What we’re about
Ever wondered how a great idea like feminism or kindness was turned inside out and became a caricature of itself? Feminism that hurts women? Empathy that results in more injustice? Kindness that leads to more suffering? It’s time to step back and look critically on today’s vocabulary. Our society is built around values, but what if the things we value the most only got the empty shell left, only the word, not the meaning. Let’s re-discover all the great ideas together, and not let them get ruined by virtue signaling, ignorance and immaturity.
From feminism to GMOs, from positive thinking to recycling, from being “nice” to protecting the environment, there are so many things that started out as a great and beautiful idea, but was misused, mislabeled or turned into the complete opposite of itself.
Take feminism, it started out as a beautiful idea of achieving equal rights for women; however, currently many branches of feminism went into directions that literally hurt women.
Take GMOs - genetic modification of vegetables and crops can allow for better yields and healthier plants and, therefore, help solve food shortages, alleviate drought problems, etc. However, not only genetically modified vegetables got demonized by the press, they also are abused by the farmers, who exploit plants’ resistance to pesticides and use unsafe amounts of them, which actually does renders the plants dangerous (which ironically has nothing to do with the way they are being demonized).
And the list goes on. There is a multitude of these issues in politics, social life and beyond.
This book/discussion club is dedicated to discussion of controversial issues like that.
Our main values are critical thinking, rationality, and effectiveness. Virtue signaling is our worst enemy. We welcome different opinions and lively polemics as long as people are respectful. The truth is born in a dispute.
P. S. please, note, that a real photo on the avatar is required to join the group. This is to ensure that everyone is on equal footing. Also, please, answer the required questions, even if your answers are very general, I will not approve requests with "..." instead of answers. Thank you for your understanding!
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Single payer healthcare (new date)Lucky Tree, Raleigh, NC
Let's discuss single payer healthcare
Single payer healthcare is another great idea that is getting ruined. Even though I agree that specking about ideals and “perfect situation in vacuum” having government paying for healthcare seems like the most humane solution. However, I am not big proponent of talking about idealistic scenarios in vacuum.
Here are some example articles to read:
Some definitions:
article 1
Pros:
article 2
cons:
article 3
Transparency:
article 4
Current United States Healthcare system is as far as possible from single payer system, and claiming that instating full-blown single payer system a-la UK or Canada would mean completely destroy the system that exists in use and then “build a new system from the scratch”, and if there is one thing history tells us, is that breaking something in order to build something from the scratch is a recipe for a disaster. There is so many factors that you won’t be able to account for in this situation. Besides, people who live in UK and Canada in many cases are very unhappy about their healthcare. The grievances on people in UK and USA are very different, if people in USA are most concerned with astronomic costs, the people in UK are concerned with prohibitive wait times to see a doctor and inability to access the care. Are we supposed to choose between these grievances or are we supposed to make a number of serious, but consecutive changes to the current system to make a significant improvement, and then reassess the possibility of ever achieving single payer system?
And if you think about it, certain facts become obvious:- pricing transparency must be improved, even though there were a couple of great steps that were done in that direction recently, hospitals and insurance companies fight back and try to conceal all the pricing information from the people, in some cases their pricing strategies appear borderline criminal. That must be addressed and fight must be relentless
- Middle men in the system make ridiculous profits. Even though people keep saying how “evil big pharma does this and that” it is worth remembering that Pharma is the only industry that invests about 20% of their revenue in research and development to produce new medicines that will save people’s lives and will improve people’s quality of life. The middle men of distribution and insurance companies, however, are only that - middle men, their work is necessary, but it must be transparent, and there must be no monopolies in these spheres, and they are currently are quite corrupt.
- As a follow up to 1 and 2, “capping drug prices” as single payer proponents normally suggest immediately results in slower innovation, because innovative companies become more risk averse if they know they can’t recuperate the cost of medical research. The costs of bringing a new drug to market are astronomical, and mostly this is due to the simple fact that you have to conduct clinical trials, which are long and costly, but are absolutely necessary to prove efficacy and safety. US is a driver or innovation and much of this is because they can charge a lot for novel drugs in USA.
- Now, you can rightfully ask - ok, they may change $1000000 for super novel gene therapy because it costed a ton to bring to life, but why do they charge so much for insulin that was invented forever ago and it’s so expensive to make? And I would agree here, and the answer is two-fold. 1) There shouldn’t be monopoly for producing old drugs that are off patents. 2) Patent law should be written such that the companies wouldn’t use loopholes.
- Going full-on single payer for all very quickly is dangerous, what seems more feasible is to expand access to certain types of health insurance for poor/people in need, which would be paid by government
- In long term access to governmental paid health insurance can be gradually increased, until it will get to some resemblance to complete single payer system, though if this is done very gradually, the risks are smaller.
Different opinions are welcome, and you are welcome to convince me to see the situation differently.
