acomar

that prevents you from assigning null to a non-nullable reference. does it also error if you dereference a nullable reference without first checking if it's null?

This is the opposite of my experience. In practice, being forced to deal with edge cases makes you find implementations that eliminate them because dealing with each is painful.

That's nonsensical and ahistorical. Anarchism is the opposition to unjust hierarchy, those relationships that put some people over others and prioritizes their needs or whims. The liberal democratic state is one such hierarchical institution but far from the only one. Anarchists seek to replace the governance of people with the administration of things. How we ought to organize society for justice, for liberty, is the fundamental question anarchists seek to answer. That there are so many different tendencies (syndicalists, mutualists, Marxists, etc.) reveals that there are many answers.

Three men own the majority of wealth in the US by themselves. It's exactly the same kind of thing. Except instead of "ennoblement", we tell ourselves that we can strike it big and join those at the top.

That's a roughly 10% increase over last year in the relative rate of participation:

   (38195-27478)/(103811)*100 = 10.32%

Comparing two percentages directly like that, while intuitive, misses trends in relatively small subsets of the larger population.

To live in a world where markets can be perfectly efficient and everyone happy because we stop staking the lives of people to their worth as determined by the market.

> If it wasn't 'net positive' not only would we not be having this conversation over the 'internet' - we'd still be in the dark ages.

The internet was developed by Darpa so I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here. Competition did not produce the internet, and the telecommunications industry, which came about after as a commercialization project, has serious issues which make this an even harder argument to make.

> complete freedom of capital to nudge the will of the people.

"Nudge" is far too weak of a verb, here. There are many structural issues between the population and exercising their will, and many structural advantages that allow capital to exert undue pressure on the political process. These advantages and dis-advantages are inherent to our system and have been described at length in academia.

> and turned it into a political argument about the primarily financial concern of school choice?

A conversation about social media and its effect on people and our culture is political from the get-go. Having conversations that don't touch on politics is hard and be careful when you think you've succeeded. Folks are absolutely right to point out the consequences of voucher program when they're presented as a solution to problems.

That is, I agree with you here:

> But let's not pretend that they address these emotional concerns that are causing more and more teens to shy away from social media. It's just silliness to do that.

but want to caution people to think twice when they believe a discussion isn't political because it almost always is, technology included.

> If they pay bonuses to themselves, then their premiums will be higher than other insurance companies so they would lose customers, the same that stops any other business from doing the same.

This might stand up in a highly competitive market, but even there you have network effects, and asymmetric power/information issues, that keep it from ever being completely true. In a market like health insurance where large fractions of people get their coverage from their employers who make choices for their employees, it's not really credible to say that high premiums will drive an insurance company out of the market. Moreover, the data bears out that premiums, profits, and executive compensation are all increasing while the overall cost of our healthcare as a nation spirals out of control.

> And since taxpayer funded healthcare is off the table in the US, we have to work with what we can.

If you expect elected officials to fix it by writing them letters and angry comments on the internet, well, yes. But campaigning and petitioning are not the only routes to accomplishing political goals. The teachers' union/wildcat strikes across states with unified Republican control of the government that successfully forced wage and funding increases, despite timid unions that wanted to push for less, should be an indication of what actually works. We don't have to accept the system as it is.

> The biggest problem with health insurance right now is everyone is not forced to use healthcare.gov so the risk pools don't have the correct distribution of healthy and unhealthy people.

That's a problem in that will cause premiums to spiral faster and eventually shutter those insurance pools. But that's a slow death. The largest problem in health insurance right now are the actual, living people being forced across the country to either suffer or die from solvable medical problems, people who are rationing medication because they cannot afford to buy more, people who are being forced into bankruptcy by a broken system. When lives are already being destroyed today, a patch that prevents the rate of lives from being destroyed from increasing quite so quickly is nice, but it quite clearly misses the forest for the trees.

Right, they have less incentive to negotiate for lower rates, because higher rates mean higher premiums, and higher premiums mean higher executive compensation.

There's a lot to unpack here. First, neither party has the trust of the working class, whatever the rhetoric. Second, the candidate that talked about fixing the system, including healthcare, won -- that he was actually talking about breaking it further gets lost in the discourse around both candidates. There's a longer discussion to be had about how to build trust and what can be done about broken political systems, but it's not the parties that can act on that at this moment.

It will take something like the union/wildcat teachers' strikes, that forced Republican majorities with unified control of state governments to raise wages and increase funding, to do anything about healthcare or the many other structural challenges we face as a nation.

