If the net neutrality repeal vote goes through

"

Jennik wrote:

1) "If we don't pass Obamacare people will die!" - It was more "people will continue to die unnecessarily because they lack access to affordable healthcare. That was a fact. Obamacare prevents early deaths. While there are mountains of evidence to demonstrate this, all it takes is to ask yourself one question (and importantly, give an accurate, fact-based answer): are people more likely to live longer with or without access to affordable healthcare?

Please provide a sample of said mountain, so I can debunk it.

Meanwhile, consider this: after decades of increases, the US life expectancy has remained eerily static since 2009. US citizens are not more likely to live longer than they were 8 years ago. Obamacare was passed in 2010.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Jennik wrote:

1) "If we don't pass Obamacare people will die!" - It was more "people will continue to die unnecessarily because they lack access to affordable healthcare. That was a fact. Obamacare prevents early deaths. While there are mountains of evidence to demonstrate this, all it takes is to ask yourself one question (and importantly, give an accurate, fact-based answer): are people more likely to live longer with or without access to affordable healthcare?

Please provide a sample of said mountain, so I can debunk it.

Meanwhile, consider this: after decades of increases, the US life expectancy has remained eerily static since 2009. US citizens are not more likely to live longer than they were 8 years ago. Obamacare was passed in 2010.

I used to play alot of basketball when I was young, but was never slam dunked on. Maybe Jennik can tell us all what it's like.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Jennik wrote:

1) "If we don't pass Obamacare people will die!" - It was more "people will continue to die unnecessarily because they lack access to affordable healthcare. That was a fact. Obamacare prevents early deaths. While there are mountains of evidence to demonstrate this, all it takes is to ask yourself one question (and importantly, give an accurate, fact-based answer): are people more likely to live longer with or without access to affordable healthcare?

Please provide a sample of said mountain, so I can debunk it.

Meanwhile, consider this: after decades of increases, the US life expectancy has remained eerily static since 2009. US citizens are not more likely to live longer than they were 8 years ago. Obamacare was passed in 2010.

2009 US Life Expectancy: 78.39
2015 US Life Expectancy: 79.24

In 6 years, life expectancy went up by nearly a year -- with a trend line that continues the upward trend. Here is the thing, your correlated data does not necessarily lead to a causal relationship. So leveraging your less than subtle logical, I could state the ACA increased the life expectancy of US Citizens but I wont.....because it would be equally misleading. Things are rarely so simple as if this, then this -- particularly with health care.

"Who knew healthcare was so complicated."
-Trump

"Bing Bong Bing Bing Bong"
-Also Trump


One thing to note for your future correlated data propaganda: the majority of ACA provisions did not take effect until 2014.


Source: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/ UN Population Division
(Your source would be appreciated)

EDIT: funny how things happen as they do, the first news report I hear in my car going home, 2016 and 2017 age expectancy dropped. The reason: ACA. Just kidding. It was sadly opioid related deaths spiked significantly in lower age groups.

For me so far...

Internet speeds still fast.
My ISP hasn't switched their plan pricing.
Video still streams just as quick, regardless of the source.
Torrents are still working.

So, when will the fallout from all of the liberal Doom & Gloom occur again? When Net Neutrality is over, right? Well, waiting... lol

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Jennik wrote:

1) "If we don't pass Obamacare people will die!" - It was more "people will continue to die unnecessarily because they lack access to affordable healthcare. That was a fact. Obamacare prevents early deaths. While there are mountains of evidence to demonstrate this, all it takes is to ask yourself one question (and importantly, give an accurate, fact-based answer): are people more likely to live longer with or without access to affordable healthcare?

Please provide a sample of said mountain, so I can debunk it.

Meanwhile, consider this: after decades of increases, the US life expectancy has remained eerily static since 2009. US citizens are not more likely to live longer than they were 8 years ago. Obamacare was passed in 2010.

