this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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I don't mind having a lot of different hot sauces. What I mind is "financial innovation" like debt-backed securities, and "tech innovation" like tracking people as they browse the web.
The point is we're getting "innovation" at the expense of people. That person says they have no teeth because they can't afford dental care in America since for-profit healthcare is another feature of capitalism.
I find it beyond infuriating that dental isn't even considered healthcare per se. It requires entirely separate "insurance," all of which is hot garbage. I need my wisdom teeth out, because they never fully erupted and now they're rotting in my gums. I shred my cheeks eating because I can't afford the $5,000 they quoted me for an oral surgeon. My dental "coverage" only pays out a max of $2,000 annually so I just deal with it and pull out the chunks as they break off.
$5000?!! That is insane.
In the UK, dental care isn't free (unless you're below 18, a student, unemployed, pregnant, have been pregnant in the past year, or there is a serious risk to your wider health), but it still caps out at £307 for the most serious dental work. Most people here are furious about it costing anything at all.
Though getting prompt dental care has been way harder after the COVID backlog...
And $5,000 isn't even out of range. Kids needed a couple fillings? $1,000 with insurance. Grandma needs a root canal? $1600 with insurance and Medicare.
It's a huge fucking racket and the fact that it still exists decades after Obamacare is extremely frustrating
This is one of the forms of alienation Marx talked about. Products aren’t made because they’re good or needed, but because they’re profitable
Well, the point is also that it's not useful innovation. Profit is prioritized, not utility. Sometimes that results in useful innovation, but frequently it results in potentially useful innovation being avoided because it'd cost too much with a low chance of return on value.
But there are plenty of other capitalistic societies where health care is covered for all like Canada. You can reign in capitalism and manage it and have socialism in the same system. The issue in the USA is not capitalism, it is out of control capitalism.
It's cronie capitalism. We don't actually have a free market and we don't get actual competition.
Exactly. Blaming the issues we are seeing on Capitalism is not blaming the root cause.
I never understood why everyone blames capitalism, when almost all of the places they spout as being great...are built with capitalism money...
Right and further, when you look at the people complaining about capitalism and ask them if they shop ethically…you know making sure their coffee beans are fair trade, their clothes makers are paid a living wage, their veggies are picked by those fairly compensated etc etc let alone slave labour in the mix, they almost always look like a deer in the headlights. They say they hate capitalism but they seek the lowest price therefore they reinforce the behaviour they hate.
Nailed it. I don't eat fast food anymore because of the cost. I'll order out from a local restaurant because it's a few bucks more than fast food at this point, and I usually get my meal quicker. Panda Express? Nope... I'm going to the local Chinese place and getting double the food for the same cost and the Chinese immigrants there are awesome people who make bangin' food.
we have capitalism in europe, but also healthcare. this just proves america bad, but not capitalism bad.
Healthcare in Europe has been eroded for decades. In my country healthcare basically covers very bad conditions,.such as cancer, chronic conditions, such as diabetes, or degenerative conditions, such as MS.
Often, medical intervention fails to take into account quality of life or the psychological consequences of illnesses.
For instance, my late father was diagnosed with a lung cancer and he was sent home without a pain management protocol.
So, long story short: capitalism bad in the long run.
Not true at all. Your country is just sold to the highest bidder. Don't pretend you are a democracy. Don't pretend you are a capitalism society.
Please admit you are a slave of your corporate masters and that they need you toothless. It's called a corporatocrazy (sic.).
Europe has 418 hotsauces (incl from USA and Cuba) and nobody needs to have toothpain (but replacing them with expensive implants may require more money as average person has)
Corporations being in control of a nation is the ultimate goal of capitalism. So I think I will call the U.S. a capitalistic society. One which has come very close to reaching that goal.
Capitalism is an economic system. Extreme capitalism leads to corporatocracy like the US, which makes it a political system.
I don't even think we disagree on anything.. You are just confusing words/symantics
Nope, not true. Capitalism in its base is just the fact you are free to exchange with others.
Businesses should not be allowed human rights. And especially not to influence politics (even if through third and such parties like lobbyists and superpacs)
That's not what capitalism is. People have been exchanging things long before the 1600s. Capitalism is about allowing private interests to own a state's productive capacity for the purposes of profit.
Hahahahahahahahaha no.
Hahahahahahahaha yes.
The word government isn't even in that entire article. Maybe quote a specific part instead of idiotically linking a main Wikipedia page...?
Okay, allow me to copy/paste the relevant section, the first sentence.
Meaning individuals (aka private interests) own and control the means of production with the goal of generating profit, rather than they be publicly controlled, which is to say controlled by the government.
Controlled by the government part is added by you with no source. Typical American basement dwelling commie
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100353611
There's your source. That makes two versus your zero? Surely you know what you're talking about.
Dude quoting general things doenst make your point... At all... Nor does downvoting me..
Brother, you asked me to source the definition of public ownership so I got you a literal dictionary definition of it. And for the record, I haven't downvoted any of your comments, not even the ones I found irritating.
I did not ever ask that. Please refrain from putting words into my mouth. What are you, a tankie?
Okay, maybe you didn't ask for it, precisely. But you seemed to be bothered that I didn't provide one, so I did.
You seem to be in your feelings about all this, though.
I left Europe 14 years ago because it wasn't nice anymore in my home town. Sorry for you guys but if you live in the USA you shouldn't think you know everything about Europe...
I don't think I've made any specific claims about Europe in our discussion. I don't live in the USA, I live in Canada, but either way I would never claim to know everything about Europe because I don't.
Polite USA = still same shit
Whatever, dude. Have a lovely day.
Same to you dude! Hope you never have to emigrate your home town because it becomes unliveable thanks to Moroccan welfare receiving cocaïne dealers/pimps (and their clients) trying to rob you! Although I'm happy here in Ecuador for 14 years now!
You are conflating commerce with capitalism. They aren't the same things.
F u tanky moron. Extremists are always bad Left wing as much as extreme capitalism.
I'm not a tanky.
You're still conflating capitalism and commerce.
He called me a Tankie in another thread. He doesn't know what it means.
I'm actually a little upset he called you a tankie before he called me a tankie. If he's gonna call anyone a tankie it should be me. Am I not being radical enough?
You're just not tankie enough I guess.
Fair enough.
I'm still laughing that pinkdrunkard thought you were a conservative shill.
They're right though. Freely trading goods and services is commerce, and an economy based on commerce is a market economy.
Capitalism is specifically a market economy where the means of production are owned privately by an investor class, who increase their wealth exclusively by "profit": a discrepancy between the value the workers in a company contribute, and the compensation paid to those workers (Price- Cost [including wages] = Profit).
There are non-capitalist market economy models. Like market socialism, in which economic production is still generated by private companies in a free market, but those companies are owned by the workers themselves rather than by non-employee shareholders.
You're wrong, and you don't know you're wrong.
If you care at all that you might be wrong, you would read David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" and learn more about this.
But you won't, because this is the Internet.
My take away from that book is that we should fight the oligarchy to demand the re establishment of a Jubilee.
You seem unclear on what capitalism is.
Capitalism isn't necessarily EXTREMIST. I can be limited, actually it IS in ALL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. however, in some shithole countries like the US of aholes, it's limited in the wrong ways because of lobbyists and meek population being distracted by bread and games.
Speak for yourself. The Netherlands still has seperate dental insurance, and even those don’t cover everything, fixing your teeth can still cost a lot here, and minimum wage people stopped going to the dentist.
You can easily afford getting an extraction in Holland. Not in us.