The opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics included a celebration of the National Health Service, which got mysteriously cut from the broadcast in the US, at a time when there was a bunch of fuss over Obamacare that had come into effect a year or two before.
Was hard not to imagine that was a deliberate choice.
Look again at the insurmountable hill that is the US's potential transition to a fully public healthcare system, and consider that celebrating having done that elsewhere might be valid.
You can check it out - the first couple of minutes here of people in nurse costumes standing by beds and moving around a bit. Not really must see stuff. https://youtu.be/ReJjvlipXpM
Well the "no censorship!"-crowd in rhe US has been strangly focused on the censorship of racists, bigots and nazis. I don't think they consider censorship that benefits the Neo-feudalist lords as censorship.
The naive part of me these past years was thinking that calling out contradictions would bring shame and reflection to these people.
It's still important to call them out for all the onlookers, but he goal in suc discussions should not be to try and convince the other party in these cases. They at best don't care and are going all on vibes, and at worst knowingly contradict because their goal is also onlookers.
Even if a large conspiracy isn't involved, I believe that biases in worldview can contribute to these effects. However, I still think it's important to inform people of things they might be missing and hold media accountable for their choices, regardless of whether those choices are random or unknowingly biasedWe need to be careful not to fall into the allure of "fake media" in our outrage, as this could ultimately benefit populists in the long run.
The NHS is genuinely loved by most British people, for all it's faults. Not celebrating it would have been very weird. So not really propaganda, just showing the world the things we are proud of.
Feel free to censor it on your end if you find the very idea dangerous.
How is the NHS very different from the military. Americans love their military and often have propaganda-style bits like fly-overs during football games. American's don't get the option to 'opt-out' of paying for its gigantic costs. Why not have military spending depend on voluntary donations?
They actually should be able to, for the most part.
The original idea of state exists to ensure 3 things:
- Protection of the territory of the state
- Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen
- Protection of the private property of the citizen
This is why people started organizing in societies and allowing the existence of a ruler class. These 3 things.
You will always need some amount of military to be part of the state. But what most countries waste today (the USA for instance), is pornographic. The state should only be allowed (by taxation) enough military to defend their territory, not to exert control over the all planet like the USA wants to do.
EDIT: Yeah, I should have guessed the part of the "integrity of the individual citizen" would, of course, be twisted. No, it's not protection of the individual from disease of from his own stupidity or lack of ability. It just means the role of the state is to ensure the citizen is protected from deliberate harm from another individual.
I would say that in the list 'Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen' is something that a NHS would serve. Individually, people want to know that if they get injured or sick they can be taken care when they can't for themselves. Everyone is at risk of these things. Society as an organism also benefits from having resources dedicated to repair of its components in the same as it does in defense of external threats. 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
> 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
Let's be honest here. You know the NHS (and various equivalents across the world) go way, way beyond this.
And I'm not even against the existence of a public funded health service within limits. But this is just phonographic. In my country (and from what I've read in the NHS it's relatively similar), in the past 10 years we added more than 90% medical doctors and nurses to the national NHS. The budget for the local NHS increased by 72% in that same period.
And the service has become absolutely terrible and now people (the ones that only benefit from it but don't pay the costs) are asking to raise taxes even more to put even more money into the problem.
Naa, enough is enough. I don't want to support this crap.
Fair enough to complain about the execution, but glad to see you see the logic of its existence. Back to the military comparison, the waste (fraud, corruption, kickbacks, etc, etc) in that part of the public expenditure is pretty massive. Yet there don't seem to be the same outrage or call for reforms in that area. Even when multi-billion dollar programs stagger about for years then produce nothing useful (except for the profits extracted by the defense firms and their investors). Lots of hate for NHS waste, but military spending waste seems to get a free pass. Why is this?
Basically, because the military got a massive budget in WWII and Americans just got used to it because slaughtering the Nazis was the only thing that can convince Americans to buy into that level of welfare.
Now it's mostly a jobs program for poor people plus pork for politicians to throw at their favored contractors/companies. Can't really be eliminated without political suicide because too many mouths are fed off of it and will make it their mission every waking moment to damn anyone who tries to do it.
Since prevention is a lot cheaper than cure we're trying to avoid the same mistake with other things rather than commit political supuku on things that already exist.
The idea behind taxation is to enable collective spending power for things that ideally benefit society. The NHS is likely to be useful for the vast majority of people at some point or another though individuals may well not get value for money if they're healthy or die young etc. However, providing free/cheap healthcare enables people to get check-ups and hopefully catch problems earlier which can make a huge difference to the outcomes. Of course, increasing the health of the workforce is going to benefit the economy as well, if you're looking for a purely monetary benefit.
There's option to opt out of social security if you are of the right religion that existed before, I want to say, by the 1960s was the nominal date in the statute -- and registered as such by some gatekeepers in the religion. The Amish won't let those who didn't grow up in the community register although some Mennonites might. Or are working as a preacher.
It should probably be challenged because it's a clear religious discrimination. I looked seriously at renouncing my right to social security but eventually I found out they've gamed the system in favor of a few insular religions.
What a weird worldview, celebrating censorship that aligns with corporate interests in healthcare, a basic necessity, while using the tired diatribe "but muh tax money!" to pathetically drum support for it, lol.
Aren't you tired of being so angry at the wrong stuff? Such an exhausting way to live.
Nope, I came commenting on your comment which given the pattern of your other comments getting flagged all the time shows to be an exhausting way to live: being mad at small things.
I wish I could live in your bubble, where disliking the state forcibly taking away 50% of my salary (more actually) to redistribute to people that don't contribute to society and to waste in severely mismanaged public services is "being mad at small things".
You live in the bubble where taxation is only to redistribute to wasteful means. In that bubble you get blinded by black-and-white thinking that can never achieve any kind of nuance to actually address issues, only seeing issues in it all is not conducive to creating concrete criticism which is the first step to change. You can only be cynical, and contrarian.
So yeah, seems exhausting, being mad at it all because you can't think in specifics, just a general sense of madness and outrage at a black hole of frustration.
Unfortunately you live in that bubble.
Sorry you live in a broken society, maybe do something to change it.
The NHS is a bit like the NRA in the US. Politicians and rich folk would ideally do away with it, but they cannot, so they have to play lip service to gain favour with the public.
So its not propaganda in the way you are thinking of.
Was hard not to imagine that was a deliberate choice.