The fact that healthcare was a snarled, untenable, unsustainable mess in this country before Obamacare is not in dispute. Whether the ACA fixed that mess is disputable (sharply, to hear people rail on it all the time), but the fact that the mess existed, and flat required fixing, is not.

The American healthcare system was an out-of-control raging dumpster fire that was hemorrhaging money to little practical effect, with millions of people receiving extremely substandard care at mind-numbing premiums. People did die when they might otherwise have lived, simply because they couldn't afford to appease whichever medical oligarch decided that the minimum buy-in for Living was $[X]. They continue to do so.

Was the ACA a successful correction to the problem? No. Personally I believe that what it was trying to accomplish was a step in the right direction, but we need far more drastic reform of healthcare in this country before it stops being the Thomas Wildfire of government initiatives.

Will the Republican vision of health care, i.e. none whatsoever, do any better? Silent Gods, no. The individual mandate that was stricken in the recent Republican disaster of a tax redux was vital to the structure of the ACA; the point of the individual mandate was that many hands make light work. Or in this case, many wallets make light premiums. If everybody pays for healthcare, the individual-to-you price of healthcare can be much lower than if, say...only 'bout %20 of people are paying for healthcare. That means each of those twenty percent of people are on the hook for five times the cost they were previously being asked to pay, and every person who gets hit with this price hike and goes "fuck this, man! I'm 25! I'm young and immortal, I don't need health coverage!" and cuts their plan heaps their share of the price burden onto the shoulders of others.

This is basic reasoning. Unfortunately, Republican legislators by and large seem to operate on a fundamentally different mode of logic than regular people. Democratic ones are hardly any better, but Republicans are truly baffling, as are many of the people who vote for them. The cycle goes as follows: "left" or centrist voters slack off, the rural areas turn up in force, and elect a Donald Trump into office. The Donald Trump proceeds to deregulate everything, tear down anything Dems did in the last twenty years out of vindictive spite, remove "barriers to the free market", and pass new tax bills which force the middle class to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and for Big Corporate (because we can totally afford to pay for Wall Street's share of the tax burden, amiryte?)

They do this, and everything immediately goes to shit. The Donald Trump that happens to be in office at the time manages to piss off the entire world, as our current DT is doing a fantastically thorough job of, they sink the hell out of the economy, they cause huge backslides in social progress (notice how much rougher the LGBT folks have had it since The Trump got into office? It's not just us, either), and they just generally kludge up the works across the board.

This happens, and the left/center go "OH HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU WHAT ARE YOU DOING", and the next few elections are either viciosuly contested or landslide victories for the Dems. Who try and repair the damage that the deposed Donald Trump du jour did, whilst also being dense twats with no real sense of what their constituency wants because there's not a single one of them who's under 85, or who has spoken to anyone younger than 70 in the last hundred years. So they do what they can to fix what the Repubs did their absolute damnedest to fuck up beyond all repair, but they waste a lot of their chance with infighting and weird old-legislator hang-ups.

In the interim, lefts/centrists breathe a sigh of relief, decide that this time the country will have finally learned its lesson after the horrific damage the latest Donald Trump did, and slowly slack off until the righty guys who somehow never connect the fact that the country immediately self-combusts every single god damned time a Republican Trump manages to swing the vote with, y'know...the Republican Trump having swung the vote...get pissed off and manage to force a fresh Trump through.

Rinse, repeat.

Some of us are so sick of it, it makes us literally sick. Can we please knock it off, PANNRA?

"

1453R wrote:

The fact that healthcare was a snarled, untenable, unsustainable mess in this country before Obamacare is not in dispute. Whether the ACA fixed that mess is disputable (sharply, to hear people rail on it all the time), but the fact that the mess existed, and flat required fixing, is not.

...

Was the ACA a successful correction to the problem? No.

So far we're in agreement.

"

1453R wrote:

I believe that what it was trying to accomplish was a step in the right direction, but we need far more drastic reform of healthcare in this country before it stops being the Thomas Wildfire of government initiatives.

