Florida Man shook himself awake to the sound of cops banging on the door. Shit. Pausing only long enough to see whether he had pants to keep the police dog from chewing on his nuts if it was going to be that kind of chase, he staggered away from the sound of knocking. Where the Hell was he anyways? It was like he was in a boat, but it wasn’t rocking. Fuck. He hoped it wasn’t the FWC. The Grouper Troupers have all sorts of fun motorized vehicles that make escaping on foot (or by swimming) hard.
Oh look, Florida Man, thought. I am in a boat. It’s just grounded. That makes sense, but you can’t assume things about what people will build for a house in Florida. Throwing a leg over the side, FM saw that there were cops waiting for him.
“Please, bro. Don’t tase me!” Florida Man called, throwing up his hands and falling to his knees. “I’ve got a bitchin’ headache, my mouth tastes like a bus driver’s ass smells, and people spent all day yesterday punching the shit out of me.”
A deputy approached and said, “Sir, is this your boat?”
“Nope. Never seen it before in my life.”
“So you don’t know whose boat this is? Because it seems to be lying on its side in the middle of a beach. Do you know how it got here?”
Florida Man thought fast.
“No, sir. I, uh, had just come aboard right before you got here to see if anyone was here or hurt. It does seem strange to come upon a nice boat like this on Daytona Beach.”
The deputy was giving him the cop stare, hoping Florida Man would get nervous and say something else. The silence went on for half a minute. Then one of the other deputies walked up and said, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who got beat up yesterday at that softball game?”
FM nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That was me. I’m a little unclear on the in-between. I had, like, a bunch of 4Lokos and blacked out.”
The second deputy said, “Well, anyone who is friends with a Polk County Sheriff’s deputy is friends with me. We ain’t kick your ass for trying to a good deed up here. You can go and have a nice day.”
Florida Man turned and started walking away, amazed at his dumb luck.
“Hey, boy!” A deputy shouted.
Florida Man tensed to run, but turned around, his face a rictus grin of fear.
“I think you dropped your cell phone and your wallet while you was in there!”
Florida Man walked back to retrieve his phone and wallet, certain he was going to jail yet again.
“You okay, boy?” The deputy with his possessions asked.
“Yeah, I, uh. Bad seafood. I’m gonna have to find somewhere soon.”
Florida Man retrieved his phone and wallet. He did a fine impression of a man with a bad shrimp about to paint his pants walking away. Thank goodness that the average Florida cop was recruited from the same pool as his minions, he thought, scrolling through his phone. It was the only thing that gave him the slightest hope of one day ruling all that the Mouse did not claim.
Though I like the He-Man reference, I don’t think his hairstyle is “mullet-like” enough to belong to Florida Man.
Why are He-Man’s nipples so close together?
Same plastic surgeon as this chick.
Bad bench pressing form?
He had nipple realignment surgery because they were chafing too hard on his armorkini top.
If they were further away fro each other, his harness/wifebeater wouldn’t cover them. Duh. It’s like you don’t know how to cartoon whatsoever.
So is florida man black, or do florida cops use ‘boy’ the way most other cops use ‘sir’?
“Boy” is a catchall for any male not worthy of “sir”.
Well, I’m off to court to fight my seatbelt/no insurance ticket today. I can’t decide which 2A t shirt to wear. Maybe I’ll just put on a dress, because I feel like I am going to get fucked.
Good Luck! Bring lube, just in case.
Don’t wear panties. The judge will appreciate that.
Good luck. Make sure to tell the judge to go fuck himself if they give u any lip.
Glibertarians – come for the fun, stay for the stellar legal advice!
Patriarchal shitlord, how dare you assume the judge is a man! A woman is just as capable of enforcing the State’s
money grabsafety regime as any man.(My kindgdom for a preview post button. )
Feh. Preview is for the weak.
Not all of us want to end up like Gilmore…
A Glibertarian’s posts should be like a Glibertarian’s love: hard and fast.
…awkward looking and ultimately disappointing?
Ending with a lot of crying and shame?
“A Glibertarian’s posts should be like a Glibertarian’s love: hard and fast.”
I was thinking full of anger stemming from childhood drama?
Stupid autocorrect drama was supposed to be trauma.
Coldly calculating with lots of sarcasm?
ground up and in the freezer?
Oh, wrong joke.
