DandomRude

Yes, the "Klüngel" has a very long tradition in Germany - from carnival clubs in Cologne and Düsseldorf, to beer tent friendships or fraternities in Munich and elsewhere, to the Rotary and Lions Clubs in pretty much every German city. But I still agree that things have gotten much worse in recent years.

It's a crying shame, especially as many voters either still let themselfs be fooled by the pretended bickering of the parties or can't do much on their own to actually change anything. They don't see, don't want to see or just watch helplessly as the majority of at least the top politicians pursue the same goals despite their apparent differences: Unscrupulous self-enrichment and favoritism at the expense of the citizens and even future generations.

I don't think the situation is likely to be much different for adults, as German mainstream politics unfortunately hardly represents the interests of the population anymore, but increasingly only those of the economic elite.

CDU politician Friedrich Merz, the candidate for chancellor of the largest popular party and, unfortunately, presumably the next German chancellor, is just one example of many: The man was head of the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany until 2020 and has always been a keen business lobbyist throughout his whole career (source).

Both the top candidates and the minor functionaries of many other parties have similar "affiliations" that can hardly be described as anything else than open corruption. The fact that the press continuously uses the trivializing PR term lobbyism in this context should not fool anyone anymore.

However, as there are hardly any credible alternatives, people still have to vote for these established parties - or worse still: they vote for the opportunistic demagogues of the AfD, who pursue the same neoliberal economic policy but hide this fact behind xenophobic and of course absolutely fictitious bogus, just like the MAGA people in the USA.

So I guess it's not too surprising that many Germans have lost faith in politics - I'm pretty sure that this is true for most age groups.

The OG way is still the only universally supported one for e-mail templates. So it's Thug table Life until further notice, I guess.

https://perfectmotherfuckingwebsite.com/

As previously mentioned by @[email protected].

It's crazy that such measures are necessary at all. Why are today's fascists still such fans of book bans? Because Hitler thought it was great?

Yes, I realize that this post is less about the trolley problem and its moral dilemma than an allusion to the corresponding meme. And I certainly understand the intended message.

Nevertheless, I think the post is a good example of how the whole discussion about the healthcare industry in the US is currently being conducted: I don't think it should be about whether vigilante justice is justified in the case of CEOs acting inhumanely. In my opinion, the discussion should rather be about why the healthcare system in the USA is so inhumane and profit-oriented in the first place and not only allows this behavior, but is specifically designed for just that. The question should be how this has come about and how a better (and more efficient) system can be established.

As long as this is not the case, the debate revolves exclusively around the idea that individuals and their greed were responsible for abuses. But this is a systemic problem where there will always be another unscrupulous person to take over as CEO.

Therefore, I think, nothing can change as long as the focus is on individuals and not on the goals and/or the failures of the healthcare system. In other words, as long as US citizens and especially politicians agree that the healthcare system is a business like any other, even vigilante justice directed at individuals will not change anything. Sure, that may help to draw attention to the actual problem. But this problem can only be resolved if the discussion is not about symptoms, but about their causes, namely the healthcare system itself. Or even similarly designed systems for that matter.

Since a healthcare system does not have to be designed in such a way that people inevitably fall by the wayside, this depiction of the trolley problem seems to me to be a pretty US-American thing.

I see it like this: the guy on the lever is also the CEO of a health insurance company and chooses the option of eliminating a competitor, accepting that his even more profit-optimized approach will lead to even more helpless people dying, which would not have been necessary if he had left everything as it was and not eliminated the competitor. The US thing about this is that there is no third option in the first place, where nobody dies because of the healthcare system. This very basic fact is not noticed, addressed or even criticized by anyone. Instead, even those who will die unnecessarily agree with the guy in charge in his decision to sacrifice them on the altar of higher profits because a hated person will die with them - they even agree with his statement that it would be for the greater good, instead of asking why it is even necessary for them to be tied to the tracks and run over.

This seems odd to me, but is probably only logical if you're used to seeing the healthcare system as a business like any other. I don't really get it tho.

Unfortunately, only for their own benefit.

I think it's like this:

Due to their rarity, gold and silver are only available in limited quantities. This makes them suitable as a means of payment, as the limited availability of these materials allows them to have a relatively stable exchange value. They are also durable and easy to work with. So as a means of payment, gold and silver became representative of goods that can be purchased with them.

Coins made of gold or silver, which were used as currencies early on, were not very forgery-proof. However, as the materials themselves are rare, good forgeries were only possible if the material was available. And the rarer the material used, the more forgery-proof the coin became, which is why it made sense to mint coins with a high exchange value from rarer materials (bronze or copper for lower value coins, silver or even gold for coins with higher exchange value).

Early examples of inflation illustrate quite well how value and material are linked: In ancient Rome, for example, silver coins were used as a means of payment. Under Emperor Gallienus, there was massive inflation because he had the silver content of coins reduced to below 5% in order to finance military campaigns and other expenses (he basically created value out of thin air with this move). This ultimately led to a loss of confidence in the currency and thus to a decline in the value of the coins, as they were not inherently forgery-proof (it became quite easy to mint counterfeit coins with such a low silver content).

Still, the value of the material itself has always been variable and depended heavily on its rarity: When the Spanish imported large quantities of silver from their colonies in South America in the 16th century, the value of silver fell because the material became less scarce. This eventually led to massive inflation throughout Europe at the time.

However, the value is not so much determined by the material itself, but by the value that people ascribe to it at a certain time. There are also great historical examples of how speculative bubbles work: In the 17th century, tulip bulbs were at times traded at enormously high prices in the Netherlands because they were difficult to obtain and therefore rare - this made them coveted as a status symbol. However, this bubble finally burst in 1637 when traders could no longer find buyers due to the astronomical tulip bulb prices - demand was covered; the "Tulipmania" had ended. As a result, the merchants began to sell these tulip bulbs in "panic sales" at ever lower prices in order to recoup at least part of their investment. As a result, the price fell to near worthlessness.

Such speculative bubbles still exist today, of course. This is demonstrated very impressively time and again by cryptocurrencies, for example, which are not even material and have no central regulatory authority (such as a central bank) - their value results basically just from what someone is willing to pay at a certain point in time.

So gold and silver were and are valuable not only because of their utility value, but also because of their use as a means of payment, whereby the value - as with today's currencies - results from a (more or less stable) consensus on the exchange value in goods attributed to a material or currency.

As gold in particular has historically been used as a means of payment for a very long time, most countries still have gold reserves to back their currencies to a certain extent, even if their currencies are generally no longer directly linked to an equivalent value in gold as they used to be. Nevertheless, the US, for example, still holds large amounts of gold at Fort Knox and elsewhere to counteract the fact that paper money, and especially its virtual equivalent in some digital form, is materially worthless.

I guess if we had a sun god instead of Christianity, climate change wouldn't be a thing.

Any girl who would touch him we would think could lick the arse of a diseased hangman.

Catullus (~84BC - ~54BC) The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers. London. Smithers. 1894.

It ain't easy being grumpy