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How do I live in a country this over the top in its evil?

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4 minutes ago, Tenderlysharp said:

Pay or die is often the ultimatum in the medical industry, and in the case of my father's cancer, he asked repeatedly how much it was going to cost and they gave him Obfuscations and never answered him, showing him funding information that appeared like it was going to pay for everything, until weeks after the procedure was over he got his bill.  Add high pressure sales tactics that the longer he waited to act the worse it would get.  Add the fact that brain researchers have found that much of your frontal cortex goes offline when shocked with a traumatic event like Cancer, you just don't have the full functioning of your reasoning capabilities.  

Are the exorbitant costs in the medical industry malice or happenstance?  

Mystics used shame and war to control the populace, in order to reduce overpopulation.  Shame and war aren't working like they once did.  The humans who are susceptible to shame or who can be goaded into war are being systematically eliminated from the DNA pool.  

Mystics seem to have a strong need for control and attention.  An over active frontal cortex causing obsessive compulsive disorder.  How have these controllers evolved with modern times?  Medical controllers.  Media controllers.  Political controllers.  "Humanity is an infection" Controllers.  There are so many floating abstractions in all of these industries it is easy to control people through their fear. 

How do you usurp control out of the controllers hands?  How do you trick them into running on their own hamster wheel away from the rest of us?  

Would there be ten times as many people here today if it weren’t for the controllers?  
 

You speak of the failings of an improper and immoral society, some of which would likely be attempted by individuals even in a proper society.  I sense you do not have a clear and solid idea of, or have not yet made up your mind about, just what constitutes a proper society and just what would exemplify a proper trade occurring within it, or perhaps a hesitation to share such.

Sensing you are not disposed to offer a full answer, would you offer an inkling ?  Not of what is wrong.. but of what you think may perchance be right? 

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So the question that you have to ask (answer for yourself) is, what is the principle underlying the observation “Ten to a thousand times higher per hour of work rendered by most other professions”? Is “fairness” defined in terms of an average hourly wage computation? Let us assume that the average hourly wage in the US is about $25/hour. This implies that hourly rates of between $250 and $25,000 are unfair (I understand that you’re not confidently asserting that the threshold is 10 times – maybe it needs to be 1,000 times to be truly unfair). At this point I will put in a plug for Watkins & Brook Equal is unfair.

You should also concretize the wage rate of “most other professions”. The number I gave you ($25) is about individuals, not professions, which seriously lowers the average figure, because there are way more cashiers and fry-cooks than surgeons. I don’t know if there are statistics on this (the government loves to create statistics, so it is plausible that there is a figure), but I think the underlying notion is that you wold figure out on a by-profession basis what the typical hourly wage (or equivalent) is, and then sort them so that “most professions” constitutes the middle 50% in the ranked list, and “ten times more than most” would be “ten times that upper limit”. For which reason, I think that in “most professions”, the upper rate is over $100/hr.

One flaw in a pure-labor theory of value is that the cost of doing business is not just wages, and it is not just the wages of the individual who directly services you. Some businesses are just more expensive to operate, either because the nature of the work requires more support staff, or because material costs are very high. Both factors afflict the medical industry.

StrictlyLogical has identified factors that are particularly relevant to evaluating the fairness of medical expenses. One of them is the question of misleading customers on what they are agreeing to. It can be very hard to get a definite figure (or even a reasonable approximation) – especially in an emergency situation, you have to decide based on limited information what is most important (your wallet or your life). The second is simply that medical care depends on very expensive technology. Modern medicine is truly miraculous, but that comes at a price (related especially to development costs). The third is the “contribution” of government to this equation. Here are some ways in which government increases costs. Medicine is hyper-regulated: government permission is required for pretty much everything, and complying with regulations is very expensive. A corollary is that equipment and staff are in short supply owing to government regulations limiting the supply of equipment (there are laws restricting private use of scanning technology, for instance), and limiting the number of doctors (via licensing regulations and accreditation laws for medical schools). The government also requires share-the-wealth schemes, where a facility may have to eat the costs. We also have a new source of governmental income-redistribution where actual medical insurance (as opposed to pre-paid medical care) is illegal. And finally, the government intervenes to some extent via its involvement in malpractice suits.

