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todayilearned
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>It changes wildly year to year and averages out to over 50% effective tax rate.
Ok, this is statement was, at best, wildly milseading. The *statutory* rate has been below 50% since 2002. The *effective* tax rate is wildly different than the *statutory* rate. As I stated previously, while the *statutory* rate is currently 40%, the average *effective* rate is a little below 17%. So while there was a large period of our history where the *statutory* rate was over 50%, it's very hard to believe that the average *effective* rate was anywhere close to that when at not point that I'm aware of was anybody paying anywhere close to the *statutory* rate on average.
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todayilearned
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Well maybe we need to change our mindset about taxes and ask our politicians what we get in return for these taxes. If it's more tanks rotting in a desert so some MIC stock goes up 2 points that's bad. If it's fixing our D grade infrastructure that's good. If it's buying a soundproof booth so my corrupt politicians can undermine my government that's bad, if it feeds a poor child in school that's good.
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todayilearned
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> Ok, this is statement was, at best, wildly milseading.
No it's not. It clearly states averaging out from year to year, not person to person like you interpreted.
>The statutory rate has been below 50% since 2002. The effective tax rate is wildly different than the statutory rate.
Taxes started in 2002? News to me.
>at not point that I'm aware of was anybody paying anywhere close to the statutory rate on average.
Except that being the entire context of the discussion, someone dying with a wealth many times the exemption amount putting their effective rate very high.
Sorry you're too busy pounding your keyboard because you disagree with opinion to read *good*.
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todayilearned
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Because you're not interested in a real discussion. I'll admit to being antagonistic with you to begin with, which isn't productive. However, you made a claim and provided zero evidence to back it up. Generally, it is incumbent upon the person making a positive claim to provide evidence to support it (what with it being impossible to prove a negative and everything). Still, I cited multiple sources suggesting that your claim was wrong. Then you sourced me back to the thread we're already in. So enjoy yourself, I'm done.
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todayilearned
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> Still, I cited multiple sources suggesting that your claim was wrong.
No you didn't you cited things disproving what you erroneously thought I claimed, which you finally realized you were wrong about. I thought we already got through this.
> However, you made a claim and provided zero evidence to back it up.
You want me to cite you how the sky is blue when you can walk outside and look up? It's public record. Objective. LOOK IT UP.
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todayilearned
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The estate tax should be 100% over $1 million and same for the gift tax. You should have to prove your worth to society before being allowed to just live a life of luxury. Otherwise, you are just supporting the idea of allowing an Aristocracy, which has not worked out too well through most of history.
Do you think that retard Donald Trump is worth all the money he has? No, he is just living a life of luxury off the hard work of his dad, Fred Trump. After Fred was gone, Trump kept running the empire into the ground and had to declare bankruptcy on the Taj Mahal, Trump Castle, Trump Plaza, Plaza Hotel, Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, and Trump Entertainment Resorts. Its no surprise really because Donald has the cognitive skills of a 5 year old. Or how about that fat idiot Wyatt Koch, who is already a billionaire; totally indefensible.
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todayilearned
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Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to work for them. Instead of being appreciative of them creating a job that provides you with regular pay, for some reason you're entitled to more money without having incurred any of the risk.
I suggest trying to start your own business or be completely self sufficient in supporting yourself. Perhaps then you might understand why business owners are entitled to more money for the risk they took on getting that company off the ground.
The level of entitlement in this thread is frankly pretty scary.
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todayilearned
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Inherited money was likely already taxed, how does it make sense to tax it again? Lottery tickets have no tax when you buy them. It's also not the same investment buying a lottery ticket as to working hard to earn a nest egg for you and your family. You're proposing a blanket way to handle a near infinitely small group of the population that wins the lottery and applying that logic to people who (generally) have legally earned their money and want to help take care of others they love with it.
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todayilearned
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I never said that there doesn't need to be some regulations since we are so tightly interconnected and dependent on business, but you have to take into account things from a business perspective. You can only compete if you offer competitively priced products and services. You typically can only do that by cutting as many costs as you can. It's the nature of business, like it or not. That's why it's important to be smart and get a real education or skill that is or is projected to be in-demand. We don't need more general psyche and political science majors, we need programmers, engineers and specialized trade skill workers. We need to stop brainwashing kids into just "go to college no matter what" and work smarter, not harder. This gives you bargaining power and more money, in the long run. With online degrees all over the place, even full time parents can now find time to get another more revelevant education in their free time if they work hard enough. Never said it was easy but almost nothing good in this world comes easy, nor should it.
It's not perfect but regulating business is better than going pure socialist or communist. I don't think any young person in America is educated enough to understand or dive into the dangers of other types of societies, like communism or socialism, and people who despise big businesses are walking that line very closely in their ideologies.
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todayilearned
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On 27 April 1806 Great Britain was discovered by Moehanga.
Of course, various indigenous, white-skinned tribes had already inhabited the British Isles for thousands of years, but Moehanga was the first Māori to discover Britain. The British natives were in awe of Moehanga’s tattoos and they insisted he meet their chieftain King George III.
When Moehanga arrived on the island he would have seen families living in primitive, damp and unsanitary conditions and a brutal society that punished almost any act of disobedience, from theft to associating with gypsies, with death. The Britons were a warlike people, renowned and feared for their prowess at fighting other European tribes and even raiding and conquering lands and taking slaves on distant continents. Today England is a thriving multi-cultural nation producing a range of quality exports whilst preserving its rich heritage and traditions.
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todayilearned
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Taking the test I have always come back as an "I" but the reality is I don't really enjoy socially interacting when it's not something I care about. My interests often don't align with the typical person, so most of the interactions I would have are about things that I would struggle to stay awake trying to be interested in. Since my interests are well aligned with my professional life it's a lot easier for me to in that area.
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todayilearned
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Same here, though my own social anxiety gets in the way at times.
If there's an activity I'm interested in, my brain is like "Man I wish I could engage and be part of the conversation here. I feel like I could really add something and learn from these people."
But if it's an activity I have zero interest in my brain is like "I would cut off my own dick to be at home with a book right now."
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todayilearned
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I would disagree slightly, the perceiving / judging is quite relevant.
However, all of these are just about how you perceive them yourself. I once challenged my J, as I felt that I was very laid back and very go with the flow, but my colleagues pointed out that this was only because my nature was to have already thought things through at a million miles an hour. Classic J.
I also flip between I and E, but with a situational focus. I would be quite happy to not speak to anyone for days and be the epitome of introvert , but switch into extrovert role when required.
The language used by myers Brigg is also misleading, and is often misinterpreted. I found the belbins to be more accurate.
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todayilearned
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>The Aedes aegypti mosquito and 2 of its transmitted viruses (yellow fever and dengue viruses) and the plasmodia parasites of malaria (Plasmodium vivax and P. falciparum) are believed to have arrived to the Americas during the 17th century by ship during the slave trade (7–9). During the 17th century (even during a cold period known as the Little Ice Age) until the 19th century, summertime malaria was present in much of the eastern United States, including northern areas of the country (10). Numerous outbreaks of malaria occurred as far north as Massachusetts, with documented outbreaks occurring during 1793–1799 and in 1806, 1810, 1820, 1828, and 1836; nearly 2,000 cases were reported during an outbreak in 1880 alone (11). In the subtropical southern states along the Mississippi Valley during the 18th and 19th centuries, malaria spread quickly, especially during the American Revolutionary War and Civil War (5). Malaria is reported to have caused ≈1,300,000 cases of illness and ≈10,000 deaths among soldiers during the 4 years of the Civil War (5).
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5938790/
If there were 1.3 million cases in the 1860's (4.2% of the population) I think it's possible that the founding fathers dealt with malaria.
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todayilearned
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They weren't always large, there wasn't a big sample size (esp being as it isn't infectious, there was rarely a noticable localization) and people until like 1500, pretty much the world over, had a very, *very* sketchy idea of what the inside of a body, esp the composition of organs, looked like. Like, I'm pretty sure that the Christian/Muslim world thought men and women had different numbers of ribs for like 1300 years. Even though a trivial test would have shown that to be wrong.
I would be entirely unsurprised if almost all cancers afflicting internal organs were unheard of for most of human existence, until only a few centuries ago.
