by sershe | 2025-05-15 18:31:09+00:00
"Oh, so you're from that other universe." yeah, the reality-based one, not "random outrage machine" one. It is characteristic how random (and tangentially related to your assertions in the previous post) your sources are; what they do have in common is outrage potential without any numerical context.

1) This link is from 2013. The most recent article that I can find based on the same source (ACSI report) lists Anheuser-Busch as the most hated company for partnering with trans influencer [1]. Not what I expected (I barely heard of this before)! Do you still want to use this vibe thing as an argument for which companies should be considered bad?

2) What percentage increase of healthcare costs does that contribute, and when did it become a major issue? Healthcare costs were high for a long time. Typically people complain about insurance, but we know insurance is not really a major problem [2][3]. Americans actually pay lower fraction of the cost of healthcare out of pocket.

The reason healthcare is expensive is because provider prices are high, and the reason prices are high is because there's shortage. There's a residency position shortage causing a physician shortage, caused by AMA - the union of doctors. Doctors fight tooth and nail to not allow nurses to do more procedures. To open a hospital you need a "certificate of need" issues by governmental health agencies. But no, let's latch on some random piece from an outrage cycle.

3) High drug prices (again aside from a couple of edge cases like Shkerli or whatever his name is) are a well-known thing - US subsidizes drug discovery for the rest of the world. [4] and many more can be found.

4a) I gave you a source for the FAA dispatcher schools thing, did you read it? It documents the specifics. It's not from a right wing source, in fact they keep griping how they hate it that it took Trump to notice it. And of course it's definitionally racist - but not the way you imply. From the intent itself, to outright giving explicitly race-based organizations hints on how to cheat the screening test.

4b) As for FAA/Boeing thing, "The Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) program was established by FAA Order 8100.15()". It was done by regulators themselves, not some act by politicians. But yes if we add more regulators it will solve this problem.

4c) And of course the design defect that caused MAX crashes had nothing to do with self-inspection. Sure, FAA dropped the ball, but it's funny that your link is for some unrelated issue that caused "minor injuries" when you were initially talking about plane crashes. I guess this self-inspection thing is much more of an outrage generator!

5a) That's literally not what it says. It says "recommends" and provides alternatives, so yes, you can. Also you, of course, picked one extremely rare and local example.

5b) Is looks like a rare edge case and a problem I never had. I cancelled Comcast twice (as far as I recall) and didn't have any issues. My gym membership can be cancelled or paused online without any human interaction. Even given that there's some small consumer protection problem here, I want proper Kinder eggs far more often than I cancel services, so I'd take turning FDA into advisory-label type of thing even if it means I'd have to send Comcast a letter when I move.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-21-most-hated-...

[2] https://www.kff.org/health-policy-101-health-care-costs-and-... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-out-of-pocket-ex...

[4] https://www.nber.org/digest/may05/effect-price-controls-phar...