I must say, the lack of ... rage ... on this article surprising.
I would expect there to be a leaked list of names of the executives responsible for this, with pictures and home addresses. I would expect people protesting in front of their homes 24 hours per day. And covering their cars with rotten eggs when they went out.
That's the kind of thing that would have happened in France.
From what I understand, the US culture is one in which it is generally considered the fault of someone for being unable to pay for their own healthcare and living circumstances. Because there is the sentiment that it is possible to not be oppressed through one's personal power, cleverness, and considerate behavior, the people who claim to be oppressed are actually lazy, stupid, and inconsiderate.
You can see this whenever someone claims that they individually were able to climb out of poverty but know other people who, through their own stupidity or ignorance or bad luck, were not able to- and therefore less sympathy should be garnered to the whole of impoverished americans as there exists a subset that is comfortable leeching off the extremely poor social safety net that exists.
In short, a poor person egging a rich person's car would be seen as an aggressive, unprovoked action on the poor person, and the poor person should focus their efforts on being less poor instead. That the egger is focusing instead on protesting is an evidence of their screwed up priorities.
> From what I understand, the US culture is one in which it is generally considered the fault of someone for being unable to pay for their own healthcare and living circumstances. Because there is the sentiment that it is possible to not be oppressed through one's personal power, cleverness, and considerate behavior, the people who claim to be oppressed are actually lazy, stupid, and inconsiderate.
That is not "US culture". Those are the beliefs of an unfortunately sizeable minority. Even then, it is generally only directed at "the other" and is really veiled racism. Do not take the rhetoric of certain political factions at face value or as a representation of "US culture".
I agree it's probably a minority who would put it in such harsh terms as the comment you're responding to, but the underlying sentiment is more a part of American culture than many other places.
For instance, the values of meritocracy and self-determination are deeply ingrained in the US mythos, beginning from "All men are created equal" and "the pursuit of happiness" in the declaration of independence.
Since moving to Europe, the difference in the concept of individual credit/responsibility is one of the largest cultural differences I have felt.
indeed there are the stories of people who have managed to raise themselves from poverty and gone on to be CEO, and it is possible if all the dominoes line up, there will always be the exception where this occurs, in general the odds are not in your favour. I can't help but think if the line from the hunger games - may the odds be ever in your favor.
This is absolutely the story of the American ideal. We're a nation of Horatio Algers -- the quintessential "rags to riches" story.
Poverty, in the US, is a personal shame, not a systemic failure. The successful end result of centuries of propagandizing in favor of the Individual, and against organizing. We're a fractured people, to our detriment.
Exactly. Capitalist societies take what was considered a public good, and attempt to forcefully privatize it to every individual. And then, when the individual is bad at doing it because of institutional forces against them, they are blamed individually for the failing.
> You can see this whenever someone claims that they individually were able to climb out of poverty
Oh yes. Horatio Alger (0) stories are commonplace within capitalist societies. It's one of the bedtime stories we tell each other, that with enough hard work, and some luck, you will succeed... Except for that mound of people whom worked till they died. We'll just ignore them. They were, uhh, lazy, and didn't deserve to live with the fruits of their labor.
> ...but know other people who, through their own stupidity or ignorance or bad luck, were not able to- and therefore less sympathy should be garnered to the whole of impoverished americans
Yep. Nailed it. Because there's a person who with combination of hard work, community/friendship networks, and luck, was able to climb out. So everybody who isn't, is just lazy and dumb and doesn't deserve to be helped.
> as there exists a subset that is comfortable leeching off the extremely poor social safety net that exists.
I'd also argue that the very "poor social safety net" doesn't even accomplish helping people. It only maintains a very sad, horrible, brutish life. And given its tremendously regressive practices, also enforces either illegal actions OR keeps people down in poverty.
exactly: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck
The story Radicalized in the recent Cory Doctorow collection of the same name is about a forum on which victims of insurance shenanigans get radicalized. When I read it the biggest surprise to me was that it hasn't happened yet. I've never had any issues with health care or insurance, but can easily imagine the impact it must have on someone.
