People dealing with opioid addiction, pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions should see a health professional to get a prescription for FDA-approved treatments, Hays said.

There’s a reason so many people don’t go the approved route, and instead try self medicating. It’s because our healthcare system is run by insurance and pharmaceutical companies, who care only about maximizing profits.

Seeing a health professional in the US means first getting insurance, which can be its own baffling ordeal, then finding an in network doctor, then spending an hour waiting for the doctor so you can spend 5 or 10 minutes with them (probably being lectured), then, assuming they take your mental health concerns seriously, they’ll just prescribe you a drug anyway. If it’s between that and going down to the gas station and getting a bottle of momentary relief, I get why many people choose the gas station elixir.

“Democrats must be bold and meet this moment,” he said. “This is the urgent work in front of us: to stand up to authoritarianism, to protect care and dignity, and to make life better for the people who count on us.”

Sure, Democrats, be bold. Meet the moment. Stand up to authoritarianism…then immediately fold, faster than Superman on laundry day. But, I don’t doubt you will succeed at making life better for the people who count on you, who are of course your donors, and other elites and oligarchs.

I stopped buying consoles and moved pretty much exclusively to Steam because it gives me many more options. Thankfully, I don’t think that’s changing anytime soon. Consoles are great for some people, but I need more flexibility. I sometimes wish I could (legally) play Nintendo first party games, but it’s really not that big of a deal.

Nintendo has spent decades building an extremely loyal, multigenerational consumer base. They also release very popular, high quality games. I have no interest in owning a Switch, but I get why so many people do.

No body wants that.

Somebody must want it, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. And that’s fine. People want what they want, I don’t think it’s mine, or anyone else’s place to tell someone what they can or cannot like or want. But, I hope you understand why it’s hard for some to find the motivation to fight for a society that they don’t particularly like.

Well, the quote I was responding to used the words “open borders” specifically. I may not understand the meaning of the term, as it is being used here, but hopefully you can understand my confusion. I didn’t realize that “open borders” meant “you can have and enforce borders.” I proceeded on the assumption that those two states exist in opposition to one another.

If they’ll accept Ukrainian law and, you know, not attempt to take over the country, yes why not?

And if the Russians don’t accept those terms? Or, say that they accept them to gain entry only to then carry out a campaign of slow annexation?

During Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, the pope asked that God ‘open borders, break down walls [and] dispel hatred’

Borders do serve a purpose, though. Should Ukraine open their borders to Russians? There are legitimate reasons for wanting to keep other people out.

I couldn’t care less.

Trump tells ABC he’s ‘not particularly’ interested in reconciling with Elon Musk, who appeared to say making peace would be in the best interest of the US

If you really cared about what’s best for the US, you and Trumpy would join hands and walk your asses into a volcano.

I wonder if it’s profitable. The free markets evangelists would say that companies like this would be competed out of business, but the current American economy is ample evidence that that theory is bunk. Invisible hand of the free market my ass.

they’re genuinely trying to downplay what they have. It’s not just quiet — it’s silent. In an era of rising economic tension and class rage, a rich person’s privacy has become the ultimate commodity. They don’t want to be seen at the Chanel store.

For a long time here in the US, inequality has been treated as no big deal. “Oh, inequality is growing?,” said the business leaders and economists, “Why should we care?”

This is why.

I wasn’t trying to adhere to a strictly Marxist semantic structure. And the reason for that is: I’m not a Marxist. But you’ve made it quite clear that when words like “socialism” or “socialist,” or the term “socialist mode of production” are used incorrectly (according to Marxists), this can cause great consternation. Therefore, in the future I will use different words/terms, so that I might avoid offending the sensibilities of Marxists, such as yourself. Hopefully that will help me avoid interactions like this one, in the future.

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.

Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.

Source

Go back to my original comment where I described the socialist mode of production:

the socialist mode of production (when the means of production are owned by the government, or a group of workers, or a community)

No system is purely public or private

I know, that’s what I’ve been saying. That’s my whole point.

Socialism is a mode of production determined by public ownership

That’s what I’m talking about. Essentially every national economy on the planet includes at least some socialist production. I can’t think of a single national economy on the Earth where the production of all goods and services is carried out exclusively by privately owned, for-profit firms. Can you?

For some reason, people still act like capitalism and socialism (or communism) are mutually exclusive, that an economy must be one or the other. But if you look at essentially every national economy on the planet today, they are all some mix of the socialist mode of production (when the means of production are owned by the government, or a group of workers, or a community) and the capitalist mode of production (when the means of production are owned by a private individual or group of investors, operating for a profit). Almost no economy is exclusively one or the other.

It is true that in most countries with robust high speed rail, there is significant government involvement, like planning and building infrastructure, subsidies, or just providing rail travel as a public service. I definitely think that for a national rail service network to work, you need to do some planning. Here in the US, government and planning are bad words, but clearly they needn’t be.

You know that meme that came out of the pandemic? “We are the virus.” I’ve thought about it and I don’t agree. We’re not a virus, we’re more like a large asteroid impact.

Periods of rapid climate change are often associated with mass extinction events. Earth could experience a mass extinction event like the one that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, as a result of this period of extremely rapid climate change that we’ve created.

No, we’re not a virus, we’re a natural disaster on par with some of the worst to ever befall this planet.

The acceptance of risk and seemingly crazy leaps of inspiration woven into American attitudes, he said, help produce a research environment that nowhere else can quite match.

American exceptionalism BS.

This really comes down to technocrats vs the people. The technocrats want to double down on neoliberalism because many economists and other experts are telling them it’s the only way. The field of economics, especially in the US is mostly just a cult of free market evangelists. Technocrats like Klein believe in listening to experts, which I would normally strongly agree with, but I just can’t listen to experts who advise that we double down on the same god damn policies that have left so many millions of Americans feeling left behind, desperate, and hopeless. It’s insanity.