Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon

[Bruce Wayne]

people who can't afford or get medical care?? Well... yeah they normally are the victim, bit much that to be honest mate

I'm not talking about medical care, I was talking about the unhealthy lifestyles that contribute to sickness, as I clearly said.

It's societies fault that people eat too much, drink heavily and don't get enough exercise?

 

[Walken]

I'm not talking about medical care, I was talking about the unhealthy lifestyles that contribute to sickness, as I clearly said.

hmmm, bit of a backtrack this

 

[Bruce Wayne]

 

[abelard]

It's societies fault that people eat too much, drink heavily and don't get enough exercise?

Oh Bruce. You're above this, surely.

I think a lot of humans are getting closer to binary quicker than AI is at assimilating us.

^This remark comes to mind...

As anyone who has managed a 2:2 in first-year uni can understand, the answer to structure vs. agency questions is always "a little bit of both."

It is so obvious as to go without saying that people who neglect their health, abuse drugs and alcohol, mistreat their families, commit petty crimes, or carry out any of the other symptoms associated with poverty and discrimination, bear responsibility for their individual choices. Even among the most prosperous and close-knit communities, people still do cause harm to others and/or themselves.

But when pondering why, for instance, the once prosperous and close-knit industrial communities that for decades drove the economies of the United States and Britain are now national epicentres of the traits I list above, is the suggestion that everyone has simply become less moral than they were before really a satisfying explanation? Might not there be some sort of larger structural forces at work as well?

Is it such a stretch to accept that people who grow up in places characterised by unemployment; low levels of education; poor public services; social and geographical isolation; class prejudice; drug and alcohol abuse; obesity; poor quality food, water, and air; broken families; poverty and despair are more likely than a roomful of public schoolboys to perpetuate these kinds of poor decisions?

Or perhaps, conversely, you really want to see the logic of your post through. Perhaps desperately poor and uneducated agrarian societies like Vietnam, Taiwan, China, or South Korea elevated themselves not through careful state planning and investment designed to lift the common good, and instead, through everyone collectively putting down the Little Red Book and picking up prosperity gospel cliche peddlers like the 1950s equivalent of Jordan B. "Rosa Parks of Pronouns" Peterson, before which time it had never occurred to anyone to work hard and stand up straight with your shoulders back.

The government can't do much about individual morality and responsibility. But it can and has done much to affect the social and economic conditions in the places described above, and not in their favour. And it could do even more still to improve them, if we could muster the political will.

I've mentioned this several times before (so forgive me), but the latest social science research on community health overwhelmingly indicates that social conditions and perceptions have almost as much impact on an individual's expected health outcomes as any other factor (and I could post a hundred links to this effect if I thought anyone would read them). In Canadian med school, for instance, the first thing anyone learns is that the opposite of health is anomie and inequality. Even the algorithms responsible the MayBot have recognised this.

The NHS serves as a catchment basin, where all the social ills of post-Thatcher Britain are channeled and concentrated. Yet it has only the means and mandate to address their symptoms (poor health) rather than their largely social and political root-causes.

To improve the public health, it would be much easier and cheaper for America and Britain to think beyond the usual token end-level spending formula tweaks or PFI contract term adjustments, and to instead do what they can to ensure everyone has the same access to healthy food, clear air and water, exercise facilities, quality education and community services, and a realistic shot at a desirable future. To consider health care holistically, in other words (a cliche which I use here advisedly). It's a lot cheaper, more sensible, and better all around to have children eat broccoli early on than it is to administer gastric bypasses and treat their adult-onset diabetes. Sure, not everyone will immediately put the lager down and start reading at night to their children, but government policy the world over can and have served as the driving force in turning chronically deprived places around.

Similarly, though the UK is clearly determined to render itself as marginal and deprived as possible via austerity and Brexit, we could address our chronic and critical productivity gap not by writing off an entire social class as unworthy degenerate chavs, but by emulating Europe rather America, and actually investing in its people. The current method of deploying the state to siphon public wealth into private hands while loading everyone else up with unaffordable bills and credit card debt has bot exactly done wonders in that regard, has it? We've saw where laissez-faire responses to social alienation led us in the 1930s, and it's not a comfortable place for people like you and I.

But as I've said before, meaningful policy change goes beyond the threshold of what the lunchtime-at-Pret-with-The Economist-smartphone-app crowd is willing to countenance. They're likely to continue mindlessly channeling the common wealth to their small coterie of plutocrat patrons, and, bypassing polite chartist constitutionalists like Sanders or Corbyn, lead us headlong toward Trump and beyond.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Oh Bruce. You're above this, surely.


^This remark comes to mind...

As anyone who has managed a 2:2 in first-year uni can understand, the answer to structure vs. agency questions is always "a little bit of both."

It is so obvious as to go without saying that people who neglect their health, abuse drugs and alcohol, mistreat their families, commit petty crimes, or carry out any of the other symptoms associated with poverty and discrimination, bear responsibility for their individual choices. Even among the most prosperous and close-knit communities, people still do cause harm to others and/or themselves.

But when pondering why, for instance, the once prosperous and close-knit industrial communities that for decades drove the economies of the United States and Britain are now national epicentres of the traits I list above, is the suggestion that everyone has simply become less moral than they were before really a satisfying explanation? Might not there be some sort of larger structural forces at work as well?

Is it such a stretch to accept that people who grow up in places characterised by unemployment; low levels of education; poor public services; social and geographical isolation; class prejudice; drug and alcohol abuse; obesity; poor quality food, water, and air; broken families; poverty and despair are more likely than a roomful of public schoolboys to perpetuate these kinds of poor decisions?

Or perhaps, conversely, you really want to see the logic of your post through. Perhaps desperately poor and uneducated agrarian societies like Vietnam, Taiwan, China, or South Korea elevated themselves not through careful state planning and investment designed to lift the common good, and instead, through everyone collectively putting down the Little Red Book and picking up prosperity gospel cliche peddlers like the 1950s equivalent of Jordan B. "Rosa Parks of Pronouns" Peterson, before which time it had never occurred to anyone to work hard and stand up straight with your shoulders back.

The government can't do much about individual morality and responsibility. But it can and has done much to affect the social and economic conditions in the places described above, and not in their favour. And it could do even more still to improve them, if we could muster the political will.

I've mentioned this several times before (so forgive me), but the latest social science research on community health overwhelmingly indicates that social conditions and perceptions have almost as much impact on an individual's expected health outcomes as any other factor (and I could post a hundred links to this effect if I thought anyone would read them). In Canadian med school, for instance, the first thing anyone learns is that the opposite of health is anomie and inequality. Even the algorithms responsible the MayBot have recognised this.

The NHS serves as a catchment basin, where all the social ills of post-Thatcher Britain are channeled and concentrated. Yet it has only the means and mandate to address their symptoms (poor health) rather than their largely social and political root-causes.

To improve the public health, it would be much easier and cheaper for America and Britain to think beyond the usual token end-level spending formula tweaks or PFI contract term adjustments, and to instead do what they can to ensure everyone has the same access to healthy food, clear air and water, exercise facilities, quality education and community services, and a realistic shot at a desirable future. To consider health care holistically, in other words (a cliche which I use here advisedly). It's a lot cheaper, more sensible, and better all around to have children eat broccoli early on than it is to administer gastric bypasses and treat their adult-onset diabetes. Sure, not everyone will immediately put the lager down and start reading at night to their children, but government policy the world over can and have served as the driving force in turning chronically deprived places around.

Similarly, though the UK is clearly determined to render itself as marginal and deprived as possible via austerity and Brexit, we could address our chronic and critical productivity gap not by writing off an entire social class as unworthy degenerate chavs, but by emulating Europe rather America, and actually investing in its people. The current method of deploying the state to siphon public wealth into private hands while loading everyone else up with unaffordable bills and credit card debt has bot exactly done wonders in that regard, has it? We've saw where laissez-faire responses to social alienation led us in the 1930s, and it's not a comfortable place for people like you and I.

