People at that time have immediate needs, and I'd rather see those tended by some priority other than how much they can afford.
We're not talking about people injured needed a ride to the hospital. Just a bunch of people that need a cab.
A tax break is not debt forgiveness. A tax break is a reduction in the tax you owe.
You get a tax break (I'm assuming you work for a living, which is probably a bad assumption considering your attitude that the government owns everyone and everything) all over the place, from AFDC, EIBT, Standard deductions, healthcare deductions, electric car credit, energy efficiency credit, etc. etc. Not to mention if you don't work, you can get housing credit, EBT food, etc. (except you don't if you're living in your parents basement while planning the Communist Revolution. So YOU are actually a public employee working for the Federal government.
Tax breaks are federal funding too.
NO. No, it's not.
You're looking at it selfishly. Try looking more at what benefits a society as a whole, or in this case, what benefits the most people.
I pay less (in terms of how much I have to work to get the money) and get priority treatment.
What if, instead, you have twice as much money because you worked twice as hard. Would it be immoral to offer $40 because you have more in that case? Or would you compare each others' current funds and the person with the least amount of money should be the only one allowed to bid?
And there is not a single private corporation in the USA who does not get a lot of federal and state funding.
WUT?? LOL!
Can anyone provide any evidence that this girl actually has a mitochondrial disorder? I take care of a lot of very complex mito kiddos, and the really sick ones are attached to drips 24 hours a day.
Well... there's the evidence that while being treated for it she was doing okay (could walk, skate, talk, etc.), but when that treatment was removed and denied, she deteriorated to the point that she was in a wheelchair and had trouble talking, then when treatment for mito resumed, she improved significantly.
So, there's that.
Yes, certainly the parents are at fault here, as when their daughter was kidnapped by the state and held captive by the doctors, for some reason the refused to cooperate with the kidnappers, and even called them bad names!
The parents have found a single doctor who said it might be mitochondrial problems, but after all this time it has still not been established. The parents refuse to get a proper muscle biopsy done, something that could clarify if that is the actual cause.
The hospital had full custody of her and provided any treatment they saw fit for 16 months. Why didn't they do a "proper muscle biopsy"? Oh, right, because one of their "experts" diagnosed it as psychological, so there was no need to check for anything else. Even while her health was getting worse and worse the whole time.
Aside from that, a muscle biopsy (typically multiple are required, and they are painful) will not necessarily produce a definitive answer.
For some conditions it remains a real challenge to detect the mitochondrial abnormality. This might be because the biochemical change that we see is very subtle or alternatively because there are many, many hundreds of different genetic defects in patients with mitochondrial disease. The identification of these mutations can be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Not sure why you want to vilify the parents and accuse them of lying after it is so clear the Children's Hospital is at fault, here. Wait... are you posting from Boston?
But can a private hospital legally take custody away from a parent? If anything, the hospital is negligent by not further exploring options.
Well, they did it. All it took was a overzealous state bureaucracy and a compliant court system.
Private hospitals. Now part of the 'nanny state'.
Boston Children's Hospital may be "private" by your definition, but it's an entirely tax-exempt organization that receives millions of dollars in Federal funding every year. It's more like a public/private partnership.
So, yea, part of the 'nanny state'.
That said, I don't think that justifies attacking the hospital electronically or physically; just through legal channels. But the hospital and courts were complete and utter pieces of shit in this case.
So the courts were utter pieces of shit, but you still think there is some "legal channel" available to attack them through? There really wasn't, which is why this guy is a hero for bringing attention to the malfeasance. Legal channels had already failed the child and her family, and left her at the mercy of these psychopathic bureaucrats.
Given the number of other things Apple's done like this I'll side on this becoming a trend.
Yep. People that have to have the latest Apple device will continue to need the latest Apple device.
the market trumps basic morality
No, you're completely missing the point. The point is, the market was able to create a moral outcome (lowering the shortage of drivers) by using market incentives (pay drivers more so there will be more drivers).
Would it be more "moral" to leave the rates alone, allow the shortage of drivers as-is, and have more people standing on the sidewalk unable to get an Uber ride home?
affecting the economy as a whole due to lack of options and an enormous entry barrier.
The most effective barriers to entry are the ones erected by government regulation (often at the behest of incumbent corporations). Companies are rarely able to erect those barriers themselves without compliant government bureaucrats. As an example, when Uber and Lyft left Austin, TX, 5 other ridesharing companies showed up to take up the slack (two of the dedicated to Austin).
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.
