I don't want government internet because my government thinks it's ok to read my email (and everything else). Letting them be the ISP makes it that much easier.

That said, I don't see any problem with letting local governments, with the consent of their citizens, provide that service any more than I think it's a problem for them to provide trash service, water service, etc. Internet service at this point should follow a utility model. All I want is a pipe.

Just don't make the public option the only one. Monopolies can be bad no matter who runs them.

If you so much as ask for ID, a vocal group of people around here start shouting voter suppression.

A big part of the problem is that it isn't just a technical problem. It's a social one.

No, in the general case you're not responsible for making sure your users make the right decisions. Imagine doing that for a dating app. Should you date this person? How should I know? All I can do is present you with information.

The article, though, is about software that specifically exists to help businesses make better decisions. So yeah, if you're writing software that's supposed to help people make better decisions, you do have some ethical duty to write software that leads people to make better decisions. If you're writing such software that DOESN'T do so, why?

This is just a specific instance of the general idea that if you write software to do a thing, it should actually do that thing.

Depends where you work. I don't have a work contract, just like most everyone else in the US.

The world at large should consider it mostly not your problem when someone opens a credit card account in your name. It should be as simple as saying "Nope, not me!", and it's actually the credit card company that has been defrauded, not you. That's why I really hate the term identity theft. I had that happen to me, and my identity wasn't stolen. I still had it. My credit card company was defrauded to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, but I was mildly annoyed and had to spend a few minutes confirming that a few purchases weren't made by me.

I think it should still be considered a criminal act, and obviously things like changing your medical record or arrest record can have very serious consequences, but it's a positive that creditors understand that when this happens, THEY have a problem. I much prefer that to them coming after me and trying to stick me with the consequences of their lax security.

Oh, easily. People who don't get paid tend not to provide service. If you think you're going to go to the hospital and get whatever is medically necessary and now and again the hospital gets stiffed, I think you're wrong. There will be some sort of coordination where the hospital will find out or know in advance what they'll get paid for, so that single payer becomes the de facto controller of your care.

It's not much different than insurance now. The typical policy has things it just won't pay for, limits on some things, things which require preapproval (and sometimes they say no). You can switch doctors all day long and that won't change what your insurance policy pays for. If you want that, you need to switch insurance policies or companies...unless you can't, because there is only one.

Of course you have people who are not happy with their healthcare... They actually used it.
I can promise that any problems they have are NOTHING compared to the USA.

No, you can't, actually. The US is where they went when they weren't satisfied with Canadian care.

I'm really sorry for what you experienced. That must have been a nightmare. It sounds like outright fraud...but that's not a systemic problem with US healthcare. One of mine spent a month and a half in the hospital, a reasonable portion of that in the NICU. Aside from one medical record error which was the fault of a transcriptionist, the care and payment was flawless. To this day I don't know what all that cost, but I wasn't making much at the time, and whatever it cost me wasn't enough to remember.

Then that would be interesting, IF they could guarantee that it wouldn't ever be worse. If you've ever paid attention to my (US) government, you'd know that's not the case. Case in point, I think the ACA is, on balance, a good thing, but there's a very vocal minority who would repeal it in a heartbeat if they could.

It's the IF that's the problem, though. I don't live with a government that has a track record of doing things well all the time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Americans really do seem to see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

There's a lot of truth in that, tbh.

The country that got to be rich and powerful by innovation and thought is all for more of that in the medical space. I switched insurance plans last year. Give me a better option and I'll switch again. All I'm saying is don't take away the thing I chose because I like it, then give me something else and tell me it doesn't matter if I like it because it's the only game in town. That's not innovation.

You're describing one system, not all systems that use single-payer. I can't remember if it was Germany or a Nordic nation that was profiled, but for them you just showed up for GP visits.

Saying, in effect, that some countries do it right and some don't really makes my point. If you implement this in a nation of 300,000,000 people where moving to another country is kind of a very big deal, you're hosed if your country doesn't do it right.

Now consider that I live in a country that periodically shuts its government down because they can't even pass a budget.

No, they're simply not linked. That other people need stuff is a fact. I'm not averse at all to society helping out people with genuine need. My personal viewpoint is that my place in the world is just a moment in time. I as well as my family and friends could be in very different circumstances in the future. For that matter, some of my family are really not well off anyway. I just disagree with the notion that because a subset of people can't provide something for themselves, we should have the government provide it for everybody. There's another option, that being provide it for just the people who can't provide it for themselves who actually want it.

Homeless people need somewhere to live, but that doesn't mean the government should start building houses and assign everyone one. Some people don't have food, but I don't want a government ratio crate on my doorstep every week. I want the right to pick my own provider, and the right to fire them when they do a bad job.

People always say that, yet I have extended family in Canada who aren't happy with health care there.

I'm expecting exactly what I said. Single payer means if that single payer screws it up, you don't have an alternative to jump ship. Sometimes the government does a good job at things. Sometimes they don't. I'm just choosing not to indulge in the naivete that some wish to and believe that giving a job to government automatically means it'll be done well.

Really, if single payer is so wonderful, just let people opt in to Medicare for $amount. There's no need to conscript every living person in the US to go with you if they don't want to.

Single payer just means no options. If your single payer is great, wonderful. If it's not, you're hosed and have no options.

Personally, I think it's just a pipe dream/standard appeal to authority. "Somebody else handle this and do a good job!" Well, yeah, sure. What if you give it to someone else and they do a bad job?

No real risk, beyond that of inconvenience. All it does is shut your computer down. It's not wiping anything or physically damaging the hardware, it's just turning it off and relying on you using full disk encryption to actually protect your data.

Sounds like you watched "House of Cards", too.