But as I've said before, meaningful policy change goes beyond the threshold of what the lunchtime-at-Pret-with-The Economist-smartphone-app crowd is willing to countenance. They're likely to continue mindlessly channeling the common wealth to their small coterie of plutocrat patrons, and, bypassing polite chartist constitutionalists like Sanders or Corbyn, lead us headlong toward Trump and beyond.

You should offer your services to the NHS. I'm sure with your considerable experience of the sector you'd have it fixed by the end of the year.

 

[orchard]

You should offer your services to the NHS. I'm sure with your considerable experience of the sector you'd have it fixed by the end of the year.

int foo()
{
// more stuff
foo();
}

 

[Bruce Wayne]

int foo()
{
// more stuff
foo();
}

Goodie, another smart arse. Stick to blaming the Tories for everything if I were you.

 

[orchard]

Goodie, another smart arse. Stick to blaming the Tories for everything if I were you.

Hahaha, you going to address the points he's clearly made then, or am I right?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Hahaha, you going to address the points he's clearly made then, or am I right?

Why? Despite never working a single day in the NHS he knows all of it's problems and how to fix them. There's nothing really to add. Anyone that disagrees clearly fails to match up to his own vast intellect so it doesn't seem worth the hassle.

 

[abelard]

Why? Despite never working a single day in the NHS he knows all of it's problems and how to fix them. There's nothing really to add. Anyone that disagrees clearly fails to match up to his own vast intellect so it doesn't seem worth the hassle.

Do you really think that I think this way about myself?

I'll admit, I was expecting more than the @zzr45 line of attack from you.

My brother works in the Canadian health care service, so I'm not a total idiot about how these things work. And in my defence, the British taxpayer has never spent a dime on my education, and I worked all through high-school to cover my own Canadian and American uni fees. Am I allowed to have an opinion yet?

I would appreciate a substantive response, if you have one. That was why I posted the Pollock piece, actually...

Cheer up Bruce, we haven't even lost to West Brom yet!

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Do you really think that I think this way about myself?

There's a constant stream of jibes about people with lesser degrees or who read the wrong publication. It comes across as incredibly pompous.

 

[orchard]

I don't really want to add to your bad day mate, but is it apparent to those that you're discussing the NHS with that you may have a vested interest in its privatisation? It may help people understand your experience in the field better.

Btw, i've voted tory/lib Dem far more than labour, but I believe anyone who has social values and understands the extent of damage to what's left of our social infrastructure that the current Government will perform if unchecked, ought to attempt to remove them from power.

Why? Despite never working a single day in the NHS he knows all of it's problems and how to fix them. There's nothing really to add. Anyone that disagrees clearly fails to match up to his own vast intellect so it doesn't seem worth the hassle.

 

[abelard]

There's a constant stream of jibes about people with lesser degrees or who read the wrong publication. It comes across as incredibly pompous.

Just teasing mate. Sorry it evidently didn't come across.

I've never said anything derisory about anyone who doesn't have a degree, which would include much of my own family.

And you know I read the Economist too ; )

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I don't really want to add to your bad day mate, but is it apparent to those that you're discussing the NHS with that you may have a vested interest in its privatisation? It may help people understand your experience in the field better.

Btw, i've voted tory/lib Dem far more than labour, but I believe anyone who has social values and understands the extent of damage to what's left of our social infrastructure that the current Government will perform if unchecked, ought to attempt to remove them from power.

I have zero interest in the privatisation of the NHS.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Just teasing mate. Sorry it evidently didn't come across.

I've never said anything derisory about anyone who doesn't have a degree, which would include much of my own family.

And you know I read the Economist too ; )

It's a nerve that can be easily struck. I should have walked away.