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Socialism will greatly reduce the number of suicides.
On a personal level? The show we all watch teaches us a lot about how to care for your friends and yourself. If you or a loved one are experiencing suicidal ideation, call 1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Hotline
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The data on that doesn't support your thesis, I fear:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg
Suicide is a complicated phenomenon with many factors. Socialism by itself is not a good predictor of suicide rate for a country.
(It is, however, not a terrible predictor for life expectancy, but that's not surprising considering the benefits of socialized health care.)
ā¤
I don't understand how, can you elaborate?
5123242 True, but with that being said, having a reliable source of food, a stable housing environment, a... whatever revitalization is probably contributes, and a good mental health system, helps.
5123243
From across the Pond, I'd observe that socialism and socialised healthcare are not intrinsically linked in most people's minds in most of the rich world. It's perhaps relevant that the very term "socialised healthcare/medicine" feels very American to me in the UK. It's basically never used over here; "universal healthcare" is vastly more common. This separation also applies to politics: for the most part, the NHS as an institution is popular across the political spectrum, even if various aspects of it are less so. It's really not seen as "socialism" in a party-political sense.
5123250
While obviously we have seen plenty of high profile rich and famous people commit suicide such as Robin Williams, which reminds us that depression is a brain chemistry problem first and foremost, economic destitution in general increases feelings of hopelessness and despair, Plus, some people commit suicide because of healthcare costs.
5123257
I donāt know how many homeless friends you have, but I have a lot and have been homeless myself, and food assistance and subsidized housing require you to jump through so many hoops and are extremely broken systems. Itās almost impossible to get section 8 housing here in Southern California. Hereās the solution: free housing and food should be a human right and would be under socialism. Cuba for example, has almost no homelessness. https://fresnoalliance.com/homeless-in-cuba-not-likely/
Liberals love welfare. Socialists like to look at why we need welfare in the first place. Obviously there are people who canāt work, but besides them, more ideal than welfare propping up capitalism would be if people were paid a living wage, and that would happen if workers owned the means of production.
5123242
None of those countries are actually socialist. Most of them are social democracies, which yes, have a better Safety-net than America does, but arenāt socialist. Japan in particular has a relentlessly capitalist mindset. South Korea is pretty horrible about that too.
My thoughts (bit of opinionated stream of consciousness-y):
Government is socialism. ( I hate that new car insurance commercial which says insurance is fundamentally flawed and then gives the definition of what insurance is. Government functions similarly to insurance just replace premium with tax. Those people are lying predatory assholes.)
Society is socialism. (It's in the damn name)
Socialism as an idea is people taking care of and helping each other.
Socialism is commonly used in the US as an attack word intended to conflate helping people who need help with old fashioned Communism/Red Scare/antidemocracy/anti-American beliefs.
Happy people are less likely to commit suicide than hopeless or angry people.
Improving external factors like food/shelter/job security makes them less likely to negatively affect people. If things aren't going wrong you're unlikely to worry about them.
Improving mental health care including reducing stigma around feeling bad (advertising, media, and drug companies aren't blameless in this) will help people voice any internal factors that may drive someone toward suicide, and actual understanding of the few situations in which the cause is mostly biological in nature can be better caught if better known.
My brother had a period in high school where he was on like six different medicines and all of them just messed with his head and body to a point where he just wanted to die, not from life, but from what he felt like on those drugs. He was much better after he just left them cold turkey. The doctors prescribing them didn't understand what the pills were doing to him; they just threw more at him. It was a very difficult time for my family.
Doctors need to be better educated in what effects medicines have on people and when it is appropriate to use them.
Universal health care works in most other countries, which means we have dozens of models to choose from.
Yes, your taxes would go up under universal government health care, but your giant separate insurance premium would also vanish because that's now under a thing called taxes. You're not really spending more money. you're just putting the money into a different bucket, that more people are paying into, so there's more to go around.