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todayilearned
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They die and cut them open is the number one way. Some cancers can be physically visible too, or as you said can be felt when pushed against. Of course you're usually pretty boned by that time for all of those.
I'm sure there are other ways they detected it though. Urination patterns changing, blood in urine or stool, etc. Ways we still do it today but via more primitive methods.
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todayilearned
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This is a common misconception. While the exact nature of all organs in the human body were not extremely well known, we have been performing surgery on the human body for thousands of years. Surgery was a common treatment in ancient Egypt. Not all cultures thought cutting open a corpse was sacrilegious either. Ancient Egypt is a great example when it comes to what our ancestors understood of the internal organs, and it was a lot. China was also not skittish about surgery and studying internal organs.
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todayilearned
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Oh yea. Just like colloidal silver, massive Vit A doses, homeopathic drops, fruit diet, raw diet, keto diet and prayers. If you heard it on Facebook it's probably wrong.
If there really were a significant portion of people who got rid of cancer by fasting, it would be a part of the treatment administered by doctors.
That said I (personally) believe that "one meal a day" diets and fasting really does good things for you, since we, through evolution as hunter-gatherers, aren't made for three meals a day. Look up HGH, insulin reaistance and autophagy in relation to fasting for example. It might prevent cancer but not cure it.
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todayilearned
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Though many cultures opposed disfigurement, there were also many cultures did not shy away from examining the human body. We have been doing autopsies also for thousands of years. Before even that, Egyptians did examine the organs they extracted during mummification (and even found and recorded tumors). We even know the names of some autopsists from ancient Greece.
Ancient Rome had laws and regular practice for autopsies. Famously, Julius Ceaser had an autopsy.
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todayilearned
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It wasn't universal, but medical texts between Classical times and the Renaissance, across Europe and the Islamic world, were remarkably incorrect about basic things. Maybe not everywhere was that bad, but it was at least somewhat rare.
And I'm not sure about the Egyptians, they were skilled at embalming, but they weren't exactly doing a thorough examination of the population. Even if they did assess and record the precise attributes of the few organs they cared about, it would be almost impossible to detect cancerous trends in essentially a single family per generation. And embalming for lower class people that could afford it (during the times when that was even a thing) was not nearly as sophisticated.
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todayilearned
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I'm not saying cancer was unknown, I'm aware of it (or it's equivalent in terminology) being diagnosed from like 3000 years ago (I think). But only some kinds of it would be known, and probably only pretty advanced practitioners during short periods of history. And it was also likely rarely caught after death, even if autopsy was sometimes performed. Also, are you sure autopsy was widespread? I know it happened, but even before Christian times I was under the impression that studying dead bodies was pretty taboo in the Classical world.
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todayilearned
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Now that you've linked a source I can agree with you that malaria is misidentified.
>Humphreys begins with a careful review of malaria in the colonial era and works through the nineteenth century, all the while aware that historical reports do not reliably identify malaria as a distinct disease.
I still disagree with your claim that the founding fathers never experienced or knew someone who experienced malaria once. With the prevalence at least one of their writings had to be about malaria and not a different disease.
I started this argument about whether it was *possible* that they dealt with malaria, but you continued it as if I was saying everything they ever wrote about malaria was gospel.
Claiming none of their writings were true in the context of
>I wasn't aware it use to \*plague* the west.
makes it seem like you're trying to say America never had any malaria. Claiming malaria was never in America is more intellectually dishonest than me saying it's *possible* that the founding fathers were writing about the correct thing once.
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todayilearned
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Interestingly cancer is theorized by some to be a “man made” disease in the sense that modern pollution, technological radiation, intake of chemicals and diet have caused cancer cases to be much more likely now then they were in pre-industrial societies. I’m sure you can find more information if you search it but there was an interesting study that found that an extremely tiny number of mummies had died of cancer (something like 2) which showed that it was a lot less prevalent historically.
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todayilearned
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Huh. TIL. I love the Classical Era (esp Romans) and kinda consider myself at least amateur-ly very familiar with them.
Julius Caesar is actually one I was aware of, which is kinda what I meant by uncommon. He was the most important man in Rome, and as killed via murder, I figured opening him up was something of a legal exception to the typical culture around dead bodies of the time.
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todayilearned
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Lol its hard when you have a 4 year old, a wife that doesn't work, and a machine operator job...
I went to college for an aerospace technical program and a 2 year degree, then tried going to University for computer engineering. Took 4 core classes, had my kid on the way, and failed out my first semester.
Studied on my own over a year, python, web stack, C... Tried to enroll for computer software classes for Fall 2018, but i moved further away from the college, have had car problems all summer and had to focus on my job and turn down University again...
Life sucks sometimes, but im trying to be surprisingly optimistic, thinking about changing jobs and getting my wife a job, car improved a lot.
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todayilearned
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I have no dog in this fight. So none of this matters one way or another to me.
> It's not my fault you fell for a con man and emotionally invested in a position that later fell apart.
Now you're making assumptions about my "side" in this fight, as well as verging on a personal attack on me. (For my "gullibility" or some such)
I was just trying to offer you some friendly advice or introspection which you appeared to be lacking. I know now this was a fool's errand.
Feel free to continue on with your self-righteousness.
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todayilearned
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Well, that's *only* 0,00189% of a 7 billion population.
I personally find it worse that over 6 times that amount resorts to suicide. This says a lot about our society. These people are so desperate or sad that they see no other options in life but to take their own and end the misery.
Funny how terrorism is somewhere all the way down. Makes you think about how much it gets blown up whenever something happens. Also puts people who fear *dem damn terrorists* but drive by car or drink alcohol or smoke into perspective.
As my lecturer told us yesterday; "When you lock the front door at night, you're actually increase the risk of dying for everyone inside the house. And still we call it *a security measure*."
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todayilearned
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And then consider that most mental illnesses, depression, and suicide are rare in “primitive” societies; i.e., those that are hunter-gatherer/pastoralist. Those numbers are also low in “modern” societies where poverty or subsistence living is the norm. The mechanisms are still not 100% known, but as I understand it, there’s not much time to commit suicide when you’re so busy trying to stay alive.
(That’s not to say those factors didn’t exist at all prior to the invention of agriculture, just that they occurred in extremely low rates, based on surveys and interviews with modern-day HG & Pastoral groups,)
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todayilearned
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I don't think the west realize how prevalent malaria is in poorer areas. I've been in Thailand for 10 years and I've known multiple families who have had members died to it, especially the elderly.
Clean your water, use bug spray. These are core rules when traveling here in Thailand and the same everywhere. Cheap tourist come here and drink well water, don't use bug repellant, and sunscreen. Then later they come to hospitals with 3rd-degree burns, malaria, dengue fever, or worse.
It's like everyone thinks these horrible diseases only exist in books.
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todayilearned
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cancer only became a serious diagnosis in recent decades, and without expensive tech non-exotic cancers were either just sudden death or a prolonged period of suffering followed by death.
add to that strange practises in the past and you'll see more people died from blood loss or infection than not.
even after the middle ages, "old age" was a perfectly valid cause of death, which as we know today is mostly cancer.
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todayilearned
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They always say the killer is usually someone closest to the victim. Who else is closer to yourself than you? Who’s more likely to hate you than you?
On a less flippant note: mental illness is now one of the leading causes of human suffering globally. It is hidden illness that you can’t see, which makes it that much more difficult to diagnose. On top of that, the stigma still exists for people, especially men, to seek treatment. Improvements in treatment and public perception of mental illness is steadily improving, but more needs to be done to tackle the issue from medical research to diagnosis and treatment at a local level.
#If you or a loved one is suffering, here are a few links:
**UK**: [The Samaritans ](https://www.samaritans.org/) (you can also call them on **116 123** in the UK and Republic of Ireland.)
**USA**: [The Suicide Prevention Lifeline](http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/) (call toll free on **1-800-273-8255**)
**Australia**: [Lifeline](https://www.lifeline.org.au/) (or call **13 11 14**)
#[For a list of contacts to other suicide prevention websites and hotlines, please click here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines)
**New Zealand**: I noticed there was no information on there for you, [so click here](http://www.suicide.org/hotlines/international/new-zealand-suicide-hotlines.html). There appears to be a variety of local numbers to call depending on your location.