My friend in traffic court:
Judge: On (date) you were pulled over and charged with exceeding the posted limit by 15 mph. How do you plead?
Friend: Not guilty.
Judge: I rule in favor of the police. You can pay your ticket with cash or check at the counter on the way out.
Friend: But, I.
Judge: Court is adjourned. Do not make me have the bailiff arrest you. You can pay your ticket with cash or check at the counter on the way out.
Me in traffic court for running a stop sign:
Me: Here is the photo evidence of no stop sign at the intersection.
Judge: You probably ran a stop sign somewhere else. Guilty.
To be fair, the judge was right.
But he died a few months later, so I count that as a victory.
As far as I can tell, a not guilty plea only works in traffic court if the arresting officer is not present. Otherwise, you should plead guilty and hope for probation before judgment.
HA HA! I won, pigs lost. Fuck them for wasting my time.
go on…
The city attorney called me to talk to him. He asked if I could prove I had insurance at the time of the stop. I gave him my insurance cards. He asked if I just wanted to plea to the seatbelt violation. I said no, I was wearing my seat belt.
He asked if I took it off during the stop.
I said no, I was wearing my seatbelt.
He asked why would the officer write me a ticket then.
I told him I assume he did so because he was stalling for time in order to give time for the K9 unit to show up so they could search my vehicle.
The city attorney said OH. I see. Well will will just elect not to prosecute on both counts then.
Seems like he had seen that set up before.
That’s pretty sweet.
EXCELSIOR!
Go get drunk, man.
Was it the dress that did it?
Short skirt, thong underwear?
That won’t work as lyrics to short skirt long jacket.
Now I am trying to figure out what a thong jacket might be.
short skirt, thong in buttcrack?
Sorry that’s all I got
I want a defendant woth a short skirt and a loooooong rap sheet
/judge
At city hall we meet accidentally
We start to talk when he brings me in.
He wants a speeder who wears no seatbelt
He wants a guy -just cancelled state farm.
He’s dropping charges, they just can’t stick em.
He’s going out to yell at that city attorney.
I want a defendant with a short skirt and a long rap sheet.
pretty good. +1 cake
Congrats on showing them what for.
Nice!
HUZZAH!
Presumably, you still used the lube? I mean, you brought it all that way after all…
of course
Here’s rooting for ya. I hope it goes well.
Refresh, dammit.
In texas you can get a jury trial for traffic tickets. If you demand a jury trial the judge will just throw your ticket out.
I don’t know if you can demand a jury trial for traffic tickets in Arkansas. I was considering asking for one if this matter went any further.
What usually happens is that the City will move to continue your case about four or five times, until you get the hint. This will cause you (or the attorney you’ve hired) to have to come into court each time, sit through docket call, and then get told to come back some time later. Eventually it’s just cheaper to play ball, plead whatever you’re going to plead, and go on like everyone else.
Now that I’ve written that, I’m sure one of the Texas attorney Glibs can point out a case or two where someone went through voir dire etc… and actually had a case. But I’ve not heard of it from the friends I have that practice here.
Oh Florida Man, when will he ever learn?
If he learned, he wouldn’t be Florida Man…
Touche.
Brett, you have to use this story in the next florida man:
http://www.flkeysnews.com/news/local/article159883474.html
If people want species to stop being endangered, they need to talk people into eating them.
Thanks for the tip.
but just the tip.
*narrows gaze*
Oh, nothing is going to be narrowing- why do you think they call him lord Humungus?
I was disappointed in the lack of the use of the Florida man shoots self in penis story.
“the average Florida cop was recruited from the same pool as his minions,”
I lost it at this part.
Minne has some weirdos, but I do look forward to Florida Man’s adventures. Thanks, Brett!
So is Florida Man a Marvel or DC character?
Indy. Neither big outfit would claim him.
Rob Liefield draws him, which is why he doesn’t have any feet.
Originally Charlton, but it was gobbled up by DC years ago.
Fun Fact: The hapless black psychiatrist in Watchmen was originally Florida Man’s mild-mannered alter ego, Pete Pogglepost.
I enjoyed a lot of the Charlton titles. Some classics like The Phantom and Captain Atom.
Actual, real news about Florida Man.