Will the Republican vision of health care, i.e. none whatsoever, do any better? Silent Gods, no. The individual mandate that was stricken in the recent Republican disaster of a tax redux was vital to the structure of the ACA; the point of the individual mandate was that many hands make light work. Or in this case, many wallets make light premiums. If everybody pays for healthcare, the individual-to-you price of healthcare can be much lower than if, say...only 'bout %20 of people are paying for healthcare. That means each of those twenty percent of people are on the hook for five times the cost they were previously being asked to pay, and every person who gets hit with this price hike and goes "fuck this, man! I'm 25! I'm young and immortal, I don't need health coverage!" and cuts their plan heaps their share of the price burden onto the shoulders of others.

This is basic reasoning. Unfortunately, Republican legislators by and large seem to operate on a fundamentally different mode of logic than regular people. Democratic ones are hardly any better, but Republicans are truly baffling, as are many of the people who vote for them.

At the very start of this quote, you reject the basic conservative premise on Obamacare, that is, that it made what was already a problem even worse. When your attempted solution to a problem makes things even worse, going back to how things were before trying a second attempt at fixing the problem is not illogical. I, too, see Obamacare as a net negative and would like to see it repealed in entirety.

Now, I do get that fixing the non-solution is not fixing the original problem. And there is some validity to the observation that while Republicans are relatively united in regards to "repeal" they are an incoherent mess in regards to "replace." And replace we must. But I sincerely believe in one step at a time. We should get rid of Obamacare completely first, then go back to the drawing board.

"

1453R wrote:

The cycle goes as follows: "left" or centrist voters slack off, the rural areas turn up in force, and elect a Donald Trump into office. The Donald Trump proceeds to deregulate everything, tear down anything Dems did in the last twenty years out of vindictive spite, remove "barriers to the free market", and pass new tax bills which force the middle class to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and for Big Corporate (because we can totally afford to pay for Wall Street's share of the tax burden, amiryte?)

If the GOP proceeded to deregulate virtually everything, in a consistent and fair manner that didn't pick winners and losers in the marketplace, I'd be thrilled, trust me. But this is not traditionally what the GOP does. You can't objectively say government gets smaller under Republicans, at least not historically; it still grows under their reign. So what the GOP traditionally does is deregulate its donors, or simply fail to enforce regulations upon their donors while keeping them on the books, rather than deregulating in general. I'm not so naive as to believe the Republicans don't represent government for hire.

However, crony capitalism is a bipartisan affair. While Republicans have historically been deregulators for hire, the Democrats are regulators for hire. Want to create a set of laws over an industry to bury new businesses in red tape, forever shielding the current industry leaders from new competition? The Democratic Party is the party for you. Corporatists have rather thoroughly co-opted both parties.

There are differences, because the Republicans offer a fundamentally different service to the oligarchs than the Democrats, and thus some lobbying groups prefer one side to the other. But this cycle you're talking about isn't goodguy-badguy, it's badguy-badguy.

"

1453R wrote:

everything immediately goes to shit. The Donald Trump that happens to be in office at the time manages to piss off the entire world, as our current DT is doing a fantastically thorough job of, they sink the hell out of the economy, they cause huge backslides in social progress (notice how much rougher the LGBT folks have had it since The Trump got into office? It's not just us, either), and they just generally kludge up the works across the board.

The corrupt Democrat establishment, and the corporations heavily allied with them, certainly want you to think this, but it isn't usually true. The economy has been doing extremely well in the past year, I haven't noticed anyone throwing homosexuals off of rooftops (on this continent), and it's normal for there to be some drama after you stop sucking your international boyfriend's dick.

I say I'm a centrist, which a lot of people around here don't believe, because after a president who doubled the national debt in 8 years I think we need a whole lot of right before we go left again. But I think whether or not things go to shit has primarily to do with how corrupt the winning candidate is, and what they are setting their targets on as far as (de)regulation is concerned. Ironically, both Obama and Trump picked good targets: healthcare did need fixing, and Obamacare was a non-fix. And although the Obama administration was not without corruption, Barry to this day looks like a saint compared to John McCain.

In conclusion, please stop looking at regulation and deregulation as if one is inherently evil and the other inherently good. Our corporatist overlords certainly aren't clouded by such idealism — they'll deregulate themselves or regulate their competitors as it suits them, dual-wielding both the Left and Right wings to slay their enemies if they can get away with it. If we ever hope to defeat cronyism, we're going to need to stop focusing on the anti-establishment types on the other side of the aisle and instead focus on the corporatist shills hidden within our own side. Stop thinking so damn much about the general; focus on the primaries. Never, ever allow a Clinton to represent you again.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

...
In conclusion, please stop looking at regulation and deregulation as if one is inherently evil and the other inherently good. Our corporatist overlords certainly aren't clouded by such idealism — they'll deregulate themselves or regulate their competitors as it suits them, dual-wielding both the Left and Right wings to slay their enemies if they can get away with it. If we ever hope to defeat cronyism, we're going to need to stop focusing on the anti-establishment types on the other side of the aisle and instead focus on the corporatist shills hidden within our own side. Stop thinking so damn much about the general; focus on the primaries. Never, ever allow a Clinton to represent you again.

Focusing on this for debate's sake, but first of all my appreciation for actually providing salient and reasoned points to debate *from*. After twelve pages of schlock, it's a nice change of pace.

Anyways.

My stance is that Big Corporate inherently cannot be trusted. The Free Market only works if there are certain steelclad rules in place to ensure fair competition, and Big Corporate has been working tirelessly to undermine those rules for as long as Big Corporate has existed. You say that both Dems and Repubs are corrupt? I agree! The whole lot of them are thoroughly bought and paid for - but who did the buying?

Corrupt politicians don't erupt from the ground like those fucking worm-spewing Pit Maw bastards in Abyss. They're made, not born. Corruption stems from an external source twisting the decision-making process in a way that is not true to the politico's mandate to work in the best interests of his constituents, and since he can be investigated, charged, imprisoned, and generally have his life thoroughly ruined if he's caught doing that, there's only really one way to make it worth his while to risk all of that Bad Schitt.

And that is to be on the take. Which requires there to be an entity he's taking from. And that entity is always and invariably Big Corporate.

Big Corporate does not and never will have the best interests of the general public at heart. They are and will always be predators, and we are their prey. I'm not even being melodramatic here - they exist by consuming money, by Earning a Profit, and they have a literally insatiable appetite for growth that forces them to constantly strive for more More MORE. Stable profits aren't enough for them - they have to be making MORE profit, all the time, or they start flipping schitts and firing people left and right in a paroxysm of corrupt capitalistic fervor, blaming it all the while on The Shareholders.



The only way Big Corporate does that, feeds that endless hunger for money, is by convincing us to give them money. Whether we want to or not. Whether we can afford to or not. Whether it ruins us or not. Look at the credit debt epidemic in this country - an epidemic far more entrenched and far more ruinous to American lives than the recent opioid spat, and yet you never see Presidential acts informing the CDC or whoever to investigate the fact that Americans are drowning in people screaming at us to spend just a little bit more(!!!) because they've got SUCH A GREAT DEAL for us. People can go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and the corporate establishment just eats it up.

The only entity in the entire world that stands a chance of forcing Big Corporate to fucking behave - and they need to be forced, there's no chance in Hell that 'voluntary compliance' will last longer than it takes to say the words, not with MORE MONEY on the line - is the government. This is, of course, hard for them to do when Big Corporate has essentially purchased the government and only Congressional inertia is stopping them from doing whatever.

