Media being owned by a few rich people was and always has been dangerous for press freedom.
I can only really see workers co-ops striking the correct balance here. (Basically, editor makes decisions, when needed workers vote on whether to publish or not).
Capitalism is always the problem, and anti-democratic.
Only developed country where mass shootings regularly happen, so, I'm gonna press X to doubt on the claim bows and arrows are anywhere near as deadly.
Gun culture is weird to the rest of the world. Get a different hobby if the trade off is preventable deaths.
Or, ya know, properly licence the damn things.
Practically every pro-gun argument is countered with: it's being done better elsewhere.
High gun ownership in Switzerland!! Yeah, because you go through stringent military training, and registration!
Oh, but criminals will still have guns, there'll be a black market!!! Yeah, but much, much less easily, with proper licencing and restrictions to only allow guns for things they're actually needed for (farmers, police, etc). Again, this is plainly obvious when you look at every other country.
I'm back to complain about Australians looking at Medicare through rose tinted glasses, when it still has a lot left to be desired.
PBS is one of the better parts of Medicare, however, there is very often a gap fee, even for PBS medication, unless you qualify for a health care card. Which is great because we're taking care of people who can't afford it, and the gap fee is still mostly fine, in most cases.
I mean, look at the sign, has an Asterix right there.
However, the rest of Medicare is more and more resembling a two-tiered system where you get to skip the queue if you have the means to pay, and you get a tax break to do so 👍 and of course, can't forget our luxury bones which still aren't covered.
Please do not vote for the LNP, I beg you.
Medicare is not that great compared to what we could afford as one of the richest countries per capita in the world. Only in comparison to the shitshow in the US.
While I agree with the sentiment (where this should be the case), this isn't actually true for some of these countries.
Australia, for example, though not sure if we're included in this 23, we have a private system also.
For all emergency care, it's single-payer. Private health insurance / private hospitals are not permitted to provide emergency care, nor out of hospital car, but all other hospital care is allowed (I am simplifying, as I'm not super clear on it either). Further, private health insurance is not allowed to cover things that Medicare doesn't at least also partially cover.
Sounds good right? Sounds like private health is kept in check? I mean, sort of, but it's still really profitable, and you even get a tax break.
What it doesn't stop, is prices getting higher and you having to cover the difference because health care employees are not necessarily employed by the stat, and can set their own prices (which is either covered by private insurance in hospital, or out-of-pocket outside hospital as private can't cover that).
If you don't have private health, you often have to wait way longer in the public system for non-emergency (but still medically necessary) care, like hip replacements, eye surgery etc.
It's kinda fucked, everyone ought to be in the same queue, and if things are taking too long well then gee, I dunno, pay more / hire more / train more doctors, this doesn't take a genius to figure out.
Healthcare should be provided by the state, in-full, covered by taxes. We (and the US for that matter) have plenty of tax revenue to cover this. And if you're feeling really frisky, perhaps very slightly increase corporate taxes and tax breaks for the wealthy.
So we now have a two tiered system, where the wealthy get care first, or whoever can afford to pay. And you even get a tax break for it.
The US system is trash, and ours is utopian by comparison, but let's not pretend like all 22 of 23 countries have true, universal healthcare.
I'm not claiming they're the same as cigarettes. Just that if they hadn't come along, a huge number of people (in Australia) may never have picked up a nicotine addiction at all.
there's a lot more people quitting smoking than there are picking up vaping
Sadly, in Australia, this isn't the case. We had very, very low smoking rates, and vaping has opened up the floodgates to new nicotine addicts, many, many of which never even tried cigarettes.
I'm pretty annoyed about it, to be honest.
Another generation who will reap the rewards of cancer, which will be a massive cost to society. Financially and emotionally.
Eh, I heard from someone who works in Australia, processing asylum claims from Chinese nationals, that, many, many claims are rejected (not sure about other countries, and this is 2nd hand info, from years ago).
Basically, while it can be argued certain, and notable numbers of Chinese citizens are being persecuted, saying every Chinese citizen is being persecuted is a bit of a stretch. Even if various freedoms are not granted in China.
The average Zhang, Wang, Li and Zhao can go about their lives with some differences to here in the west, but it's not as extreme as people portray on the internet. Most people live their lives in much the same way as they do elsewhere in the world.
Things don't have to be extreme in order to still be criticisable, in my opinion. Just like things aren't complete shit in the US, but there's a lot to criticise.
In summation, no, most Chinese immigrants wouldn't qualify as asylum seekers fleeing political persecution.
Inb4 the tankies and "China Bad" idiots: reality is nuanced, deal with it.
I had a though recently. It would be neato to have some open source, crowdsourced world database of item locations, where you add this sort of information.
Tagged search of a store, where certain items are. What's stores in a city sell X item. That sort of thing.
Call it "WorldDB", bake it into OpenStreetMap.
No idea what the legality would be, but I would LOVE it.
May write a post about it at some point, as I am no programmer.
I mean, sort of. TIL this particular unit came from different definitions of hundredweight. Though, I'd argue this is still kinda of British origin (and the pound).
My favourite unit to pick on when someone doesn't want to switch to metric because it's "European" and they're proud Americans, is BTU.
MisterFrog @ MisterFrog @lemmy.world Posts 9Comments 919Joined 2 yr. ago
It's been like this for thousands of years. Have you heard of religion?
But yeah, it is not a pleasant thought that people love this way :/