I agree with a lot of what you said in this post, but I’ve got a lot of reservations about the conclusions you’re drawing. I definitely don’t believe that corporate entities are in the business of making people happy, but there is no doubt that the leaps in nutrition education and medicine in the last 50-100 years has significantly increased the health and well-being of the population. Again, there’s a lot of bad shit and bad actors as well, but I don’t think it’s correct to draw such a broad conclusion about all of it considering the broad positive outcome. (I do agree that wealth/race etc. having huge disparities in access to health treatment and education is entirely fixable and awful, but I think many of those problems could be lessened by increasing the social safety net).
But one of those days each year it gives us The Running of the Gumps which is one of the greatest expressions on American culture
This makes me irrationally sad and upset at the same time. Is there anything we can do to restart this tradition unlike any other?
I think people get caught up in intent. When you make money the only motivating factor, then people's health and well being aren't even considered. I think that's the problem. We prioritize positive financial outcomes and then are shocked at the shit corporations do. I guess the difference being corporate entities are amoral and not immoral. I'm agreeing with you but I'm not being clear probably.
Fortunately they can still make a pilgrimage to the Nick Saban Mercedes-Benz dealership of their choice and drive off in style.
Another not that out there take. Our system is a natural conclusion of profit seeking above everything else.
Ohio is a perfectly fine place to live when big logistics isn’t actively ignoring safety and our factories aren’t exploding all over the place.
I think there's a little bit of a universal connection but it's more like a bird eating carrion or me being eaten by worms and bacteria than anything grandiose
That's a fair critique, I probably painted with too broad a brush. Advancements in medicine and nutritional education has been a net positive, agreed. But many of that seems to have been co-opted by corporate hellhole interests. A lot of the life saving, cutting edge treatment costs a fucking arm and a leg - look at insulin or hospital imaging on a trip to the ER. Your doctor thinks you need this surgery? Oh, here's an insurance adjuster with no medical experience that will dictate whether or not you actually need the care. It's absolutely fixable with a large social safety net, but that's not going to happen in America.
Agreed. I suppose I’m just trying to be careful with criticisms when potentially lumping in corporate bullshit/greed and medical and scientific advancements. It’s not wrong to say big pharma sucks shit when you see stuff like increasing insulin or epi pen prices or to say that our food providers/oversight organizations are heinous for participating in food deserts and the expense of (and difficulty of preparing) healthy foods, which are killing our most vulnerable populations. Easy to be imprecise with language in that scenario and have some dipshit spiritual healer or chiropractor antivaxxer who believes that all GMOs are a threat to the natural order of life agree with the above for the wrong reasons.
I think Redav already hit this but why would you expect publicly traded large corporations to work in the interest of the public when they put their existence at risk to do so? They have a duty to serve their shareholders and as long as they aren't knowingly deceiving people there's really nothing to hold them accountable for. Everything is deliberately setup to protect 'innovation' and competition even if public welfare is sacrificed. I think it's worth distinguishing food markets and pharma though. Pharma has one of more harmful American institutions, copyright and intellectual property laws, working for them.
The advances in medicine mean Americans live longer, but not better. If you’ve got a health issue, we’ve got a drug for that. And when that drug results in some adverse side effect, we’ve got a drug for the drug. Before long you’ve got Americans in their 50s carrying around M through S pill caddys. And the entire time, the pharmaceutical company is making money. The sooner someone is on pills, the longer they can make money off of that person.
Healthcare being strictly driven by money is why we have a dozen dick pills while they put basically zero resources into curing a host of other things.
I've said this in other threads but if there's something that could turn me into a real deal revolutionary it's the American health insurance system. I wish those companies would all burn to the ground.
Corporations don't generally "want" anything besides to make as much money as possible. If you boil it down to that life makes way more sense. Whatever makes them the most money is what they will do. They don't want Americans fat and stupid unless that makes them money. They aren't woke unless it makes them money. The only thing they care about is money.
