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Ojustaboo, thank you for your very thoughtful post.

You are not the only one who has been reprimanded or shunned online or labeled an "anti-American enemy" for daring to simply point out certain uncomfortable facts or point out that the emperor had no clothes.

Excellent article from the BBC discussing "insularity"...
I have family living in the US Midwest and it is interesting to observe that -- even when households all around them there spend an average of 5 (!) hours per day prone on their butts with 64 oz of sugar water and a bag of crisps watching television (or maybe because of this) -- most people have absolutely no integrated knowledge of life outside of their state, let alone their country.

Due perhaps to a combination of factors such as the failure of the school systems to teach more than guessing on true/false and multiple choice questions after rote learning, the size of the country, the extreme inward-looking-ness and self-focused-ness of the culture and a lack of intellectual curiosity, combined with "news" programs consisting of 40% of the time on advertisements where three people with face & breast lifts and perfect hair make jokes with each other and report mostly only on local police chases with meth dealers and high school
football scores.

Just like peasants in China or serfs in Russia or comrades in the old USSR, there is a functional ignorance among millions upon millions of US citizens of both the richness of the world and a complete absence of understanding of why they are personally in the (often precarious) position they find themselves in their very own country. When that is combined with the extreme contrary-to-both-common-sense-and-objective-fact propaganda that is force-fed through Cuban-style pledges of allegiances to the flag every day in grade school classes, absurd junior high civics classes based on cartoon-like, blatantly bellicose and anti-historical tomes such as "Triumph of the American Nation", and extraordinarily patriotic advertisements of " we are number 1", "only we are 'free'" etc. etc. ad nauseum one truly sees how easily creepy Orwellian visions are achieved.

In other words: it is all about ME, ME, ME, MacMacMac. Everyone else be damned.

Did you choose to be born to your parents? Did you choose to be born in the USA or your home state versus another country? Did you choose to use public roads rather than only use your bare hands to wade through the wild Floridian Everglades every where you went? Did you choose for the US to be a republic with representative democracy depending on well-educated citizens who are responsible and accountable for self-government through the constitutionally instituted bodies rather than a failed state such as Somalia filled with Ayn Rand-styled "rugged individuals" choosing their self-interest as they axe each other to death? etc. etc.

People who are indoctrinated to think of everything as a personal "choice" and of themselves merely as consumers in "free" markets rather than responsible citizens and members of civilized society equate the world to being nothing more complicated than being left alone to choose Crest over Colgate toothpaste. Simplistic lies. Without having pulled together as a species and a society over the Millenia, toothpaste would never even have come into existence and we would still be fighting over tree branches with our Chimpanzee cousins.


There are two excellent books that give insight in how people can hold these kinds of unthinking, contrary and self-conflicting thoughts as quoted above that in most people raised under normal circumstances would cause a kind of extreme cognitive dissonance that would make their brains explode:

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/0307339378
(this book even explains why MacMacMac might want to live in North Carolina)

and

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

Happy Reading. And, remember, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

[Edited]

Oh, you might also consider this one as well while you are at it:

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/

Hey, surprise, surprise: more TV!

As this is a forum, could you please summarize in written words your summary of and conclusions from the 3 (three) videos you have referenced, why you believe they are credible, why you see this as an important issue, what our choices are and what free, personal choices and effective actions you are personally taking?

Thanks!

[Edited]

[Edited]

Well, I do wonder how much of the music of today's Broadway musicals (not those from the 1930s & 1940s) will be worth listening to in 150 years. Probably every bit as little as the primarily insipid repertoire of operette that is actively performed today.

It's a tremendously thought-provoking thread. Reconciling one's rational thoughts with perhaps contradictory and sometimes pronounced emotional reactions to things can be very difficult.

You can have a million dollar condo and you can't play an acoustic without complaints.

I play my digital and I wish I had a 48 weighted key
keyboard so I could practice where ever I go. Maybe someday they will make them that size.

I am not that fussy but when I have a note /chord that I have to hold over 2 measures/8 beats, it doesn't do it. It fades unlike an acoustic. If you use the sustain pedal it is not right - other than that I love the digital for what it is.

