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Messages - GreatJustice

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241
General Discussion / Re: John Galt's Freedom Appreciation Megathread
« on: July 02, 2014, 11:58:18 pm »
Quote from: mainiac on July 02, 2014, 11:07:44 pm
Quote from: GreatJustice on July 02, 2014, 10:29:02 pm
That's all beside the point, though, that there is no rational reason for birth control to not be over the counter.

Yes, products that can cause an ectopic pregnancy and kill you if certain risk factors are present should be sold over the counter.  What a brilliant idea.  Because you know who's really f#ing good at researching and making expert decisions about pharmaceutical interactions before they act?  Horny teenagers.

Of course you shouldn't need to know that a group of birth control methods was causing dangerous drug interactions back before medical studies unearthed that little nugget of wisdom.  There aren't enough hours in the day to learn all the obscure crap like that.  Doctors literally keep learning all their lives just to keep up to date with their own specialty and the general stuff.  We need to accept like mature adults that we dont know everything.

Even OC drugs have a variety of risks, some even more than the risks of birth control, yet they are still OC.

Oh, and it would seem that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists actually agrees with me on this, so in this case I suppose you'd better gracefully accept their view using the same strain of logic.

242
General Discussion / Re: John Galt's Freedom Appreciation Megathread
« on: July 02, 2014, 10:29:02 pm »
Quote from: Vector on July 02, 2014, 09:29:39 pm
Quote from: GreatJustice on July 02, 2014, 09:24:06 pm
don't cover contraceptives because they don't really qualify as "healthcare".

Quote from: GavJ on July 02, 2014, 07:24:54 pm
Also, it is very important to mention that contraceptives are used to treat a variety of conditions that have nothing to do with sex. Endometriosis and other reproductive issues or diseases, even auto-immune diseases. In fact, my girlfriend has lupus, and is allergic / has horrible reactions to all hormone based birth controls. However, she can tolerate a copper IUD, which provides contraception, yes, but much more importantly, it stimulates her overactive diseased immune system to attack the copper, which essentially distracts it and prevents it from attacking her organs, extending her lifespan and reducing reliance on other dangerous drugs considerably. It also saves taxpayers and employers a ton of cash by paying for a piece of copper instead of thousands of dollars of immunosuppressants and who knows what all else.

This can be life saving treatment and if her coverage for that were removed, she would be forced to quit her job and have huge difficulty finding another one due to her condition's restrictions, and  probably end up on social security disability, where taxpayers would be paying the equivalent of an IUD to her every single month instead of once. I.e. it would completely and utterly backfire in tax and efficiency and be a far worse alternative for everybody, as well as risking her life and forcing her to live in her car for months or years while trying to get a new unlikely job or disability.

Okay, but those side benefits are not the primary reason one gets contraceptives, and those benefits are exceptions to the rule. Marijuana has many perfectly legitimate uses beyond getting high, but getting high is still the main use, and you (generally) wouldn't get weed included in the insurance even if it was legal.

That's all beside the point, though, that there is no rational reason for birth control to not be over the counter. I don't know enough about to intricacies of American healthcare law to be sure, but it seems to me that the solution to the coverage problem would be to save your damn money and just buy the drugs out of pocket. I mean, unless American birth control costs thousands of dollars or something.
Quote from: Descan on July 02, 2014, 09:31:13 pm
Do prescription drugs, dentists, and opticians not count as healthcare either? Because we don't cover THOSE either.

I'm not referring to OHIP or the actual healthcare system when I refer to "coverage", I'm referring to the coverage you get for stuff not covered by OHIP, which would, in fact, cover dentists, opticians, etc etc etc (but not birth control, maybe barring special circumstances).

243
General Discussion / Re: John Galt's Freedom Appreciation Megathread
« on: July 02, 2014, 09:24:06 pm »
Quote from: GavJ on July 02, 2014, 07:24:54 pm
]
You're right, man. Businesses shouldn't be forced to protect their workers from open, uncovered rotating blades or caustic fumes, either.

Truly, the go(d)vernment is the only reason workers today aren't working in the Satanic Mils and having their children eaten by bloodthirsty, cackling capitalists. If not for perfectly crafted regulation, workers would be paid 5 cents an hour with a 50% mortality rate on the job!

Wait, what does this have to do with birth control mandates again?
Quote
Nor should the be forced to clean smoke from their smokestacks. It's their property for the 10 seconds before it floats into the public! They should have a right to spew tons of noxious sulfur fumes into their air and tiny section of streams! I can't be expected to be responsible for what the wind does, pfft.


Yeah! And shooting people in the face is covered by property rights because "I can't control what the laws of physics do with my bullet!".

