tom sarbeck

Unseen, a central tenet of Marxism is class struggle leading to violent revolution. It also infers collectivisation and a state run economy.  What you are talking about is not Marxism but a mixed approach applying some socialist concepts. But Marxism? No. You cannot call modern-European-style-mixed-systems Marxist. That’s why in nearly every…[Read more]

The US does indeed offer the most advanced and comprehensive services in the World for a small minority of people who can afford it. It is unlikely that any American user here would have unfettered access to such healthcare without having to lose their house in extra costs. So yeah, you are, sort of….technically right this time…though mostly…[Read more]

In Fact some countries semi-privatise healthcare. For example in the UK and most of Canada some services like physiotherapy have a limited government service with a waiting list, less convenient locations and fewer specialised services mostly for free. Or you can pay for private services (pricey) which can be covered by supplemental insurance. In…[Read more]

A few industries should absolutely be government owned in most cases:

Utilities like energy production, water, gas and potentially petrochemicals for small countries. Public transportation including rail (privatisation of rail in the UK has been an unmitigated horrific disaster).

Some countries have been very successful at starting up companies…[Read more]

I am not a Marxist because a Marxist state does not allow something that I believe is absolutely fundamental to any healthy society: the ability to get rid of a bad government. As far as I know…the only system that can guarantee getting rid of a bad government is a healthy and well functioning democracy. No other system I know of can. Not being…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
You are the gumshoe Pope whose parameters lack scope.

Oh no! I specifically mentioned that I was not looking for these things (except for the Amazon book list), but I’m accidentally noticing references to PoC in everyday language. I do not call myself a gumshoe, but if you’re impressed with that label, it’s fine. You got “Pope”…[Read more]

While looking for a professional mental health event unrelated to PoC, I accidentally ran into this item:

Is it any wonder how non-scientists can be skeptical of science? Modern physics seems like interpretation of art, where different people can freely assume different meanings and different relationships among parts of the painting. The Higgs Boson became the God Particle. When a significant percentage of scientists lean toward the “many worlds“…[Read more]

The long timescales that geologists assign to the erosion of deep canyons are erroneous. Deep canyons can and do form very rapidly. This includes the Grand Canyon of Arizona—not long after the Noachian flood.

I expected their reliance on pseudo-gelology to make their case, but “Noachian flood”? That is a hilarious attempt to sound like they’re s…[Read more]

I had 3.1 devices plugged into 2.0 ports and don’t feel like I overpaid for the 3.1, as it came in handy later when I installed a USB 3 card in a computer slot to speed up transfers. Another bonus with the new card was that it also charges some devices faster. But if it’s just (say) a webcam you’re plugging in, you’ll rarely see any difference.…[Read more]

One major hurdle in the US are the extreme hurdles in making changes to your constitution! Most of the issues that hinder democracy in the US:

• Unlimited campaign contributions to parties
• Gerrymandering by the states
• The electoral college
• Limits on bogus voter suppression laws
• First past the post system

Would require constitutional…[Read more]

While looking up current usage of the word “constructionism” (for a topic unrelated to this one), I ran across a kind of interactive graph presented by Google that I’ve not seen before, showing a measurement of specific language usage in publications over history since 1800. So I entered the term “People of Color” and got this:

LOL Jake, this…[Read more]