TrickstaPriest

Hah. Glad to know politics in Canada has(n't) improved.

Very true...

That depends if people actually believe that person has 'become a better person'.

True, 'vulnerable to misinformation' is not correct or right. But I don't think I'm wrong in saying anyone in a rural environment is much more vulnerable to getting limited education, information, and social influence (separately from religion-directed influence). That's separate from being a bonehead. But I also think you are right, it does sound like I am making a judgment call on people in rural environments accepting BS more easily. That's not true and I shouldn't think of this in that way. I explicitly brought up information, social influence, and education for a reason, though. All of these are important, but they do not prevent someone from being 'boneheaded'. I run into a -lot- of people who claim to be rational but are definitely prejudiced, judgmental, and angry. I definitely agree that 'emotional-driven' is a powerful influence on people, but all of these people also deeply engage in the rejection of information they disagree with (not whether it's factual or not) and being prone to believing anything they already agree with. Even when (as an outsider) some of that new information was almost painfully, obviously, incorrect. I guess the original point of what I was trying to get at is this: having more access to people with differing opinions is vital in order to re-evaluate what beliefs or 'facts' you take for granted as being true. I mean, I'm well aware of social echo chambers that exist in cities and online, but that exists regardless. I'm looking at what else is even available (at least, pre-internet). --- Then again, maybe access to other people doesn't have as big an effect on refining people's awareness of the facts as I thought? It might not be an 'improvement' at all to have access to others information/opinions, or maybe that has no value even if you did have it.

My (limited) understanding of that has to do heavily with the huge rural versus suburban/urban population divide in the US. Anyone in a rural environment is much more vulnerable to getting limited education, information, and social influence (separately from religion-directed influence), and (to me) appears entirely vulnerable to bad actors spreading misinformation. You can tell I love our radio show/political news environment in the US, can't you.

I do appreciate the digging, though.

...No thoughts on the Amazon...?

Meanwhile, that Amazon. edit: Yeah, I've been telling friends for over a year Puerto Rico has to leave the US. They have no choice now. But they have to find someone willing to help rebuild them, too.

I've abstained from commenting on the gun violence topic, but from my (American who grew up in Canada) perspective, the real problem with mass shootings to me is that it's a symptom of an often clearly abusive relationship certain extreme political show hosts have with their viewership. We can be kind and say it's a symptom of what happens when a large part of the rural population feels abandoned by political efforts (which it is), or children feeling abandoned by their own society (which they are), but it's also a symptom of an idology that's literally preying on the minds of those vulnerable people and instilling violent anger in them as a mechanism of control. It's been happening for a long time, but if the government was invested in preventing that abuse instead of using it then we wouldn't have 'these styles' of shootings. Which of course is only a subset of the other shootings we have (school shootings are their own category), or the gun violence in general in this country... The amount of people being killed, relatively speaking, is low. But it's a very obvious symptom of societal breaks that are "not good" for the future of a stable, democratic society. ...OTOH those symptoms are great if you don't care about maintaining a stable, democratic society. But that's just my opinion now. (edit: not as a conspiracy theory, just as a 'some people are shortsighted opportunistic assholes' statement)

Pretty much the reason I read this board I like getting these pieces of contextual information from people. When I feel it's very relevant I'll dig up more on them.

Why I always like when people provide a detailed source. Thank you.

I strongly suspected something like this (as the reason doctors would refuse to see Medicare patients). This is very helpful to comment on, as I'm never satisfied without hearing the underlying "boots on the ground" reality of a situation. This is quite a different problem from the issues I've seen with the behavior of the insurance companies (much closer to my own experiences), and its good to get an account of what is happening there.

And this here is why I hate the current insurance system. Plus, with people who have ongoing conditions, their strategy is to 'wait it out and hope you die before paying for something'.

As far as Medicare's denial rate is concerned, I'm not surprised given the general age and health of the participants. I definitely would like to see the data on how it compares to private insurance for the same age group (and costs) though, because I'm inclined to agree based on what you are showing. (No, not asking you to do my research for me I have to start looking for sources for research on some of these programs, I just haven't gotten to it yet) I don't want us to get too hot under the collar. I wholly agree that the medical system costs have to be forced under control, but I don't think private insurance has been working to control this.

I think, instead of addressing the definition of socialism, I have been thinking of maybe approaching these issues with what specifically causes socialism to 'damage' society and how that relates to what the conversation is talking about. I've had some back-and-forth arguments, and they've usually summed up as 'people having different priorities'. ie- one person is talking about how belief is just an excuse to for individuals to do bad things, the other is talking about how belief galvanizes groups into dangerous mob behavior.