A 23-year-old Florida man was pulled off a Delta flight to Beijing, which had to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Thursday evening, after the passenger assaulted a flight attendant, authorities said.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/delta-flight-to-beijing-returns-to-sea-tac-following-security-incident-with-passenger/
Florida Man never catches a break
Man, even pulled from his natural habitat, Florida Man does not disappoint.
Some say that outside his natural habitat, he becomes even more unpredictable and aggressive.
Fuckhead. A delay on an already horrible flight – he’s lucky they didn’t stuff him in a beverage cart.
Or tie him to the landing gear.
This. As a passenger, probably in coach, I would’ve wanted to have killed him.
I already wanted to burn down Continental’s district office after they forced our plane to turn around, halfway from Houston to Seattle, and fly back to Houston. That was only 4.5 hours of fun in the air to get nowhere.
God only knows over which desolate part of Alaska drunk fucko decided he needed another mini bottle of Jack to make it through the trip.
What are you trying to say about Brett. Are you calling his story fake news.
In other news, Terrence Malick may just be the most annoying director in cinema history.
Once again, the whole thing was filmed with a GoPro on a selfie stick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9t4SKWryWM&feature=youtu.be
Looks thrilling.
*injects self with Sudafed just to stay awake*
*barfs*
“It does seem strange to come upon a nice boat like this on Daytona Beach.”
A nice twist would be for the cop to tell him that this was Palm Beach.
Of course, they probably wouldn’t have let him go at that point.
I was thinking maybe he washed up on Myrtle Beach, or maybe the Jersey Shore. And had to fight and steal his way back to Fla.
Channelling the Warriors? Sounds cool, bro.
OT: Do poor people make bad choices?
Okay, so society has either become more unequal, or the economy has had slower growth rates. That isn’t the same thing most people mean by having economic mobility, and does nothing to disprove that hard work and an education can be deployed to take you form the gutter to the top. Their own examples, Ceclia Mo and the author of Hillbilly Elegy, did exactly that. A lot of the difference that is *observable* between the people making it out of the gutters and those staying there is hard work or intelligence (often both).
*facepalm* Of course, people who make excuses for themselves- that doesn’t mean to take them at their word.
Hrm… yeah, it can definitely work both ways. Met a lot of lazy people when I was working with the workfare folks (welfare, but with some strings attached- I was not on the program, but working for a nonprofit associated with the city government). That did not make me like them.
And empathy isn’t the same as “rah rah all your decisions were the correct ones don’t ever change!”
But it provides some insight into the mindset of certain people…they only like people they already agree with, if there’s something about their behavior they don’t like they develop distaste or even hatred.
Think of that next time they say “those evil right-wingers who disagree with me are full of hate!”
Or am I not being empatetic enough.
Right, I’m not saying I don’t feel sorry at all for anyone in a bad situation. Shitty things can and do happen to people, outside of their control. But there is a difference between someone who is down on their luck and who made their own ‘bad luck’. The problem I have with the posted article is they are implying the latter type of person doesn’t exist.
Hell, I was the latter type of person for awhile, with the exception that I knew I was at fault.
Probably the biggest thing to have empathy for is that kids who are poor largely grow up in an environment where people generally make poor life decisions and poor life decisions are considered perfectly acceptable.
Back when I was a teenager working the factory floors to make some summer $$, I got a lot of shit for being a “college boy”.
I also learned that I really, really liked some of the black women there – who were incredibly friendly (and two of them were rockin’ hot, even in their 30s).
Looks like you had some of the old [offensive term deleted], wink wink, nudge nudge!
These were mostly white people, early-middle aged typically. I’m not sure if it came off that way, but I wasn’t thinking in terms of race when writing this.
“I also learned that I really, really liked some of the black women there – who were incredibly friendly (and two of them were rockin’ hot, even in their 30s).”
Go on…
It was mostly white guys – nearing middle-age and stuck in the factory life making not-too-much money. Most of the older black dudes I met were pretty mellow.
Chocolate don’t chip, as a (black) co-worker once said to me. I thought he and I were around the same age (40), and it turns out he is in his mid-50s and has a son the same age as my younger sister.
I grew up around a lot of poverty when I was a kid, and it’s actually gotten worse since then because the few factories around closed. My family was more lower middle class than anything else, but if you want a good ‘starter kit’ to avoid being poor:
1. Finish high school.
2. Don’t have kids if you’re unmarried or not financially stable.
3. Don’t do anything that attracts the cops’ attention, i.e. crime.
4. Avoid chemical dependency, be it alcohol, drugs, smoking, etc.
Think you ‘uplift’ a lot of poor people with these basic rules. Guess what they all involve.
