Real World Event Discussions
John Kerry is a Socialist!
POSTED BY: Anarko
UPDATED: Thursday, October 28, 2004 23:37
VIEWED: 9610
PAGE 4 of 4
Friday, October 22, 2004 8:14 PM
Quote:
First, I won't argue the first part, as we have vastly different ideas on that scope from my take of you in your other posts
Hmmm... you've read my other posts then???
(*runs and hides*)
Re: infant mortality. It should be possible to re-cast USA infant mortality rate into the WHO model by deleting the <1000 g births from our stats. Unfortunately, I won't have the time to do this in the near future but then we would be able to compare USA to Scandinavian countries (which have developed socialist economies) to Cuba (which has an under-developed socialist economy).
BTW, I'm not blind to the problems of other healthcare systems. I hear a LOT about those UK waiting lists! But the problem is that Britain underfunds medicine terribly on a per capita basis. (Culturally, British docs also seem to have a tremendous god complex!).
I hear a LOT of complaints from the USA too. Some people get MAXIMAL care (child has a central line and is on total parentral nutrition, a trache, in and out of ICU for years mainlining antibiotics bc of mitochondrial disorder) while some people have NONE (similar case, child was sent home w/o even oxygen support or sufficient morphine to make the last few months more bearable).
You might say that if SOME people can afford maximal and alternate treatments, then clincial progress can be made in a "researchy" fashion. My experience has been mixed, but I think that oddly, parents comparing notes on the internet have advanced medicine farther than money.
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Getting back to the issue of "fairness". "Fair" isn't a term that I apply to nature for obvious and personal reasons. But there are processes in nature that smack of "fairness" and they are tied to (of all things) species survival.
If every individual animal were to compete with others of its own species strictly on the basis of might, the species would die out. There is a rough form of "justice" that says that if a species doesn't have enough inhibitions against killing its own vulnerable members (encumbered females and young) it terminates. This is especially true among social species, which have developed all kinds of non-lethal negotiations to resolve issues of status, protection, resources, cooperation, sex, friendship, hierarchy and so forth. The negotiations are flexible, they result in a non-instinctive culture.
In fact, there was a recent report of a baboon culture that did a complete 180 after their more aggressive male members died out from tuberculosis, and this culture has maintained itself despite the fact that new male baboons joined the tribe.
http://tigger.uic.edu/classes/psych/psych242/NYT,%20Baboon%20culture,%
204-13-04.doc
Now, if baboons can demonstrate behavioral flexibilty, what does this say about humans?
The point is that human behavior isn't driven by primal forces over which we have no control.
And oh drats, my lunch break is up!
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Saturday, October 23, 2004 12:55 AM
Or, to continue... our primal forces are not as one-sided (towards aggression and competition) as most people think they are. On balance, humans seem to be capable of a LOT of behaviors, and instituting "fairness" is one of them.
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