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todayilearned
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I'm intrigued.. what factors contribute to a locked door being more dangerous than an unlocked one? Just because the statistics of a home intruder are so low and other things happen more often that a locked door could make worse I guess? The only thing I could think of is if something like a fire or carbon monoxide poisoning was happening it might delay you getting outside but only a couple seconds really..
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todayilearned
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Their number for malaria deaths in 2016 (719,551) is too high. The WHO estimates that [438,000](http://www.who.int/malaria/media/world-malaria-day-2016/en/) people died of malaria in 2015, and fatalities due to this disease have almost continually decreased for the last 10 years (with some periods of plateau). This is because of the widespread scaling up of malaria preventative interventions (insecticide treated mosquito nets, insecticide spraying on the walls of people’s homes, seasonal malaria chemoprevention for children, etc.) as well as improved diagnosis and treatment.
There’s still a long way to go, but the statistic in their graph is misleading.
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todayilearned
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I know that for a fact for the developed world. Due to variances in durations of flu seasons and in more recent years the effectiveness of vaccinations charting flu deaths is a wild ride of highs and lows, but the numbers do trend downwards. However you could well be right for the underdeveloped world. Honestly, data is too incomplete, the WHO only has estimates due to poor reporting on CoD. I wouldn't go so far as to say you're right, but in lucid second thought I wouldn't say I was either :P
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todayilearned
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I feel like if we're accounting for all humans that ever lived over the timespan we've been on earth, cancer may be one of the biggest killers known to man in unrecorded history too. A quick google search says the earliest recording of Cancer was 1500 BC in Egypt.
Sure there has been lots of humans since 1500 BC, but also just as many maybe even more before that time too. Just a thought.
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todayilearned
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Bill Gates has done some amazing things, but he is just one westerner in a billion. The fact three other people gave me the same name "Bill Gates" and no one else is testament to just how nobody really cares about Malaria.
Oh, and we haven't cured Malaria. There are treatments, but it is a disgusting disease. If it directly impacted the western world even to this day I think we'd have come close to a cure a while back. The regions of which it actually severely impacts usually don't have the money. And whilst Bill Gates is rich, he isn't country-rich.
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todayilearned
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People with compromised immune systems tend to get more cancer. It's thought that "potential cancers" are relatively common but the immune system is able to recognize and eliminate them. So cancer is just a "potential cancer" that managed to trick or fend off the immune system. Looking at it another way, cancer happens when the immune system fails to recognize the problem. I think you could say that cancer is an autoimmune disease if you take that term very loosely. People are even working on reverse vaccines to treat cancers by helping the immune system to recognize the problem. (u/fl0wdeep)
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todayilearned
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>Yeah, you can say any disease is autoimmune if you take the term loosely.
I don't think so. An "autoimmune" disease refers to the immune system attacking the body's own cells when it shouldn't. Cancer involves the immune system not attacking the body's own cells when it should, so it's kind of a reverse autoimmune disease. A bacterial infection, like a staph infection, isn't really like an *auto*immune disease at all. You could say that it's a failure of the immune system, but it's not an *auto*immune disorder. Anyway, the person above never said cancer *was* an autoimmune disorder, just that it's closer to being one than it is to being an infectious disease.
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todayilearned
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Which ones of these do you consider that you've been insulted? They look like arguments to me. Closest I'd say might be the "reading the wrong historians" but that's a pretty big stretch. Perhaps you're a lot more sensitive than you think you are?
>If there were 1.3 million cases in the 1860's (4.2% of the population) I think it's possible that the founding fathers dealt with malaria.
>You're the guy who hasn't provided a single source for your claim that the founding fathers never dealt with malaria.
>Then you're reading the wrong historians.
>Then can you name a single medical historian with the correct information?
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todayilearned
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I'm not sure this is going to help.. but I recommend re-reading these things and putting yourself in the other person's shoes. You appear to continue to have these kinds of interactions across reddit in your posting history. You don't seem to be able to have an argument without taking things personally. Not sure if there is a way for you to step back and try another approach, but I think you might be happier if you are able to try and succeed. I sincerely hope you can. Good luck!
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todayilearned
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Is there something missing in your life where you're looking for validation on the internet? I don't care about the argument at all or who was wrong or right. Nobody on the internet is going to come out and point out all the arguments and show who is right or wrong. If you are looking for that kind of validation, I'm not sure you're in the right place. I posted to help you understand where you can improve in your correspondence with others on the internet. I'm not sure if you're 17 or 57.. but if its the latter, then I'm probably too late.
If this would help you in your life, I'll post it. "That other guy was wrong about everything and lying and all that stuff." Now, can you agree that your human interaction and approach to arguments needs a lot of work and introspection?
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todayilearned
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Hey, you raise a valid points! And I really do want to take them to heart, but I just can’t help but focus on your hypocrisy because if you REALLY cared, you yourself would “correct” this record by listing a few names yourself.
My point about gates still stands, and you’ve done nothing to weaken it. He’s not the only one, nor did I or anyone else claim him to be, but he’s done an infinite amount more than you, me, or the next guy has. Or at least his money has, and hey... almost the same thing.
TLDR; Practice what you preach and enlighten us, and do you feel better for attempting to shit on someone who has done infinitely more good than yourself?
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todayilearned
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Very likely. I visited a Christian church in China, as well as other temples. They're allowed to exist. But there are lots of restrictions on their existence and require registration in at least some provinces. A lot occurs right in the open.
However, I have not gotten the impression that it increase your safety or career success by being openly religious in the PRoC. Maybe you can correct this perception. Can you tell me of any openly non-traditional religious people (as in not merely following Daoist/Buddhist beliefs with a mix of Confucianist cultural ideas) that are the Politburo or the People's Congress in the People's Republic of China? I'd love to be better informed and read directly about these people, as my local mainland Chinese friends cannot name any and said it lowered one's social standing in the Party.
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todayilearned
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It’s always funny when China does something, be it banning something, or imprisoning someone and Americans look at it and with pride claim that it would never happen in America.
Meanwhile just as much equally bad things happen in US except it’s done not directly by the government, but instead by the corporations who own the government.
The only difference between the countries is that China doesn’t go out of its way to put a happy face on all the same shit.
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todayilearned
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Dude, private entities doing bad things is *worlds* better than the government doing it. When the government does something authoritatively there is nobody other than a higher ranking government body or official who has the power to stop it, and then there's the potential for political fallout. When it's a corporation, there are many levels of accountability and governance that can take issue with and correct the matter. Basically, they have more oversight control and accountability to deal with as corporations than arms of a government do. It would be horrible to have the US government doing horrible things. Like running camps for example. Just...for example.
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todayilearned
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I don't think you're living in the same country I am. The corporations are in charge of the government. In China, the government is in charge of the government. In the USA, the government is #2 to giant corporations. Wanna know who can buy out any candidate at any point in time at the drop of a hat? Google, Amazon, Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple just to name a few gross tens of billions of dollars a year. Plenty to buy out any politician on the planet. Money buys everything in this country, including and especially elections. Corporations have already been shown to be above the law on numerous occasions.
Edit: Not to say China is doing better, not even a little bit. In China private entities do bad things too, just like the government in the USA does bad things. It's all chocolate-covered shit.
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todayilearned
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Look, they can get a few people, but if they do something distasteful, there is a herd effect that will be able to exert authority. You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea. If you *can* ignore the idea, as in, if it's the govt. doing the bad things, you have less hope because you can be silenced. If you can continue to campaign and bring charges with other likeminded people, something can be done without waiting for those responsible to die.
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todayilearned
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I agree there's more possibility for accountability and control with corporations. You're 100% right there, and it is a benefit over the government in that regard. The problem I have is that when you leave it to corporations there is -nobody- to police a corporation. The government is in their pockets, they look the other way. The CEOs, the presidents? Sure, they can for the most part when it's something unrelated to themselves, but what happens when a corporation or group of corporations, like Big Pharma, decides they need some serious money and go out and get a quarter of the population or more addicted to opiates? When the government commits the wrong-doing, the threat and balance to keep them in line is removal. That's the main advantage we have over China; we can determine who our politicians are and add or subtract accordingly. Yet even with that possibility we rely on corporations.