Money from the government?
Intimate contact – such as the experience if teaching in the inner city, mentoring, other types of services that allow people to connect despite class difference – builds empathy.
And here I thought familiarity bred contempt.
I deliver pizza 3-4 nights a week. Our store’s delivery range does not encompass a lot of nice neighborhoods, which means I’m delivering a lot of pizza to a lot of poor people. My experiences are not building any empathy, I must say.
Obligatory
It isnt complicated to have a decent life. All you have to do is not fuck up. Don’t be overly self-indulgent, gamble, dope, run afoul of the law, too much hookers and blow etc.
I bet a lot of this change is attributable to greater wealth. If a lot of people are poor (gee, I wonder if there was some event that impoverished people not too long before the 1940s…hmmm…) then in a free country there’s a lot of room for growth. If fewer people are poor, there’s less room for growth, so less of the poor will rise out of it. It’s probably true that a certain segment of society is “naturally poor”, i.e. prone to bad decisions that will result in poverty, and as a society grows richer it will start sorting itself out so that the “naturally poor” and the “naturally rich” will find their way into those categories. As it becomes sorted, it would not surprise me if the natural rate of people doing better/worse than their parents is 50/50: half of the children of the poor are “naturally rich” and so will do better than their parents while half of the children of the rich are “naturally poor” and so will do worse. Seems like that would fit a bell curve.
Excellent point, especially since if my parents made $250K a year, I wouldn’t consider it a life-failure to only make $250K (or $200K) a year.
Not to mention, even with inflation factored in, someone today making $250K a year is living a better quality of life than someone 30 years ago who did the same.
Intimate contact – such as the experience if teaching in the inner city, mentoring, other types of services that allow people to connect despite class difference – builds empathy.
Yeah, because the poor kids who go for mentoring or Big Brothers/Big Sisters or after-school programs are just such a perfect reflection of their cohort. Here’s a hint, the kind of kids involved in these sorts of things are much likelier to be the sorts who get out of poverty, even before they set foot in the program.
Eggsellent werk, Britt.
So my kids wanted to watch Willy Wonka this morning. Look for it on demand, and there it is, from some network I’ve never heard of called Freeform. In the commercial breaks, this promo for a show on the network was showed. Nearly made me piss my pants with laughter. It’s as if your average Jezebel freelancer decided to make a TV show.
Your icon doesn’t scan on my computer. Maybe my computer is, like oooold.
I also don’t see the avatar.
I don’t either, but I thought it was just supposed to be some sort of hipster ironic metacomment on the impermanence of digital art or some such white nonsense.
Huh….it was working yesterday
Oh, there it is – the Misfits’ Field Club, no wait, *Fiend* club.
Why would you join a club of fiends? Are you a Democrat?
I had to reload it.
I’m guessing you’re not familiar with the old horror punk band The Misfits. Their fans called themselves “fiends”.
I beg your pardon, I’m sure.
OMG you’re right it’s horrifying!
Bad Music for Bad People
BadAwesome music for bad peopleDoof. That was a Cramps album, not a Misfit album. I have the shame.
Aha. I never really listened to The Cramps beyond the odd song on a mix tape. Never had any of their albums, anyway.
With computer set lists and “scramble” they all tend to blur together anyway, SF. Misfits rolls into Electric Six into the Cramps to the Dead Kennedys to Horton.
It’s amazing how much information is available and how easy it is to access and carry around.
Glen Danzig was a beefy he-man like singing munchkin.
Caught a video of him singing about 10 years ago. I never knew leather Spandex tops were a thing before and I really treasured my ignorance of the subject. The video of him getting punched out backstage is also a classic.
Great voice though.
Hah….I love the Misfits, Samhain, and Danzig’s early albums, but Glenn is SO pretentious. I’m a fan of his music but I too laughed when he got decked.
There’s also an old story floating around from the early eighties about Henry Rollins chasing Danzig down the streets of L.A. and beating him like a rented mule.
Huh…the story I heard was that Hank and Glenn chased Vince Neil down the street once.
…that probably would be more likely.
