I'm sorry, but the rules for how your government works are so confusing.

And requiring budget bills to pass every year or you entire government shuts down is a bug most other democracies patched out last century. (You just make everything roll over by default if you can't pass a budget). The US Government seems to be constantly in shut down. It's kinda dumb folks, it doesn't need to be this way.

I could have sworn I heard that the 100 person US senate only needs 51 members to pass a bill, but I vaguely heard they don't want to do that because it overrides the option to filibuster?

What???

Very lost over here

This is actually genetic!

Lucky east Asians....

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/east-asians-no-body-odor-dont-need-deodorant-rcna156778

Because I'm a fairly basic Chinese (Mandarin) learner, this gave me a moment of feeling dumb before realising it's Cantonese.

Even picking up is a data point which will mean you'll get more spam calls, unfortunately

But this is a good habit for when you're expecting a call from a doctor's office or something, I'll be using it, many thanks!

New meme template just dropped

You would not expect a government based on a set of self-serving antidemocratic bureaucrats to result in such benefits

Sure, there was genuine ideological reasons for the USSRs achievements, but you're moving the goal-posts a bit. The original claim you were disputing was whether the USSR was authoritarian, which many people agree that it was.

There can be genuine and successful efforts to improve people's lives under any system, including in the USSR.

What was imperialist about it?

• The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and occupation of Poland
• The Winter War against Finnland
• The East German uprising of 1953

are the first to come to my mind.

It would be a lot easier to defend the USSR if they only intervened to allow the proletariat to hold referendums, but we both know this is not what happened on many occasions.

It seems to me that Russia was continuing in the tradition Russian Empire, just under new management, and was definitely the first among "equals" in the USSR and its sphere of influence.

As a side note, I've only done very little Wikipedia level reading on anarchocommunism, and as much as I also believe people help each other willingly, I've yet to hear a good defence on how it would be possible with the massive populations we have now, as opposed to pre-history.

It's all well and good that there are federated groups, with free association, but this is fundamentally ignoring that not all regions are equally blessed in resources.

If you have money, well then you need a centralised or decentralised way of miniting the money.

If you don't have money, well, I don't think it's much of a stretch to think that people will want to take care more of the people immediately around them, rather than people on the other side of the world, and since we're not getting together on large scales to make binding decisions, then there's no way to guarantee that everyone has a fair share.

I'm not saying that more decentralised government wouldn't work, but I do remain thoroughly unconvinced that free association of small groups across the entire world, would lead to much equity at all.

And as much as we may dream, there WILL be dickheads ruining it for the rest of us. Humans are nice, but humans can also be awful. Pretending otherwise is foolish and doomed to failure.

I'm a socialist, and am very keen to hear your thoughts :)

In my point of view calling yourself a socialist and not being able to criticise the blatantly anti-democratic and imperial power the USSR became is weird.

Socialism (in my view of it) necessarily requires democratic structures at work as well as government.

Despite the USSR's positives (all countries have them) let's not pretend like they had a good template we should emulate (on governance and voting, that is).

Without democracy, you're basically hoping the people in charge are benevolent. But then when they're inevitably not at some point, you have no way to peacefully remove them.

Next minute you'll be telling me China is a democracy just because they elect people the the National People's Congress. (Another country, with many positives, which is not a democracy).

And please do not confuse my criticism of notionally socialist states (China is definitely not), with implicit praise of the "democracy" in the United States, what they have is barely democracy.

subsidy model that doesn't subsidise private

I think the only way this would make sense in my view is making gap fees illegal. But because Medicare hasn't been properly indexed, this also would likely mean we'd see even fewer bulk billing practices. Even then, we shouldn't incentivise medical coverage on how much money doctors can expect to make because of demographics in the area.

It makes vastly more sense (in my view) to simply provide the services where people are on an as-needed basis similar to so many other public services (like schools), and just pay the doctors and other medical staff a competitive salary.

we are a very conservative country

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. It's a miracle we have a centre government (Labor) with the right-wing media dominance in this country. But we do bring back centre left governments because the character of the country is about people receiving a "fair go" which is the opposite of conservative values.

We are a country founded in-part on the labour movement, we have just lost our way over the last couple of decades (on labour, other issues we've improved obviously) and while there are conservative areas, I don't really think as a nation we're terribly conservative compared to many other countries.

We have to get back to making people the priority, not profits.

I agree very much

Profit itself isn't the issue imo, profit above all is.

I do not agree. Profit motive is the issue, to some degree, in practically all areas of our economy. Profit, in any form, is causing problems in our healthcare. Having practice owners who have the capital to own a practice, taking a percentage for all appointments from the doctors who work there, serves the community in no shape or form.

In the long run, it would be cheaper for us to just own the practice ourselves via the government and employ the staff directly. The profit we need to pay goes into the practice owner's pocket and does nothing for actually providing the service. People may try to argue this is the return they deserve for putting in the investment of owning the practice, but this only holds true because we have relinquished the responsibility of investment. Either way, the investment needs to come from somewhere. It's just way cheaper in the long run if it comes from our taxes, rather than in the form of markups for profit.

The profit motive means doctors are incentivised to charge as much as possible while still attracting enough patients. This is market forces and doesn't lead to an optimal outcomes. The profit motive needs to be removed entirely, because what, we're going to ask individuals to work against their own best interest?

Psychologists got way, way more expensive during COVID: because they could. This is the profit motive.

We need to make the public service larger and employee essential services directly.

Pay them well, and we'll all be better off (well, except for the practice owners)

This is my opinion, but I think many of us can agree that over the last 40 years the personal economic situation of us all had become worse. And it's not that we couldn't afford, as a country, to go back to government provided services.

It just would make the powers that be less money. And we can't have that, can we.

Yeah I was curious as to what reforms you would propose. We already have a system that purports to have universal medical care, but it's only true in limited ways. There are many avenues to free medical care, but it's still a for-profit system under the hood (for non-hospital care, which includes seeing specialists).

There are government run parts of the system, like emergency hospital which runs very well, but outside those, the gap fees are getting larger, and the "elective" surgery system where people on the public queue wait months for life altering surgery is an embarrassment.

I'm proposing we end the subsidy model, make all health care publically provided, not just some, everyone goes through the same system, not two tiers for those who can afford it. This is the only way there is extremely strong incentive for everyone to want healthcare to be extremely good.

Although, in order to include dental earlier, it would need to be restricted at first on need.

Why though? I'm guessing hospital care is vastly more expensive than getting a check up at the dentist. The peak body of dentists rail against dental into Medicare because it'll dampen their profits. Preventative dental is cheaper than emergency dental.

We should pay medical employees actually doing the work more, and give practice owners nothing.

The "free market" is a stupid way to run an essential service. Thank god ours at least is regulated decently (but, not enough)

People need to look at the last 40-50 years and realise privatisation has not worked, it's time to roll back the clock on government ownership and running of essential service.

We have a say over the government's decisions, not private companies (outside regulation and legislation). Why are people so allergic to government ownership (it's propaganda, if we're being honest)

Profit motive needs to be taken out of healthcare and elder care yesterday.

There can be absolutely zero doubt that Trump is a Russian stooge

Requests the app made today.

This is my phone I own outright, by the way. I don't have any creditors.

Update for those curious: