Human Nature

[Alan V]

So our tribal loyalties may allow us to blame the Republicans entirely, while we show our gratitude to Obama for a crappy system that has worse outcomes than any other developed nation. This allows us to keep voting for the Democrats, even though they gave us a crappy system. 

And here it is again, the equivocation and minimization. Implementing a "crappy" system = trying your best to abandon it and replace it with....."concepts of a plan", since.......2016?

Democrats have to fight their battles wherever the front line actually is.  Progressives would like a more favorable front line, but so would Democrats.

Wishes, fishes, something, something ...

[Belacqua]

Democrats have to fight their battles wherever the front line actually is.  Progressives would like a more favorable front line, but so would Democrats.

Wishes, fishes, something, something ...

Yes, this is certainly true. No matter what improvements we want to make to the health insurance system (or any other issue) we have to begin where we are, and work with what we have. 

Not to make a definitive judgment here, but in general I'd say that Democrats are more likely to think that they can work within the existing system. If only we can elect a few more good people, and get those terrible Republicans out of the way, then we can finally get what we want. Help us AOC, you're our only hope!

So they are more optimistic, that you can get there from here. 

I'm not sure if I'd call myself a Progressive. I don't quite know what all positions that entails. But I am less confident that incremental changes made by our current crop of Democrats will ever make much difference. As I say, Democrats get nearly as much money from the insurance industry as the Republicans do. I am skeptical that the motivation is there. 

And the tendency to see everything in a dichotomous way makes it harder to make progress. We say thank you thank you for the small gains we've been given, and re-elect the same people, and give them a pass on not working for something much better. And maybe in a generation or two they'll come up with a slightly better system.

The health care system in Japan is far better than America's. Because the health insurance is single-payer from the government, it means that the health care can be largely privatized. Except for really major procedures (e.g. heart transplants) nearly all of the health care is done at small clinics owned by the doctor in charge. Instead of having an HMO telling me which clinic I have to go to, I can walk into any clinic in the country, show my insurance card, and get seen by a doctor. Given this freedom of choice, patients vote with their feet. A doctor who is good and experienced, listens well, is judicious in his prescriptions, etc., will have his patients come back to him over and over. That way he makes more money. There is financial incentive to do a good job. There are at least ten primary care clinics in my neighborhood, and the local gossip tells me how to choose. Dr. Niita is reluctant to prescribe medicine. Dr. Kodama is really good with kids. Dr. Ito is patient with elderly people. Dr. Tsuya has all the latest machines on premises (MRIs, etc.) but he tends to stare at his computer screen the whole time he's with you and doesn't look you in the eye. 

Japan could get such a good system for a couple of reasons. First, there was some kind of Extremely Disruptive Event in the 1930s and 40s which wiped away the old system and allowed a fresh start. Second, Japan has never had the commitment to libertarianism which is often prominent in the US. A lot of Americans have thought the government should do as little as possible, even before Reagan gave the idea a big boost with his "The government is the problem" mantra. The Japanese government is willing to balance these things in order to assist and protect its economy. So where the big US car companies got in trouble paying pensions and health insurance policies, Japanese car companies are free of those burdens because the government does it. 

"If wishes were fishes, beggars would ride..." is that how it goes? Anyway, Trump has offered few specifics of what he would do. His proposal for greater price transparency seems reasonable, though whether he will work for it or not remains to be seen. 

Anyway, I don't want the argument to boil down to "because Trump is bad, we should be satisfied with whatever the Dems give us." There is huge room for improvement, and there's no reason why we can't be pushing hard for all possible changes.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^I find myself overwhelmed with joy about your regret for turning this into a political thread.

Boru

[Alan V]

^I find myself overwhelmed with joy about your regret for turning this into a political thread.

Boru

This is partly my fault, since we could just as easily be discussing religious examples of how problematic human nature is.

In fact, posting at various atheist discussion forums over a period of years has likely been the greatest single reason I have changed my opinions about other people in general.  Unlike many other groups, atheists are highly conscious of how early-life conditioning often determines people's belief systems, how once people have identified with a certain group or ideology it distorts how they process information, and how so many logical fallacies depend on inherent perceptual biases.  And of course, being exposed to so many theists posting poor arguments which rationalize their beliefs, regardless of the logic or information contradicting them, could make up a course in human psychology all by itself.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I don’t have an issue bringing up politics in a discussion of human nature, but it’s tangential at best. That’s not what Bel is doing. As you said in the OP, this falls under psychology, not politics. If Bel wants to continue bitching about the US political landscape, he’s free to do so, but this isn’t the thread for it.

I actually considered splitting the thread, but that’s a whole lotta work.

Boru

[Alan V]

I don’t have an issue bringing up politics in a discussion of human nature, but it’s tangential at best. That’s not what Bel is doing. As you said in the OP, this falls under psychology, not politics. If Bel wants to continue bitching about the US political landscape, he’s free to do so, but this isn’t the thread for it.

I actually considered splitting the thread, but that’s a whole lotta work.

Boru

I believe this discussion has largely run its course in any case.  Most atheists here seem as critical of human nature as I have become.

Perhaps I should concentrate on secular humanism, which is still a possibly redeeming perspective, as @AFTT47 suggested early on.

[Mister Agenda]

I was a capital L Libertarian for 20 years, but it requires a faith in human nature that I just don't have anymore.

[AFTT47]

I was a capital L Libertarian for 20 years, but it requires a faith in human nature that I just don't have anymore.

I've never been able to understand Libertarianism. It goes way beyond the optimism of Secular Humanism. Secular Humanism assumes a general good nature which overshadows our bad. It assumes progress is possible, that future society should become more just. But it acknowledges limitations. The Libertarian ideal that everyone will do the right thing without oversight - even when there is great incentive to do the exact opposite - is just crazy unrealistic.

Maybe it would work in a world without scarcity. Afterall, it's easy to be a saint in paradise. It's quite a bit harder in the real world.

[Belacqua]

I don’t have an issue bringing up politics in a discussion of human nature, but it’s tangential at best. That’s not what Bel is doing. As you said in the OP, this falls under psychology, not politics. If Bel wants to continue bitching about the US political landscape, he’s free to do so, but this isn’t the thread for it.

I actually considered splitting the thread, but that’s a whole lotta work.

Boru

I believe this discussion has largely run its course in any case.  Most atheists here seem as critical of human nature as I have become.

Perhaps I should concentrate on secular humanism, which is still a possibly redeeming perspective, as @AFTT47 suggested early on.

As I said earlier, politics is where human nature shows itself in an obvious way, and where we debate what we want to do with it. 

If you don't want to do politics, we could certainly discuss religion, because for many centuries religion was the framework through which Western people analyzed human nature. 

Dante is the obvious example. Nobody ever parsed human weaknesses and their cures more than he did. 

A more recent example is C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. You have to read Dante before you read this one, but it is a more modern version, explaining just what it is about human nature that keeps us turning toward what is false and selfish. 

The best analysis of why political parties interfere with progress is surely Simone Weil's On the Abolition of All Political Parties. Here she makes a persuasive case that by aligning ourselves with a party, instead of just focussing on the truth, we turn ourselves away from the truth. It's true she writes from a Christian perspective, but because she was a philosopher, the God she writes about is entirely different from the God that we argue against on this forum. For her (as for Plato and most philosophers) God is simply the true and the good. And since you also feel that at least some parties turn people away from the truth, this is a profitable thing to read. 

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/...al-parties

What secular sources would you recommend?

[arewethereyet]

Let's turn the thread into a reading list instead of bashing all the politicians, shall we?