You can have a digital in a resthome, hospital - almost anywhere you have room for a bed. At $600 Canadian for a weighted key keyboard is awesome so
everyone can afford a piano and learn to play at any age anywhere.

I don't know if the word is replace, but the cost of making pianos will exceed the amount that most people can afford so digital will slowly replace acoustic pianos. If you go to a piano store, the acoustic section usually has nobody in there, but the digital part is full of people of all ages. Cars cost 50,000, houses cost a million and condos cost a half million for 500 sq ft and the cost of an acoustic 3 legged piano piano...... in most Canadian cities.

Yes.

No.

What evil intentions?

Thinner wallets, because all the info that is stored on various plastic cards right now might be stored on a microchip.

According to German data protection laws, every citizen has the right to decide who gets access to his/her data. This would most likely not change with an RFID chip.

And if someone calls an RFID chip the "Mark of the beast" and uses references to Revelations, that's not going to increase their credibility in my eyes.

Studiologic VMK-149 was one with AT. Seems just have been discontinued, an Acuna could come out perhaps as replacement.
All Fatar keybeds, though, TP40 vs. TP100but the Acuna88 has got much better reviews (an Acuna73 should be available by now).

It is indeed. I'm not sure how good a grasp I have of the issues in various countries of the world discussed at length here but let me just chime in briefly on the issue of health insurance and accessibility in the Czech Republic.

I suppose everyone and their grandmas know that the Czech Republic is a post-communist country. It has been nearly 24 years since the velvet revolution took place. I was only eight by that time so I didn't understand much by then.

However, even though we are supposedly "democratic, capitalistic" country now (if something like that is possible after 24 years from a revolution that had ended another 40 years of heavy communism combined with occupation by the Soviet army), our system of health care stayed pretty much the same for almost all of that time. It is only now changing somewhat into what I guess you could see in countries with no history of communism (i.e. where patients are supposed to partly cover the expenses). What has remained the same is that every working individual is supposed to pay their own monthly health (& social) insurance fee.

The upside is that "higher-level" medical care is free (pretty much anything from simple appendectomy to brain surgery). What the patient has to pay for if they stay at the hospital is a fee of 100 CZK (~ $5) for every day of the stay + any additional charges if they chose some above-standard care, like recovery rooms with extra equipment or rooms that were designed in a special way (like more comfortable and such) etc. Note that people are also allowed to insure themselves for the possibility of having to stay at the hospital -- that can further lower the impact of these fees.

Patients are also supposed to pay 30 CZK (~ $1.5) for most of the usual kinds of clinical treatment at a doctor + additional 30 CZK for every prescription sheet. Apart from that, all basic health care is free. Also, most of the more expensive medicaments are fully covered by the insurance companies, only the cheaper medicaments and those available without prescription are partly or fully covered by the patient. Lastly, special purpose check-ups are usually fully covered by the patient but depending on the purpose, the patient might get their money back (for example in case of the employment entry check-up, the employer pays the full price of the check-up back to the employee).

Since the funds are essentially pooled/shared, that also means that the money is used for treatment of chronic or long-term illnesses. Personally, I have nothing against that. People get born with all kinds of problems and the treatment of, say, disseminated sclerosis is a really expensive thing. With that said, I feel ever so slightly uneasy at the thought that I also help finance the treatment of people who are willingly ruining their own health by smoking or excessive alcohol consumption. That I'd say is the downside of our health insurance system.

So as you can see, it's not perfect but it has to work somehow. In the past years, we have had several strikes by doctors and nurses over the height of their salaries and it has long since become clear that only funding the whole healthcare system from the insurance fees is not going to cut it, but the people are only slowly getting used to having to pay for tooth filling at their dentist, besides other things. It was the right-wing party that introduced the 30 CZK fee and since people had never seen such a thing in the past, there was some outcry about this. The left-wing party hurried in with their populistic promise to abolish this necessity after getting elected (as they usually do with such unpopular matters). It didn't take long, however, for them to acknowledge that the fee really is necessary and they quickly took that promise back.

My personal stance on this whole issue is that I rather welcome these measures. IMO, people will at least remember that there really is no such thing like free health care and if that helps them remember to take better care of their body and their well-being, I'm all for that. Having said that, I'm also glad our government was far-sighted enough so as to liberate people in dire social need from the necessity to pay the 30 CZK fee and other fees as well.