To take a quote from you, "When the government does something authoritatively there is nobody other than a higher ranking government body or official who has the power to stop it, and then there's the potential for political fallout."
Definitely true again, but when it comes to corporations, the highest ups of the most successful answer to legitimately nobody. What happens if the CEO of WalMart decided to just put rat poison in 50% of their food products for fun? Is the CEO going down for that? Only if they can link it to him. Instead, whomever added the poison and whomever shipped it off will be held accountable. They scapegoat constantly. The government isn't much better on that front, but the public is what (is supposed to) hold them accountable.
My overall point is that I agree in principle that corporations doing bad things is, in domestic and geopolitical sense, better than the government doing them. The current administration is enough to see how much havoc can be wrought by leaving it to the government to be accountable. My issue is that very, very few corporations will actually police themselves all the way up to the top. When there are people held unaccountable leading the way, that breeds trouble as well.
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todayilearned
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I'm somewhat hesitant to go that far in terms of outright saying fuck them - not because their government isn't terrible, but because I have to least give them credit where credit is due.
They didn't have a healthcare system, then they decided to make it back in 08 or whenever it was, within a couple years 90+% of the citizens had healthcare.
They didn't have a good infrastructure, they decided to do it, and within the last decade they've gotten to the point which US can't even dream of.
So yeah, it's a shitty government and human rights are being violated a billion times a day - but at least, they get shit done. I'd rather have that than live in a country which isn't quite as bad about violating rights, but where people are going bankrupt because they got sick, where infrastructure at every level is falling apart, where bureaucracy is so bad that if you want to build a new bridge, it'll take you 15 years of arguments and the project will be canceled 6x over because it's not in the right district from an elections standpoint.
Credit where credit is do, for all their faults, they're proactively doing everything in their power to improve their country and bring it to a 1st world level. Meanwhile US is letting everything deteriorate to shit.
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todayilearned
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Exactly this. Frankly I'd even argue that no, corporations don't have more accountability. They do in theory, but in practice when they're buying off those who are supposed to police and regulate them, all accountability goes out the window.
It's like you really think the FCC regulates Verizon in any way that would ever hurt that business no matter how crappy their business practices are and how many laws they break.
You really think the government would regulate the big banks when those big banks not only paid for the politicians' entire campaigns, but have then also given them specific lists of people to fill their cabinets with. Exactly why in 08 nothing happen to those banks. No matter how much money they lost, no matter how many people they screwed, they just got bailed out, everyone's bonuses were paid, and now they're far bigger than they were back in 08 when they were "too big to fail" and everyone was talking about breaking them up.
It is exactly what you say, just chocolate covered shit. Not even trying to change the colour of it, just slightly covering up the stink while in the process attracting even more parasites to it.
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todayilearned
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I don't know if you care about actual progress, but this kind of mentality that "nothing really works anywhere anyways" is very harmful to moving forward in our societies, and is very popular with authoritarian regimes because it perpetuates the idea that things can't get better and other governments are just as corrupt as theirs, only they hide it.
The United States certainly has its faults, and the sabotage of this book isn't great, but in general American government does pretty well with handling (or rather, not handling) dissent and opposition. In fact the popular media right now is incredibly critical of our current administration constantly, and that's already on a whole other *level* than what is allowed in China. There are plenty of troublesome problems the US needs to address (lots of foreign policy ones for example), but in terms of censorship and many other issues Washington doesn't *come close* to to Beijing, and throwing around claims of equivalency without nuance because you're cynical is dishonest and irresponsible.
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todayilearned
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> Dude, private entities doing bad things is worlds better than the government doing it.
You have no recourse and no transparency when private entities do it.
> When the government does something authoritatively there is nobody other than a higher ranking government body or official who has the power to stop it,
Many countries in the world have this idea of "voting to select their leaders".
If you don't live in America, you have a wide range of political parties to choose from, and your vote for even a very marginal party is not wasted.
Of course, in America you have a choice between the pro-war, pro-Wall Street party, and the very very pro-war, very very pro-Wall Street party, and if you even breathe the suggestion of voting third party, every American will yell at you.
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todayilearned
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\>In fact the popular media right now is incredibly critical of our current administration constantly
Current being the key word there. It's only because it's Trump, and only because they don't like him.
I'm not defending him, nor do I support him, but lets not pretend the media is in the right here.
Obama deported far more people than Trump. The media said fuckall. Obama started another half dozen wars against countries neither attacked US nor posed any sort of a threat. Again the media didn't say shit. Obama's administration was an absolute disaster when it comes to protecting whistleblowers despite that being a major point of his campaign.
Bill Clinton met with Kim Jong-il, they didn't call him a traitor. HRC has been taking money from foreign governments for decades, they've never suggested that she was a puppet to some oligarchs.
​
As I said, I'm not defending Trump in any way, I think 80-90% of what he does is absolutely stupid and most of the people he has surrounded himself with are absolute morons. But what I am saying is that you can't praise the media because they chose to be selectively outraged with this administration, while for the 8 years prior they've self censored in order to protect the previous one.
Yes in China the media is controlled 100%. In US, it doesn't need to be because most of the mainstream media, self censors worse than what you find in dictatorships.
It all goes right back to who owns the government. The the same corporations own both it, and the media, the government doesn't need to censor anyone, the shared parent corporation will make sure that the subsidiaries aren't in conflict.
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todayilearned
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Literally the first comment in the chain you're responding to mentioned China as a point of reference where Americans act like we are above the things that China does when we do the very same things at home disguised under different banners. China has different laws and rules for censorship; congrats? That's not the debate. Nobody said China is better, the OP just mentioned how China gets blasted for doing "inhumane" or "corrupt" things whilst we at home in the USA act like the mere **thought** is appalling.
I don't even know where you're getting an equation from in the first place. Not a single person in this chain has even so much as hinted that China's policies are better than the USA's policies or that they're possibly equatable. Two entirely different government forms. The only "equation" is that both are capable of being corrupt, lying, cheating, stealing, voter fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, etc.
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todayilearned
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>Yes in China the media is controlled 100%. In US, it doesn't need to be because most of the mainstream media, self censors worse than what you find in dictatorships.
What unrepentant and utter bullshit. You’re being entirely disingenuous here because there is no way, shape, or form you can make this argument with a straight face. All those things you complained showed that bias, many of which are themselves intentional misrepresention of facts? They were reported in the media, that’s how you know about them. So, no, *its not just as bad here*, and even pretending like it is shows either your own ignorance or your own bias.
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todayilearned
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That’s not censorship, that’s just the result of a profit driven news organization. They did the same with Clinton and Lewinsky, but I guess it only registers as censorship when they dare focus on the sordid details of GOP presidents? And let’s be clear, we’re at the point where an adult film actress is writing a tell-all book about the confirmed affair she and the sitting president had when the current FLOTUS was pregnant, *and you're arguing that the media focusing on the details of that story is censorship.*
This is a shit argument.
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todayilearned
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... and we go straight to the Nazis naturally.
Ok, lets see, as an easy example. A handful of Saudis flew some planes into buildings. US then responded by invading a completely different country, one that didn't attack it, had nothing to do with the attack and the most they could say was "the guy in charge is a bad guy". That killed over a million Iraqis and destabilised the entire region which has resulted in millions more dying.
So excuse the bluntness, but fuck off with the Nazis. Just because they did a ton of absolutely awful indefensible shit, doesn't mean that every war crime committed by US is perfectly fine just because a few million less people were killed over a slightly more extended period of time.
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todayilearned
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The issue is not them talking about the story. The issue is that to them it is a more important story, than anything else.
I do not support Trump. I did not vote for him. I disagree with the majority of what he does. And I do not give the slightest shit about his personal life. I would not care if he was blowing trannies in a turnpike bathroom. I simply do not give any shit at all about that.
What I do care about is his specific policies. I care about the wars he could be pulling us out of but isn't. I care about him breaking all of his populist campaign promises. But the media doesn't talk about these issues. The closet they get to talking about them, is talking about what some other personalities have said about the issues and how someone is outraged about someone else saying some stupid irrelevant shit.
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todayilearned
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>The issue is not them talking about the story. The issue is that to them it is a more important story, than anything else.
No, the issue is that you think a profit driven media corporation isn’t driven by profit.
>I do not support Trump. I did not vote for him. I disagree with the majority of what he does. And I do not give the slightest shit about his personal life. I would not care if he was blowing trannies in a turnpike bathroom. I simply do not give any shit at all about that.
Cool, that has shit-all to do with the point being made.
>What I do care about is his specific policies. I care about the wars he could be pulling us out of but isn't. I care about him breaking all of his populist campaign promises. But the media doesn't talk about these issues. The closet they get to talking about them, is talking about what some other personalities have said about the issues and how someone is outraged about someone else saying some stupid irrelevant shit.
Who do you mean by “the media”, *specifically*? Because I can cite untold numbers of stories about the very sorts of issues you claim “the media” doesn’t cover. Hell, how do you think you know about those claims in the first place? “The media”.
You seem to think a CNN daytime host somehow talks for the entirety of the “the media” instead of what cable news often is, lowest common denominator newstainment. If you were at all politically aware during the Clinton impeachment, you’d recognize there’s nothing new nor biased on them reporting these sorts of sordid details.
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todayilearned
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You can air your concerns that the mainstream media doesn't do enough to report on problems like Democrat-administration deportation and proxy wars. Plenty of people do on various forms of major media. ***Which would not be allowed in China.*** We're able to have a conversation about these things because we have the freedom to - whether we do or not is another matter. And Fox News certainly criticized Obama almost consistently throughout his entire stay in office.
>most of the mainstream media self censors worse than what you find in dictatorships.
This statement is just plain laughable and is exactly the kind of disingenuous nonsense I was referring to. First of all it is far preferable to be censoring yourself instead of being censored, because that's *freedom*. And no one is saying the media doesn't necessarily report the stories it should (although it typically reports what will sell, not what isn't controversial) to say that self-censorship has a comparable effect on content as authoritarian state censorship is just ignorance.
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todayilearned
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How much you care about the president's personal life isn't relevant. The *people* do care about it, at least to the extent that they're willing to watch news stories on it, and for some it might affect their vote. But it's all driven by sales and ratings.
Yes, the mainstream media tends to go with hot-button news that often fails to address key issues. But that's far better than going with news specifically filtered by a propaganda agency that frequently straight-up lies and misinforms, and besides you also *have* access to *tons* of readily available media that *does* cover these things in detail specifically *because* the government isn't given the power to censor it.
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todayilearned
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> but in general American government does pretty well with handling (or rather, not handling) dissent and opposition.
Holy moly you need to get out you bubble, boy.
The American population just let 3000 fucking people fucking die in Puerto Rico because they are clueless about *their own fucking country* works.
If you allow homeschooling you end up with idiots clueless about science, let alone their own country's operations.
The American educational system, with its white flight schools around the entire country, and home-schooling has produced a populace unbelievably ignorant about its own history and culture, and utterly incompetent to understand how things like colonialism, *which the rest of the world has renounced*, kills people, even today.
And Reagan era de-regulation on media monopolies destroyed the ability of the fourth estate to educate the populace.
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todayilearned
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Organizations that report the news for profit engage in censorship. There are journalists inside these organizations who want to report on what they think is most important but are not permitted to by their bosses because their bosses want them to report on what will make money. That is censorship.
Think they can just quit if they don’t like it? If it were that simple we would have many more powerful independent news media organizations, but we don’t because several large conglomerates control the vast majority of the news. There aren’t very many jobs in independent media. The reality of working in media is that if you want to have a job that puts food on the table, you live with a job where you don’t get to report on what you think is important news and where you get censored by a boss beholden to corporate profits. Eventually you internalize those ‘professional standards’ and know before you ask what you will be allowed to report on. That is self-censorship and it’s just a euphemism for how an organization silences people within itself. It’s not actually preferable to other types of censorship.
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todayilearned
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Holly hell I am amazed to actually see people actually believing this.
In my humble opinnion , it is the reole of the government to protect people from corporations and to allways have a firm boot on the throat of corporate power to prevent the inevitable abuses such power allways commits when left unchecked .
At least in theory the government represents the people and is at least in theory accountable to the people , and it is at least in theory not a totalitarian thing. Corporations on the other hand are totalitarian organizations that are explicitly mandated to make profits at all costs...
Private entities doing bad things is better ONLY if there is a good degree of certanty that the government will stop them , and how can that happen where corporations own the government ?
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todayilearned
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Healthcare in the US is pretty good for the vast majority of people who are covered by insurance or through a government program. Our system sucks for those who are covered by neither or who have decided not to get healthcare. Interior China healthcare is still at third world levels and people forget to mention the incredible disparity between what you find outside of the largest cities and special administrative zones.
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todayilearned
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Total Number of All U.S. Registered Hospitals 5,534
Number of Investor-Owned (For-Profit) Community Hospitals 1,035
The numbers are pretty easy to look up here:
https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals
This is also the same source used by news organizations when reporting.
Both insurance and pharmaceuticals can be dealt with by the average person given some patience. My family is multi-racial and we have a wide variety of backgrounds. The one thing that is available to many people is government help. I'm not denying your argument but we have in the US something like 12.5 million ER admissions and god knows how many doctor visits a year.
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todayilearned
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And that is my point entirely, the military is structured in the same exact way that nearly every tin pot dictator has done over the last 100 years. In the US there is a clear distinction between the elected government and the military. In China there is no distinction, members of the military routinely issue press releases and exert political pressure. If you are saying that the military does not play an incredible influence on the governance and politics of China then you can just keep your head in the sand.
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todayilearned
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>I don't know if you care about actual progress, but this kind of mentality that "nothing really works anywhere anyways" is very harmful to moving forward in our societies, and is very popular with authoritarian regimes because it perpetuates the idea that things can't get better and other governments are just as corrupt as theirs, only they hide it.
I completely disagree. I would argue that the majority of the US population is very complacent with the current state of their country and, in general, believes that their country is more progressive and free than it really is. Sticking your head in the sand isn't a way to create progress - criticising and inciting social change is. If comparing the US to China is an effective method if condemning an action (because China is seen as an enemy) and this in turn instigates change, then that is a good thing.
>The United States certainly has its faults, and the sabotage of this book isn't great, but in general American government does pretty well with handling (or rather, not handling) dissent and opposition. In fact the popular media right now is incredibly critical of our current administration constantly, and that's already on a whole other level than what is allowed in China.
Nobody us claiming that the US is as bad as China. The comment that you responded to is making an observation about the way in which the general US population looks down upon other countries for transgressions that their own country is guilty of, all the while being ignorant or accepting of those transgressions when it occurs within their own country. Additionally, just because media coverage is currently turning on the dumpster fire of an administration you elected, it had a completely different strategy pre-election. One incidentally positive action doesn't show that the US is a magical and free country.
>throwing around claims of equivalency without nuance because you're cynical is dishonest and irresponsible.
How is it dishonest and irresponsible? It's a completely valid criticism to make. The US has *many* problems with corruption, from political donations to media monopolies. Just because the US isn't literally a dictatorship like China doesn't somehow mean that it's invalid to compare the two. They are both superpowers that will face similar issues, and comparing how the two handle those issues is pretty important.
Ultimately, this comment feels like it has nothing to do with perspective, and everything to do with defending some misplaced sense of national pride.
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todayilearned
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This is a very ironic perspective to take, given that this thread is specifically about a book by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.
There’s another book by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman you **really** need to read, since it deconstructs and refutes the very core of the argument you’ve made here. It’s called “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media”.
In it, the authors effectively argue that the propaganda system in the United States is the most advanced, effective, efficient and restrictive of **any** propaganda system the world has ever seen. Part of why it is so efficient at delivering the political line the oligarchy wants to be repeated, and not straying from that line, is because the people who have high-paid positions at national newspapers and cable TV news channels have all *internalized* the ideas the “establishment” wants propagated.
By the time these people get through college at Ivy League universities, and have spent years or decades working shoulder to shoulder with the wealthy elite in this country, they internalize the Neoliberal political “line”, or consensus, **much more deeply** than did their Soviet counterparts at Pravda, for example. They internalize it to such a degree that they just simply *know* that *”there are certain things that it just simply wouldn’t do to say. And moreover, there are certain things that it wouldn’t even do to THINK.”*
To prove this point, the authors analyze hundreds of news stories and editorials published in the most mainstream news sources in the country (NYT, WaPo, LA Times, etc.) dealing with certain subjects, and compares their coverage of, for instance, elections in US client states (such as El Salvador) to elections in states with Leftist governments during the same time period (such as Nicaragua and Guatemala). They analyze objective data about the elections from a variety of NGOs whose job it is to monitor these things, and compare the coverage in the US with the consensus positions of the NGOs.
Using this method, the authors quite effectively prove that our decentralized propaganda model is **much more efficient** at delivering the “politically correct line” of the oligarchy than any state-run propaganda system has ever been.
The title “Manufacturing Consent” is meant to imply that the news media is just a mouthpiece for power; an industry that produces commodities like any other. The commodity that the news media produces, however, is **consent for US foreign and domestic policy**.
You should really read this book. You seem to have a very idealistic notion of how “free” our media is, compared to countries like China. I think, based on research such as this, that you are entirely wrong in this conclusion.
Think about this: there’s a reason why the news media is especially critical of Trump, compared with previous administrations. Trump, for various obvious reasons, threatens many of the essential interests of the oligarchy - the real rulers of this country. The news media serves as a propaganda mouthpiece for the oligarchy, just like Pravda was for the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. It’s just MUCH more effective - and a large part of why it’s more effective is *precisely because they’ve managed to trick so many citizens that they are, in fact, free agents, and that they aren’t being held to any political line.*
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todayilearned
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I don’t disagree with you regarding media and internalized propaganda, but I think it’s dangerous to say that media is critical of Trump *because* he threatens “the oligarchy”. It makes it sound as if he has some sort of positive intent or effect.
He threatens many of the left- and right-wing elite, true. His policies are also hugely beneficial to many of the left- and right-wing elite, as well as adversarial foreign powers. He’s just attempting to replace one oligarchy with another. If he were really revolutionary, GOP old-timers like McConnell would be trying to boot him just as much as the left.
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todayilearned
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You got me. Missing the point, but you got me. Hopefully you at least understand that making a generalized statement that covers **most** scenarios, IE "we do the very same things at home" isn't an implication that we do every single thing the same as China... would you like me to say 85% the same? 95%? 70%? But in any case our government commits atrocities regularly and that is not up for debate. Though I can't say I remember the last time China nuked anybody. I digress, nuance is nuance, and you're right, we don't imprison people for voicing opinions regularly.
Edit: I actually don't think you're even reading the comments or trying to understand anything, because I didn't even make that quote you yourself brought up. I was explaining who mentioned China, as you asked, which was u/michaelflux. The only thing he mentioned being equal is the severity of bad shit we do is about the same as the severity of bad shit China does. When I said they are the same, I am referring to the severity of human rights violations committed by each nation's government to be relatively equal in impact. You can get on my case for using the word same when paraphrasing his point, that's fine, but if you're just sitting there looking for things to pick at in an argument then there's the exit.
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todayilearned
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When college students protested the vietnam war they were beaten and killed right? Forgot the name of the incident but America has already shown signs of facism for a long time. Trump is a reflection of Americas past. The problem is the gun owners are the fascists. Who are they gonna rise up against, they are the problem. They can destroy democracy by voting facism in because the electoral college favors rural fascists.
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todayilearned
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Good point. I wasn’t trying to imply that he’s somehow doing anything positive, or revolutionary. What I meant was that he threatens the *stability* of the system the oligarchy have grown so comfortable in. And I don’t think he even means to (obviously, since he’s a member of said oligarchy himself). He’s just such a complete imbecile that he keeps embarrassing them in public, and putting an ugly face on their ugly policies - as opposed to someone like Obama, who was a fantastic representative for the oligarchy. Clean-cut. Well-mannered. A perfect human representation of the international neoliberal consensus.
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todayilearned
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Maybe you should try not getting your information about how the world works from television.
No, protestors in general were not 'beaten and killed.' That's laughable. I assume you're talking about the Kent State shootings, where national guardmens panicked and fired on a violent mob of students throwing rocks after several days of escalating threats (from the students, not the government) and anger, including a college building being burned down.
Yes, it was definitely unjustified, but absolutely not a deliberate order by a fascist government. And meanwhile, there were thousands or tens of thousands or other protests that were perfectly peaceful.
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todayilearned
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Do you even know what 'fascism' is, beyond 'stupid meany government doing things I don't like'?
Yes, the national guardsmen killed people, but there's no evidence whatsoever to suggest it was ever a deliberate plan by anyone. Really, if the government wanted to 'beat and kill protesters' don't you think they could have done a much better job than they did? They killed four and wounded nine. Why wouldn't they just bring in heavy machine guns and gun down hundreds?
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todayilearned
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Whoa, one thing at a time. Now, we can agree that the idea of the government ordering protesting students be 'beaten and killed' is pretty stupid and silly, right?
By the way, I love how your response pretty much supports exactly what I said. To you, fascism pretty much means exactly that, don't you? Meany stupid government doings things you don't like. Do you think democracies are incapable of human rights abuses?
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todayilearned
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I'm an immigrant who moved to the United States, so I've been outside of the west before. You are absolutely *insane* if you think a figure like 3000 is comparable to authoritarian regimes worldwide. My home country had a history of disappearing suspected dissidents in the tens of thousands, out of a population smaller than America by a factor of ten. A populace misinformed about some scientific and foreign-policy issues is nothing compared to those systematically oppressed by a regressive censorship system which routinely simply flat-out lies to them and often *purposefully murders them.* No one is saying that there aren't major problems to be solved, but I am telling you as someone from outside America that your false equivalencies actively help authoritarian regimes globally by giving them propaganda to show to their people and prove things over here aren't better. ***They are.*** I understand that you're trying to draw attention to issues you think aren't being addressed but your dishonest tactics have international consequences that *hurt people*. So *stop.*
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todayilearned
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All your points about simply making comparisons (which I would be fine with) and not having equated the two are wrong; this is the original poster's comment:
>The only difference between the countries is that China doesn’t go out of its way to put a happy face on all the same shit.
Which is clearly not just making comparisons but equating the two.
​
Media coverage isn't turning, it's always been negative. Anyways, my point isn't exclusive to the current administration, every administration in American history has had media criticizing it to some extent or another, at times very prominently and other times not. Even during the early part of the Iraq war there were dissidents, and the mainstream media didn't censor French opposition to the war or anything like that - and that was the *worst* point in media complacency in modern history.
​
>How is it dishonest and irresponsible? It's a completely valid criticism to make. The US has *many* problems with corruption, from political donations to media monopolies.
>
>Ultimately, this comment feels like it has nothing to do with perspective, and everything to do with defending some misplaced sense of national pride.
I'm telling you this as an immigrant from a country with a history of authoritarian government who moved to the United States and isn't defending this "misplaced sense of national pride" which you *assumed* because it was convenient; things here *are better*. People aren't thrown into the ocean from government helicopters, university students aren't kidnapped by the government and tortured. Yet here you are supporting these equivalencies as a lazy rhetorical tool, and in the process giving authoritarian governments propaganda that conditions in the United States aren't any better. That democracy is a failure and is just as corrupt and everyone knows it. That there isn't anything worth fighting for on the other side. ***STOP DOING IT.***
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todayilearned
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It's an issue I feel pretty strongly about. I come from Argentina where the dictatorships loved to say that the United States was a puppet for the CIA and only fools believe a civilian government could actually have power. They used American media exposés and conspiracy theories as proof, and many people who were used to believing that the truth is ten times worse than anything a government admits (instead of two or three times) fell for it. Some were even convinced dictatorship was preferable to a democracy because "at least you know who's in power".
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todayilearned
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When people don’t have an argument against what you’re saying, they start nitpicking at your terminology. It’s like trying to argue with lawyers, even if they’re defending the ‘wrong’ position, they’ll still try to ‘catch’ you on some technicality. ‘You see on paragraph 18 line 3 you used the word xyz which in the context of a precedent set in 1867 by judge bla in Alabama, bla bla bla bla bla’
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todayilearned
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It sounds like an interesting book. However, my original comment was about comparisons and equivalencies about censorship and freedom between the United States and China. All the self-censoring in the world doesn't take away your freedom like authoritarian states do, and the fact that the book you're recommending isn't banned and instead readily available on Amazon is an example of why that's incredibly important. I understand that your point is that sort of ulterior tolerance is part of the system which makes propaganda more effective, but that's another conversation about propaganda and not freedom.