5123242 Y'know... that's an interesting table. If you look at the US, it's nearly flat for half a century. Obviously zero would be ideal, but in this context, it looks like economic prosperity has very little to do with the suicide rate in the US. I was about to say that the economy might have a major effect on the rate, but apparently not. So I highly doubt that providing ever more housing, food, etc, would have a significant effect on the numbers.
5123271 I won't disagree that the system is somewhat broken, but I've known a lot of people who take advantage of that system. If it's so easy for so many people to get assistance that they don't even need, I find it hard to believe that it's that hard to get food stamps and housing and such. And I know for a fact it's easy to get Medicaid, because I was on it for a couple years. The only good thing to come out of Obamacare was raising the limit of minimum income to be on Medicaid. It was not hard to get at all. But then again, it may simply be different in California. These things are state-handled. And California is... well, California.
5123257
5123270
It is a problem of mental health first and foremost. Socioeconomic status comes second to all of that. I have never heard of someone commiting suicide just because of healthcare. While drug use absolutely increases within the lower classes, and drugs affect the brain in a whole host of ways that could potentially lead someone to ssuicid, I am not aware of any relation between socioeconomic status and suicide rates. If you have something to point me towards, I'll gladly look into it.
Actually, the best way to reduce the suicide rate is to turn your country into a war-torn, third-world state. Obviously, just grim humor, but suicide is surprisingly low in places like Africa and Syria in comparison to Europe and other first world regions.
5123333
While obviously I canāt know for sure, I would probably chalk that up to underreporting. I can tell you that most African and Middle Eastern strife is in large part directly due to Western imperialism though.
5123335
I don't really agree that most of it is Western caused, but you're right that some of it could come from under-reporting. I'm going by UN numbers, but it's true that plenty of the states in Africa have... uh, subpar functioning governments. I doubt that the reporting would be skewed continent-wide, however, and there are third-world nations that aren't necessarily war-torn hellholes.
Well, truth be told, I like my Capitalistic Democratic-Republic country. Yeah, it needs some things fixed, but it has functioned pretty well since its founding.
5123340
Are you familiar with the ways European powers and America completely trashed Africa for many decades and even today continue to extract trillions of dollars of resources with very little of that flowing back into African economies?
In the Middle East of course American imperialism continues to this day. Now we want to go to war with Iran for an attack they didnāt make so we can protect our Saudi Arabian āalliesā so they can keep committing genocide in Yemen.
5123343
Which country is that?
5123345
The United States of America.
5123344
Mostly the European powers, true, though these days it's China sinking its greedy talons into Africa. There's not a lot of media reporting about it in the West, unsurprisingly, but there are a few stories here and there. Hell, there are a number of parties running on anti-Chinese platforms in Tanzania and other African nations.
If you want a particularly horrifying read on the European colonial subject, have a look at "King Leopold's Ghost." It focuses specifically on the Belgian Congo and the Rubber Terror, but it's a good start if you're looking to get more into it. Let me know if you want some more reading recommendations. :)
5123351
Oh god Leopold was an absolute monster on par with Hitler. And yes, you are correct, China is increasingly flexing its imperialistic muscles. If you ever want to watch a bunch of leftists argue, just ask them if China is still communist, or what their thoughts on the Hong Kong situation are.
5123346
At least 47 million Americans on food stamps, meaning they receive aid to keep them from starving. I wouldnāt say thatās a system that is working particularly well.
5123352
Yeah... maybe a few years ago I might have found something like that entertaining, but these days I've found I prefer productive discussions. Watching people argue in circles gets a little dull what with suffering waiting in the wings, doing its thing.
5123353
I will point out my prior statement that things need to be fixed, specifically within the system of governance. A wise human does not scrap a car because it has a flat tire, nor do they buy a new house because of a broken light bulb; they replace the broken part, most often with a better part, and move on. Government works the same way.
On a side note, with a hefty case of curiosity: if America is such a terrible country, why are you still in it? You have plenty of other options that support your political stance.
