[anlsh]

A ridiculous fairy tale. Dictatorships need hardly interfere with the "stability" of a society which launches a bloody and monumentally expensive temper tantrum in response to 9/11 but allows thousands more to die each year for want of basic medicines

[JoshTko]

It's just a ROI calculation. A Russian fighter jet costs $25 mil, so a rational course of action would to weigh the benefit of buying another jet vs. buying a dozen congressmen, or flooding social media with misinformation to cancel a multi billion dollar defense bill for Ukraine.

[hypertele-Xii]

When God was abandoned, money became the top object of worship. Is that experiment going well yet?

[joquarky]

Which god figure are you referring to?

For example, Abrahamic religious leaders have made the concept of god toxic. But if you go by their dogma, then their god is responsible for the state of things.

Many of the non-abrahamic religions in the USA don't even have a god in the same sense, or they see their (equivalent to) god as the fabric of the cosmos and thereby not able to be abandoned.

I agree about the money though. It is the leading religion now.

[someguydave]

Who dies for want of basic medicines?

[acaloiar]

The uninsured. The underinsured. People on the "wrong" insurance plan. People without the budget slack for $100s or $1000s per month for the medication they need. Poor people who don't bother going to the doctor to get needed prescriptions because they can't afford the initial visit. Rich people whose doctors fail to mention the drug that costs $250k because no past patients cleared for it could afford it. People going to the doctor who gets financial kickbacks from the inferior drug's drugmaker. People prescribed drugs that kill them.

If your question was actually serious, this is a non-exhaustive list.

[gottorf]

When the GP said "basic medicines", they probably meant all the generic stuff that can be had without insurance for a few dollars; all the stuff that is on the WHO list of essential medicines[0], that is.

I'd venture that drugs that cost hundreds of dollars or more per month in the US are all cutting-edge stuff. I mean, sure, you have stories of people getting charged $10 for a pill of acetaminophen at a hospital, but that's a separate matter unrelated to the fact that you can get a bottle of 500 pills for single-digit dollars at your local Walmart.

> The uninsured. The underinsured. People on the "wrong" insurance plan.

Plenty to criticize about the US healthcare system, but let's remember that countries with nationalized medical care also suffer from their own ills, mainly in the form of long wait times. Ultimately, no place has enough doctors per capita that every sick person can be treated promptly and cheaply; so care must be gated one way or another. In America, you pay with money; in most other countries, you pay with time.

[0]: https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/371090/WHO-MHP-H...

[jackpirate]

The WHO list of essential medicines is not just over-the-counter drugs. It includes things like the chemotherapy drug cisplatin. I happened to need that for testicular cancer ~10 years ago, and the treatment cost was $50k (as "payed" by insurance). That overall seems pretty reasonable to me for the treatment I received, but definitely not something I'd expect the median American to be able to pay out of pocket.

[buzzert]

The median American would not have to pay out of pocket, as nearly every American has health insurance (since the ACA, it is actually illegal not to have insurance).

[acaloiar]

I think it's accurate to say that the median American is insured, with only 8% of the population uninsured [1]. Although, to put that percentage in perspective, that's 26 million people and likely thousands in excess mortality relative to the insured poplulation.

I believe you're referring to the ACA's "individual mandate", which imposed a federal tax penalty for being uninsured. I won't argue whether that makes it illegal or not, but I can say that the individual madate was eliminated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2019 [1]. There's no longer a federal tax penality for being uninsured.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/pe...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944881/

[someguydave]

I find it amusing that people are basically advocating for the government to become every citizen's Medical Daddy (the GP of this comment) backed by the threat of state violence in a thread that is ostensibly about freedom from the security state.

[someguydave]

My question is serious. The US Government spends $2 trillion per year for health care for the poor and the elderly, and also spends a significant amount for for tax credits for health insurance for those that are neither poor or elderly. Furthermore, hospitals always treat regardless of the ability to pay.

How many more $ trillions and how many fascist medical bureaucracies would achieve your ends comrade?

[djbusby]

Americans w/diabetes is one group.

[0xBDB]

We (I am one, though fortunate to have excellent insurance) really are not one such group.

https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/16-tips-to-help-y...