And after all the avatar brouhaha, still no comments on that ridiculous commercial 🙁
“Hmmm…we can have this show with hot women in sexual situations, but we have them use the word ‘patriarchy’ a lot and abuse men…you know, we might have an audience for that…and the feminists might like it too.”
“And if anyone says we’re being exploitative, we call them sexists and the controversy goes viral…KA-CHING!”
“And we could have them do assignments where they go off and fight crime and…wait, I think I may have seen a show with that concept before…”
“And let’s do something really unusual for a scripted drama – let’s make them all live in NYC working as journalists for a women’s magazine! It’s never been done before to my knowledge – super original!”
I have seen that advertised. I wont be tuning in.
I am fortunate that the video is not available in my country! Score one for Canada!
I’ve seen it advertised on HGTV. My wife said “Wanna bet me on the over/under for how long it lasts? I’m betting one season.” “Nah, six episodes.” “Nuh-uh. Most of the target demographic’s too shallow to quickly realize it’s crap. One season.” “Yes, dear.”
She’s usually right about these things, which is why she’s such a good marketer and I stayed away from marketing like the plague.
Shoot me now.
Which part inspired it – “We smash the patriarchy” or the girl whining about the “old white men on the board”?
“We smash the patriarchy” is cringe worthy but a common enough theme. Complaining about “old white men” makes the SJW alarms in my head go off and I start seeing red. That and the scene with them apparently yelling at a train. Lots of people in NYC do that, they’re all crazy.
There are a bunch of other ones linked on YouTube that are just as cringeworthy. Honestly, even if you were in the target demographic of young woke women, wouldn’t this thing be obvious pandering?
Fast-forward to September, 2019, when Freeform cancels The Bold Type due to lack of interest:
“The Bold Type is Cancelled – Here’s Why That’s a Problem”
I love the equivalence between “too-frank portrayal of the dark side of the gridiron” and “portray smart, sexy, fierce, independent women for who they really are”.
Makes it sound like protraying women for who they really are is a too-frank portrayal of the dark side, doesn’t it?
I think FS Jr. just made that up, but it is pretty convincing…
FS Jr: Have you thought of getting a career writing at The Atlantic, or maybe Jezebel?
I did just make it up – my framing device was that this was going to be the writeup when this show bites the dust in a couple of years. Normally when I spring these on y’all, I like to pretend that they are real at first.
It appears that this is my one and only talent; I’ve fooled others, both at Reason and here. I should probably find a way to capitalize on it.
I was complimenting him on burying a nasty dig in the woke word salad.
I’d take credit for it, except I hadn’t even considered that angle.
Ah, okay. I guess I was the only one to misunderstand someone.
*slinks off*
Look, I’m just spitballing here, but maybe someone could do a miniseries (as opposed to a play-that’s been covered) about Aphra Behn?
Female Restoration author…wait, don’t yawn so loud, she was also a spy and “belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester.”
And she wrote a poem about ED.
Was that a poem or a dissertation?
Ba ha
I wanna be a minion now…
They have FloridaMinion starter kits on Amazon. I went with the evening wear package: jorts, miss-matched flip flops, Mike Allstot tank top, PBR sun visor, and wallet chain.
Where’s the meth and keystone ice?
They have a baby stroller add-on just for that
“my mouth tastes like a bus driver’s ass”
“about to paint his pants”
[Raymond Chander gives raised eyebrow, approving nod]
chandler. dammit.
“Where women blow and men chander.”
+ 6’4″ and full of muscles
Hashiell Dammett!
(polite applause)
Big, big savings from single-payer! It has to be true, it’s in the New York Times!
“There are lots of other related benefits with Single payer that people dont mention.
* Car insurance and personal liability insurance is cheaper as you dont need to sue for medical costs. Fewer court cases and lawyers
* Health policy gets more interested in making people healthier as it reduces the countries’ bill
* People are more likely to quit jobs and start smaller companies as they dont need to work at the corporation for the health benefits.”
The level of derp is making my eye balls hurt.
Healthcare: the only industry where less consumption = more productivity
Car insurance and personal liability insurance is cheaper as you dont need to sue for medical costs.
Of course, whether you are insured or not has virtually nothing to do with personal injury cases.
Health policy gets more interested in making people healthier
Which should scare the shit out of you.