5123358
Iāll answer that question with a quotation from one of the greatest leaders of all time Che Guevara ,i.ibb.co/zhk2ZP3/EAB93-B51-96-E9-403-A-B632-6-A9-F164-FBAE4.png
5123320
I suspect that part of what's going on there is that if you already have some measure of financial security, it's a lot easier to muster up the time, energy, documentation, etc you need. It actually is that hard to get assistance.
5123359
Cute... I don't care about a quote. I want an actual answer in your words.
I enjoy conversing intelligently with intellectual individuals about nearly any topic. You come across as a fool who uses others clever words, for you have none of your own.
In the future, use quotes to support your answers and arguments.
5123258
Voters across the political spectrum appreciate universal healthcare, at least here in Britain, but conservative politicians consistently attack it. The NHS is currently suffering badly from a decade of financial starvation under the Tories, and there are all manner of people trying to make it more capitalist and American - no matter the lives it costs. Conservative voters will be among those suffering.
Just one of the ways in which the right is built on lies.
5123361 I can see how that might be so, but unfortunately all the welfare systems in this country are set up in such a way as to benefit people only if they are dirt ass poor. If you're just regular poor, you're screwed. In fact, it's set up in such a way as to punish people who elevate their financial status, and in this way, encourages poor people to stay poor, or to game the system by lying about their income, getting cash-paid jobs, etc.
5123358 I'd like to see him live in Cuba or North Korea for a while. Is it too late for Venezuela? They're still a communist shithole, aren't they? Then again, California's about as close as you can get, in the states.
5123396
All right well I will just rephrase that. I love where I live and I love my friends and comrades here, and I want to build a better, fairer America.
5123412
Itās almost like the liberal welfare system sucks. If workers owned the means of production and were paid a living wage, we would need much less welfare and arguably a lot less people would need to work a lot less hours.
While the peopleās democratic republic of Korea does have some issues, it generally has better human rights than the United States of America ( if youāre open minded Iāll provide some sources if you like). That said, material conditions arenāt the best, largely because of Western imperialism constantly trying to destroy it. I would love to live in Cuba for a bit though.
Venezuela isnāt socialist. 70% of the means of production are still held by private citizens and companies. It is the subject of corruption and American meddling and blockades though.
5123420
That's better. Always use your own words, for your words hold more weight.
5123412
I see no problem with any of those choices. Knowledge means nothing without experience to temper it.
5123399
Well... yes and no. My politics are not right-wing by any stretch (unless you're comparing them to Mr Trampoline's!) and while I'm not going to get into my personal health situation here, let's just say I absolutely need universal healthcare. Buuuut I don't really feel the Tories want to destroy the NHS. I wouldn't say I trust them with it, no, but I don't think they really want to bring in a US system. Because that's not even sensible from a "spend less government money" perspective!
5123718
Bold of you to assume Tories are sensible.
5123718
Right now there are two very different wings of the Tory party. There's the old conservative wing that has traditional small-government low-spending values; and there's the new hard right wing that has racist arsehole values. They're very different philosophies. Now I'd never vote for either of them, but the hard right wing that's in power right now is far, far worse. And that's the wing that's happy to take corrupt money from American corporations that want a slice of the NHS, and happy to expel thousands of doctors and nurses because just living in Britain and working for the country for years apparently isn't enough to overcome them being foreign.
And if you don't believe me, today the former Tory Prime Minister, John Major, gave a statement to the supreme court saying that he believes the current PM broke parliamentary law.
5123870
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate conservatives and how heartless they are? All these conservatives love their friends but when you start picking apart their policies they expose themselves as absolute monsters.
5123870
Heh... I've been a huge politics junkie since the late Thatcher era. (Yes, I'm that old.) I've spent more time than I'd like to calculate over the past three years following the ins and outs of you-know-what issue.
Buuuut, I think I'm out of this thread now. One thing that's really, really important to me, especially at the moment, is having somewhere for escapism -- and for the most part, the Pony fandom is that. I'm not going to let my one major escape also become a place for me to become angry and miserable, since frankly my mental health would not stand it. I know whereof I speak on that score.