So, with my not-so-brief-after-all description of the Czech healthcare system I wanted to provide an insight for you guys so you can compare with what you have in your respective countries.

One last thing for MacMacMac -- would you please lay off the egocentric attitude a little? I don't want to be the bad prophet here, nor do I wish for anything bad for you but you never know what might await you in the future.

Do You know this excellent Book incidentally:

Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country - a good "review" US vs. UK

While very entertaining, it goes into depth on some issues also.

Nor have I but I witnessed for some 25 ys. how a big pharmaceutical company bought up a license worldwide for a molecule, which was widely fabricated and was readily available and affordable. They ensured stopping production and marketing globally, cause they found a new illness as a target, applied for a new combination treatment FDA license, they got it and this special agent was marketed since then at a price of a multiple (about 30 times !) of the original prices. (The new indication was a disease with much higher prevalence then which the agen was invented for and marketed previously.)

They brilliantly managed to apply the same new prices worldwide.

I could buy a last cheap supply for a specific problem within the family, because it's production went on a while in Milosevic's Serbia, they resisted against economical influence from the US until they got taught to be more obedient by the international NATO bombing.

I have fear to name the Big Player and even the agent, I must confess...

But it is a good example how it works. Pharma companies have also the means to prevent or postpone developing new drugs even by other companies: they can make cooperation contracts through which they can easily share the profit of.
It is and easy to prove or disprove suspicion: If someone finds, that new the replacement cycle with launching generation of therapies/drugs strictly (in statistically significant manner) follows the time span of generic license protection, it is an easy proof then. I'll have to do some research....

I hope I'm wrong, but I think your left-wing was correct - this is a slippery slope your people should have nipped in the bud. I predict health care will become more and more an ideological / political football in your country, and used to divide the populace against itself. It works so well here that we have a sizable percentage of brainwashed people voting 180 degrees against their own (and therefore damaging everyone elses) self interests - I wouldn't have believed it possible if I didn't live in the middle of it. And if it can happen here it can and probably will happen elsewhere.

Why don't these people just go Galt already and leave societal resource pool they claim to loath so much to the rest of us unworthy sorts? It would be something of a win-win as I'm rather uncomfortable living around people with such questionable moral compasses. Many seem nice enough on the surface, but something deep down in their psyche has been monkey wrenched to the point where they seem eerily gleeful at the notion of others suffering.

It's so weird though Dewster - you are obviously referring to Mac - but I quite often find those with what I would call the most right wing, laissez-faire, look-after-number-one attitudes about society and community and all that big stuff are often, on a more individual, personal level, the kindest most generous people. There are some high profile examples. Our Mrs Thatcher, the most divisive and in many ways hated prime minister we have had in the modern era, with a vicious and uncaring public image was capable (and many examples have surfaced over the years) of astonishingly kind and generous personal gestures, quite at odds with her public persona.

So it might not be wise to judge so harshly - although I completely take your point.

The question I would pose to Mac though, is...what would he say about those people who are unfortunate in life, or have disabilities or for whatever reason simply cannot support themselves? I mean cannot, not will not. The moment you put in place measures to give those people a decent, humane standard of living you have a kind of welfare state. Or alternatively, those people perish, or habitually commit crime through desperation. The "haves" will be in secure gated communities, constantly fearful of the actions of the "have-nots". In that case I would imagine that even the people most resentful of giving financial assistance to others through their taxes would baulk at the grim alternative?

You know, I don't think it's actually that bad. It may be just my wishful thinking now but I believe people have sort of understood that to maintain a reasonable level of quality of healthcare, their contribution is necessary. (Well, at the very least, there's not much talk about these things nowadays.)

As I have pointed out earlier, doctors and nurses have gone on at least two strikes in the past several years and rightfully so. Even though Czech doctors are well known for their high level of education and knowledge, the wages are subpar compared to those in neighboring countries and doctors/nurses often have to work long hours with very little compensation. I remember clearly that the doctors on strike were getting invited to work in German and Austrian hospitals though I'm not sure how many eventually decided to leave.