To move to your points, I agree that the actual media in the United States fails to do an adequate job at informing the public even semi-consistently (especially on foreign policy) and I view it with contempt. However, I don't really see it as being that effective in inspiring consent for US domestic policy compared to general political apathy, and how much leeway it gives the government I'm not sure. At the end of the day this manufactured consent still cannot give the US government more leeway than an authoritarian state, because authoritarian states straight up basically don't need consent in the first place (China can occupy and annex Tibet, I'm not sure whether the US could manage the same with Canada). So I'm fairly confident the Chinese system as a whole is worse, and that authoritarian elements would prefer a Chinese-style system to this American one if they could get it. As you said, the oligarchy couldn't even stop Trump from getting elected. You won't see that mistake in China or Russia anytime soon.
I'll have to remember to pick up the book sometime, though.
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todayilearned
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>Also, maybe don't say "deep state" if you want to be taken seriusly.
W.T.F. Are you denying something that multiple US Presidents from both parties spoke about and warned us about? Seriously? Just because dumbass Trump supporters use it doesn't mean it's fake or conspiracy theory.
The surveillance and military people have a vested interest in keeping a healthy budget for themselves. It's not some dark conspiracy. It's just human nature and business. They are not elected. They remain in place whether there's a D or and R in the white house. That's the "deep state" and it's been a factor in US politics for many decades. Ignoring it makes you look foolish.
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todayilearned
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3000 AMERICAN CITIZENS died because Americans are fucking clueless about their country.
You think that's OK? Then, bluntly speaking, forget you.
America is denying climate change because of home-schooling produces idiots.
Maldives will no longer exist is just a few years, because of climate change deniers.
You think that's OK? Well then, bluntly speaking, forget you.
America denies some of its citizens rights like voting, because white flight allows people top be utterly informed about their own country.
You think that's OK? Well then, bluntly speaking, forget you.
You know what's possible to do in a country with a dictator? Overthrow him.
You know what's possible to do with an ignorant, xenophobic and intellectually lazy populace, kept ignorant so people in power will not be questioned? Not much.
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todayilearned
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>3000 AMERICAN CITIZENS died because Americans are fucking clueless about their country.
And TENS OF THOUSANDS of citizens of dictatorships die not because of hurricanes or bureaucratic inefficiency but because *their government purposefully murders them.* ***ROUTINELY.***
>America denies some of its citizens rights like voting
Dictatorships deny *all* of their citizens "rights like voting". And other rights, like assembly, or trial by jury, or ***the pursuit of life***.
>You know what's possible to do in a country with a dictator? Overthrow him.
Good God, this is next level stupid. I don't even know where to begin. The total ignorance needed to make such an idiotic statement is unfathomable. I suppose next time I talk to my parents I'll ask them why *they* didn't just declare war against *the military of a modern nation state* \- I'm guessing it'll *probably* have something to do with their lack of a standing army, or an air force, or a navy. I believe they were also just not too keen on being stuffed into a body bag and thrown into the Atlantic from a helicopter.
>You know what's possible to do with an ignorant, xenophobic and intellectually lazy populace, kept ignorant so people in power will not be questioned?
Educate them? Are you implying that it's harder to *peacefully educate people* than to *overthrow a state military*? Man, what a terrible situation you're in; whereas *you* have to sit down and have a *conversation* with someone, all those *lucky* denizens of dictatorships just need to get themselves ***killed*** in a violent failed revolution to get *their* freedoms. Really sounds like you got the short end of the stick, what with *already* living in a stable democracy and all.
My friend, unless you're still in middle school you desperately need some perspective, and quick.
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todayilearned
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I've seen the documentary and I don't disagree that our market-led model of indoctrination is the most effective ever yet created. However, you also have to look at the content of what is being indoctrinated. A great deal of it is harmless, and in some cases beneficial. Some ideas, after all, are true. Like, for example, the self-evident truth that all people are created equal. That's an excellent idea for the masses to be indoctrinated with. It's something that people *should* hold to be self-evident.
Not everything that we are socialized to believe (with utter mechanical efficiency) is necessarily bad, is all I'm trying to say. And I'd further posit this indoctrination mechanism is probably a large factor in why we've got a safer and more egalitarian society than we did 100 or 1000 years ago.
We also shouldn't assume that this indoctrination mechanism is completely elastic in its ability to indoctrinate any content. It may be that it's only good at indoctrinating true things, meaningless things, and insidiously evil things (the things Chomsky talks about), but not obviously evil things (like it wouldn't be able to turn America into Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, for example).
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todayilearned
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Yeah, that’s a good point. I would further argue, based on this very same logic, that a lot of the propaganda and censorship happening in China under official state direction is defensible using the same moral criteria you described.
You may not be a communist like myself (to be clear, I’m not a big fan of the direction the CPC has taken over the last few decades, but based on what I know, I’m not yet willing to “throw out the baby with the bathwater”, as it were), but I would point out that the ostensible aims of the CPC in engaging in this propaganda and censorship are 100% morally defensible things, like spreading the idea of solidarity and comradeship in society, that every person is equal (not “created” equal) in society, and deserves to share in the wealth society creates - that people should look out for each other in society instead of themselves, that they should combat racism, combat destructive capitalist ideology which teaches that exploiting the labor of your fellow man for your own gain is somehow justified, and move in the direction of a stateless, classless society based on Marxist doctrine.
They don’t follow through on a lot of these things very well, in some ways. And there’s some serious issues with their economic development backsliding into capitalist relations in practice, if not in theory. But the US are even bigger hypocrites, so... yeah.
I mean, China doesn’t teach their citizens that every human is equal, and then engage in imperialist wars of aggression all around the world, killing millions of people at the behest of a corporate elite.
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todayilearned
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Yeah, Fox News was, but MSNBC, WaPo, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and other major outlets that are constantly linked on r/politics largely treated Obama with kid gloves. During the 2016 campaign for Hillary Clinton they also completely glossed over the military interventionist track record of Obama and Hillary. As in, they almost never mentioned it or brought up the fact that under the Obama administration we went from bombing two countries to bombing seven. They also didn't mention that the financial reform legislation passed by Obama's congress allowed the too big to fail banks to become even bigger, while giving them cheap money with which they could buy up smaller banks.
New York Times did a decent job of critiquing Obama's foreign policy while it happened, but their editorial board still went out and endorsed Hillary Clinton when they would have better served their reputation by not endorsing either of the shit candidates fighting it out on the maincard in 2016.
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todayilearned
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This is an interesting conversation. Thanks for those points. I believe strongly in communism (essentially) at the family/neighborhood level (since it's the natural state of order for the human animal at those levels), but at the state level (which has no "natural" state of order; i.e. evolution hasn't prepared us for it) I think I might, personally, be ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I recently read Marx's communist manifesto again, and with fresh eyes it just seems so clear that teaching people to think in terms of class struggle, while having the good intention of preventing oppression, has negative outcomes in terms of respect for the sovereignty of the individual (which obviously has led to human rights violations time and time again throughout the history of Communism). When people say, "Well I read Marx and didn't feel myself going down that slippery slope," I want to remind them that that's only because they've already been deeply indoctrinated by another, better, system of morality--when you give Marx to people who haven't, that's when you get atrocities.
I'd prefer to teach people to think in terms of absolute respect for the rights of the individual, and then further teach that not exploiting people (whether they're of a certain class or not) is *therefore* not okay. It just doesn't seem to me that we require a completely new rubric of human moral imagination to replace the one we came up with during the Enlightenment (and also in ancient Greece, and in other places too, I'm sure). It's not clear to me that our moral failings as a species are due to the current rubric not being good enough.