That's exactly the circumstance I outlined previously. This plan has you taking the debts of somebody who cannot afford to pay, reducing them to something above the actual cost, then asking them to pay the higher amount. You are making money from the least able to pay and profiting from a system driving people into bankruptcy. I cannot imagine starting such a company without serious empathy issues.

I've suddenly started seeing this take all over the place and I have no idea where it comes from because it doesn't make sense. That the insurance companies profit margins are restricted means rather little because executive pay isn't capped: if they earn too much money, they can simply pay bonuses to raise their expenses. Or cut shareholders a check. Or. Or. Or. Tangentially, this is why "non-profit" doesn't mean what people think it means.

And despite what caps exist (can you point me to resources on this topic?), the industry is enjoying record profits right now. That's not to say hospitals aren't as well, but I'm puzzled that so many people seem to want to point the fingers at doctors. Doctors and nurses actually provide the care. If there's anyone I'm less worried about making a little more, it's the people actually doing the work. The administrators and the corporations that set and negotiate prices with the insurance companies though... I'm with you there.

Lastly, the incentives of insurance companies do not align with the patients unless you ignore most of how the industry works. Insurance companies make money when they're able to deny you coverage or require you to pay more out of pocket (in vs out of network). That doesn't align with patients at all.

There should not be a profit incentive in health insurance.

For what? Lay out a business plan in this area for me that doesn't take money from the worst off.

You joke, and the OP is possibly joking as well, but this is a reality for a lot of people... Their poverty freezes them out of the credit system, they lack health insurance, etc.

Poverty in the US has gotten so bad in some places that it rivals the worst of Africa[0][1].

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-st... [1]: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...

> Why the fuck isn't there a law against this kind of shit?

There's a pretty clear answer to this question almost every single time it's asked... the people who benefit are wealthy and the people hurt are poor. The latter structurally lack the ability to fight it or lobby their congresspeople to change the law to help them. Until a mass movement steps forward to say "no, we will not tolerate this", nothing can possibly change. We have no recourse but each other and collective action.

Crucially, that's only true if you have the money and time to fight. For the people hurt worst by the system, they lack some or all of: knowledge that they can fight it, money with which to fight it (or again, knowledge that a lawyer will take it pro bono), and the time with which to fight it and not work one or more jobs. I know people on this forum are relatively well off, but everyone reading this should try to put themselves in the shoes of someone working multiple jobs, trying to take care of a sick family member, and facing predatory companies trying to bilk them for all they're worth.

That the government will protect you, in theory, is not the same thing as in practice.

Yea, but to hire a medical billing advocate, you need: 1) knowledge/information that they exist and that hospital bills are BS, and 2) money to pay the advocate AND the reduced bill. If the final bill is $800 and the advocate gets a cut of the savings, how many people in dire straights are likely to be able to afford that? Keep in mind, most Americans don't have 1k in savings, living pay check to pay check because they have no choice. Facing a 100k bill, people are more likely to wait for the collector to show up and then declare bankruptcy, facing damage to their already poor credit, garnishment of already subsistence wages, etc..

I'm much less worried about the folks who pay it anyway than I am about the folks whose lives are destroyed by an industry predating on people in the worst of circumstances.

There are a few sites that won't accept this and won't even accept a Google Voice/VOIP number because they do some kind of check. Very frustrating.

I'm a prison abolitionist. Your reply could not possibly fall on ears that care less about your point.

Your analysis completely ignores power structures inside the US. Try to oppose the prison industry, in reality not theory, and get back to me. This is a fight I'm actively involved in. I'm literally an activist and trying to end this mistreatment. You're wrong, but the reason you're wrong isn't your intent. It's the way people assume you're right and ignore the darker sides of capitalism. The truth is that it doesn't matter what the public supports or doesn't. Prisoner slavery exists because it makes people money and it will continue to exist until it does not.

Maybe we should rehabilitate criminals in some fashion that doesn't involve indentured servitude or putting them in cages and reserve the latter only for those who cannot be rehabilitated. Trying to argue that forced labor is more humane is morally bankrupt from the get-go. That it's being made by people with a literal financial incentive to see the system not change only underscores that point.

That exception literally exists to provide a means to cheap labor... It's not accidental. Notice how many laws disproportionately target black people (always in their enforcement and effect, it would be illegal if it were in the text of the law), like drug prohibition, and you start to see a pattern that looks a whole lot like intent. We abolished slavery but we weren't ready to end white supremacy and our laws reflect that. The Civil Rights act was followed closely by the War on Drugs. We deny voting rights and job prospects to felons, enslave them while they're incarcerated, and keep them in an underclass that has few opportunities specifically to ensure they can re-enter the criminal justice system. Is it any wonder that we have the highest per-capita rates of imprisonment?

