Urist

Thanks! I felt inspired by your elaborate thread so I wanted to see if I could make an attempt at providing some complimentary analysis 🫡

Thanks, @[email protected] for the usual thorough and detailed answers! Your effort to educate really is deserving of admiration.

As a fellow Norwegian, @[email protected], I would also point out (not implying that you are in any way unaware) some of the mechanics of how the public sectors in Norway serve the private, and in turn how this undermines the social programs over time.

In particular we are at a pivotal point with respect to our public healthcare system, where we have over time seen a rise in private clinics, culiminating in the somewhat recent "fritt behandlingsvalg". In reality, the private healthcare providers serve to siphon resources from the public sector, while to a large degree giving less back to fewer people.

In the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, private healthcare is good and necessary for dealing with increasing waiting times for treatments. In reality, they are one of the main causes of it. This is why we need to analyze the situation in terms of productive forces.

1. We are educating doctors and nurses at a steep cost (I think one million kroner a year for each student of medicine per year amounting to six million for a degree).
2. We have a shortage of people in key sectors such as the public "fastlegeordningen", with near critical failure looming as the work load increases to a point where no one wants to be a part of this system anymore, due to the personal expense. This is further propagated by the alternative of fewer hours at a greater pay in private alternatives.
3. The private sector can (over) charge both wealthy people for largely unnecessary treatments as well as hospitals that need to buy their services due to the increased load on the remaining people in the public sector. This answers how they can offer greater pay at fewer hours, by the way.
4. The private sector only provide treatments that are comparatively simple, leaving the lengthy expensive ones to the public. Additionally, the public sector have to step in whenever complications with regards to a procedure happens, for which the public hospitals take all the cost. See the second point with respect to unnecessary treatments for rich people such as plastic surgery and the recent news for real context.

All in all, my point was to demonstrate how the private healthcare providers prey on the public ones. This gives them an economical advantage that they in turn can use to increase their own surplus by taking and reducing (buying up) the publicly owned resources that were painstakingly developed by the state for public use.

I could mention other stuff as well, but what is really, to me, interesting is how the overall production of health services declines due to increasing privatization. At the same time we put in more money from the public, from which the private firms extract the surplus value by design.

All the while this is happening, the talking points in the political sphere is that private healthcare providers are the solution to the problem of deficient resources (productive forces that is, although it is not said aloud). In my view, this portrays some of the importance on why we need to educate ourselves and learn to analyze the mode of production from a materialist point of view. The how I think @[email protected] already have answered perfectly.

It is related to nystagmus. I thought I only did it on purpose, but when I am tired I also sometimes do it involuntarily.

From the link:

A slightly different form of nystagmus may be produced voluntarily by some (8% of) people. Some can sustain it for up to 35 seconds, but most average around 5 seconds.[19][20][21]

Deposed rulers sing it: peace, land and bread

Do not know about that one. Kid friendly may also entail some historical revisionism. Also the flag of the Russian federation would probably not wave over the Kremlin before the revolutions of 1917, though I am no expert.

Catchy song and love me some bread and peace, but what was the point of this again?

sherry cask speyside

Love this as well. There is no shame in being honest that you want something non-smokey, sweet and delicious. Islay scotch for example is IMO for people who are, after years of smoking like chimneys, without tastebuds.

Cannot find any source on this. Do you have a link?

Rich people are only smart insofar as they buy brains to think for them. The truth is that most economists and finance "experts" have really no clue how anything works, except for within a narrow paradigm which is the non-decaying period of capitalist exploitation.

The reason they are buying islands, bunkers and stuff is more of the essence that so is their primary stratagem: buy things you want, buy things you might need and buy contingencies to make potential problems go away.

I reverted my original downvote because it was not intentional. Then I looked through some of your other takes and intentionally voted it down because I thought you were in the wrong.

That being said, I need not careful nor do I really need to care whether or not you let anything "go". I appreciate that you want honest discussions, but policing other people's reactions is really just your reaction to someone else's content and does not help you attain your goal.

Actually, to be honest, I cannot remember so I assume I must have misclicked. However, it is maybe a little worrying that you monitor me and/or comment votes?

Could also be that I shut off my brain at some point. Your messaging is also not really super clear.

Thanks for the detailed elaboration! I have thought about putting up a game as a DM, but this aspect has been a little daunting since I feel some responsibility on making things fun lies on me. Nice to hear it is somewhat super illegally not not okay to do some on the fly balance corrections (even though I would never deny my players the fun of having a godlike stomp nor a terrifying encounter).

How do you go on from a player death? Is there in general some trick to balancing the need for risk-taking to be punishing without destroying the fun?

I get bit by a werewolf and sentenced for execution due to being a danger to society. For some reason they choose death by drowning and it turns out I cannot drown because I am a vampire. I then actually do not die because I am an undead.