> I would expect there to be a leaked list of names of the executives responsible for this, with pictures and home addresses. I would expect people protesting in front of their homes 24 hours per day.
That's how you end up with dead people. It's the difference between journalism/civilised discussion and cesspools like twitter/fb threads, we should present facts, not opinions or call for violence.
No matter how fucked up these things are you don't want to lower yourself to their standards, you'll lose all grounds for discussion.
What does "losing all grounds for discussion" mean? Discussion with who? The decision makers responsible? How are we discussing anything with them now? Nobody knows their names, or at least not enough people do. What is the value of discussion with them anyway? Are we going to talk them out of being absolute bottom-feeding assholes?
To be clear I am not advocating vigilante mobs of any sort. I would like to see these people's homes with protesters in front though.
I think we agree on the goal, not on the methods. It took decades for these companies to become what they are. If you listen to some people you should just burn them to the ground and go personal vendetta mod on their executives.
What I'm saying is that we should be careful about how we do it, because in fine the "how" is as import as the "why". Things don't happen in a vacuum, you have to deconstruct them and get to the root causes, otherwise you're just rushing to another failed system. Let's say you manage to get the execs out, what do you think will happen ? The new ones will turn everything 180 degrees and sell drugs at loss ? No, why ? Because the whole system is tweaked for profit.
Every time health pops up on HN, the majority of Americans defend their system and criticise the European way. There is a bit of a cognitive dissonance here, people can't expect a private/for profit company to do the right thing when it comes to public health. On top of that the demographic of people who voted Trump very much intersects with the one needing cheap health care, it clearly indicates that people are voting against their own interests in term of health, that alone would hint that there is a much bigger thing going on than "greedy execs control everything".
I think there's a lot of room between "we can't know their names lest any of them get inconveniently shamed" and "burn them to the ground".
But yes, I agree with the rest of what you're saying at least partially. Root causes are important, I just think there's a danger of going from that principle to never actually doing anything because we're looking for one more link in the chain and ignoring the assholes right in front of us.
It's the civilized discussion of the past that has created this problem, and you're right, dead people are the result.
The only solution that works every time is for enough of us get angry and voice that anger in concrete ways that shame and vilify those captains of industry (and henchman politicians) who blithely choose to harm other people because there's more profit in it than giving a damn.
Herein lies a big problem I have with the current culture in the US. We celebrate our independence (July 4th is right around the corner) but we do not celebrate the choices that led to it. A person can barely even hint at the cost of such social change without crossing the lines of what society now deems acceptable discourse.
I am having a hard time to see how I can tell people who can no longer afford lifesaving medicine due to profit maximization to value a civil discussion culture higher then their survival. Or differently put to value my principles higher then their survival. And that is the current situation, a decades long discussion about how the right to profit trumps peoples survival. And that situation has a running tab in the form of people dying so that people profiting on that misery and despair are not confronted with the consequences of their actions. All of this not even touching the problem of neutrality in a life or death situation of out powered people. Desmond Tutus mouse and elephant come to mind.
> I am having a hard time to see how I can tell people who can no longer afford lifesaving medicine due to profit maximization to value a civil discussion culture higher then their survival.
Tell them to act in a civilised way and to not vote for Trump who clearly stated his stance on public health.
The individuals might not survive that long. Or might not quietly accepts the situation if the majority votes for Trump regardless. I understand that dying quietly would be less of a hassle but dying on easily preventable causes rarely is friction less.
I would also suggest asking yourself why you view protests outside of peoples houses less civilized then them condemning people to death to make a bigger profit.
If you haven't ever done so, please go and read 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail', by Martin Luther King, Jr. I won't try and quote any relevant sections here, as it is far better to read the whole thing;
Yes, it works where the protest culture is already in place. You can't ask Americans to do the same, someone will inevitably bring a gun and it'll go south very fast, as it happens almost daily in all sort of public demonstrations, peaceful or not, in the US.
There is no points of comparison between the US and France when it comes to protests. LA riots, black panthers, vs may 68 and yellow jackets...