People are more likely to quit jobs and start smaller companies
Also supposedly a benefit of ObamaCare and the exchanges. Oddly, though, the rate of new business formation and the number of entrepeneurs crashed.
“Health policy gets more interested in making people healthier
Which should scare the shit out of you.”
Yes!!! That is by far the scariest thing about ‘single payer’ healthcare. Whenever I think nothing could be worse than Obamacare I remind myself that it is a gateway to all sorts of worse things.
“gateway to all sorts of worse things”
Exactly why the single payer crowd wants it. With pinkos everything is about control. Always power. Creepy fuckers.
“Car insurance and personal liability insurance is cheaper as you dont need to sue for medical costs.”
If someone hits another under single payer they’re still suing for lost wages, emotional distress, and fuck the government option I want the best care you are paying for my private doctor.
“People are more likely to quit jobs and start smaller companies”
Yes because people are going to flock to start companies with the ridiculous taxes and regulations that will be put in as a result of single payer.
Bottom line if any of this bullshit was true it’s not free. It’s a massive transfer of wealth and liability. You pay less on your car insurance because everyone is now paying for you. Everyone is now paying for your poor health decisions. And everyone is now paying for you to quit your job and start that pet psychic business you’ve always dreamt about.
Health policy gets more interested in making people healthier
Actually, no it doesn’t, instead they just impose idiotic cash grabs like soda taxes. When in reality taxing fat people would actually have results.
What also reduces a single-payer country’s bill is just letting people die, as the dead have little cost, but that friendly detail is often elided…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html
Obamacare will bend the cost curve!
…Which direction?
I dont know about y’all but the 2500 bucks / year that obamacare saved me went to my gun collection.
Yup, saved so much that even the sixth largest economy in the world couldn’t afford it.
Can CNN please take the Times with it when it goes off to die?
Let’s see…
Uh-huh. Are you in the market for bridges?
If you follow the link for that 15% number, it’s to an advertising company’s advertisement. It’s not even about health insurers.
Fun fact: sick people are not going to stop being sick because they are on the same program as healthy people.
Jesus tittyfucking Christ. You get to keep more of your money? IRRELEVANT!
It’s not your money, you didn’t make that!
So if we already cover the sickest population with single payer, why exactly would we need to expand single payer? I don’t understand how this could even be considered an argument in favor of the system.
Because, pleb, someone needs to pay those medical bills, and if sick people could do it on their own, they would have already.
/Single Payer Advocate
The “savings” of single-payer systems, relative to the U.S., come from some combination of the following factors:
1. Unavailability of equipment and services. If you can’t buy it at any price, then you’re not spending money on it.
2. Rationing. Different from (1) in that the equipment and services are available, just in limited quantity.
3. Limited liability. If you can’t sue your doctor for malpractice, then he doesn’t need to pay for malpractice insurance.
4. Lighter regulatory burden*. If you don’t have to jump through as many hoops, then you don’t have to pay for so many hoop jumpers.
* = (4) is a mixed bag; regulations differ from country to country and are lighter than the U.S. in some ways (direct care) and heavier in others (R&D)
Yep. Sargon always pushes the ‘but public healthcare is cheaper!’ argument as well, always forgetting the second part: “…because its services are worse.”
Public healthcare (usually slightly) raises the bar for the lowest ~20% at the expense of (sometimes drastically) lowering it for the other ~80%. It’s a least common denominator solution. Some of its proponents are honest about this fact being their intent (better everyone waits in line for the same small pool of resources than that some with money can dip into larger pools), but a lot of people now are peddling the “it’s better in all ways” line of utter bullshit.
better everyone waits in line for the same small pool of resources than that some with money can dip into larger pools
This is also a load of crap because there’s still plenty of preferential treatment in public systems, it’s just based on power rather than money. Servicemen and vets get better treatment than civilians in Canada for example.
Which is a fair rebuke based on reality, but their principle is shit even if (perhaps, especially if) it were actually applied.
Servicemen and vets get better treatment than civilians in Canada for example.
As do cops, particularly RCMP.
I’ve also personally seen young athletes getting front-of-the-line treatment for their injuries (particularly hockey players for inguinal hernias).
I had an acquaintance take me to task for going the private route to fix my medial meniscus tear in my right knee many years ago. He explicitly went with the “it’s evil that you can do this while some other people can’t” argument, and also tried to buttress it by saying that, if I was willing to travel around a lot in the province (i.e., operation-shopping), I might find a surgeon without such a long wait time (i.e., less than 30 months).