In the light of these events, I'm convinced that the previous 40 years of socialism are probably the worst that could have happened to us. The very idea that everyone's equal regardless of how hard each man works to put food on the table and that certain things are for free, healthcare included, is very deeply rooted in the minds of the people (especially the older part of the population). It will take many more years to make this right.

Having said all that, I think the saddest and most enraging part of our contemporary "capitalistic" history is the very high level of bribery -- it almost seems that whenever there is a state project that involves billions of crowns of budget, you constantly hear about someone demanding a bribe or heaps of money getting divided and disappearing in mysterious ways. If anything, this is the one thing that makes people long for the old times. I'd say things like that happen all the time, regardless of regime, it's just that with "free media" you get to hear about it more often. Unfortunately, men are only men and whenever there's a chance for profit, they will jump at it. It's just so annoying and discouraging to hear about it so often.

Liberty means not having the government manage your affairs (financial or otherwise). If you happen to like the way the government manages your affairs and don't care that they have taken that power from you, good for you. Go live in an authoritarian country. But loving liberty (and being willing to sacrifice a degree of security for it) is not the same thing as egocentrism. Liberty and personal property rights are the foundation of the society and economy that has defined modern mankind--especially America and places that pattern themselves after it. It's not the only way to live, but it's what Americans and many others want. The battle over whether to retain liberty or trade it for collectivism is the major issue in the US today and has been in one way or another for generations. As usual, neither side is objectively superior...it's just two different views on what it means to be a human adult.

Be a serf if you want, but don't try and make those who take a more individualistic view feel morally inferior about it.

Fair enough. Just be ready to face the consequences when you get yourselves in a situation where your freedoms won't do squat for you but a little more security would.

Oh, and just for the record -- Czech Republic is not Belarus. Just because the government takes care of certain things does not mean I am a slave in any sense of the word.

I guess while I'm thinking about socialism and, shall we say, libertarianism, I guess I'll mention the two major issues with the socialism/collectivism that has been so highly recommended by the international community here.

1. Dead weight loss. If the government did a dollar worth of good for every dollar it took away from us, I'd be much more open to socialism. But it takes a tremendous amount of wealth from the people and wastes it in bureaucracy, ineptitude, cronyism, and corruption. This is not unique to any particular government...it's the nature of public goods and organizations. The more power you give the government improve the situation of the poorest, the greater the number of people pushed into poverty and dependence by that same government. I can look around and see many beneficial things provided by government but essentially every one I see is actually provided by state and local government, which is a very small part of our tax burden. The Feds take the lion share and do precious little good with it. This is not surprising: inefficiency increases with scale. That explains why sundry little countries can implement socialism with relatively few apparent harmful side effects but practically every step in that direction in the US brings untold misery, waste, and destruction.

It is not necessarily the case that conservatives in America always want to shrink the government in general, but it is almost always the case that true conservatives seek to shrink the FEDERAL government. Many of our states compare in size or GDP to the countries you guys are mentioning. Imagine how you would feel if in addition to your national taxes you had to pay an even larger portion of your wealth to an all-EU super-government, which promptly wasted it on projects that accomplish precious little.

2. Socialism decreases people's incentives. Contrary to the caricatures of the US abroad, the safety net here is extremely strong and constantly getting stronger. It's so easy to mooch off of the government in one way or another whether you really need it or not that tons of talented people choose to do so in place of developing and using their talents to produce something. And there are tons of people and organizations that could produce more, but are prevented by some regulation, tax, or other government disincentive. These issues were less of a problem in the past, when America was the poster boy of economic success. As we have gotten richer and richer, though, we've gotten lazier and more inclined to just move wealth from one person to another rather than improve ourselves as a nation and as individuals. American decline and American socialism go tightly hand in hand, which is why so many people oppose it despite the obvious theoretical benefits of having the government take care of anything you might worry about.

Parenthetically, it's also the case that when people outsource their good deeds to the government via what we've called liberalism, they no longer feel the need to do good themselves. This is why conservatives are overwhelmingly more charitable than liberals in the sense that they give voluntarily of their own wealth to people in need despite the fact that they both share the same tax burden. I assume that's true abroad as well.