It's horrifying when you start to see the whole process in its entirety and doubly so when you realize how much money is generated through the system. Criminal justice reform is incredibly difficult to actually pass as a result.

People react when they face an issue that affects them. Tone policing like this says nothing but that you value the appearance of civility more than you do the harm people are complaining about. This is a fairly trivial example. But this is the same mentality that goes into telling NFL players not to kneel, so it's worth calling out.

When you focus on style instead of substance you draw attention away from the core of an issue. It's an effective tactic when it's what you want to do, but anyone who wants to use it should stop and think about why they want to obscure the point instead of addressing it directly. If it's because you don't have a valid objection, perhaps you don't have a stake in the discussion and you should think twice about entering it. Digressions that address the civility of the participants always serve to defend the status quo. Is it a status quo worth defending?

Doctor's pay is not the driving factor behind increasing medical bills... administrative expenses at providers in insurance, opaque and arcane cost structures negotiated as deals between providers and insurance companies, and record profits at both insurance companies and providers point to a system that's cannibalizing itself. This will do nothing to costs even if implemented universally as it does nothing to address the actual causes of rising medical expenses.

Honestly, what's worked best for me is buying a book on the topic I'm interested in, and just working through it methodologically. The most difficult thing has been checking my work since answer manuals are difficult to come by. If I'm really unsure, I'll try and find an appropriate group to post a question to. I'm mostly interested in algebra, category theory, and topology, so it's difficult to just ask a computer to check my work for me.

> Interestingly enough, this starts to bring up questions that have previously only been super active in science fiction circles, particularly, Star Trek: If you can perfectly recreate something down to the molecular level, what actually has value? (Assuming, someday, that synthetic versions are excessively cheap, in Star Trek's case.)

This is really getting at a core contradiction in how we analyze value. On the one hand, you have something's monetary value. This is the exchange value - the value you can get, denominated in a currency, via a sale. On the other hand, something you need has value because it fulfills a role when you use it. This is use value.

We don't consider use value at all when talking about the value of a good and consider the exchange value to be paramount. But this makes no sense. When you're starving, a loaf of bread is quite literally worth your entire world. When you have plenty of food, one more loaf of bread is worth almost nothing at all. When you need to get around, one car is extremely useful. Hundreds of cars together are essentially worthless, except perhaps to rent to others (literally rent-seeking).

If you can recreate something down to its molecular level, and produce arbitrarily many copies, then it's only value can be its use value. And use value is difficult to quantify as it's tied to the subjective experience of need.

> If you can replicate cooked food perfectly, will people still claim that "real" food, grown, slaughtered, and cooked, is "better" or tastes "more authentic", despite no technical difference?

I suspect that some amount of this comes from our attempts to justify the price we pay. It costs more, and so it must be worth more. We invent reasons in our minds to justify the dissonance. Though, if you experience something better, there isn't really any argument that can satisfactorily say that you don't, since experience is subjective, anyway.

You're looking for Feynman's Lectures on Physics. It's a 3 volume set (and accompanying audiovisuals are available on youtube) that gets at exactly this kind of thinking.

For example, the double slit experiment came out of a really simple question. Bullets seem to behave like particles, waves in water, like waves. Light seems to behave like a wave, as well. But we know from other experiments that sometimes it behaves like a particle (Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect demonstrates why). In fact, you can show that the diffraction of light is due to the behavior of light through a single slit, with spacing set appropriately for its wavelength. But what happens when you try to put electrons through? I don't think anyone expected the results. They're unintuitive and rightly stunning. But it was trying to understand the weird particle/wave duality of light that led to the result on electrons and subsequently other particles. The books go into a lot more detailed on the variants of the experiment people tried to try and understand the incredible results they were getting, like varying the rate at which particles were going through, adding detectors, etc..

A constant function doesn't act on its input. `f(x) = 6` doesn't perform a different action on each input. But given your comparison to `f(x) = 0*x + 6`, let's move away from numbers and consider a different function. `f'` which I'll define as:

    const :: a -> b -> a
    const a _ = a
    
    f' :: a -> ()
    f' = const ()

Now I can give `f'` anything at all. Can you try to explain the action of `f'` in any way but that it ignores its argument?