Personally, I believe that business should be as separate from government as Church is from State - if you're a businessman you do not get to be a politician or government official as well. Not without renouncing your business ties, and not without investigation to make sure they're cut. Business doesn't get to donate shit to political campaigns, and if a business or a businessman is caught trying to pay a government man, for any reason, then the businessman is the one who gets thrown in jail forever, not the government man. Or at least not just the government man.

Corporations are not people. The government exists to serve the People. Says so right in that fancy documajigger a bunch of dudes in funny wigs signed 'bout two hunnert-fitty years ago now. The interests of the People should be paramount and sovereign over the interests of Big Corporate. If this is so then the individual people who make up Big Corporate, who are in fact part of The People, will benefit right alongside the rest of us. This is in fact the only way for society to thrive. Anything that places the interests of a nebulous organization or ideal above the interests of the individual citizen, the most fundamental unit of society, inevitably gets us in trouble.

Which, in a long-ass winded manner, gets us back to Neutrality. Ajit Pai is a businessman who was appointed to a position designed primarily to be a check on businessmen - does it surprise anyone that he's turned out to be a total goddamned shill? This vote has no benefit whatsoever to the People, it gives us nothing and does not improve our lives at all. What it does do is allow Big Corporate to get their predator on and come up with new and inventive ways to bleed us of our money without regulatory interference.

Always recall that your satisfaction is not, and never was, Big Corporate's goal. They do not give a single fat frog fuck if you're satisfied with their service or product. They could not care less. The ONLY thing that matters is that you pay for the service or product in the first place. Once they have your money, you can fly and go f*** yourself so far as Big Corporate is concerned. It's why they work so hard to subvert the steelclad rules of free and equitable competition that The Free Market relies on - it's so much easier for them to simply squash competing services and drown out alternative options than it is for them to actually try and create a service or product you're happy to pay for. Why work their butts off to make you happy when they can exert a tenth of the effort and expenditure on simply ensuring they're the only game in town?

The proof? The mere existence of Comcast, which by all the laws and theories of free market capitalism that The Conservative Right swear by should have long since collapsed in flames under the sheer weight of universal hatred their customers feel for them. But they're still here. They're still a multibillion-dollar company who Ajit Pai is trying to give free and clear permission to do whatever they want. Why people think Comcast has more motivation today to be a better group of people than they had in November, I cannot presume to know.

But whatever the reason is, they're wrong.

"

1453R wrote:

Focusing on this for debate's sake, but first of all my appreciation for actually providing salient and reasoned points to debate *from*. After twelve pages of schlock, it's a nice change of pace.

That's because the general discussion people were composing the first 11 pages.

This is Day 8 without Net Neutrality. I will be posting in this thread every day until all the doom and gloom that the left promised would happen actually does happen. Remember, we were told our internet will now come in packages and we will have to pay every time we dl something or post on a forum. As of today that has not happened. So far they are liars. We'll see how tomorrow goes. Have a Merry Christmas! Those of you who hate me and want me dead just because of my opinion, try to enjoy the holidays. Keep that shit to yourself around your families.

"

pannra wrote:

This is Day 8 without Net Neutrality. I will be posting in this thread every day until all the doom and gloom that the left promised would happen actually does happen. Remember, we were told our internet will now come in packages and we will have to pay every time we dl something or post on a forum. As of today that has not happened. So far they are liars. We'll see how tomorrow goes. Have a Merry Christmas! Those of you who hate me and want me dead just because of my opinion, try to enjoy the holidays. Keep that shit to yourself around your families.

Those people were doing something called speculating. It's when you guess about something that will happen in the future. It's different from lying, even if it turns out to be incorrect.


Anyway, for now, you can just look to the past instead of future to see examples of network neutrality violations that already occurred without proper competition or regulation. Link for the lazy.

Hopefully those people who were speculating are incorrect, but we will have to see. Maybe ISPs will be afraid to abuse their power. I would guess that if they do anything it will be slow and incremental to try to avoid too much negative attention.