I am not a fan of the American healthcare system. Navigating it takes brains and effort that shouldn't be required. But if you have them it is essentially not possible to die here from lack of healthcare, and it's possible but surprisingly difficult to go bankrupt (except from lost wages, which is also a leading cause of bankruptcy in the UK).

[zrn900]

> But if you have them it is essentially not possible to die here from lack of healthcare, and it's possible but surprisingly difficult to go bankrupt

That's a false myth.

https://www.quora.com/Were-there-any-American-citizens-livin...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insur...

[0xBDB]

Yes, so this is where the brains and effort (and time, forgot time) come in.

The anecdotes in your links (that I read - can't get through all of them right now) have a common theme, which is that people died because they either needed very expensive and/or experimental treatment that probably would not be affordably provided to them under any plausible healthcare system, or else they got a bill, decided they couldn't pay it, and did without or tried to self-ration their healthcare.

The correct course of action in that case is to call the healthcare provider and negotiate A) a 90+% discount and B) a payment plan, both of which are pretty readily available in the American system. You have to know that's possible, and you shouldn't have to, but it is possible. Then you reach out to the charities, government programs, and/or nonprofits from my original link to cover what you still can't afford. Same deal if you get screwed by an insurance company as in the Guardian article.

This is, again, not something I'm trying to defend. It's not the way a sane healthcare system would run. But it is a system that works, more or less, for those who know how to work within it.

[zrn900]

> The anecdotes

The anecdotes show that this is not an 'occasional' or 'edge case' thing but a systemic thing. The statistics show that at least 40,000 people die a year for not having enough money for healthcare and these are the people we know. The statistics don't include those who never go to the hospital to avoid risking medical bankruptcy for their families even if they die themselves. Just being in a hospital bed for one night without anything being done costs $3000/night, whereas waiting in the ER without anything being done can cost $100/hour.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/woman-gets-688-35-er-bill-...

This is a systemic thing. Its not 'not a sane healthcare system'. Its literally a machine that kills people to maximize profit. And it became like this only because people let it and justified this or that other thing in the system.

[joquarky]

> But if you have them

What if your problem is with your mental health?

It's not like mental health problems are fringe lately.

It feels to me like you're speaking as though you are in the middle of the bell curve, but from my perspective people who can navigate this system are an exception.

[Intermernet]

That whole EpiPen debacle springs to mind... I'm sure if you looked into it you'd find other examples of basic medicines being unavailable to large sectors of the population purely due to the cost.

[mhuffman]

There are many people that don't qualify for free health care (and some that do!) but can't afford co-pays and co-insurance, and must go without that medicine.

[someguydave]

Can you tell me what portion of the population is covered by Medicaid? Give me a guess?

[r00fus]

68k a year die in the US due to lack of medical. Poor people simply don’t visit the doctor.

[skhunted]

And yet they do interfere and are actively engaged in sowing dissent, discord, and wacky ideas by utilizing the power of social media. Your comment is at odds with reality. The rise of people being against something as obviously beneficial as the polio vaccine is an indication of just how powerful disinformation campaigns can be.

[raxxorraxor]

The reactance of those against vaccines had completely different sources. It wasn't China or Russia that are responsible here, far from it.

They of course noticed and certainly tried to reinforce that message, because they indeed became aware of the split. But the initial reason was a lack of trust in media and domestic politics and not some external propaganda channel.

And expect this to get much worse if you now increase surveillance. That said, NPR just suspended a journalist that did notice some form of propaganda from domestic sources, which might explain why people were distrustful in the first place.

In fact, you might be a victim of propaganda. Maybe read up on it.

[skhunted]

The effectiveness of the polio vaccine has been demonstrated for many decades. That now polio is on the rise and the number of morons who are opposed to that vaccine is due to “propaganda”. State sponsored information warfare has taken what was once kooky ideas and spread them in such a way that a significant portion of the population buys into them.

It is wise for you too to read up on state sponsored disinformation campaigns. Obviously the U.S. and others are involved in such campaigns. Obviously the U.S. government and institutions like the NYT have collaborated to sell a version of events. For instance the NYT endorsing the invasion of Iraq.

[raxxorraxor]

The polio vaccine in particular had some hiccups where people got infected with polio due to insufficiently neutered pathogens in the past. Today the vaccine is created differently and this isn't a problem anymore. But still this is a reason why the vaccine might have a bad reputation in some places in the world.

