[3D30497420]

Even some parts of the US have found solutions.

From the article:

> In Tulsa and Oklahoma City, meanwhile, the government buys staffed unit-hours from an ambulance operator, while households can prepay a few dollars a month on their utility bill and owe nothing if the ambulance ever comes.

[pornel]

billed for buying unit-hours from an operator... that's very carefully worded to make it sound like a corporation<>customer relationship and not socialism.

[toomuchtodo]

Lots of policy in the US is hacking around the lizard brain idea of "We cannot have nice things because someone who doesn't deserve it might get it."

My favorite example is universal school breakfast and lunch. Without fail, someone will argue that some kids don't deserve it. It doesn't matter that all of the data shows it is more economically efficient and the benefits to kids is overwhelming.

[sleight42]

You essentially described the Republican and Libertarian perspectives in the US.

The Republicans seem to see it as immoral to potentially give a few people support they don't need even if that means that most of the people who need the support actually get it. And, instead, they believe that having an inconsistent array of private interests will somehow be more able to service an enormous population than having an organization (like government...) that is large enough to match that population's needs.

The Libertarians seem to either genuinely not care about the rest of the world or, more often than not, seem to be naive about how life can be for the less privileged.

It's the lie of the "rugged individualist" in America. Most "successful" people come from successful families. Social mobility, in the US, is part of that lie. Here, we celebrate the person who rises from poverty to become wealthy as a member of a sports team, or as an actor, or similar, while disregarding that these massive successes are outliers.

I'm so often disappointed in my own country.

[KetoManx64]

> The Libertarians seem to either genuinely not care about the rest of the world or, more often than not, seem to be naive about how life can be for the less privileged

No, they just put boundaries on what services they want handled by the government. Government programs are the least efficient and most wasteful way of getting a job done, and there are endless examples of this.

Churches were historically the places people went to for assistance, and churches held people accountable and would push them to fix their underlying issues. Government programs have none of this, you can keep making the same bad decisions and nobody will hold you accountable and the benefits will keep coming in.

[rincebrain]

The government is in a bad position to be that kind of paternal - any sort of large machine is the worst possible judge of the difference between "shit happened" and "I am systemically making incorrect life choices".

I agree that what you need here is someone(s) with leverage and respect in your life to interfere with systemic bad behaviors if they exist, but that takes community, government merely gets leverage, and churches are often not a welcoming place to many people's eyes, rightly or wrongly, around the US.

As I get older, I'm increasingly of the opinion that the best you can do is unconditional support from the government (because it's the only kind you can rely on no humans in the chain acting in bad faith to condition), and well funded local support structures for people to subsist while fucking up their lives and also help them get out of that spiral if they want to.

Not because I believe in some fundamental good in man or something, but because I think that's the only way you can design this that isn't subject to people's bad faith manipulation, and I've personally seen too many cases go wildly differently for "objective" criteria where the main difference seemed to be whether the person reading it went into it assuming you were lying or not.

[expedition32]

Christianity died in my country because people got tired of the judgemental, hypocritical cunts. The child abuse scandals that hit later only confirmed it.

[toomuchtodo]

It’s dying in the US too, just taking longer than other developed countries.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/697676/drop-religiosity-among-l...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484284

[KetoManx64]

Worse than the child abuse scandals of goverment: - public school teachers sexually abusing their students - The Epstein files ?

[cubano]

It's interesting to note that very often these same Republicans have no issues at all with large tax-based incentives when they help their employers or knock some dollars off they yearly property tax bills.

It just boggles my mind how the poor are supposed to be continually punished just for being poor and should always be denied, almost by rote, any sort of government aid because, you know, did you hear that story about that fentanyl addict who was found with THREE active EBT cards in his wallet?

Yeah for sure...how dare some dirty addict should be able to eat!

[shimman]

Sorry 'bub but the Democratic party is as much to blame as republicans. Neoliberalism has infected both parties and let us finally shed this fake reality that the democratic party is the party of labor and not corporations.

Good news is that if you want the democratic party to become the party of labor, now is the absolutely best time to have a real impact in your community.

[sleight42]

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

I will tar and feather the "right" constantly. The "left", here, is somewhat better. As you say, though, neoliberalism has infected both parties.

Personally, I'll take the DSA over both. However, the population is unlikely to accept Sam's. And both political parties would sooner collude than accept the DSA as a modern inheritor of American Liberalism.

[andrew_lettuce]

Come on, across the world we prepay for the use of things regardless if we do or not. As described in the article it's an option, not a political system.