We are relearning a lesson from 100 years ago which is that the act of putting your name on a product enters you into a social contract where adulterated products lead to an unprofitable loss of status. It’s a form of mutually assured destruction.
If we finished decriminalizing the “alcohol tier” drugs and allowed for national brands, instead of a mosaic of companies who cannot legally transport product across state lines, then we would have a real alternative for people who think their highest priority is to check out of life for a while. For the people who want to check out as long as possible/forever, they already need loads of therapy. And legalizing or criminalizing activities they like to repeat doesn’t change that.
You take your average severely depressed person, who may describe themselves as too much of a coward to end it all. Now threaten them with ruining the rest of their life? I have news for you, most of them already believe their life is ruined. Putting yourself in harm’s way to feel something is a terrible existence, and I think the people who describe it as slow suicide are not wrong. I also worry sometimes about adrenaline junkies.
You can’t outlaw self destruction. What threat can you possibly make that will have any import?
It might be too much of an extrapolation but theres quite an odd cultural phenomenon around death in north america. It almost feels as though people think you deserve to die if you’re poor, get sick, dont currently have benefits, etc. There’s a massive for profit institution obsessed with extracting maximim value from you before you die. If you do, it was your responsibility anyway.
We dont really care about people living, or their quality of life. We care about the metrics sureounding those things, and gaming them to the maximum extent permitted by law.
I've noticed this too - it's horrifying. Just the complete ambivalence to death. From covid to gun deaths, traffic accidents + pedestrians being killed by cars to overdoses and suicides. Not to mention all the preventable deaths from lack of access to medical care. If the solution involves "the state", we'd rather just not bother and fighting "government overreach" at the cost of mass death is a completely common position. No license plate cameras, no gun registries, no mental health institution funding, no universal health care. People are starting to overturn vaccines rules about preventing childhood diseases. Rather than acknowledge the utility of some of these interventions and work around any potential downside, just rule out any coordinated action and hope for the best.
Those numerous and recent examples you listed show us that many people would actually rather die and/or contribute to others dying than be told what to do. Rugged Individualism has become elevated to near pseudo-religion, that people are swearing their lives to.
It's not that people are ambivalent to death. It's that a certain amount of death is going to happen. You can't legislate it away. Some of us think we've reached the point of diminishing returns on many topics and don't think giving up liberties will do much good.
No I don't want cameras. No I don't want backdoor encryption. No I don't want gun registries. No I don't want the Fed's to have more money or power.
They are not looking out for our best interests most of the time.
I would just like to clarify - Canada is in North America and it is nothing like you describe above. Actually it's quite the opposite, our healthcare means we're literally all-in to help each other.
You're talking about the United States, not "North America"
> Nearly 4,000 people died in fires, the highest number in close to 20 years, making for a death rate of nearly twice that of western Europe.
This seems particularly damning considering that in the name of fire safety, the USA (and Canada) goes to the effort to build two stairways in apartment buildings, which makes them harder to build, and compromises the design in making them subjectively worse to live in.
Europe does not do this extra safety step, which benefits their housing, and yet they have fewer fire deaths.
I might be wrong but in most of Europe timber is basically unused as a building material (except for UK). And it seems to be used extensively in the US.
Concrete and bricks don't burn anywhere near as much as wood.
Scandinavia uses timber frequently. People use what they have and a lot of Europe doesn't have ample timber supplies. North America does so it's used and it's a fine material with a lot of upsides. Modern timber framed homes are quite fire safe and have a few ways to slow the spread of fire down so it doesn't rage. But old ones are generally not for a variety of reasons.
While you see some very old timber buildings in the UK from the 1500s and 1600s, we mostly switched to brick centuries ago since we’d cut down most of our trees.
Lots of new timber buildings in the Nordics as they have plenty of trees.
> the USA (and Canada) goes to the effort to build two stairways in apartment buildings, which makes them harder to build, and compromises the design in making them subjectively worse to live in.
Did a developer tell you that? Adding multiple stairways in a building is not difficult unless we are talking some sort of converted slum building.