That is has returned to developed countries has probably other issues instead of propaganda. But there aren't any propaganda campaigns in western nations that disincentive vaccination that would create the need for government to spy on your devices. These alleged propaganda campaigns would be easy to find, no? Since they target a broad audience?

[skhunted]

You just can’t agree that being opposed to the polio vaccine is entirely idiotic. It’s amazing. It’s been an effective vaccine for over 50 years. There is overwhelming scientific and statistical evidence that it is a good thing and that it should be required. Being opposed to it is entirely moronic.

That people like you are willing to rationalize anti-vaccine sentiments on the polio vaccine is quite illuminating. And you suggest of me that I’m the victim of propaganda!

[raxxorraxor]

That is not the essence of any statement I had made, I recommend you read again.

You make the argument that because there are people believing X, we must allow the surveillance of our devices.

[hmmmcurious1]

China and Russia are not responsible despite actively enforcing the lack of trust of the people for their governments and authorities with disinformation. Got it, got any more gems to drop on us plebs?

[zrn900]

No external force created the John Birch society that transformed into modern Trumpers. Its purely an American thing.

And, the investigations into election meddling ended with finding out that external forces spent some $100,000 on bad Facebook ads before the 2016 election. Not even a drop in a bucket. A simple blog network that the American conservative capital funds among the tens of thousands that they fund has more reach than such an ad.

What is even worse, even non-conservatives do it for money and make millions out of such activities:

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/50...

[skhunted]

Trump openly asked for Russia to hack the DNC. And they did so. Cleary Russia interfered in our election. I don’t blame them for doing so. We interfere in other nations’ elections but one should not deny the obvious.

[zrn900]

> Trump openly asked for Russia to hack the DNC. And they did so.

Says the Democratic side. They are a party in the political fight in the US and they cannot be taken as an objective source. This includes all the 'inquiry committees' that are propped up in the congress and senate whenever the party that wants to persecute the other side has enough majority.

[another2another]

>A <$insert hyper emotional disparagement>. Dictatorships need hardly interfere with the "stability" of a society which <$insert random example some democratic failure>.

And yet they do interfere. We've seen plenty of evidence, from Russia, Iran, China and (I still can't believe how they got competent at this, but there you go) North Korea.

And in some cases they've been successful at destabilizing formerly fairly sane and stable democratic countries. The social divisions that the UK And US currently find themselves in could be attributed in part to this steady drip of caustic interference.

However, as a "short term pessimist, but long term optimist" (Hitchens), I'm optimistic that we will start to introspect a bit more as societies and begin to be less easily manipulated. It will take a while, but I believe even now the tide is turning.

[blooalien]

> "And yet they do interfere. We've seen plenty of evidence, from Russia, Iran, China and (I still can't believe how they got competent at this, but there you go) North Korea." (Emphasis; Mine - To single out the bit I'm replying to specifically.)

I still can't believe how readily so very many people continue to fall for it time and again, despite the lessons of history.

[another2another]

Your answer seems a bit vague to me, so I can't follow what your objection is.

But just to be clear, my surprise at their abilities stems from the fact that their country is so insular, tightly controlled and technologically backward* (look at a night picture of N. Korea, for instance, 80% dark, with no basic streetlighting), that it surprises me that they can allow a portion of their society to roam and participate in the internet freely without infecting the rest of their country.

The Doublethink needed to pull that off must be staggering (thank you Orwell for giving us a vocabulary to express the concepts and experience of living under totalitarianism).

*I know they have ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, also I'm pretty sure their internal surveillance tech is also top notch.

[Ray20]

> the fact that their country is so insular, tightly controlled and technologically backward

A totalitarian country can invest billions of dollars from the federal budget into propaganda in another countries. You don't need technological supremacy to pour money into something. Tight cotroll and insulation makes the task easier, not harder.

> that it surprises me that they can allow a portion of their society to roam and participate in the internet freely without infecting the rest of their country. Isolation and elimination of infected individuals helps prevent the spread of the disease through hte population

[randmeerkat]

> I still can't believe how readily so very many people continue to fall for it time and again, despite the lessons of history.

“The bigger the trick, the older the trick, the easier it is to pull.”

“You believe it can’t be that old, and it can’t be that big for so many people to have fallen for it.”

