Baconmancer

Capitalism depends on actually giving benefits to people, and if you just ignore it and let capitalism fuck up a generation (2008) so much they demand socialism, then the decision makers chose their greed over the preservation of the system.

We currently live under unrestricted free market capitalism.

The only alternative to what we have now is communism.

Neither of these things are true. What we have is not capitalism(or at least not what most self-described 'pro-capitalists' would call capitalism), but rather an 'expert' managed economy. One where the people at the top(government, investment class and megacorps) work together to hinder the functioning of capitalism for everybody who isnt 'one of them.'

The US hasnt had true, unrestricted capitalism since before anybody living today was born(and one could even argue we never really did). But it has gotten further and further from that over the last century. So its not a coincidence that things have gotten worse for most people.

EG, without anti-trust I don’t see how you keep the entrenched tech firms from choking everyone else out via economies of scale, but every libertarian I’ve personally discussed this with seems to think that the FTC are the front line soldiers of Bolshevism, harrying our poor job creators.

And we’ve seen the consequences of limited environmental regulation first hand, the clean air and water acts of the ‘70s were passed because the air in LA made you sick and rivers in the Midwest were actively flammable from chemical runoff.

I agree that there’s a lot of regulatory capture, and no perfect system, but the closest eras to unrestrained capitalism were not good times. Late 19th century food safety and workplace safety standards (specifically the lack thereof) also spring to mind.

Total freewheeling laissez faire might work in Adam Smith’s world where there are 1/10th of the people and few firms bigger than a master craftsman and a few apprentices, but we haven’t lived in his world for a long time. The capital-intensity of starting up in certain industries naturally bends the situation towards monopoly conditions, for example.

Frankly, although there are many parts of their system that I dislike, the example of China suggests that managed competition with an eye towards long-term thinking wins out over the “maximize quarterly returns” ethos of the US system.

I won’t even get started on Ford V. Dodge Brothers of 1919, we’d be here all day haha

Capitalism depends on actually giving benefits to people, and if you just ignore it and let capitalism fuck up a generation (2008) so much they demand socialism, then the decision makers chose their greed over the preservation of the system.

the cycle is labeled “The Inaccessibility Cycle”

the steps are inaccessibility ➡️

disabled people unable to participate ➡️

disabled people not visible in public ➡️

disabled people seen as outlier/rarity ➡️

‘so there’s little/no need to consider them’ ➡️

> immediately lose

> call your troops low-T pussies

...Wright Langham, the chemist who devised the human experiment, justified the toxic injection by explaining to Manhattan Project physicians that "the subject was an elderly male whose age and general health was such that there is little of no possibility that the injection can have any effect in the normal course of his life." But Cade was only fifty-three and held down a grueling job hauling long trucks. Except for a cataract, he enjoyed excellent health.

Before they set Cade's broken legs, AEC doctors completed higher priority tasks. They extracted bone chips and pulled offer of his teeth to measure Cade's newly elevated plutonium levels; only then, five days later, did they set his broken bones. Six months later, Cade was still in the hospital, and in a September 1945 letter, Capt. David Goldring M.D., of Oak Ridge informed Langham that "more specimens and extracted teeth will be shipped to you very soon for analysis."

But before he could lose more teeth or bone, Cade slipped away. One morning, the nurse opened his door, and he was gone. Morgan recalled, "They were surprised that a Black man who had been expected to die got up and walked out of the hospital and disappeared." They were also disappointed: Doctors had hoped to autopsy Cade's body, because the purpose of the injection had not been to treat Cade, but to experimentally calibrate the plutonium's physiological destruction."

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.