584 karma · joined May 15, 2023
Unfortunately we can't just throw money at every problem to fix it. There could be more effective avenues if we want to spend that minry though, revisiting the food our kids eat might be more effective at keeping our kids healthy for example.
Whether the decisions were bad is a matter of opinion, and it's not a given that union employees quiting in mass would kill the company instantly.
(personally I do agree the auto companies have acted in bad faith and would be screwed if these workers all quit, but we'll ever see that happen to know for sure)
Take away tax breaks, subsidies, and the concept of "too big to fail" and I can't imagine companies could ever get to the size of a modern auto manufacturer, tech company, bank, etc.
Again, this is why I asked how it was the race-based version of whitewashing rather than immediately going into a debate. I wanted to clarify my understanding and see if I missed anything before jumping down someone's throat, would have been nice to get the same courtesy here.
I may have simply misread the GP and picked the wrong meaning, but I was going with this definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/whitewashing-words-...
Assuming there aren't existing laws either protecting or prohibiting abortions, my read on this bill is that it is playing two roles.
It does establish a right to reproductive treatment and grant elgal protections to Healthcare workers providing it, I don't see this as an expansion of government powers as it is focused entirely on protecting the rights of the people. The state isn't really claiming any new ground there, and if anything is limiting it's own powers a bit by protecting individual health decisions.
The second part of the bill seems to get into an expansion of powers though. The state is granting itself the right to prohibit abortions after the treating physician deems a pregnancy viable, unless the physician believes the mother's life is at risk. Thats absolutely a expansion of government if there aren't currently any abortion bans in Ohio today, as the state otherwise hadn't claimed the power to ban abortions.
Given both in the same bill, my personal read on that would be the first section protecting freedoms is a political stunt to get the second part through. The state is leaving itself a backdoor of the definition of "viability" as well as the line for what level of life/heath risk to mother warrants a later term abortion. If passed, the state would also have the opportunity to try a case in court that challenges a treating physician's determination of either point, opening the door for case law that would effectively expand or refine the law based on the court's ruling.
tl;dr; I see this as the state protecting some rights while claiming more power under certain conditions. The line distinguishing the two is a gray area that the state has likely left poorly defined and/or can try to move later through case law rather than legislation.
A democracy of knowledge, if that is a thing, wouldn't require respecting anything anyone has ever believed. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy, where everyone may have the right to their opinion one vote doesn't decide anything. A democracy of knowledge would likely look more like scientific concensus where everyone doesn't have to agree but what is considered "fact" is really just what most people seem to agree they believe to be supported. Facts in that sense can change over time, can be built on assumptions or belief, and can have competing ideas held by others.
My original point really wasn't meant to say that both parties have the exact same view on any one specific political football, if that's how it came across then I explained myself poorly. My point was simply that, in my opinion, we've lost the classic left/right divide that was trying to find a balance between government powers and individual freedoms. Both parties in the US believe the government should have a say over nearly everything, from who you can love to what food you can eat. We don't have an option for a party that wishes to see keep government small by prioritizing individual rights. I may very well just misunderstand the core of the elft/right divide, but I was always led to believe that it came down to how big the government was, how much it spent, and what we can be told is/isn't allowed.
With regards to my point about abortion, it's much too detailed to put here and was probably an unhelpful distraction. But I don't see either party arguing that abortion should never be illegal, save for a few extremists both parties seem to agree that abortion should be illegal at some point and only disagree where that point is. Meaning, they disagree about whether that line is conception, birth, or sometime in between but both parties believe that they have the right to legislate what a pregnant mother can or can't do.
I was such a big advocate for the push to legalize gay marriage because the government has absolutely no business telling people who they can and can't marry, and the legal distinction caused ridiculous ripple effects in everything from healthcare to taxes for anyone that wasn't allowed to marry their partner.
At this point I guess the political debate would be that the government can, in fact, tell us who we're allowed to marry?
Its also worth noting that any concept we have written down is a bunch of made up shit, invented by people along the way to try to explain the world around us.
A separate, though just as divisive topic, is abortion rights. I've watched for 20+ years as each side screams across the aisle and yes they have different opinions but at the end of the day it has always seemed to me a battle over where to draw the line. Both sides support new legislation, and therefore new governmental reach, defining what a person can do with their body. They can't agree on when an unborn child is considered human and must be protected, but both sides want the government to tell us what we can or can't do.
Growing up in the 90s the parties were always pitched as big government vs small government, balanced budget vs spending for social causes, war hawks vs anti-war, etc. My opinion at this point is that we have two parties that are different in degree but not kind - both are pro-war, big government, money printing machines that have done a great job at keeping up a front of a two party system. This is why I say the left/right split seems lost here today, I don't see any divide in core principals driving the parties.
Granted, though, that for anyone who is a one or two issue voter there can be very different policies that would push one to either side.
I'd argue that's the main reason for not making a law though, if it's too complicated for the average person to read and understand where the line is drawn then we shouldn't draw it.
To me both parties look very much the same though. Both parties are fine spending trillions in deficit each year, both have championed foreign wars, both push policies to grow the government, both have parties have been terrible with regards to human rights at the border.
Sure they debate specific policies, but even then it's often a debate of where to draw the line rather than whether it should be drawn at all.
I've seen some really compelling research looking into diet changes that may impact risk of skin cancer, specifically an increase in saturated fats helping to reduce risk. The idea is that saturated fats are envloved in the process of your body turning UV into vitamin D. With more saturated fats in your system the UV has effectively has a job and is processed by the body.
My point is simply that the body is complex, cancer generally develops over years, and trying to narrow down a common link strong enough to claim causation is tricky if not impossible.
Epidemiological studies tracking humans over time aren't controlled and will at best show a correlation worth studying, lab animal studies aren't great analogs given all the confounding factors and environmental differences with humans in real life, and unless the cancer causing agent acts quickly a controlled human study is likely impossible as controlling variables over years simply won't happen at scale.
Also the idea that visible light should be banned because radiation is an asinine argument meant to just badger without actually making a point.
I would be surprised if the grid + new battery storage could handle so much peak-y demand being added to it, but I've been surprised before!
The challenges of supporting a nation of EV is entirely different than gasoline/diesel. Storage of electricity isn't as simple as burrying a large tank, and when everyone stops for gas at the same time it has no impact on the electric grid.
We already have growing pains in our electric grid, those would only get worse with surging use as vehicles charge. If the existing grid may not work and storage is impractical, what's left?
Unfortunately this isn't limited to conspiracy theories. We spent the better part of the years with leaders and scientists forcing similarly baseless explanations down or throat rather than taking the time to collect the data that actually supported the politically favorable talking points. There were countless fantasies made up to explain the risks of the specific virus, efficacy of masks, net benefit of vaccination, etc.
I agree though, removing subsidies would destroy many of the farms that exist today. It's a prime example of the risks of welfare programs, they are presumably all run with very good intentions but in this case the industry is so wholly dependent on the subsidies that we can't remove them. The problem there is a broken system can only be propped up so many times, and the more you pile on top of it the worse it is when it finally collapses.
Hopefully people wiser than me can orchestrate a soft landing here, because I can't personally see how we safely transition our food industry off the centralized, subsidized model.