No offense to anyone who is all "yay, life!" but as people learn more, as the blinders fall off, as we are encouraged to question tradition and establishment, what we see at the end of the line doesn't look great. Miserable health if you make it to retirement, disposable marriages, your social institutions crumble. Forget the church and the Elks lodge, we can't even keep bowling leagues and book clubs together. Life starts seeming absurd and has for a long time. Think of that bit in Con Air, where the too-aware serial killer says ""What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years, at the end of which they tell you to piss off? Ending up in some retirement village, hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time."
Everything has been first chisled, then jackhammered, and finally bulldozed away. No rocks to fall on us and hide us from the grim end of Terror Management Theory, no sense in planting a tree which we might never sit in the shade of if it will be scorched to a stick in some kind of global warming furnace. We ought not to be surprised, then, if so many elect to reach for non-thought, for entertainment and distraction, because staring into the abyss can get old. We used to have protections, elaborate and impermeable to questioning, which protected us from seeing how unappealing the inevitable decline and end can really be.
Not exactly. It was proposed that we assign meaning. It is not there to be found. Unless you are a virtuoso of self-deception, you will be aware that you have arbitrarily assigned meaning. It is no less hollow than an atheist with a communion wafer. That is the crux of my point: all of the constructs we had, including whimsy and distraction, become reduced to so much translucent -- at best -- mist once we're aware.
Protections? In like the Great Depression, for example? Or just in a thin strata of 20 years from the '50s to the '70s thanks to the spoils of WW2 + pre-computerization?
And now we have no child labor, no draft (or even civil service to get people out and mingling with a diverse range of their fellow citizens for the good of the country), the weekend thanks to unions, civil rights, entertainment and knowledge at our fingertips... it's horrible. Why plant the tree, especially if I don't get to enjoy its shade? :c I'm picking up my toys and going home!
> For an explanation, a look at America’s geography is revealing [...] the national trend of stagnant life expectancy reveals huge regional variation (see map). In a place like Hazard, in eastern Kentucky, life expectancy is lower now than it was in 1980. In a place like Manhattan, or some wealthier counties of Colorado, it has increased by not much less than anywhere in Europe.
If you actually look at the map, it's pretty clear that geography is the biggest factor. The rural lifestyle is killing people - poverty, the amount of time spent in a car, the boredom.
Is poverty, the amount of time spent in a car, or boredom anything new since 1980? If anything we (they) are less bored, constantly stimulated.
Since there has been a large increase in deaths of despair specifically, I'm inclined to blame the spike in accessibility of addictions. In 1980 you could maybe become an alcoholic or addicted to cigarettes, or gambling if you went out of your way. Now you have alcohol, 1000 forms of nicotine, gambling at your fingertips, social media, porn, fentanyl, meth, ...
Some of these addictions, like fentanyl, will kill you directly. The others just make you check out from life, and eventually, living.
Or, people are in more despair in these areas because they have been dying since the 90s. I escaped a rural town for exactly that reason. If I didn't have a way out, and had to "live a life" in that town for 60 years, I'd probably have ended up offing myself.
It used to be you could get a random job and live an average life which could give you time to develop hobbies and have friends and do enjoyable things, as well as just be less stressed, but now rural areas are half welfare and half people working themselves to death for the most basic life imaginable to americans.
The meth and opioid crisis hit rural regions much more significantly than urban areas.
It's also interesting that they point out 1980 vs 2023. Pre-Globalization, those rural areas used to have factories that by the 90s began leaving for Canada+Mexico and by the 2000s for China.
Same with mines, which is what the Hazard, Kentucky economy was built around.
This is not just an economic crisis but also a crisis of meaning. The mines and factories provided stable, decently paying jobs. People could feel they had a place in the world and see a future for their children. Now what?
I fear that the college-graduate white-collar work that has provided meaning, stability, and economic sustenance for most of us on this site is headed for a similar pass with AI.
You bring up an interesting argument: is it healthier to live Urbanely vs Rurally? I see many advantages & disadvantages for both.
Having grown up in a city, and tried both, I plan to live somewhere in the middle:
On the outskirts of a small city (For me, about 30000-80,000 seems to be the sweet spot, preferably with a university, and with large enough parks for a 2 hour hike, and/or a river) while also being within 45 minutes from a large city.