Now I devolve into things I don't know enough of the specifics on to discuss seriously, but I'll throw some ideas out there in case you're bored at work like I am and it might give you an interesting thought or two:
As for Chinese foreign policy, I'm no expert (nor am I really caught up on modern literature on the subject), but I can see that it's very clever in that it maximally leverages the principals of Complex Interdependence outlined by Keohane and Nye. The Belt and Road initiative is definitely beating us at our own game. Western powers don't win most of their "wars" through violence, either, they win them through things like debt-slavery via the World Bank, which is what China seems to me to be doing now in the developing world, but at an even faster rate and under less regulation than we are, so I imagine it's even more exploitative, but that's just a guess since, as I said, I'm not really up to date on the specifics. It would be interesting to look into the concrete effects of the BRI and compare them to Western efforts of a similar nature (economic development, not military) in the developing world. Let me know if you have any interesting sources on this!
It's definitely an interesting experiment going on right now. Obviously life in China now is totally different than during the first decades of the revolution, so there have clearly been factors able to moderate the worst of what tends to happen in Communist states. Part of it seems to be switching to an economic model much more closely resembling market capitalism, if much more tightly controlled. That capitalist influence was able to grow the middle class, whose presence probably was a large factor in moderating China's most totalitarian policies. What will be an interesting lesson for the West, especially to the most staunch free-market Libertarians, will be seeing that markets, similar to our own, don't necessarily run better under democracy. They may, in fact, be even *more* profitable under authoritarian regimes. I think it was Slavoj Zizek who noticed that.
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todayilearned
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Perhaps I'm not being as eloquent as I could. I don't disagree with what you've said. My observation is that the end result is the same. In fact your reference to 1984 is rather apt. It could be, and is often, argued the resistance was just another wing of Big Brother's regime. An enemy to focus the people. A counter narrative.
If you believe the Russian interference narrative...this is exactly what is going on. When a crowd of people shout, who actually knows who is speaking? I don't have an answer, and I enjoy the discussion. I guess it could be argued that to much of any extreme is bad...one voice or millions. Just throwing it out there for though.
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todayilearned
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I just have issue with calling it censorship. Do Americans have their heads up their asses? Yes. Is choosing to get your news off of Facebook censorship? No.
It's different because at any point an individual can choose a different source, regardless of if they do so or not.
As far as Russia goes, I totally agree they have been made into the West's boogieman. They are a convenient excuse for why your chosen political candidate lost. People need to be conscious that with free speech comes the freedom to lie and manipulate. Which is why we must remain viligant.
I disagree because the US government would absolutely be as oppressive as the Chinese if they could. I have no doubt in my mind. Censorship could be way worse in this country.
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todayilearned
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The idea that we are created equal is constantly disproved by our legal system. If you have lots of money you are more equal than your fellow man in our legal system. Not even taking race into consideration, if you're rich you can afford to sue people or corporations in order to correct injustices, you can personally affect legislative changes that benefit you economically, and you can also frequently avoid justice for crimes you are certainly guilty of, simply because you can afford a better legal team than the prosecution can.
This is considered to be fairly common knowledge, even in the least educated demographics.
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todayilearned
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It's also common knowledge among the least intelligent animals: Even two rats understand that no two individuals are equal in power. But that's not what the idea that we're "all created equal" means (just as it doesn't mean we're all equal in height, or equal in intelligence, etc.)
It means we are all equal in basic human dignity. Equal in value. Equal in rights. So in a court of law, when a lawyer argues that, as you say, a rich person has infringed on the rights of a poor person, no one laughs. Every single person in that room instantly recognizes what is being said. They all have a common understanding that that's how the law is supposed to work, because we all (in the Western world) share a cultural idea that all people are equal in dignity. That's not how it has been in almost any other culture throughout human history, or indeed in other modern cultures in the world.
If you read the code of hammurabi, the oldest extant legal document in the world, you'll find that laws literally applied differently to different classes of people. And that's how it was *supposed* to be. That's how people believed it *needed* to be in order to properly organize city-sized groups of people. We've come a long way from there. We're now at the point where the majority believes in equality, but argues over what that means specifically and how to implement it, and suffers in implementing it due to difference in power/ability/etc. between people (as you pointed out).
I doubt there will ever be a time in human history where we're done debating and refining these ideas, but I suspect progress in the department is like a [mathematical limit approaching infinity](https://www.mathsisfun.com/calculus/images/graph-1-1-n-n.gif): We're already around 80% of the way there, and over the next thousand years we may get to 90%, and in another 1000, perhaps 95% of the way.
I'd suggest checking out the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (the audiobook is great, too) if you're interested in the evolution of humanity, genetically and culturally.
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todayilearned
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My friend, you need to think about what happens when the world's largest military and the world's largest economy are centered around an (willfully?) ignorant populace.
War destroys civil order.
The US visits war on foreign lands, and has done so continutously for more than 100 years.
Those dictators you are worried about? Whose global political chess games are they pawns in? Whose aid are they using to stay in power?
You think there is some no suffering from the largest refugee population in the history of the world?
You think that rose up out of nowhere?
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todayilearned
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A free society with an ignorant populace is capable of far more global misery than a small country with an murderous tyrant.
And, my friend, if the last century of history has not shown you that in fucking spades, it is *you* that needs to return to middle school.
Preferably in a country where the school book content is not decided by a history and science denying subgroup.
But really, if you think American foreign policy did not as much as determine your home country's domestic policy, education may not help you much.
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todayilearned
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The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."
. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone".
It’s not just audio and video recording we need to be concerned about. Your smart home monitor knows how many people are in your house and in which rooms at what times. Your smart water meter knows every time a toilet is flushed in your home. Your alarm clock knows what time you woke up each day last month. Your refrigerator knows every time you filled a glass of cold water. Your cellphone has a GPS built into it that can track your location, and hence record your movements. Yes, you can turn off location tracking, but does that mean the phone isn’t keeping track of your location? And do you really know for sure your GPS is off simply because your phone’s screen says it is
When I was in the Air Force 85 to 89, I saw things that would blow your mind today. There is far more tech being utilized than you know right now. I don't have to make anything up my friend. Accessing cell phone mics and cams has been used since the 2000's .
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todayilearned
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> The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone."
Unless they release a proof of concept, isn't this just a useless warning? And why are they the experts in this field?
> An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."
Of course, but it can't do it when the phone is off.
> When I was in the Air Force 85 to 89, I saw things that would blow your mind today.
Oh fuck off. As if the air force has superior tech to what google and apple have.
Now sure, if you are saying you can pic up the tiny amount of energy put out by the mic by focusing a machine on the device from a few meters away, I will concede that is possible. But that is not the same as remote monitoring.
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todayilearned
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The mic is a receiver, not a transmitter, btw.When you turn off your phone, it is still energized by the battery. You just don't see anything turned on. Nothing is aimed at the mic, the mic and camera are activated. And one can listen as if you made a call to some one and set the phone down on the kitchen table and carried on a conversation with some one in the room. One must remove the battery from the phone , to prevent this. Unless it's an iPhone. Then you are screwed.
You don't have to believe it, not sure why you don't. The technology is no secret. The military, does have some mind blowing tech. I have had some limited access, it was amazing.
Proof of concept? It's been used to gather evidence in some high profile mafia cases. Look it up.
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todayilearned
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Well, it's no secret the military has tech they keep secret from the general population. I don't know why you think that is do far fetched. The military used GPS long before civilians knew about it. Sr 71 Blackbird was a secret for a long time..just 2 examples, lots more...how would you know if your mic or camera were activated and being monitored on your cell phone right now if it looked and acted like it does when it is powered off? A cell phone can be made to communicate with cell towers even when powered down.
Like I said, this tech has been used already, and made public, so not sure why you think it's all bullshit. Is there something else that is bothering you?
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todayilearned
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If he already didn't like deaf people, I'm not sure that responding to him with "fuck you" is going to make him change his mind.
How about trying to educate people? Sure, he's being a dick, but why stoop to his level?
He's going to read your comment now, think that a deaf person just said "fuck you" at him and use it as internal justification for the fact that he thinks all deaf people are rude. Which doesn't help in the slightest.
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todayilearned
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This is why the internet is such a relentlessly shitty place. Someone is a dick towards someone else as a troll / joke then everyone starts being assholes to each other.
I suspect that there will be more than 1 person that sees this bit of this thread and thinks "oh yeah, deaf people really **are** rude". Hope that makes you happy.
Asshole.
EDIT: And you recently posted a thread asking people what they do to make the world a less shitty place? Haha, that's fucking hilarious, when you go round being a twat to people.
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