Wait, no, that isn't how property works. Do you live in Venezuela, by any chance? That might explain some of the strange misconceptions.
Quote
And what if I don't feel like maintaining my roof to make sure it doesn't fall down on my workers out of nowhere? I shouldn't have to on my own property. Nor should I have to bother with fire extinguishers, and I should be able to insulate my walls with fluffy gasoline soaked cotton if I think it might save on energy bills! MY PROPERTY, MY RIGHT TO A FIRE TRAP!

Yeah, dead workers and burnt down factories literally generate profit for those responsible, so it's a good thing we have trustworthy regulators to keep that to a minimum! It's hard though, since besides generating profit, hilariously unsafe workplaces just attract workers in first world countries even more than safe businesses, and are never held liable for contract violations.

Wait, what does this all have to do with contraceptive mandates again?

Oh, and back to the actual ACA mandate business, it's worth mentioning that similar (if not entirely identical) coverage policies exist in Canada, which don't cover contraceptives because they don't really qualify as "healthcare". It is a bit strange that birth control isn't an over the counter drug and has to be mentioned by insurance at all, though.

244
General Discussion / Re: John Galt's Freedom Appreciation Megathread
« on: July 02, 2014, 04:49:47 pm »
Seems to me like this is a decent result with a very stupid justification. From what I can see, HL really didn't care much about "religious freedom", but the fact of the matter is that it shouldn't be forced to provide anything regardless of religious freedom or not. It's kind of sad that Americans have completely forgotten about basic property rights and have to hide behind religion to justify running their businesses the way they want to.

245
General Discussion / Re: Canadian Politics Mega-Thread!
« on: July 02, 2014, 04:47:42 pm »
Asbestos isn't a straight up evil thing, though. Yeah, it's carcinogenic (among other things), but it's very cheap, its an excellent insulator and it can used in a wide variety of ways, generally safely as well. Really, the industry is most dangerous to the miners that have to actually get the asbestos in the first place, since they actually disturb it and breathe it in, whereas the people in 3rd world countries that buy it won't even necessarily suffer from the side effects if they just stick it in a wall or something and let it be. Alternatives to asbestos tend to be more expensive and have other drawbacks, otherwise it wouldn't even be sold. There are plenty of things I'm ashamed of my country for, but selling asbestos really isn't one of them.

246
General Discussion / Re: Canadian Politics Mega-Thread!
« on: July 01, 2014, 11:34:27 am »
Quote from: Levi on July 01, 2014, 09:39:01 am
Woo, Canada.

That said, I dislike all our major parties.   :P  I keep voting green just because I like SOME of their policies and don't trust the other three.  I can't wait till they get rid of Harper though.

Yup. Federally I'm voting whoever has the best shot at beating the Conservatives because Harper is a fascist thug (hoping for a benign govt that can't get much passed, like an NDP minority), while provincially (Ontario) I ended up voting Conservative because the other party platforms were so unrealistic in terms of ignoring our current economic state that they may as well be advocating the use of fairy dust for economic stimulus.

247
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: June 29, 2014, 06:51:49 pm »
Quote from: Owlbread on June 29, 2014, 05:47:06 pm
Quote from: mainiac on June 29, 2014, 05:44:29 pm
That would be a good question if this was a crisis between the US and Russia.  This isn't about the US and never was except for in the increasingly delusional minds of the Russians.  Not even the far right fringe of the US thinks this is about the US.  This is about Russia being a dick and the rest of the world just half-heartedly telling you guys to stop.

My understanding was that the USA was very supportive of the revolution; that support actually involved sending funds to the more moderate revolutionary groups that would work in line with US interests in the region, like Tymoshenko and her allies in the Fatherland Front. The USA has had its fingers in this pie for a long time just like Russia, interfering since the beginning. Ukraine is caught in the crossfire, as always.

America is an infallible defender of freedom and democracy and Russia is a comic book supervillain bent on world domination and how dare you suggest otherwise

248
General Discussion / Re: John Galt's Freedom Appreciation Megathread
« on: June 24, 2014, 08:53:12 pm »
Another factor is the fact that the Republicans and Democrats, besides having perceived legitimacy from having been around so long, also have vast campaign budgets to fund their campaigns. When Ross Perot ran, he very nearly won the election (until he stupidly abandoned his campaign and then came back again later) as he was able to match the Democrats and Republicans in terms of money. So the moral of the story is that a third party candidate can do just fine under FTTP so long as they are billionaires willing to devote lots of resources and their own name to the campaign.

249
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: June 21, 2014, 08:02:34 pm »
Me, I'd go one farther and say everyone should have the inalienable right of secession. Why have "Free Venice" or the "Manhattan Commune" when you could have "The Republic of Jim's House" or "39 Pine Street Kingdom"?