I work remotely, and I am interested in living closer to nature and keeping a few livestock.
At a 45 minute distance, a 2-day-hybrid work week wouldn't be too bad, especially since that city offers things I can't get in my town (specialty groceries and IT meetup events).
Just for a little more context on why this is, Buc-ee’s is a gigantic operation. They're major truck stops with super-massive gas stations, tons of parking, and very large stores with a wide variety of stock including a lot of food. At any given point during the day they could easily have a hundred customers on premises gassing up or at a store. Managing that operation is not like managing a typical roadside gas station/store.
Why would anyone do such a stressful job for that money? Especially now that education is so costly. I made more than that as an electronics engineer, and later as a software developer, and I was able to go home every single day of my career knowing for certain that nothing I did or didn't do had killed anyone.
This not only includes childbirth, but also up to 42 days after childbirth. This site below goes into the breakdown and the leading causes of death surrounding prenatal, birth, and postpartum deaths in the US. Obesity and heart disease rears its ugly head again sadly along with access to healthcare.
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. You need to interpret these stats.
America is a very broad place with a lot of different types of people. We have millions of people that refuse to accept medicine due to religious reasons. Similar to beliefs around birthing children. There are more weirdo's here than anywhere else. This works in America's favor in many ways but is negative in many ways too.
If you're a normal person you don't have to worry. Subtract the weirdo's from the datasets and outcomes are fantastic. The same thing with all these other health and life expectancy numbers. If you're normal, avoid obesity, don't smoke or do drugs and avoid a variety of high risk behaviors, and visit your doctor then you're likely to live a long life.
I'm not sure if it occurs to you, but exactly the same statement applies to every country on earth.
"If you ignore the really bad cases, the average is fine".
Australia accepts more immigrants per capita than any other country on earth - so it's extremely diverse, and remote. Why are the health outcomes in Australia AT LEAST 10x better than the US?
I'd expect the outcomes in hospitals to be about the same. It's just that Americans avoid those for obvious reasons.
I highly recommend that you or your partner give birth surrounded by professionals, as well as getting check-ups done before - even if those professionals are expensive.
Readit News
If we finished decriminalizing the “alcohol tier” drugs and allowed for national brands, instead of a mosaic of companies who cannot legally transport product across state lines, then we would have a real alternative for people who think their highest priority is to check out of life for a while. For the people who want to check out as long as possible/forever, they already need loads of therapy. And legalizing or criminalizing activities they like to repeat doesn’t change that.
You take your average severely depressed person, who may describe themselves as too much of a coward to end it all. Now threaten them with ruining the rest of their life? I have news for you, most of them already believe their life is ruined. Putting yourself in harm’s way to feel something is a terrible existence, and I think the people who describe it as slow suicide are not wrong. I also worry sometimes about adrenaline junkies.
You can’t outlaw self destruction. What threat can you possibly make that will have any import?
You can outlaw reckless endangerment.
We dont really care about people living, or their quality of life. We care about the metrics sureounding those things, and gaming them to the maximum extent permitted by law.
No I don't want cameras. No I don't want backdoor encryption. No I don't want gun registries. No I don't want the Fed's to have more money or power.
They are not looking out for our best interests most of the time.
I would just like to clarify - Canada is in North America and it is nothing like you describe above. Actually it's quite the opposite, our healthcare means we're literally all-in to help each other.
You're talking about the United States, not "North America"
This sounds like someone who has never had significant interactions with the Canadian healthcare system...
This seems particularly damning considering that in the name of fire safety, the USA (and Canada) goes to the effort to build two stairways in apartment buildings, which makes them harder to build, and compromises the design in making them subjectively worse to live in.
Europe does not do this extra safety step, which benefits their housing, and yet they have fewer fire deaths.
Concrete and bricks don't burn anywhere near as much as wood.
Lots of new timber buildings in the Nordics as they have plenty of trees.
Did a developer tell you that? Adding multiple stairways in a building is not difficult unless we are talking some sort of converted slum building.
I'm sure it's not technically terribly difficult to add a staircase, but it's added time and expense and restricts architects in what they can do.
https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...