Regarding LA riots, black panthers, vs may 68 and yellow jackets, there's a world (an ocean?) of differences between the reasons which lead to each of the events, with the situation of blacks in America having nothing to do with the situation in France today and the same with the start of the LA riots vs the start of May 68.
>No matter how fucked up these things are you don't want to lower yourself to their standards, you'll lose all grounds for discussion.
This is the classic centrist liberalism argument that we have to maintain civility at all costs.
The time for civility was back when the drug companies were doing things like pushing bad legislation (that didn't directly hurt people) or the like.
The time for civility is over. People are dying because drug companies are too greedy and unregulated. The only way to get them to stop being utter vacuous wastes of oxygen is, in the long term, regulation. But in the short term? Harass the fuck out of them. I have exactly zero sympathy for the pharma execs that are profiteering off human misery.
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not what the site is for. Worse, it destroys what it is for (curiosity), so we ban accounts that do it. If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd be grateful. There's more explanation here:
I mean it depends on the context, right? I just mean that generally speaking, when there is nothing forcing people to be decent, it is clearly not simply enough for "wow this is morally reprehensible" to be a deterrent.
For profiteering off generic medication, I think some sort of subsidized natural monopoly producing and selling generics would work. Clearly, there isn't enough profit in the generics to make money off them without acting in a malicious anti-competitive manner, so incentivizing it otherwise must be necessary in a market system.
Alternatively, have a purely nationalized "company" that's funded by taxpayers and "sells" generics at cost. I think the value to society of cheap, readily available generics make this worth it even if it's not something that could survive in the market.
I work in biotech/pharma, and not all of us are greedy sacks of shit as some people seem to think. I'm not an exec and cant speak to their ethics broadly, but like any industry where people make big bucks you have greedy asshole-y people here too. But coming back to regulation, the FDA's primary mandate is the safety of the populace, its not to create economic incentives or disincentives. The FDA has been slowly increasing the standard required for compliance, which in turn raises the operational cost to ensure safety/efficacy/reliability/etc (obviously a very good thing IMO) but that in turn has also increased both the incidence and the cost of failure. When one product that sucked up a cool 10-50M of capital fails, the company has to recoup the cost elsewhere. Of course nobody wants to take a haircut themselves, so they just bump up the prices. I think a lot of this has to do with the ways companies in general pretty much have to absorb market risk to give a false sense of stability to their workforce. Maybe if our corporate system were structured where it was OK to fail, people might be less inclined to mask the failure on the balance sheet to please Wall Street.
>Alternatively, have a purely nationalized "company" that's funded by taxpayers and "sells" generics at cost. I think the value to society of cheap, readily available generics make this worth it even if it's not something that could survive in the market.
Well, maybe.. I'll keep an open mind but when has the government done anything cheaply or efficiently? They will have to sub-contract at-least some parts of it out just like they do with weapons or infrastructure or other projects. Government contractors are going to milk the system with their '$100 screwdriver' invoices.
> This is the classic centrist liberalism argument
Is this the step 1 of the identity politics game ? Paint someone as X Y Z and be done ? In what world being civilised is constrained to "classic centrist liberals" ?
All politics is identity politics. Putting "identity" in front of it is a weasel word to deflect, as you've just done.
My point still stands. Remaining civilized at all costs in the face of incivility is as insane as trying to calmly debate someone as they are in the process of murdering you.
"I would expect people protesting in front of their homes 24 hours per day. And covering their cars with rotten eggs when they went out."
Honestly that would be letting them off too easy, they need to be dragged in front of a court and be made to explain their behavior to the loved ones of victims that had died from this. They also need to be sentenced to a few thousand hours of first hand volunteer work that directly deals with people impacted by this. Seeing first hand the cost of their greed might knock some sense in to these people, if that won't I'm not sure what will.
I would expect there to be a leaked list of names of the executives responsible for this, with pictures and home addresses. I would expect people protesting in front of their homes 24 hours per day. And covering their cars with rotten eggs when they went out.
That's the kind of thing that would have happened in France.