31 replies to this topic

[nupi]

From the beginning you're not seeing the merits of the system. The technology is there, we just haven't built enough medical machines. Drugs are cheap and the process would be the mechanism that creates wealth.

Must be that I lack vision, but how exactly does building more machines (whatever they are, sounds like fairy technology to me) to treat random people (who may or may not have been making a positive contribution to society prior to falling ill) guarantee that we create wealth? Under some assumptions, it would, under others, equally reasonable ones, it would not. Just proclaiming it to be true hardly makes it true.

More wealth, more jobs. More jobs, more resources.

It sounds vaguely Keynesian. Color me skeptical on whether that works (looking at the US budget deficit and the economy over the past couple of years, I have grave doubts). Also if we have sufficiently powerful machines, we might end up with LESS jobs (s.b.)

We just haven't trained enough people to operate the technologies.

Read 'Average is over' on that one. It's unlikely that most people could be trained to operate them properly. Or even wanted to be.

Machines could do much more work than is currently being done and produce more for everyone leaving more resources for the future as modern processes recycle everything but nuclear waste.

Citation please. If this was true, why aren't you at it, getting phenomenally rich in the process to then be able to finance all life extension endeavors you can think of?

How many new shows and kids shows have popular fat kids in them and argue that it's ok to be fat? This is as much a social problem as it is a family problem and it will be a problem either until people die or until we do something about it. The society who caused this problem is responsible for fixing it are they not?

Anyone dumb enough to fall for fat acceptance nonsense probably has bigger issues than being fat.

[YOLF]

Ok, machines is just an example. Lots of people can learn medicine. It's hard, but that doesn't mean it can't be made easier. Building more machines allows manufacturers to achieve more efficiency of scale. Does a full featured cardiovascular sonography equipment setup have to cost more than $1500? Do we really have to pay $150,000 or more for a machine to tell us what the composition of an unknown substance is? What if instead of having 100s of them we have 100,000 and used them to conduct research ad nauseum (is that possible?)? My system doesn't interfere with people working and isn't a reason for anyone to stop. Subsidize medical school 100% for anyone who can make it in and give them a posh lifestyle. Allow them see patients sooner with a lower class load and learn more from apprenticing other doctors. There's no reason why we can't train an army of medical professionals except for reasons we create ourselves. Medical school should be able to start in every middle school, maybe sooner. This does assume that we need to ensure higher parenting standards and we might need people to fill those jobs too. Every burger can be flipped by machine. Cars could be designed to standards that would allow them their routine maintenance to be done by machine, the entire car could be assembled by machine. Raise any kid right and keep them healthy and on track and they'll be capable of med or engineering school. It's not something that everyone can't do. It's just harder for those who aren't raised for that level of performance and making people feel ok about being fat is part of the problem. The way I see it, if a kid doesn't meet a certain health or performance standard, give them to different parents until their parents come out of parents anonymous. I should also add that we should have more control over our fertility and use vaccines to prevent unplanned and unapproved pregnancies and make cryonics available for anyone who is unapproved because of a disease we haven't been able to cure... Actually, I'm a cryonics for everyone kind of guy. Take all of those things seriously and actively work to extend human lives and we'll have more time to go to med school, more time to research and plenty of people to make everything happen. Most if not all of the problems our society faces are a result of the existence of death and aging. If everyone remained as young and neuroplasticic as they were before their twenties, who among us wouldn't be capable of taking up a HLC career? In an un-aging physiology, we will be healthier and more intelligent than we have ever been.

Do you know how fiat currencies work? Do you understand how our money is nothing more than paper? The only thing that gives it value is our stability and relative value in market trading. People value our money because they can get something for it. Let it be HLC, education, and whatever else we can generate. As long as countries have science to trade and develop, their money is good.

Average is Over to me sounds like a list of reasons as to why we need the system I'm talking about. We can't very well have working poor in a perfect future. We'll need to do something about it. A standard of allowable disparity will have to be established as well as basics like HLC for all.

I've known lots of people who are fat and happy. Are you telling me that a very significant portion of the population has big problems? How did that happen? Why haven't we fixed it yet? Do you want to leave the future with the problems that will result from not fixing epic obesity?

Whatever the problems are, shouldn't we be compelled to help? Isn't that the basis for our society?