Everything has been first chisled, then jackhammered, and finally bulldozed away. No rocks to fall on us and hide us from the grim end of Terror Management Theory, no sense in planting a tree which we might never sit in the shade of if it will be scorched to a stick in some kind of global warming furnace. We ought not to be surprised, then, if so many elect to reach for non-thought, for entertainment and distraction, because staring into the abyss can get old. We used to have protections, elaborate and impermeable to questioning, which protected us from seeing how unappealing the inevitable decline and end can really be.
We have sadly lost our values as people. We don’t value community in the same way as it was before the internet for example.
We should not give into despair, although many already have.
And now we have no child labor, no draft (or even civil service to get people out and mingling with a diverse range of their fellow citizens for the good of the country), the weekend thanks to unions, civil rights, entertainment and knowledge at our fingertips... it's horrible. Why plant the tree, especially if I don't get to enjoy its shade? :c I'm picking up my toys and going home!
If you actually look at the map, it's pretty clear that geography is the biggest factor. The rural lifestyle is killing people - poverty, the amount of time spent in a car, the boredom.
Since there has been a large increase in deaths of despair specifically, I'm inclined to blame the spike in accessibility of addictions. In 1980 you could maybe become an alcoholic or addicted to cigarettes, or gambling if you went out of your way. Now you have alcohol, 1000 forms of nicotine, gambling at your fingertips, social media, porn, fentanyl, meth, ...
Some of these addictions, like fentanyl, will kill you directly. The others just make you check out from life, and eventually, living.
It used to be you could get a random job and live an average life which could give you time to develop hobbies and have friends and do enjoyable things, as well as just be less stressed, but now rural areas are half welfare and half people working themselves to death for the most basic life imaginable to americans.
It's also interesting that they point out 1980 vs 2023. Pre-Globalization, those rural areas used to have factories that by the 90s began leaving for Canada+Mexico and by the 2000s for China.
Vast swathes of America's rural hinterland effectively deindustrialized, leaving rural residents economically disenfranchised
This is not just an economic crisis but also a crisis of meaning. The mines and factories provided stable, decently paying jobs. People could feel they had a place in the world and see a future for their children. Now what?
I fear that the college-graduate white-collar work that has provided meaning, stability, and economic sustenance for most of us on this site is headed for a similar pass with AI.
Having grown up in a city, and tried both, I plan to live somewhere in the middle:
On the outskirts of a small city (For me, about 30000-80,000 seems to be the sweet spot, preferably with a university, and with large enough parks for a 2 hour hike, and/or a river) while also being within 45 minutes from a large city.
I work remotely, and I am interested in living closer to nature and keeping a few livestock.
At a 45 minute distance, a 2-day-hybrid work week wouldn't be too bad, especially since that city offers things I can't get in my town (specialty groceries and IT meetup events).
Managers at Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of stores, can make more than experienced doctors earn in Britain.
I'd be surprised if a single Buc-ees location had 100 employees, let alone 400.
Deleted Comment
Mothers-to-be in the US are much more likely to die in childbirth than in any other developed country. [1]
When it comes to healthcare outcomes, the US is comparable to Latvia and Chile, not developed nations.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240400/maternal-mortali...
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-brief-re...
Then there is some work regarding opioid use and death through pregnancy and postpartum periods that account more quite a bit as well sadly. https://healthcare.utah.edu/press-releases/2019/05/opioids-l...
America is a very broad place with a lot of different types of people. We have millions of people that refuse to accept medicine due to religious reasons. Similar to beliefs around birthing children. There are more weirdo's here than anywhere else. This works in America's favor in many ways but is negative in many ways too.
If you're a normal person you don't have to worry. Subtract the weirdo's from the datasets and outcomes are fantastic. The same thing with all these other health and life expectancy numbers. If you're normal, avoid obesity, don't smoke or do drugs and avoid a variety of high risk behaviors, and visit your doctor then you're likely to live a long life.
"If you ignore the really bad cases, the average is fine".
Australia accepts more immigrants per capita than any other country on earth - so it's extremely diverse, and remote. Why are the health outcomes in Australia AT LEAST 10x better than the US?
It's a societal issue more than a healthcare issue.
I highly recommend that you or your partner give birth surrounded by professionals, as well as getting check-ups done before - even if those professionals are expensive.