pbz (u/pbz) - Readit News

pbz commented on JPMorgan Chase Bank Assumes All the Deposits of First Republic Bank fdic.gov/news/press-relea... · Posted by u/robbiet480

astrange · 2 years ago

> Point me to one law that says you are not allowed to have more than X doctors.

Why can't we have doctors that other countries have agreed are qualified to be doctors?

Also, do you know how certificate of need laws work? It literally says you can't have a hospital unless the other nearby hospitals agree you can have it.

Taxi medallions are truly a "there can only be X many people doing this" system, but even if they're not written that way, these other laws are still intended to restrict the supply of healthcare.

nb my issue isn't whether the healthcare system is "socialist" or not, it's that it's bad. I don't think "just make the government pay for everything" is a solution to things costing too much though; if an ambulance ride costs $9000 the solution is to make it not cost that, not to share paying for it.

pbz · 2 years ago

Your original argument was the government caps the number of doctors (not taxi drivers). I am not finding anything that would show this. There is a cap on the total amount the gov is subsidizing (should be increased, but that's a different topic).

If an individual is willing/able to pay for the cost of residency that the gov covers there's nothing to prevent one to do so. Of course, this is not a practical solution for most, but that's another story.

> nb my issue isn't whether the healthcare system is "socialist" or not, it's that it's bad.

Agree, no argument there

> I don't think "just make the government pay for everything" is a solution to things costing too much though

Of course not, but if the capitalistic / private market has failed, I'd rather try a more gov-focused approach (or something else) than let it fester and cause more and more pain.

> if an ambulance ride costs $9000 the solution is to make it not cost that, not to share paying for it.

Agree, but how do you do that when the "ambulance lobby" owns the politicians and media who then try to convince the population that this is "the best system in the world"? You can't find a better system when you already think you have the best one (not saying you do) or that the "other" system is worse because it starts with an "s".

pbz commented on JPMorgan Chase Bank Assumes All the Deposits of First Republic Bank fdic.gov/news/press-relea... · Posted by u/robbiet480

astrange · 2 years ago

No, the US government caps the number of doctors because Medicare funds residency slots, and you have to get through one of those to get a license to be a doctor.

> There's no law that you can only have X doctors.

We have tons of these laws. All occupational licensing requirements are this law; that's the whole point of them.

pbz · 2 years ago

The US government caps the number of residencies it is paying/subsidizing. Yes, you have to go through residency, but there's nothing stopping the private sector from taking on this cost (well, other than greed)

It is a subsidy program:

https://hospitalmedicaldirector.com/how-residents-are-paid/

> We have tons of these laws.

Point me to one law that says you are not allowed to have more than X doctors.

pbz commented on JPMorgan Chase Bank Assumes All the Deposits of First Republic Bank fdic.gov/news/press-relea... · Posted by u/robbiet480

astrange · 2 years ago

> If the US healthcare market isn't capitalist, then no country's healthcare system is.

Yes.

That said, developing countries are most likely to have one. If the government caps the number of doctors and hospitals in the country, like the US does with residencies and certificate of need laws, it's not very market-driven.

pbz · 2 years ago

The government does not cap the number of doctors. There's no law that you can only have X doctors. What it caps is the amount of social help it's willing to subsidize. This is like complaining that the government is not "socialist" enough and therefore socialism is bad.

pbz commented on JPMorgan Chase Bank Assumes All the Deposits of First Republic Bank fdic.gov/news/press-relea... · Posted by u/robbiet480

_heimdall · 2 years ago

> They already know and/or could trivially find out.

100% agree here. Today the US goverment, I won't attempt to speak towards any other government, has way too much power and ability to collect inflammation in it's citizens. We've allowed the government to assume that powers but we could also take that power away. If the government owns the bank there's literally no way to do that.