Deceptive pricing and government-created costs are, indeed, unfair. This leaves us with the question of what would be fair, if we had free-market medicine and clear pricing information. If we had that, still, it is likely that a heart-lung transplant would cost a lot of money, way more than most people could afford, if they don’t have catastrophic medical insurance. Suppose the cost is $100,000 in that universe: is that fair? If you pay that much to save your life, is that an exchange of value for value? That is hard to say: it depends on how much you value your life. I know the answer for various elderly relatives, also for my immediate (non-elderly) family. I don’t think we can reduce this choice to a number related to average wages.

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David:

Nothing specific you have stated is spurring this... and perhaps this is a wider integration that has been simmering for some time... it occurs to me that the nanny state and regressive idea of universal healthcare have turned perception of the "issue" on its head.

 

In today's nanny state influenced society we mostly hear talk of healthcare as if the goal were to keep someone alive, as if man had a right enforceable against reality itself to continue to exist .. somehow... and the problems of the system include: costs, timely access to service, and negligence/malpractice.  The default assumption here is that a person is simply supposed to live and be healthy because - modern medical miracles.  The biggest sentiment is fear and suspicion, the system is gaming you or will "kill you".  With this attitude Doctors are swindlers at best, killers at worst.

Back during the enlightenment and prior to the poison of socialism, the goal of a person providing healthcare was to save a person's life and/or remedy a disease, the problem was the disease, or the life threatening injury, or the fact that absent intervention a person was simply going to die.  Here the healthcare provider was the solution to the problem.  The default assumption then was that when bad stuff happens and you are going to die, go to someone who can intervene and avert the calamity, save the life which otherwise and but for their heroic intervention would be lost.  The biggest sentiment for healthcare during the enlightenment then was appreciation and thanks for a life saved a calamity averted. Here Doctors were seen as heroes and lifesavers.

 

It's a difference of night and day. The difference between mentalities living in a prison of slaves and a those living in a community of free people.

Collective sentiments reveal so much of the magnitude and speed of the decline of civilization...

 

 

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14 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Back during the enlightenment [...] absent intervention a person was simply going to die.

 

1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

Suppose the cost is $100,000 in that universe: is that fair? If you pay that much to save your life, is that an exchange of value for value?

It makes sense to me that something as valuable as your own life would come at a premium price to fix. People should feel lucky modern medicine is affordable at all - or even exists - and they should be thanking free enterprise for it, to the extent it lives at all in modern medicine.

 

23 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

The default assumption here is that a person is simply supposed to live and be healthy because - modern medical miracles.  The biggest sentiment is fear and suspicion, the system is gaming you or will "kill you".  With this attitude Doctors are swindlers at best, killers at worst.

Same thing with business. The Western world is so rich now, ironically the reason for it has become the perceived demon preventing it!

 

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2 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:

Pay or die is often the ultimatum in the medical industry, and in the case of my father's cancer, he asked repeatedly how much it was going to cost and they gave him Obfuscations and never answered him, showing him funding information that appeared like it was going to pay for everything, until weeks after the procedure was over he got his bill.

I don’t think “pay or die” is a realistic summary of the medical profession’s actions: rather, it is “don’t worry about the details, we will take care of you”. That is, they offer something, but you have to agree to it. If you don’t agree to it, you may die (this much is the informed consent part). You know that agreeing to what they offer means that someone will pay. The real-world issue, IMO, is that a patient does not and cannot know what they have agreed to.

There is a real question as to whether patients actually have a properly-formed contract with a hospital, in the typical case. Their theory is that if you pick up a electro-pen and sign on a box when told to, this signifies agreement to something (they may print a copy if you request it). Classically, in contract law, a person signs the actual piece of paper where it is clear what the terms are that they have agreed to. The agreement is more than just some list of statements on a server somewhere, it also includes representations by agents. If an agent says “your insurance covers this”, that is a representation that you can rely on.

