct.

Recreational use of opium wasn't made illegal in Britain until the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act, although the 1868 Pharmacy Act restricted its sale to professional pharmacists. It has always been legal for medicinal use

Not quite, recreation use was very strictly regulated. Lets say it was semi illegal.

[Diogenes]

Funny thing when it comes to taxes, no one wants to pay the taxes for public services they claim they don't want or need.....

UNTIL their house catches fire in the middle of the night for whatever reason. If you're one of these so-called "rugged individualists" you better have an extra fire truck parked in the garage and a fat cistern of water to boot.

Wait, you don't have an extra fire-truck and a fat tank of water "just in case" the fire happens? Then I suggest you shut the f*** up and pay the small duty out your paychecks.

In municipalities, Fire trucks (and Firefighters) are paid for out of the City government funds. In Rural areas, Fire Depts are almost exclusively volunteer, with the Fire fighters made up of members of the community. The funds they acquire are from fund raisers, bake sales, and a yearly fee, (often $25) from members of the community.

The Feds pay for some firefighting. That which is on Federal lands, Military bases, Airports, etc., but the VAST bulk of Firefighting in the United States is paid for by Cities and Communities, and has nothing to do with Federal Taxes.

The Federal government though, does indeed attempt to insert it's tentacles into every aspects of people's lives. They have made great efforts to tempt fire fighting communities with Federal grants. Free money is a drug that people would be better off rejecting, but those who have the good sense to aver are chastised by the more ignorant among them for not accepting the free money.

The Free money is nothing more than bait to establish and trap them into accepting Federal intrusiveness and dominance.

[Skipjack]

In municipalities, Fire trucks (and Firefighters) are paid for out of the City government funds.

And the City government does not count as government? Or are you only talking about federal government when you are talking about government. I dont quite get the way you tick.

[alexjrgreen]

Recreational use of opium wasn't made illegal in Britain until the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act, although the 1868 Pharmacy Act restricted its sale to professional pharmacists. It has always been legal for medicinal use

Not quite, recreation use was very strictly regulated. Lets say it was semi illegal.

What basis do you have for this claim?

[Diogenes]

"A private corporation owned by the residents"? Sounds like another name for "government" to me. Whatever rings your bell.

Diogenes, but health care costs are lower here in Austria, where everyone is insured.
Here people also have the choice between elective treatments and those paid for by the insurance, btw. The elective treatments are about as expensive as they are in the US, maybe more expensive though.

A comparison between Austria and the United States in terms of Health care costs might be difficult to be objective about. There are a great number of differences between the conditions in Austria vs. the Conditions in the USA.

Many socialist leaning countries actively subsidize various programs (like health care) in attempts to achieve the results they want.

I've seen comparisons between countries on other issues, such as crime. All my life I had heard that the United States has far more violent crime than other countries in the Europe, and I always accepted the idea that we were just a more violent society. Then I saw a study that pointed out that countries like Sweden were mostly homogeneous (Back in the 70s and 80s) while the USA was anything but.

The study went on to demonstrate that if Crimes committed by minorities were removed from the statistics,
(Resulting in a European like homogeneity) then suddenly the USA had a LOWER crime rate than Europe.)


My point is, i've learned not to accept comparisons as equal, until they can in fact be demonstrated to be equal. The system here in America is more free market oriented, and to those of us that believe the free market system is beneficial, it appears that the problems in health care (and other industries as well) tend to arise in the places that the government chooses to meddle.

Anyway, normally doctors here make less than they do in the US. They only make more for elective treatments and in private hospitals.
Btw, these private hospitals and elective treatments are sometimes covered by additional private insurance that people get here.
I had that for a while, but during a slow time at work, I cancelled it. Now I cant get it anymore because of my heart attack that I had in May.
So I am "stuck" with the government insurance. This is still better than nothing though. Had I cancelled that as well (which you cant here), I would be deep in debt right now.

Here in the USA, Doctors often choose to pursue a career in Medicine for the Money as well as the prestige. The money is often what attracts the best and the brightest to work in the Medical field, and without that incentive, they might prefer a different line of work with less onerous requirements.

In any case, the Doctors Salaries would obey the normal free market rules except for the fact that various meddlings by the Federal Government created the conditions that drove the costs upward. Health Insurance itself was the result of companies trying to get around the Federal government tax structure. Companies would offer non-taxable benefits (Like health insurance which was WINK WINK really full paid health care) so that employees wouldn't get kicked into the next ruinous tax bracket as an inducement to attract and promote good employees.

This slowly resulted in a change in perception of Insurance as being something for an Emergency, to something that is used for every case of medical care, thus driving the prices upward.

When people weren't paying their own bills, they saw no reason to limit their demands for more services.

[Diogenes]

Yup, but no inherent right to shoot you dead and take your property, as is the case with government.

The government of Austria has not done that in 65 years. I also dont see anywhere in the US constitution that they have the right to do that.
I do very much see though that noone might have taken his life or property from him without a prior fair process at court.

For the last several years there has been a lot of Anger and discussion about a Supreme court ruling which allows cities to seize peoples land, and give it to someone else.

While everyone acknowledges that our constitution Grants Imminent Domain to the various governments, sensible people demand that some obvious vested public interest be at stake in order for this clause to be invoked.

The idea of taking land from one citizen and giving it to another to develop, is not an acceptable or proper role for any government. If they need someones land to build a necessary bridge, or road, that is one thing, but to take someone's land to put in a shopping mall ? That is absolutely wrong.

Of course the 5 idiot members of the Supreme court ruled that it was okay to take someone's land and give to someone else (not for governmental use.) and thus the reason for all the vitriol directed at these 5 idiots.