After I pointed out that gaming the system (as he was recommending) was tantamount to admitting it was broken, I also pointed out that I wasn’t “jumping the queue,” I was leaving it for a different queue. And then, for only the second time in my entire time on Facebook, I did the unfriend thing.
Fuckin’ A-hole.
… and in leaving that queue, you just helped everyone *behind* you in that queue, by bringing maybe hundreds of sufferers’ wait time less.
This is what you get for being a selfless humanitarian…
Yeah. I never understood why it was okay to buy a $5,000 home theatre system with my own money (even though a lot of other people can’t do that), but it was evil for me to spend the same five grand on arthroscopic surgery (even though a lot of other people can’t do that). The arguments are identical but the desirability of the outcomes are polar opposites.
If I reflect on it, there may be something to the idea that if you spend money on physical items, you’re a “consumer” … and people imagine a vast network of people ‘having something to do’ to bring that geegaw to your trembling hands. A kind of perverse, poorly understood “I, Pencil”, that delivers a tangible object to you.
Compared with a service, whether it’s fixing your teeth, your knee, your ass to make you more attractive to the opposite sex, a labioplasty that makes you feel more confident, or a ride in the first Virgin Space Flight, where your money obviously goes to a single doctor or plutocrat who ought to be abasing himself/herself at the altar of Bernie-dom for their sin of being wealthy.
I’m trying to think of some solid counterexamples, but I can’t – but maybe I’m being dumb.
Crab-bucket syndrome. Very common among collectivists.
Fuck your knee, what about muh narrative?
Although, one thing I don’t have a good answer/explanation for is why, in many countries with public and private options, the private side tends to be minuscule in comparison to the public side and is very costly. Singapore seems to be an exception to this rule, but their “public system” is extremely bare-bones from what I’ve read. Crowding out?
Any idea how tightly regulated the Private system is? Since the govt. is the one who makes the laws for both, and they obviously have a vested interest in keeping their own health system afloat, that would be a good place to look. Even pricing might be dictated by law to keep it unattractive.
No evidence, just spitballing possibilities.
Well, if they applied some thought to it, then they would want to drive patients who can afford it out of the public system and into the private system since that would leave the same number of dollars to pay for treating fewer patients in the public system.
But, as we’ve seen with school vouchers, pulling people out of the public system jeopardizes public employees’ jobs, left-wing fantasies about “shared values”, and popular support for what amount to costly and ineffective but forcibly funded programs.
It’s one of his failings. He seems to be genuinely oblivious of the existence (and meaning) of things like medical tourism and the free rider factor that Europeans (often) get from US pharma recouping their costs in the US market.
It’s not like there aren’t plenty of well-publicized examples of the failings of the NHS.
“…the free rider factor that Europeans (often) get from US pharma recouping their costs in the US market.”
One more reason to get rid of the FDA and simply make drugs legal if the EU approves them. Free ride works both ways.
Sargon always pushes the ‘but public healthcare is cheaper!’ argument
And, you get what you pay for. Spend less, get less. Spend less through a government program, get a whole lot less.
I like him and Woz Lee, but their advocacy of the NHS is annoying – they play up the benefits and ignore the flaws.
Lighter regulatory burden
This one is bullshit. The more government pays for, the more rules it imposes. About 95% of the regulation of healthcare applies because you get paid by government payment programs, virtually none of it applies because you get paid by patients or insurance companies.
Under no circumstances would the Federal Register get smaller if we went to single-payer. If single-payer countries have fewer regs than the US, its because they have fewer regs, not because they have single payer.
The beautiful thing about being the government is that you can ignore your own rules. I think, when evaluating the economics of foreign countries, one has to be mindful of the differences between the regulatory environments. Each country has its own special brand of crazy, which sometimes leaves them less crazy in certain ways compared to the U.S.
On the plus side if we implement single payer infant mortality will go down and life expectancy up. With the government in charge they will want to manipulate the data like our European counterparts so that single payer looks amazing!
I always come late but always appreciate an episode of FL man. Due to my reading comprehension, I sometimes come twice. Peace be unto FL man. I was one once.
*secret bait fishing FL man hook cross over the chest move*