A fundamental doctrine of contract law is that the terms of the contract have to be reasonable, in the sense that a reasonable person, made aware of the terms, would agree to those terms. Open-ended liability is not a reasonable contract term, meaning that your liability to pay may be mitigated by an objective estimation of whether or not you would have agreed if you had known the actual cost of the product. Put simply, your intuition “I would have never agreed to that hangnail treatment if I had known you were going to charge me $100,000” is correct, and a contract with such a consequence would not be enforceable. I don't know about cancer treatment, I'm just identifying a general principle. The full set of contract terms are usually vague and/or ambiguous: as a principle of law, these communicative defects are construed against the maker of the contract in contracts of adhesion ("pay or die", non-negotiable agreements).

There are relevant legal provisions regarding auto repairs in most states, and while they often involve improper intrusions of government into business, they also do also encode proper concepts regarding the concept of “agreement”, effectively saying that while you don’t have to give a precise commitment as to the cost of a repair, you have to be within a certain range and receive further consent if you go over that range (the shop cannot recover beyond a certain degree of overage). Again, the question is: is it reasonable to think that a person would agree to this, if they understood the facts? This same concept is applicable, in principle, to all agreements: it recognizes that agreeing to one implied price does not entail agreeing to any price. In a market-based health system, limits on customer liability would be quite prominent. in these agreements.

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1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

a patient does not and cannot know what they have agreed to.

although your post is generally good, this is not entirely accurate.  neither party can know with omniscience the outcome of an endeavour, nor even all of the variables involved at the start, there is no reason why a perfectly reasonable contract representing a meeting of minds perfectly in agreement cannot be executed.  when i contract with a wood craftsperson to make me a candle holder according to my requirements neither of us knows exactly how every atom, grain of wood, knot, face, or cut of the holder will be but that does not in any way mean we do not understand what we have agreed to.  a definition, a requirement, a term can be broad in scope without being indefinite or vague.  for example if i ask him to make me ANY kind of candlestick that would fit in a foot sized box i would know it would fit in a foot sized box but I have no idea about what characteristics it will have (which i have not specified) but i know exactly what i have agreed to.

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My statement that a patient does not and cannot know what they have agreed to is not a statement of absolute principle about contracts, it is an assessment of general current medical practice, YMMV. I agree that it is possible to craft a limit on liability, but the thing that you e-sign is not negotiated. Part of the problem is that most people don’t know about the chargemaster (I myself didn't know that there was such a thing until a couple of months ago), and I’m not even sure that the thing that you theoretically agreed to has framed the question of liability in terms of that document (e.g. “the charges you will be billed for come from the chargemaster, attached”).

The other part is that, setting aside to-the-penny omniscience, you can’t necessarily get a binding reasonable estimate. These ostensive agreements don’t say much about what you’re getting. This problem is most acute in emergency surgery situations, where the answer almost certainly will be “it costs what it costs”, and it should be the least serious in routine office visits. If you can directly deal with a private physician, you are essentially dealing with a classical craftsman contract, where you can ask for an estimate which then implies some limit on your liability (at least a ballpark). But in a typical large medical facility arrangement, classical concepts of “agreement” as underlie contract law are stretched to their limit. This lack of actual agreement and meeting of the minds is really what (properly) underlies the concept of unconsionability. Some practices may be misleading, for example if the mean cost of a procedure is $X but the standard deviation on this is really high and the actual range encompasses 1000 times that, then an honest answer about the cost would be either "I have no idea", or "The average is $1,000 but it can go as high as a million". Suggesting "I would think about $1,000" is misleading.

As far as I know, there is no independent profession of “patient financial advocate”, which is basically a contract-law trained professional who negotiates on behalf of a more specific commitment from the care-provider. This is of little use in the emergency surgery context, but would be very useful for expensive, important, but non-emergency treatments. Were I uninsured and needed a heart-lung transplant, I would seek the services of such a professional, because I bet I would not be spiritually or technically able to negotiate, or even inquire competently. There does seem to be such a profession, but they appear to be presently limited to post-hoc remedies, and are not focused providing a patient with better up-front information so that they can decide whether to go elsewhere or forego a procedure.

