Re: the future long term financial apocalypse of the USA

On Mon, 19 May 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:

D  <nospam@example.net> wrote:

Come to Stockholm and I can show you plenty of homeless people. There's an
invasion of gypsies who earn their living by begging, selling drugs,
stealing and prostitution. There's also the odd mentally ill person and
drug addict in the subway walking from subway car to subway car.

>
That's fine.  Those folks will always be with us.  I am talking about people
who have jobs but live in their car or in a tent city because making minimum
wage even as a hard worker is not enough for them to be able to afford a
studio apartment.

Ahh ok. I understand. No, this I have not seen in Stockholm nor in any other european city. I have seen it outside the cities though, usually in the country side.

street or in the grocery store, I think I saw only one or two with obvious
untreated major medical conditions.  I have friends who have fairly

>
This is tricky. I've been to the US more times than I can imagine, and
when I see crazy people on the street I don't know if they have untreated
medical conditions or not. Is that what you mean? Mental illness?

>
No, although that is a thing that is more of a problem in the US than in
most European countries.  I am thinking about people with physical issues.
Take a trip on the city bus here, and you'll see people with goiters,
contagious pink eye, untreated skin infections, etc.  Often things that
would not be difficult or expensive to cure.  How the hell do people get
goiters in the 21st century anyway?

Ahh, I see. Based on my experience, I agree with you. Granted, I don't watch too close in public transport, but no, not that many medical problems except for gypsies who illegally immigrated from romania who use it to get more sympathy while begging in the streets.

Is there any place in the world that isn't that way?  But I'd rather be a
secure wage slave than an insecure one.

>
Being a secure wage slave is a short step away from being a secure slave.
It is so far away from my core values to build my life around safety, that
it is difficult to describe.

>
I've been unsafe enough that I do tend to value safety.  Not to the
exclusion of everything else, but I'd like for other people not to have to
go through some of what I went through.  And I am okay paying a little more
taxes for that.
 I am okay paying my share of taxes, as long as everyone else is paying their
share too, and I used to think most people are like that.  It's definitely
different from place to place.

If you think taxes go towards a good thing, why would it change your position if others pay or don't pay? Your money still does good.
This is the great irony of the anarcho-capitalist position. Socialists and communists are more than welcome to live in an anarcho-capitalist world, as long as they force no one to live with them, but like minded people, pelase go ahead.
I, however, am not allowed to live in the socialists world, because then I'll be thrown in prison. I think this is a very clear example of the difference between an ideology of freedom and one of authoritarianism.

I'd much rather be free than safe. But, this is a matter of taste, and to
a certain amount, of economics. Science has shown that economically free
societies are better off in the long run, than socialist planned
economies.

>
You're saying one extreme is better than the other.  But there are a huge,
huge number of possibilities between those two extremes and most of them
are better than either one.  Exactly where in that range is optimal is
something that can be argued about because people differ.
--scott

I think you are way too adult and mature to have a good, honest, "trolly" discussion with! Yes, it is not a binary question, you are of course right.