250
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: June 15, 2014, 09:33:21 am »
Quote from: mainiac on June 14, 2014, 10:53:31 pm
All my googlefu finds is that in 1939 the female labor participation rate was still at 37%.

Well, my googlefu says that the female labour participation rate did indeed rise from 1937 to 1939... by 2%, to 33%. Oh well.
Quote from: mainiac on June 14, 2014, 10:53:31 pm
German production almost doubled from '33 to '37 and military spending increases only accounted for a fraction of that increase.  That is a very, very rapid increase in non-military economic activity.  Even if a railways eventual purpose is military activity in 1940, it can still be used for civilian activity in 1937 and it's construction still puts money in the pockets of working men in 1936.

True, a lot of the gearing up for war consisted of infrastructure spending, but in real terms, it was pretty close to useless infrastructure spending. It didn't help the German government simply due to design incompetence; for example, many new German roads were created for the purpose of allowing fast transportation of Wehrmacht forces (tanks and heavy artillery in particular) from one front to another, yet it was discovered that they couldn't bear the weight of armoured columns, which had to use older modes of transportation anyway. Further, they shined so brightly (they were painted white) that they made easy targets for Allied bombers.

For civilians, the new infrastructure had its uses, but it certainly didn't promote economic activity since, to all intents and purposes, Germany had a planned economy at the time. Actual economic decisions were largely made by high officials in the Nazi party, with limited decision making being granted to betriebsführers, the former capitalists. Any economic benefit of the new infrastructure went almost entirely to the German state (and that benefit wasn't necessarily great either, see above). And again, if you want to compare planned economies, the Soviet Union was simply more efficient than Nazi Germany in raw production despite many disadvantages, yet even those that say Hitler's stimulus was successful wouldn't support simple nationalization of the entire economy.
Quote from: mainiac on June 14, 2014, 10:53:31 pm
I am unaware of rationing in Germany before the war started in 1939.  There would of course be material shortages but that's just because of a lower total productivity factor and capital accumulation compared to the standard we in the US are used to.  The per capita gdp of 1930s germany was about 1/6 of todays, putting them a little below where Ukraine or Georgia is today even before you account for that military spending.  At that level of per capita gdp, shortages happen.  Unless you can show that shortages were worse in 1937 or so compared to 1929 or 1928, the existence of shortages doesn't really tell us much.  Unless the economy gets derailed first, people in 2080 will talk about the shortages of consumer goods that plagued the US in the year 2014.

German economic shortages and rationing existed even relative to the standards of the time. Even a German living prior to WW1 would be in better shape economically than one living in the 1930s. So far as evidence goes, well, here you go (warning: LONG). I suppose Richard Evans is a Marxist so you might consider him biased, but his analysis is worthwhile.

251
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: June 14, 2014, 09:58:16 pm »
Quote from: mainiac on June 14, 2014, 08:50:11 pm
Hitler didn't invent sexism in german politics, that had been there since unification.  The female labor participation rate stayed static at a low rate until the war started pulling women into the labor force.  So there was no exodous of women to hold back production, which rose:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Certainly Hitler didn't create German sexism, but he definitely encouraged women to not bother entering the labour force, which (artificially) dropped the unemployment rate. From 1931 to 1937, the female percentage of the German workforce declined from 37% to 31%, a fairly drastic decrease.

Furthermore, while overall production increased, production of things Germans actually desired (consumer goods, food, etc) didn't increase, and there were shortages and rationing of basic goods even before the war began, which hardly makes a good case for the German economic model.

Quote from: mainiac on June 14, 2014, 08:50:11 pm
The Nazis attacked unions for political reasons but they also established fixed wages.  They were pretty "bread and butter" oriented until the war got into full swing and the economy changed to total war.  And either way, we are talking about a demand side recession, not a supply side one.  Even before Keynes got big, Fisher was pointing out that a deflationary solution (depressing wages for supply side reasons) could just as easily depress output as increase it.  Also I was saying that Hitlers first few years of economic policy were effective, not that they were humane.

Putting about half a million people into forced labor programs (we are talking pre-WWII, not when the concentration camps were in full swing) would reduce the unemployment rate by maybe one and a half to two percent.  (Rough estimate here off the top of my head).  It would have little effect on wages because the government was already controlling those by law.  Again, talking effectiveness here, not humanity.

Germany when Hitler became chancellor was suffering from severe underproduction.  Germany by '36 or '37 had risen to pre-crash levels.  Of the four major economies to get depressed (US, UK, France, Germany), it was Germany that made the most rapid recovery.  That is what I'm talking about when I say that Hitlers economic policy in the early years was effective.