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I'm sorry to hear about your father.

There's a lot that's wrong with the healthcare system. Firstly, there's the fact that a whole lot is still unknown in medicine. Within this context of the unknown, there are some prevailing theories, and physicians are taught these, and generally follow these. In George Washington's time, a well-meaning physician might bleed a patient, thinking it will work. We're better today, but in many instances doctors will put a patient on one therapy. If that does not work, they will try another. We've come a long way from placing leeches on various spots of the body, but we still have a long way to go. It is a good bet that some current medical theories are fundamentally wrong, and a few generations later people will view them with horror.

Secondly, for terminal illnesses, and for other late-in-life debilitating illnesses, the philosophy in the U.S. medical establishment is to prolong life. Real world example: a 75 year old has a heart problem that is causing them to be bedridden and unable to do much even in bed, A surgeon says that open heart surgery -- at that age -- has a 20% chance of improving things where they will be able to hobble around the house and be more alert. Also, without the surgery, they may die around 77, but with it, they have that 20% chance of living to 80. There's also a 20% chance things will go badly and they might die within months. An d, 60% chance nothing will change.

In this kind of situation, we have the problem mentioned first: the estimates themselves are suspect, because of the state of medicine. However, people around the world are given that type of estimate. In some poor countries, most people faced with that decision figure that it is not worth spending the money to prolong life. In a country like Japan, UK or Canada, the government would have figured out how they will act in the face of such estimates and costs. They will either do the procedure for free, or refuse to do it: deciding for you, that it is not worth the money. (This is the "death panel" criticism of Obamacare.) The person who has to pay has to make that decision.

In the U.S., the bias is toward spending the money. Medicaid, Medicare or private health insurance pick up the tab. For folk over 65, its almost always Medicaid or Medicare so its a bit like UK's NHS, with Medicare being a little more liberal with its spending, but Medicaid being quite generous as well. People who do not fit into the system have a huge problem in the U.S.  The system is extremely unfair to these people. The typical retiree is covered by Medicare. I'm not sure why your father's care was not paid by Medicare. 

In my judgement, it is true that healthcare is more expensive in the U.S..  The quality of care is excellent by contemporary standards, but there is a huge amount of administrative overhead in the way the system is run.

6 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:

The price tag applied to the medical industry is high.  Ten to a thousand times higher per hour of work rendered by most other professions.  

It is not about the rate/per hour. Doctors are rich, but 10x times some other senior professional is a lot. The typical physician does not earn that much. You got to be a pretty advanced specialist to be near that. (Pediatric neuro surgeons earn below $1,000,000/year, at the median). And 1000x times: nope, it just does not happen even if it appears to be that way. When you pay  $100,000 for a hospital stay that ends with surgery, a lot of that money goes to a whole train of people. There are multiple people in the operation, and running the ward; there are people running the hospital; there are cost of running the hospital; there are computer systems; there are admin people processing claims; there are insurance folk checking up on the claims; there are software programmers writing health-analysis software to analyse what treatments are cost-effective; there are drivers delivering medicines, equipment, blood to the hospital; there are electrical companies sending electricity; there are medical equipment companies making scanners, monitors...it goes on. 

 

When you swing away from discussing the health care system, to the more general conspiracy theories, then it's wild. You should not do that, even if you want to blame someone...

5 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:

Mystics used shame and war to control the populace, in order to reduce overpopulation.  Shame and war aren't working like they once did.  The humans who are susceptible to shame or who can be goaded into war are being systematically eliminated from the DNA pool.  ... ...

Would there be ten times as many people here today if it weren’t for the controllers?  

 

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9 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

You speak of the failings of an improper and immoral society....

The failings of THIS very real society happening now.  