I’d like to see evidence of this. Not because I think it’s some far-fetched theory or anything, but more because I’ve heard a lot of morons say things like this in defense of faith healers who never present real facts supporting anything they do. Definitely not saying you are one of those people, fwiw.
The timing and manner of the asset freezing has as much to do with protecting the Soviets from a two-front war as any US-Japanese relations. What we did may have provoked the Japanese to strike the US somewhere (and we expected it to be the Philippines if it happened, not Pearl Harbor), but it damn sure prevented the Japanese from renewing their war against the Soviets (they had fought in 1939). What we did not know, and Stalin did, was that Japan had already decided to strike south instead of north, which allowed him to pull divisions from the Amur front back for the crucial defense of Moscow in fall 1941. And yes I did teach this when I was at UCLA. My 1941 lecture was wild, starting with the coup in Belgrade
That’s fair and you make a valid point. I’m relying on anecdotal evidence, but a big part of my job is reading the medical records of people applying for disability and at least half of them suffer from diabetes, hypertension, obesity and/or hyperlipidemia. For lots of those folks, their journey to becoming a cog in the healthcare industry starts with one or more of these conditions and just snowballs into more severe orthopedic or metabolic disorders. Social Security used to have a disability listing for obesity. It basically meant that at or above a certain BMI a person was considered disabled. But they had to get rid of the listing in ‘99 because too many people were becoming eligible. I’ve always found that to be one of the more damning indictments of our food/healthcare systems. Basically it’s the federal government accepting morbid obesity as a norm.
Agree with this 100% and your earlier post. General happiness would be way up and healthcare expenditures would be way down if people would just do basic diet and exercise. The body positive movement is good in that people should be happy with themselves but I do worry it gives people an excuse to be slobs. It’s a uniquely American problem
It's way more time consuming and expensive to eat healthy than it is to eat poorly. That's a huge part of the problem.
Yup. Healthy food has a shitty calorie to dollar conversion, so poor people are basically forced into it.
Poverty and obesity go hand in hand and the people who have the least amount of time to shop and exercise are the working poor. And it's expensive. They aren't going for self actualization here.
Is there literature on costs? I’ve always thought eating healthy is actually really cheap, but it’s way more time consuming and if you’re working a double shift you just don’t have time and opt for convenience. Went through a period of rice, chicken, beans, broccoli dish for about six months when things were tight and it was like $2.32 a meal I calculated
More our addiction to sugar, MSG, etc. Cut that shit out for a few months and it'll taste foreign to you. Easier said than done.
Food deserts are also real. Poverty also pretty closely tracks with access to grocery stores. If you're working two jobs it's hard to drive 5 miles one way to go get a load of groceries at the nearest grocery store.
Just spitballing, but the expensive nature is more than just what you pay at checkout. Driving to the grocery store, spending time preparing it, etc. Easier to get a couple bigmacs and feed your family before you start your second shift.
Totally - I’ve always attributed it to time and access vs cost. Eating healthy and cheaply can be done but rest of life has to allow for the time it takes
You usually have to purchase in some sort of bulk to realize those savings. That is not possible for a lot of people who only have $10 and need to feed a couple people now.
90/10 ground beef is usually more expensive that 80/20. At my grocery store a thing of fresh green beans is ~$5 and it's got 80 calories in the entire bag.
Most people can afford $4-$5 for a meal. A lot can't afford $200 in groceries at any given time. It's the same for clothes, cars, and all sorts of other shit. Buy the immediately less expensive but long term more expensive version that is usually shittier than the better version that requires a larger initiation investment (that you don't have). It's robbing tomorrow to pay for today. Over and over and over.
^ this is the same reason why cash advance places exist. And rent to own stores. And garnishments as a de facto form of bill paying service.
Totally agree. That’s why it would be nice if we had a government that would better regulate the shit that goes into our food. But I’m old enough to remember Bloomberg (generally a shithead) try to ban 64 oz. sodas in NYC and people lost their minds calling him a communist dictator.