In terms of effectiveness, well, I suppose that depends on perspective. It certainly wasn't effective in the sense of creating an efficient allocation of resources, since there were severe shortages as a result of nearly every available idle resource being put into the production of war materials. It was debatably effective at furthering the interests of the state and the Nazis in that it pre-emptively geared the German economy for war, but even that isn't absolutely the truth, either. After all, the Soviet Union, hardly an example of a nation with an efficient or effective economic model, outproduced the Germans substantially in every way, with a much smaller workforce (only catching up in 1945), every year of the war (including 1942, when the industrial base of the USSR was occupied by the Germans). Really, if you want to talk about effective economic policy, in terms of raw production, Stalin might be a better example than Hitler, though few would advocate the Stalinist method of economic recovery.

252
General Discussion / Re: Sheb's European Politics Megathread
« on: June 14, 2014, 02:13:11 pm »
Quote from: mainiac on June 14, 2014, 12:20:50 pm
Quote from: Helgoland on June 14, 2014, 11:02:28 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As an economist (well, grad student), I disagree with this.  While Hitler's intent was clearly not good economic management, he did pursue sound economic policies until around '37 or so (I don't remember the exact year here).  At that point he started using deficit spending to stimulate an already full employment economy but that was domestic borrowing.  Remember, Germany was extremely constrained in it's ability to secure foreign credit.  Remember that it was the Soviets who were recipients of German credit, not the other way around.  And while it was probably "unsustainable" the eventual outcome would just be a fiscal tightening in a full employment situation, i.e. a better outcome then what France, UK and the US were experiencing.

Hitler's economic policy was actually pretty terrible if improving the lot of the German people was the goal, and it wasn't any better before the Second World War. What did he do?

-Paid women in the form of vouchers to stay at home instead of looking for work. Since you have to be looking for a job to be considered "unemployed", this improved Germany's unemployment rate substantially on paper. In real terms, however, this basically cut German production of goods substantially (women that would have had actual jobs were now sitting around at home) and cut the German workforce, without actually getting many new jobs created (since women were looking for different jobs from men, so those unemployed German men's prospects weren't much improved).

-German unions were basically destroyed by raids and made powerless, so they were no longer capable of demanding higher wages, which resulted in more hiring. This is in contrast to the situation in most other countries affected by the Depression, where unions held wages higher for existing workers, resulting in higher unemployment.

-Those remaining unemployed were basically forced to take jobs by the government that often paid less than they had received from welfare previously, with the alternative being the threat of getting tossed into a concentration camp. So these several million Germans were nominally employed, but were literal wage slaves that were barely getting by.

So yeah, the Germans had "full employment", though that's pretty meaningless when it comes through literal slavery to the state. Source is Richard Evans' Third Reich trilogy, in case you're wondering.

253
General Discussion / Re: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine!
« on: June 11, 2014, 03:15:31 pm »
Quote from: Descan on June 11, 2014, 08:19:40 am
Quote from: XXSockXX on June 11, 2014, 08:05:31 am
Well, ugly borders are a big problem in any Paradox game, and no land connection increases revolt risk IIRC. Also India is usually a cash cow there.

Notably they also don't want the Uighur parts of China.
Nah, even dumb extremists who think India is muslim know not to fuck with the Sisko Chinese.

But they took Tibet from what I can see. Like, what?

254
General Discussion / Re: Emperor Norton's Imperial Politics Megathread
« on: June 10, 2014, 08:10:08 pm »
Quote from: nenjin on June 10, 2014, 04:41:59 pm
Quote from: Helgoland on June 10, 2014, 12:51:27 pm
Anything that's not part of a 'militia'. It's all about that one word, isn't it...

No, it's really about three words.

WELL-REGULATED MILITA.

Funny how those first two words get ignored by gun-toting patriots who threaten to shoot anyone who tries to tell them what to do with their guns.

In the actual amendment, though, the "WELL-REGULATED MILITIA" is separated by a comma which proceeds to also mention "THE PEOPLE", who presumably are separate from the "WELL-REGULATED MILITIA". Even were that not the case, the "WELL-REGULATED MILITIA" of 18th century America pretty much covered all male citizens of the US, so it doesn't exactly constitute a restriction.

Also, just because a person with a concealed weapon was killed doesn't mean that suddenly concealed weapons can't work. I doubt even the NRA would say that one random person with a gun will definitely stop a shooter, because that ignores factors like luck, skill, etc etc. What they would say is that a person with a concealed weapon increases the odds of stopping a shooting, which would generally be correct (there are plenty of examples of this, but for some inexplicable reason people don't make the headlines by shooting people before they start their massacres).

255
General Discussion / Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« on: May 25, 2014, 02:06:49 pm »
Quote from: Darvi on May 25, 2014, 09:38:48 am
I'unno, if there was a show that would kill off every character five minutes after introduction...
Soukou no Strain did this.

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