9 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

I sense you do not have a clear and solid idea of, or have not yet made up your mind about, just what constitutes a proper society and just what would exemplify a proper trade occurring within it, or perhaps a hesitation to share such.

As much as I want to believe in the rightness of a proper free Objective society, how can it be achieved when the money and power are being stacked in favor of mystics and collectivists?  I have read all of Ayn Rand's books. I feel pride in my capacity to understand Objective Epistemology, and many abstractions in Ayn Rand's work affect me deeply.  Yet , I still don't know the best concrete systematic steps I can take to create a better world.  

I have read, and sometimes re-read every response in this topic, and value the time and attention that each person invests into ideas that they care about.  

I often feel too emotional, and a lack of efficacy.  

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4 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:

Yet , I still don't know the best concrete systematic steps I can take to create a better world.  

The key lesson Objectivism gives me is that I should prioritize creating a better life for myself much higher than creating a better world. And, creating a better world is a priority only to the extent that it creates a better life for myself. 

The "mystics and collectivists" create the laws and culture. So, of course it has an impact on us. Nevertheless, certain aspects impact certain people. A law denying a person access to try a new drug (the topic of the OP) impacts that person, but does not impact many others in the same, direct way. I should be concerned too, because I could need some such medicine tomorrow; but, I cannot be concerned in the same way as someone who is actually suffering from some illness. The impact on their life is way more than it is on mine.

One needs a hierarchy of concerns. Of all the bad cultural and legal things in our world, some are more direct concerns while others are more remote. Of the direct ones, some may be annoyances, while others may be major. Some may cost you a bit of extra time and money, others may cost you a lot. How do you live in a irrational world? You start by understanding that hierarchy of concerns and figuring out what's really important to you.

Then, you come up with plans to manage around the high impact ones. Sometimes, that's not possible. For example, if you're thrown in jail under some bad law, you may not have any good solution. Or if, like the OP, you are denied an important treatment, you may have to spend a lot of time and money flying abroad to get it. So, yes: sometimes the bad culture or laws will be a huge barrier. There are so many girls in Saudi Arabia who would love to be free to get out of the situation they find themselves in: about to be married to a cousin who is a strict Muslim, while they themselves are not; to someone who will not allow them to work or drive -- and the law won't give them recourse. Where they will be stopped at the airport if they try to leave and other countries won;t accept them if they manage to get out anyway. A whole lot of people, all over the world, face huge constraints on their freedom of action.

Still, if one lives in any of the relatively modern countries in Europe or Asia, one has a lot of freedom of action, unless one hits a specific situation like the OP did.

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12 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:

As much as I want to believe in the rightness of a proper free Objective society, how can it be achieved when the money and power are being stacked in favor of mystics and collectivists?  I have read all of Ayn Rand's books. I feel pride in my capacity to understand Objective Epistemology, and many abstractions in Ayn Rand's work affect me deeply.  Yet , I still don't know the best concrete systematic steps I can take to create a better world.

Initially, I was not going to respond. 

This is beside the point and sidesteps an honest inquiry. 

The way the world is poses no barrier to rationally conceiving of how the world should be.  Anyone who has read all of Ayn Rand's books should know that, she is the perfect exemplar of just such an exercise.  The very act of perceiving society as deficient, that there is a possible better society, presupposes a concept of society as it should be, and an identification that the reality of society does not match.

Not knowing how to get to society as it should be is certainly a difficulty all Objectivists recognize, but to accept for a moment that we do not or cannot know what that society can be and ought to be would be disastrous.  No steps whatever, however small, could be taken to change the current situation, without the knowledge of which direction to go, and you cant know which direction to go if you don't know where you are going.  In fact, you cannot rationally know that society is wrong without the certainty of knowing what would constitute a society which was proper.  it is not that one then is confused about which direction to step in, one is confused about whether one should bother to any take step at all and why.

Rand's entire philosophy is about that proper, just, rational, and moral desirable destination, and this is what motivates and grounds (in reason) every criticism she has ever levied against the immoral philosophies, religions, and societies of the world.  Every time she said something is wrong, it was not with a shrug of ignorance of why it is wrong or confusion about what would be right, it was done in clear sight of it.

