I have a Greek friend who's family goes into the mountains and picks it. There is no market infrastructure in the villages, similar to how venison is expensive at a restaurant, yet poor rural hunters kill and eat it all the time.
1,162 karma · joined November 23, 2019
I used them as baseline to consider local costs.
I was uninsured and asked the local hospitals and surgeon what the prices were going to be. I did qualify for assistance. I paid my surgeon pronto($2,600) and had to wait for the hospital to approve my assistance application.
The anesthesiologist(which I hadn't anticipated, thought that was going to be in the hospital bill) told me to pay $35 dollars to keep my $1,800 bill from going to collections. Once I showed them the approval from the hospital, they would accept that and reduce it to $180.
After calling the hospital constantly to get the bill reduced, 6 months later they told me they were waiting to see if I qualified for Medicaid, which I was no where near qualifying for and never requested. I just had their standard financial assistance reduction from about $18,000 to $6,000.
In the mean time, my anesthesia bill made it to collections for the full amount. Because.
I tried initially to get all my ducks in a row. I tried to pay everyone. Ultimately, I only paid the surgeon the full amount.
The medical groups will write off the difference between what they billed and what they sold my debt for. This will reduce their "revenue". I won't ever pay them. Bye bye credit.
Cash is King.
Edit: I knew going in what the prices were and two of the three parties fumbled the process of payment. Those two didn't get paid because I was frustrated.
A key thing to note here is that the US government typically holds shorter term notes which have much lower yields than their 10y counterpart.
Most whom I talk to think the president causes inflation, seemingly out of thin air. They are not able to articulate how inflation actually happens via money printing. They support the majority of the spending items, but cannot connect the dots.
The fed is in a bind. Print and inflate or QT/rate hike and recession. They've been putting a thread through the eye of the needle. The eye is getting smaller and the thread bigger everyday. One day they won't be able to sew.
That's when I started getting notifications to get the pro version every once and a while, even though I had bought the thank you for $15. It would have been nice to get grandfathered. I was and still am thankful. They are great apps for me.
Law is not this simple. What the layperson understands as "the law" is what is written in statutes. To a lesser extent they understand case law is a thing. Case law is the interpretation of statutes by judges and juries ruling on cases. A judge or jury can "ignore" the law. By ignoring it, that becomes "the law".
"The law" is a matter of statutes, case law, prosecutor's opinion, judge's opinion, and popular opinion. As we age, we learn more about what is acceptable in society based on all these things.
Jury nullification can be a reflection of popular opinion. It is equally as flawed as any other aspect of society and government that forms "the law".
There are stupid statutes, case law, and situations that nullification can protect the citizens from a potential overreach of government.
> Lonnie Golden, a labor economist at Penn State, said in survey after survey, American workers tend to say that making more money is a higher priority than having access to more paid time off
This is close to answering the question, however, it does not address why there is no national PTO law. It explains why workers do not take time off.
> Beyond that, Golden said, there’s always been an American discomfort with leisure and time off, and a cultural bias to display our commitment to work as a sign of status.
This is closer. As with the first example, this is just explaining why individuals choose not to take time off.
The answer is the USA is reluctant to put mandates on employers that would interfere with free association of entities due to our founding being largely influenced by the idea that individuals should be free to make contracts between others. The federal government is also limited in the constitution to only regulating interstate commerce. There are of course many examples where the federal government has ignored this thanks mostly to Wickard v. Filburn (1948).
One scientist learned that smog was a result of automobile emissions as early as 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arie_Jan_Haagen-Smit). That was 56 years after automobiles were first produced. Shortly thereafter, the Federal government started tackling the issue in 1955 (https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/evolution-clean-a...). Why would companies invest in cleaner emissions if the government was going to make mandates that would throw a wrench in their investments? It has been better for them to wait and see what they have to do. They were never given the chance to self regulate.
> Why did they lobby against pollution reduction
For the same reasons I mentioned previously. Arbitrary fees and regulations can stifle the natural advancement. The patent in this case shows that they were working on reducing CO2 emissions which would benefit them in the long run as ICE engines would be cleaner. As such, they would be better competition to future electric competitors. Hence, more oil being purchased for their bottom line.
If they spend money and time lobbying and paying fees, that is money that is not spent on productive activities. Furthermore, it costs consumers more to purchase their product. This cost to consumers restricts their ability to invest in themselves and their future. Little Johnny wants to go to school to study clean nuclear fusion? Too bad, Ma & Pa have been paying more for goods and services for 18 years. Little Johnny will have to flip burgers instead.
Is the depletion of oil and gas reserves not enough incentive? They will not last forever. In the grand scheme of things it is a small amount of time before we have to convert to nuclear, solar, hydro, and wind or start burning trees en masse again. As the resources are depleted, the price will go up due to limited supply. That price increase will spur R&D.
Humans inherently seek technological advancements. We have been extracting CO2 from the environment from our very beginnings. Cheap energy allows us to do more research and development to escape the carbon dependency. Fees could potentially incentivize the right person at the right time to develop an escape. Depending on that is as much a hope as I have for free market incentives. We're both hoping here.
Here is one example:
>Patent records reveal oil companies actively pursued research into technologies to cut carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change from the 1960s – including early versions of the batteries now deployed to power electric cars such as the Tesla.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/20/oil-company...
Add my 87 year old grandmother to that list. Firefox->email, youtube, kroger, banking etc. These days most users just need access to a web browser via their OS.
This is what kept me playing for so long. I eventually played solo trying to find better loot when bnet dried up. There is now an active community on discord and plenty of people playing devilutionx. If you have a hankering for Diablo 1 community nostalia, I have over 700 links to current and archived Diablo 1 fanpages on my website https://mgpat-gm.github.io