Healthcare here is a whole other massively broken system. In general yes I think it's a fair generalization that we would prefer to pay extra to avoid large governments, historically at least since we've done a really poor job keeping our federal government small for the last 80 years. It makes sense given our country's history though, and personally I'd rather pay a little more to a corporation than save a few bucks at the expense of living under a much more powerful centralized authority.

pbz · 2 years ago

> I'd rather pay a little more to a corporation

It's hardly "a little more" though. We're spending almost twice as much and get almost half as little back. Objectively speaking the capitalist market has failed in this area. We have to first accept this fact before we can find any solutions. If we keep thinking "government is bad" and "private industry is good" we're only allowing further exploitation and pain; and for what? We need to be data/solution driven.

pbz commented on Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu theregister.com/2023/04/1... · Posted by u/Bender

pbz · 2 years ago

These kinds of changes just make the OS look cheap (like a bazaar of sorts). They're visually ugly, but easily ignored (I rarely open the start menu).

What I'm more concerned / annoyed by is the trend of Windows fighting with you. For example, try to disable the real-time antivirus protection. The UI makes it look like it's off, but then it turns back on by itself. Then you go to group policy to make it explicit that you don't want it. It's off for a bit and then it freaking changes the group policy (resets it back).

First time I noticed it do this I though I got hacked because I couldn't imagine the OS doing something so malware-ish, but it does. What's the point of having a setting at all?

pbz commented on Lowest “Who is hiring?” Post Count in 30 Months · Posted by u/trenning

prottog · 3 years ago

> to do price control, but that won't fly in capitalism

Price control doesn't fly in any economic system. Putting a legal floor or ceiling on the price anything doesn't affect what it actually costs to produce it.

pbz · 3 years ago

That depends on how authoritarian the regime is... However, I was talking about putting a price control over the level/amount of profit. If you look at the financial reports of late you'd see record profits during record inflation.

pbz commented on Lowest “Who is hiring?” Post Count in 30 Months · Posted by u/trenning

slg · 3 years ago

I don't disagree with the unlikely nature of new taxes on the rich. That was basically my original point. It is wild that we decided that we would rather go into a recession than tax the rich and I don't understand why there is seemingly no public pushback against this.

pbz · 3 years ago

There's historic precedence that increasing rates controls inflation. Yes, it's a very blunt and crude instrument. However, when you know this tool works, trying another tool is too risky to experiment with (in case it fails).

Inflation does have the risk of getting out of hand and being even harder to control. The risk analysis is that whatever pain increasing the rates would cause it pales in comparison to having hyperinflation.

As far as the lack of a pushback: My guess is a combination of apathy and the fact that it doesn't affect the average person quite as much as inflation.

pbz commented on Lowest “Who is hiring?” Post Count in 30 Months · Posted by u/trenning

slg · 3 years ago

There are other levers that can be pulled. Taxes are one example that could be much more targeted at the specific sources of the "greed/fomo running rampant". We instead chose to take it out on everyone.

pbz · 3 years ago

I'd put taxation in the same bucket as price control because for this to be effective the taxes would need to be on the rich (in effect to drain liquidity) and that's as likely as price control.

pbz commented on Lowest “Who is hiring?” Post Count in 30 Months · Posted by u/trenning

slg · 3 years ago

It is still wild to me that this is the approach we are taking, things are getting too expensive so let's shrink the economy. That can't be the best solution. We are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

pbz · 3 years ago

It's the only way we know of to stop greed/fomo running rampant. Folks need to be put in a time-out to cool off and force them to reprioritize. We like to think of the market as this calculated and rational entity. It's far from that, in fact it's closer to the opposite of that. The other option is to do price control, but that won't fly in capitalism.

pbz commented on We Are Changing the License for Akka lightbend.com/blog/why-we... · Posted by u/DarkManZero

bmitc · 3 years ago

Does Akka.NET have any licensing dependencies on Akka?

I wonder if this will push people there (please go to F#) or Elixir and Erlang.

pbz · 3 years ago

My understanding is that the .NET version is a port and only related in the style/approach. However, if I was them I'd consider renaming the lib. Looks like the name "Akka" is tainted at this point.