 

I realize we here are all fallible and our ideas and musings quite simply do not compare to the titanic importance of Rand's genius,  but many here are motivated to make clear in our minds the correct conclusions regarding metaphysics, ethics, and politics.  What is morality, what is the proper society, politics, governmental system etc.

If we have no idea what our ideal is we are truly lost.

 

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On 3/29/2018 at 6:24 AM, Tenderlysharp said:

Why does it cost $10,000-$20,000 to give birth, when the nurses are not good, and the doctor is there for maybe an hour? 

Look up death and still birth rates in populations that don't have access to a hospital, and then decide whether you're getting your money's worth from this service.

The cost isn't for an hour of the one doctor's time, spent ticking off check-boxes on his sheet, or for the nurses changing the bed sheets.  The cost is for the team of highly trained specialists the hospital has on standby, for the eventuality that something goes wrong: they can perform what 100 years ago would've been considered acts of God, to save your and your child's life.

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On 3/29/2018 at 6:24 AM, Tenderlysharp said:

Tell me Nicky how much money do you and the people close to you make off of the sick and dying?

I wish I had the wherewithal to put myself through medical school and start making money off of the sick and dying. Unfortunately, I'm just a lowly software engineer.

Btw., there was no reason for you to assume that I'm a doctor. You just did, without any anchor in reality to support that assumption. Which is what you're doing with the "medical industrial complex conspiracy", as well.

This is a very dangerous pattern of thinking, and you should start paying attention to it.

Quote

Warren Buffet invests billions into the junk food industries that cause diabetes and cancer

Between the production and consumption of food, there's a human being with free will. So no, producing unhealthy food doesn't cause cancer. Someone has to choose to binge on it...it's that choice that is causing diabetes and cancer.

I don't think Warren Buffet, just because he happens to be rich, has a moral responsibility to treat humanity as his flock, and craft our diet for us. It's okay that he feeds people what they want to eat, not what he thinks we should eat. He's a business man, responding to demand, not Jesus.

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On 3/29/2018 at 4:30 PM, softwareNerd said:

When you swing away from discussing the health care system, to the more general conspiracy theories, then it's wild. You should not do that, even if you want to blame someone...

Given the title of this topic, my response hasn’t strayed too far off the exploration of why someone might feel overwhelmed by the problems in the world.   

Conspiracy implies secrecy. People like George Soros and Warren Buffet are very open about their control agendas. 

I am deconstructing fundamental driving forces in collectivist movements:
Attention seeking and control.

The Bible is a tomb of psychological warfare that has kept Judaeo/Christians in power for 5000 years and helped them dominate much of the western world.   Many of the control tactics they used in the past have taken on more modern sounding guises.  Playing victim, raising mascots that look like the demographic they are trying to control, media control, fear, telling you what you want to hear....

“If you want to know who is oppressing you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize” -Voltaire 

The various mystical texts of other major religions cater their control tactics to, and develop the sensibilities of, the people of the regions they dominate. 

I’m taking a closer look at the places modern collectivists can dominate with fear and control while hiding under a of cloak manipulation.  Anywhere there is a grey murk of evasion, and wishful thinking there is a bureaucracy to add inexplicable expenses to the mess. 

There has been talk of “draining the swamp”. If all of those swamp dwellers don’t find something else to do with their “talents” they are going to run around sinking their bureaucratic fangs into any industry they can needle their way into.  

Manipulation depends on the susceptibility of a person.  What are you susceptible to?  How have you been manipulated?  

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It took three days of contemplation to bring together my current responses.  I'm not an expert, I know I have a lot of growing to do.  It is overwhelming, and I would like to have more speedy access to my entire memory.  Introspection is vital to growth.  I am discovering the immense value in seeking critical feedback.  Capacity grows with the effort to communicate about difficult subjects and to develop understanding.    

I have a strong aversion to wasting anyones time, I spend hours editing an idea in order to make it more concise and clear.  