[RobotToaster]

Whatever marginal effect foreign interference has, it's almost certainly dwarfed by interference, or "lobbying", from domestic capitalists.

[another2another]

This is certainly an issue, but apart from environmental legislation (e.g. please may I pump raw shit and tonnes of pesticide into public waterways) their main interest is at least in preserving public stability, general wealth and happiness.

Dictatorships though have a more macroscopically sinister agenda against successful democratic rivals.

[thunky]

Don't forget entertainment news (CNN, Fox, etc) who play no small part in dividing/destabilizing the country.

[gengwyn]

Foreign interference is almost always bad and against the interests of national security. Lobbying on domestic policy actually has some important uses.

[LtWorf]

But most of these uses only favour few rich people.

[Lendal]

I haven't read much about the domestic capitalists and lobbyists attacking our critical infrastructure with cyber-attacks. Please tell us more about this.

[solarpunk]

They're the ones that cost-cut the operations of aforementioned critical infrastructure to the point of it being so vulnerable...

Just look at catastrophes caused by PG&E in 2018, ERCOT in 2021, or First Energy in 2003. Not a single one was caused by an attack on critical infrastructure, they're just cutting corners!

[RobotToaster]

They don't have to, they just buy politicians that remove safety laws and break strikes against unsafe working conditions. The Ohio rail disaster was just one example of this happening.

[MSFT_Edging]

> The social divisions that the UK And US currently find themselves in could be attributed in part to this steady drip of caustic interference.

Please look away from the curtain hiding rising wealth inequality, cost of living, and the financialization of daily needs. There are no material explanation for the rising contradictions. It is simply our boogymen misleading our population.

It is good we as a society make bets on housing! Who needs to sleep under a roof when you can own shares!

[another2another]

I agree with you that things are currently quite bad, and need to get better. From my UK centric viewpoint, over the last decade Brexit, climate change and the pandemic have proven fertile ground for diverting peoples' attention away from societal issues that have not been addressed, or have even exacerbated by wilful neglect of basic services by Government.

But I have the feeling that that well of constant culture wars has run dry, and people are becoming more wary of being drawn into endless fruitless debates about these things. And after looking up form their smartphones they've finally seen all of the signs for Food Banks, noticed that the weather has gone insane and that the price of biscuits is inhumane and asked themselves 'how did we get here?' 'how do we get back to a better place?' and will hopefully agitate again for a better society.

Swings and roundabouts.

[theossuary]

I'm confused by your comment. First you call climate change a distraction; then you list it as something people are finally becoming aware of? The endless debates were to try and stop it. The population not being able to is just a reflection of the majority.

It's odd how people are trying to divide politics into "culture war" and real problems; it wasn't that long ago climate change was considered a culture war. Labeling something a "culture war" is just the first kneejerk reaction from the right when they appose something.

[another2another]

Creating a culture war is often the first reaction of the right to things they don't like in order to blunt their effect.

"loonie lentil eating lefties", "greenies", "mad Greta" (I'm making these up, but I'm sure I'm sure there's plenty of similar examples). People used to be comforted by these ad-hominems, and it allowed them to continue buying aspirational 4x4 off-road vehicles and 3 flights abroad a year without touching their conscious. They could laugh, share memes, ignore news stories about forest fires in Canada in December or massive loss of ice shelves in Antarctica and carry on as usual.

But as the pot starts to boil harder I get the feeling people are looking away from these distractions and beginning to look more critically at the information they're getting, and beginning to wonder if it's not such a funny joke after all.

[Loughla]

>But I have the feeling that that well of constant culture wars has run dry,

Honestly, I don't believe that statement. I think many people equate the culture war issues to the issues later in that second paragraph with the economy and climate (if they even see an issue there). If our leaders are failing at [insert culture war issue here], then that explains why they're failing at [insert economic issue here].

[MSFT_Edging]

So the culture wars are very interesting. The core of the the idea of a culture war is that class is divided by culture, rather than position in society.

You can look to old propaganda from the early 20th century in Italy and Germany where characters would speak to this. They would deny class lines based on wealth or capital holdings and insist the true class was defined by in and out cultural identifiers.

