Yep, like many things with this country, when you keep digging instead of finding the inevitable reasonable explanation you find that it just gets stupider.
Zink
joined 2 years ago
Pointing out that "free" healthcare is actually paid for by somebody is seen as a killer gotcha in the conservative world. They assume that as soon as somebody learns that they are paying money into taxes that benefit other people, they will also flip out and fight tooth and nail to stop it.
Keep pushing and they might hit you with another zinger, like how the US is not a democracy, it's a republic! 🤯
Ooh, I have not read this and it sounds pretty good. Just got lost reading a couple pages of it. Thanks for the link!
To that I say, welcome to Lemmy!
if that person thinks maybe they should get a portion of their payments back too
I think every one of them assumes they will never get a cent of that money back. They do live in America, after all, the land of "fuck you; got mine."
Change the legislation to give every living person back every cent they ever paid towards student loans, and many opinions would change.
The Republican party would still be completely against it though, so we'd still have millions of boot lickers out there arguing to hurt their own financial situation in order to please their superiors.
I jumped through hoops decades ago to get tested for ADHD and did not get the diagnosis based on my good performance on the cognitive tests, plus some of my wife's questionnaire answers not seeming severe enough.
I finally started Adderall here in my 40s thank freaking god.
It is taught and conditioned behavior, and that conditioning can be deep. The answer may never get any more satisfying than that.
I'm a middle aged white guy raised in 80s and 90s white conservative america. Looking at somebody trying to do something good for themselves or others and thinking "what a dumbass/asshole" feels as natural as breathing when that's how the role models in your life have always acted.
And the fun part with that conditioning is that some of the knee-jerk reaction feelings still get sent out from those tangled old neurons.
I have actually made comments very similar to yours. Basically how phones are a technological marvel but are ruined by greed.
Me thinking about what an arcology would be like when I was playing the hot new game Sim City 2000: "Imagine the technology in these things, and maybe they're an important option for human expansion if propulsion technology doesn't make huge leaps, and oh maybe with some really good deep geothermal for power they can be so land area efficient..."
Me thinking what an arcology would be like when I exist in 2025: "Yeah they were pretty coo- wait... What about the governments? What about the corporations that build and administrate these things and employ people? Are all those entities even distinct from one another? This isn't a post scarcity Star Trek techno heaven, it is a real world Final Fantasy 7 shit pie with the haves living literally on top of the have-nots. No, no, forget that, these things are going to destroy the mental health of the people in them even before we add the evils of modern society!!"
Does that affect the ordinary day of somebody living there though? If their daily grind of home, work, groceries, school, etc switched from being car trips to being walks, it should still improve their life.
If they're already going out of town to find fun attractions on the weekends it occasional evenings, that part of their routine won't change much.
Funny enough, if somebody offers you insurance that builds cash value, even though the sound of it does make sense you should probably run.
That general approach was so common. It really is sad.
One of the really bad effects of modern society (american especially) has been conditioning us to think of ourselves as these independent entities separate from nature and from our actual physical communities & people. We just interact with those things when we require their resources, etc. Transactional relationships happen.
One effect of this is, of course, not being considerate to those around you. But as your example shows, some people are so bad about it that it's not even a question of deciding whether to choose their own convenience over the safety of others. Considering the risk to others never enters the picture in the first place. When asked about it they would answer something like "my health is my concern, their health is their concern, and it's also none of my business." Said politely and without malice. It's just ingrained that deep.