On 3/31/2018 at 11:23 AM, Nicky said:

I don't think Warren Buffet... has a moral responsibility to treat humanity as his flock, and craft our diet for us. It's okay that he feeds people what they want to eat, not what he thinks we should eat. He's a business man, responding to demand, not Jesus.

Yes freedom allows for it, but is it objective to take advantage of stupidity?  Is stupidity a viable commodity?  When do we enter a reality where its not marketable to capitalize on stupidity, fear, and an endless bureaucracy of hoops to jump through?  Doing so cripples you, it makes your brain shrink.  

Capitalizing on stupidity goads the stupid into fits of rage.  

How can one deconstruct/clarify manipulation in a way where stupid people begin to recognize when they are being manipulated?  When will taking advantage of stupidity make you less able to compete with a person of integrity?   

The idealism of objective thought is to eliminate the murky grey evasive areas that allow for corruption.  Collectivists are angrily averse to Objectivism because it has the power to strike at the foundation of their control.  If, an objectivist wants to use their volition to cause change in their world.

Ayn Rand may have worked to reduce the grip of second handers on the minds of those who read and integrate her words. Her efficacy would have been greatly diminished if she had never escaped Russia.  Middle men are still using billions of susceptible bodies as their batteries. When will the fundamentals of objectivism become common sense?  

When I see that Ayn Rand could walk into an angry booing crowd, and have them cheering by the end I contemplate the undercurrent of profound respect for the rational capacity of men, even apparent enemies, that she held.  Someone in the crowd stands up to speak and is critically missing all of her context... “well go write YOUR OWN book about it.” Rand recommends... 

Sometimes playing stupid can keep one under the radar.  Developing an abstraction that at face value is easily taken for granted by malicious knee jerk competitors, but if taken in the context of all her work was genius.  It was something Ayn Rand did, that I marvel at.  

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1 hour ago, Tenderlysharp said:

It took three days of contemplation to bring together my current responses.  I'm not an expert, I know I have a lot of growing to do.  It is overwhelming, and I would like to have more speedy access to my entire memory.  Introspection is vital to growth.  I am discovering the immense value in seeking critical feedback.  Capacity grows with the effort to communicate about difficult subjects and to develop understanding.    

I have a strong aversion to wasting anyones time, I spend hours editing an idea in order to make it more concise and clear.  

Yes freedom allows for it, but is it objective to take advantage of stupidity?  Is stupidity a viable commodity?  When do we enter a reality where its not marketable to capitalize on stupidity, fear, and an endless bureaucracy of hoops to jump through?  Doing so cripples you, it makes your brain shrink.  

Capitalizing on stupidity goads the stupid into fits of rage.  

How can one deconstruct/clarify manipulation in a way where stupid people begin to recognize when they are being manipulated?  When will taking advantage of stupidity make you less able to compete with a person of integrity?   

The idealism of objective thought is to eliminate the murky grey evasive areas that allow for corruption.  Collectivists are angrily averse to Objectivism because it has the power to strike at the foundation of their control.  If, an objectivist wants to use their volition to cause change in their world.

Ayn Rand may have worked to reduce the grip of second handers on the minds of those who read and integrate her words. Her efficacy would have been greatly diminished if she had never escaped Russia.  Middle men are still using billions of susceptible bodies as their batteries. When will the fundamentals of objectivism become common sense?  

When I see that Ayn Rand could walk into an angry booing crowd, and have them cheering by the end I contemplate the undercurrent of profound respect for the rational capacity of men, even apparent enemies, that she held.  Someone in the crowd stands up to speak and is critically missing all of her context... “well go write YOUR OWN book about it.” Rand recommends... 

Sometimes playing stupid can keep one under the radar.  Developing an abstraction that at face value is easily taken for granted by malicious knee jerk competitors, but if taken in the context of all her work was genius.  It was something Ayn Rand did, that I marvel at.  

independent individuals of self esteem gain nothing from fraud of ANY kind or magnitude.  But what constitutes enough of a lie so that a transaction based on morphs from a trade to indirect force...ie theft?  

