john may

If anything because of America’s staggering size and ability to negotiate reasonable prices…centralised medicine would be insanely efficient in America. If you implemented it…over time you could probably do it better than the rest of the world who has done it for over 50 years now. Canada does it extremely well (yes, I know they don’t offer…[Read more]

Vox has a hilarious article about cats here.

I know it’s only half serious but after owning both cats and dogs this article pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. Of course I have known insanely attentive and affectionate cats but I also owned a total lazy bitchy selfish mean unemotional manipulative cat too. Her untimely death was sad…[Read more]

If I were stuck in America then, of course only if possible, I would relocate somewhere in New England, in a liberal state such as Vermont where they have a progressive environment, low crime, better social programs or in Massachusetts where they have one of the strongest medicare systems and a far more generous attitude towards people who have…[Read more]

Indeed Robert. Societies that take care of people, foster independence through assistance until it is not necessary, ensure everyone has the basic necessities of life and even take care of a small fraction of people who just won’t take care of themselves no matter what…hugely benefit from it. In the EU the more generous and comprehensive social…[Read more]

Basically when I see the level of people not being covered by their insurance (out of technicalities), getting billed for shit they shouldn’t, bankrupting families, private companies making a killing (out of doing virtually nothing except administering paper work and not paying a portion of the bills they should cover), some doctors making obscene…[Read more]

Encoginator, we’ve told you before that the problem with the NHS isn’t the system itself…it is conservative governments (filled with people with a mentality like yours) who is not properly funding the system (to fund tax cuts for the rich). This is demonstrably the case as the conservative government made notable tax cuts and didn’t increase NHS…[Read more]

I was actually thinking of some case in the future where we relied on diamonds for some form of technology and needed an abundance which would make diamond mining so essential. In fact scientists believe there are even diamond planets. I suppose we could even make our entire wardrobes out of diamonds couldn’t we? What would the new status symbol…[Read more]

I think  it’s particularly interesting just how difficult it would be to “mine” those diamonds. Considering the amount of pressure it takes for those diamonds to form so quickly we would need some space ship made out of a near indestructible material just to get down there (and survive air compression on the way) AND the ability to reach…[Read more]

Encoginator you are talking about a totally incomplete non-universal health care patchwork as though that is universal health care. Which it isn’t. America doesn’t have anything remotely approaching universal health care so you can’t point to shitty half-assed attempt to it and go, hey that doesn’t work so universal health care won’t work. It…[Read more]

What are you talking about? When I lived in the UK I couldn’t even afford to take the train most of the time it was so expensive. And 1/3 of all the trains I took were delayed or even cancelled. It is the worst rail system in Europe and the most expensive and flawed I’ve ever seen in a developd country (and there are many contenders including…[Read more]

In fact the UK is a pretty shinning example of what happens when you fully privatise something that should be public (or at best semi-privatised in a smart way) being the rail system. It has been nothing short of a full out catastrophic disaster the privatisation of British Rail. That same ideology (private is always better) is the same one used…[Read more]

Centralised medicine is about as obvious and sensible as centralised primary and secondary schooling, having common roads and a state postal system. The only reason to not implement it is so that private companies can make an extortionate killing on it and so that the very very richest people can have slightly better service (which in fact is…[Read more]

The antivax movement was very very small potatoes before social media helped proliferate it. In other words the genesis of the conspiracy (true well before social media) is not remotely as important as what proliferated this disinformation (unambiguously social media and youtibe). Anti-vax disinformation dissemination on facebook (and via other…[Read more]

Enconginator you do not understand how social media works. It is not a free for all like the media. It is highly compartmentalised through algorithms designed to keep people on as long as possible and interacting as much as possible. This often involves steering people towards stupid shit they never would have cared about before. It involves…[Read more]

There is no doubt in my mind one of the essential tools to solving this serious problem is to regulate the shit out of social media.