These culture wars we've been seeing are not organic. They're seeded by orgs that can make money off the outrage. It might be dramatic sounding to say, but the increasing prevalence of culture wars is indicative of the rising tide of fascism. Our societies have done a lot to weaken unions and redefine the meaning of class.

Because we redefined class boundaries to be cultural, we've created an artificial alignment, where say a working class queer urbanite and and a working class non-queer rural worker get shafted by many of the same mechanisms, but are seen to be in different stations because one has access to a bus and the other drives a pickup.

At the end of the day, material issues are what hurt people, but now the rural working class will blame the urbanite, rather than the capitalist that has strip-mined their town, and the urbanite will blame the backwards bumpkin rather than the capitalist that has strip-mined their city.

[verteu]

Since 1990, NYC rent has grown at 3.4%/yr, wages have grown at 3.4%/yr, and minimum wage has grown at 4.7%/yr.

Doesn't seem too terrible to me?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA101SEHA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ENUC356240010SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/STTMINWGNY

[MSFT_Edging]

While I wont argue pointlessly, I am curious what the median values look like for these stats.

In the US, averaging falls short due to said inequality. A smaller group of people have vastly increased wealth, while others stay stagnant. This moves the needle for certain statistics that don't give a full view of the issue.

Its easy to say "hey the average is fine" when you're talking about NYC where stock brokers and high end real estate really drags up that average.

From the 2020 census, the average income was 107k, where the median income was 67k.

[verteu]

EDIT: Seems the best metric is "avg rent burden", the ratio of median_rent/median_income.

It increased from 25%->27% from 2001-2024 [a].

Far from a catastrophe, though there is an upward trend since 1999 [b].

There are spikes upwards and downwards, and I'd guess the upward spikes make much better clickbait.

[a] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com//app/uploads/2024/02/image-1... , from [4]

[b] https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/about/insights/data-stories...

--

Yeah, I couldn't find localize median wages, so I thought minimum wage would be a decent lower-bound.

Nationally, the easiest numbers to find are Wolfram Alpha's [1]:

Median wage (2001-2020): $27060 -> $46310 (2.9%/yr)

Mean wage (2001-2020): $34020 -> $61900 (3.2%/yr)

Bottom 10% wage (2001-2020): -> $18140 -> $27340 (2.2%/yr)

Mean->Median gap isn't too large, but the bottom 10% is pretty bad.

I think there was a temporary spike in rent burden [2] [3] which quickly reversed [4].

[1] eg: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=median+US+wage+2022

[2] https://www.moodysanalytics.com/about-us/press-releases/2023...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DP04ACS006037

[4] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com/insights/market-insights/q4-...

[raxxorraxor]

Can you give a tangible example where disinformation from China impacted any domestic topic in the US?

Sure, there is propaganda and attempts to influence certain topics, but I wouldn't want to give up privacy because I don't like some content on TikTok.

I think the divisions are of domestic origin and this argument is more or less FUD.

And no, you will hardly ever get rid of surveillance powers once established without serious political shifts.

Propaganda messages are quite easy and public. And yet I don't think you can name a single instance where such a message would have influenced the beliefs of a significant portion of the domestic population. If so, which message, what topic and who was targeted?

I think an example of propaganda is that you need to give up your freedoms for security because of "disinformation". A wrong statement on the internet became a threat to democracy.

[another2another]

>I think the divisions are of domestic origin and this argument is more or less FUD.

I agree, many divisions are definitely of domestic origin. However we definitely know that foreign interference has been at play to identify and amplify those divisions.

>If so, which message, what topic and who was targeted?

5G - weird one I know, but agitators gonna agitate.

Climate - Russia was a massive oil exporter, de-carbonizing efforts threatened that.

Atomic power in Germany - Russia definitely didn't want Germany achieving independence from their gas imports.

BRICS - China would love to de-dollarize the world.

>And no, you will hardly ever get rid of surveillance powers once established without serious political shifts.

And this is the advantage of democracies, big shifts can happen. With Dictatorships however it usually takes violence. A lot of violence.

[snapcaster]

5g? why would china be anti-5g? how is the whole BRICS thing propaganda or foreign interference (is NATO propaganda or just an association, don't even get your point since BRICS isn't even that organized)? I was on the fence but this response put me super firmly into the "this argument is FUD" camp

[LtWorf]

Do you think the alphabet soup doesn't do any propaganda?