Certainly knowing what you say is likely to mislead is a form of deception.  Knowing some people might misunderstand or are incapable of understanding is not deception.  It is not someone's responsibility to ensure rational  decisions by others but some responsibility is taken to make a rational decision at least possible.  

Something similar applies to the spectrum of persuasion - manipulation.  Persuasion appeals to a person's reason encouraging the kind of thinking required for a rational decision, whereas manipulation appeals to a person's fears, emotions, unreason and is decidedly meant to discourage rational decisions by encouraging acceptance of erroneous premises (about reality, the person, the person's desires and interests). To the extent the imposter of a trader knows that her purposeful actions have subverted the ability of the other party to make a rational decision due to the falsehoods she has planted in the mind that party, she is engaged in a deception.  This although subtle is also a form of fraud.  The fact that people should know better is no excuse exonerating that fraud.  but if trader uses persuasion and the irrational are simply manipulated by those ideas because of their limited mentality, such is not the responsibility of the persuader.  if reason is encouraged but a kind of fear and blind obedience results, the trader did not intend it and usually has no way of knowing it.

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On 3/31/2018 at 11:23 AM, Nicky said:

Btw., there was no reason for you to assume that I'm a doctor. You just did, without any anchor in reality to support that assumption. Which is what you're doing with the "medical industrial complex conspiracy", as well.

This is a very dangerous pattern of thinking, and you should start paying attention to it.

You are right, I apologize.

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On 4/3/2018 at 12:34 AM, Tenderlysharp said:

Yes freedom allows for it, but is it objective to take advantage of stupidity?

According to his wikipedia page, Warren Buffett is "an avid Coca Cola drinker". And there's no evidence that he's on any kind of special diet, whatsoever. Seems like he eats the same food he sells.

That doesn't really fit your description of what he's doing, does it? Someone knowingly selling what you describe as "poison" wouldn't eat and drink it himself, would he?

Edited by Nicky
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Where to begin...

I spend time weekly looking into the health effects of food.  I could be more methodical and get a degree in nutrition, but I haven't.  My perspective of junk food poison is from a lifetime of integrating the information I have found.  

One biochemist studying nutrition is Johana Budwig, she claims that when oils are cooked to a certain temperature (fries, chips) they plasticize, your body needs oils so it will try to use the plasticized oil, which results in degradation of your DNA's ability to regenerate.   Her work and work similar to hers has not been taken into consideration by the FDA.  Uncooked extra virgin olive oil, and Flax oil are reported to be good for you.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=johana+budwig&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Corn syrup is very difficult for our bodies to process.  Those interested in making money off the corn industry flood the debate with a favorable view of their product.

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=pYzLWozoCM2WsAWOpJqABw&q=corn+syrup+diabetes&oq=corn+syrup+diabetes&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i22i30k1l7.1060.7540.0.7820.19.19.0.0.0.0.206.1986.14j4j1.19.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.19.1984...0i131k1j0i10k1.0.sPOqVScAX8k

There are pockets of humans all over the world where a larger percentage of people live to be over 100, these cultures do not eat much deep fried food, or corn syrup.  They eat a diverse diet, have clean water, and get exercise.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=diets+of+centenarians&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

For practical real world contemplation... compare the abundance of puss on the faces of McDonnalds workers to the abundance of radiant skin on the faces of WholeFoods workers.

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/31/2018 at 3:51 AM, Eiuol said:

In the original post, the bill was described as "legislation to allow Americans with life-threatening conditions access to unapproved, experimental drugs". I posted that such a bill would not pass Congress. And it didn't. And it won't, anytime soon.

This bill gives DYING patients access to medication that PASSED phase one of the FDA's approval process. Access they already had, through a different mechanism. So it's a meaningless bill, with no consequences (positive or negative) whatsoever.

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I would still technically consider medication that passed phase 1 as unapproved, that is, medications that have not completed the regulation process. I'm actually not aware of how to acquire medications that have only passed phase 1, which mechanism do you mean?

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