They can't legislate beyond the limits of the corporate compact. They cannot strip rights. They cannot charge for services not rendered.

But they can just as much sue you if you dont pay your fees, to avoid calling it (private) "taxes". How can a government strip rights from you?
Your rights are defined by your consitution. Sure the government can change the constitution, but then it is not your right anymore.

Hmm, I wonder how a Homeowners Association fits into that picture. From what I heard they pretty much are fascism alive.

The difference between these communities or home owners associations and Governments is that you voluntarily agree to the terms and conditions and likewise to the rulings of the boards and committees.

The difference is that of being a Peon/Slave or a Co-Partner.

[Diogenes]

And here in the US we have medicare/medicaid.

Not everyone is eligible for medicare/medicaid, as you might know.
What about someone who is self employed?

There are really no people in the US who don't have health care access who intentionally do not pay for it but are able to.

Bullshit! I know plenty of people that do have even multiple jobs, but do not have healthcare, because they still can not afford it. May wifes cousin, e.g. She is working as a cashier and at a gas station, but since she did not have a full time job at either, she was not eligible for the company healthcare. She was not able to get medicare/medicaid either.

I don't know what you are talking about. I've known many people who simply walk into the Emergency room and get whatever they need. I know two people that's had Heart Surgery, I know a guy that broke his forearm and had pins surgically installed in his arm, I know people who have had babies delivered (several in fact) and I know people who have had Knee surgery, etc. and not a one of them paid a d@amn cent for any of it!

Sure, the hospitals and the Doctors send them enormous bills, but they don't pay them. Does this affect their receiving of health care later ? Nope. They just show up anyway, and the hospital treats them anyway. I know several people who have REPEATEDLY had surgeries and spent days in the hospital. They have rung up what to anyone else would be soul crushing bills, but they simply didn't care, and have no intention of paying for any of it.

Yeah, our health care system does indeed need to be fixed, but not in the way you are thinking.

[Diogenes]

I already posted was being tongue-and-cheek more or less when I said that. I also posted that EVERY system that involves people (Governmental, Private, Corporate, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism ect) is going to have abuses/corruption because people are flawed. This corruption can be as simple as "bending the rules" to outright fraud and deception.

This will always be true in some form or another. That's why it's our jobs as citizens to be ever vigilant to minimize these abuses as much as we can. So when I hear someone "blame the gov't" while "praising" the ideological so-called perfection of capitalism it irks my ire and sometimes I get a little hot under the collar.

I cannot speak for others, but as for myself, I don't say capitalism is perfect. I think capitalism attempts at every opportunity to evolve itself into a government. (That is what a monopoly is. A group of people with utter tightfisted control over some vital commodity, very much like a government.)

I believe it is the duty of Government to make companies respect reasonable trading practices, and to frown on monopolies and attempts to usurp Governmental powers for the benefit of companies, corporations groups, or individuals. (Lobbyists can be offensive as well as defensive. )

[Diogenes]

The British Government was actively supporting opium smuggling to counter the Empire's enormous trade deficit with China, where opium was illegal.
Drawing any conclusions about drug legalization from that seems difficult at best.

Learn your history!
Opium trade was legalized in China after the second Opium war.
This was succeeded by the almost complete downfall of the Chinese society. This ultimately resulted in the Boxer Rebellion (some people just had enough of it, and rightfully so).

My recollection is that they solved the opium addiction problem by offering a period of amnesty for users, then after that period expired, they killed everyone that had anything to do with opium.

People may say that's a horrific solution, but you cannot argue that it didn't work pretty well.

[Diogenes]

In municipalities, Fire trucks (and Firefighters) are paid for out of the City government funds.

And the City government does not count as government? Or are you only talking about federal government when you are talking about government. I dont quite get the way you tick.

We have four layers of Government. At the Top is the Federal. It's ostensibly responsible for defending the Nation and Mitigating disputes between the states. (regulating commerce) It sucks up the vast majority of all money payed in taxes by the population. (They take it out of your paycheck before you even get it.)

Next we have State Government. The State Government is charged with Building and maintaining State Roads and Bridges, Enforcing Criminal and Civil Law, Administering the Education system (Schools) and keeping the indigents from starving and dying of exposure. The State Government is the next largest tax sucker.

Next is the County Government. The county Government maintains county roads and bridges, Administrates Local State law enforcement, Maintains records of property and other Vital records, Levels property taxes, and pays for County Health care for indigents (sometimes in conjunction with the Feds and the State.)

And Finally, there is the Municipal Government. The City maintains the water and sewer systems for the City, The Roads and Bridges within the City, They administrate Trash collection and disposal, they Administrate the building codes and inspections, they Provide for Municipal Fire Fighting and Law enforcement, The Animal Shelter, They manage the Traffic signal system, and Street lighting, they manage the Parks, and in many Cities, the Municipal government manages the local (citywide) electrical power grid.



The point of all this is, The closer the government is to the citizen, the less onerous and the more useful it is, as well as the least costly. (or if not, at least you are getting something for what you pay. )

The Federal Government in contrast, is the MOST demanding of your money, and the LEAST responsive to the people it's taking the most money from.



Often when people are talking about the Government, most of the time they mean the Federal Government, but sometimes they mean The State, or even one of the lesser governments. It depends on the issue. Usually with taxes, it's the Federal and State governments.

Often it is expected that people can surmise which "government" is being discussed because of the context. Also there is often substantial overlap between various governments, so sometimes more than one is responsible.

Hope this makes things more clear.