None of this is any criticism of you, naturally, since I was the one who chose to reply here in the first place (for which I'm kinda kicking myself). But now I'm going back to Equestria.
5123882
Thatās fair and valid. A big part of my attraction to Pony is that itās nice to have something wholesome since I spent so much time in the ugly world of politics. That said, Iām trying to use the platform I have to show people how socialism and my little pony teach the same lessons just on different scales.
5123420 The welfare system is broken. It would be a trifling matter to write a little legislation to make repairs. Sadly very few of our politicians want to address that issue, because a lot of their voters benefit from welfare.
Upending our nation's values to support communism is not the answer. It leads to nothing but disaster and misery.
5123882
Amen.
5123886
What would you say are our nationās values?
5123889 At minimum: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And let's add back the one thing that was changed: the right to own property. A century of world history has shown that none of these things are viable under a communist regime.
I'll paraphrase my high school history teacher (who was probably paraphrasing someone else): those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
5123890
So you agree that no one should die because they canāt afford medicine or health care?
So you agree that people have the right to do with their body as they please and love who they please, and that the war on drugs is a sham, and that prison slave labor must be abolished and the prison system dismantled and rebuilt from a system of racist, classist punishment to a system of rehabilitation?
So you agree that we as a nation should strive to give everyone the same opportunities to thrive?
You seem to be under the impression that communists are coming for your toothbrush. We arenāt.
i.ibb.co/mSfGNt7/2-E504-CC7-52-C3-4-CCD-8-C37-BE1-C2-D19-EB89.png
5123895
Yes, but you know we have medicaid for those people. It's not an issue.
Yes, but not children.
You're the one who seems so concerned with people not dying. Can you sit there and tell me you could give two shits about all the overdose deaths in this country? Even if they OD'd by their own choice, how is that any different from the suicides you decried only a day ago? Are you that big of a hypocrite? Seriously? That's fucking disgusting.
Meh. I won't argue that the prison system isn't broken, but I definitely disagree about prison 'slave' labor. I think that's perfectly acceptable, better than them sitting around on their asses eating food I'm paying for with my tax dollars. And there's nothing racist about the prison system, like at all. In fact, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The problem is what actions that our laws and judicial system criminalize. That's what turns people into criminals, not the prison system. Not paying child support, for instance, should be decriminalized. I know several people who've went to prison because they were simply too poor to pay. Now that's just wrong.
You seem to forget that you're speaking to a business owner. They most certainly ARE coming for MY property.
5123899
What the system criminalizes is, in fact, a problem, and one you've already identified. A lot of things which are heavily criminalized should, in fact, not be--but I think you've missed something vital in this. Namely, why are these things critized, and qui bono--who benefits from that criminalization?
Work that is barely compensated and is the only real alternative to isolation or being stuck in a dangerous and volatile prison atmosphere hardly fits the bill as free exchange of labor/time. Is it better? Of course its better than sitting in that cell block, praying to god the guys at the table over there aren't going to start shit with you today. Working for peanuts is always better than being beat. A free choice compelled by a threat is not free. You object to it being called slavery, which honestly you shouldn't, but if we just lay that label aside we find ourselves hard pressed to describe the situation. Even putting aside the socialist position that coercion to labor by the threat of starvation is inherently kind of bad, from a purely "classical liberal" position this is hard to coherently support. A person with very real and very immediate potential consequences--be it poverty or continuing to stay in the prison block--has had their essential freedom to sell their labor compromised. Their labor's value is no longer fairly weighed by a free market of competing interests but rather has its value assigned to them by an extremely powerful omnipresent force.
Were prison laborers given more decent wages, this problem does not dissappear. It makes it less obvious that the prisoner's freedom to sell their labor as they see fit is hobbled, but it does not actually solve the problem. The freedom to sell his labor is still controlled by the state, or worse in the case of private prisons, by a corporate body which has very strong incentives to make sure that 1.) his wages are low, and 2.) he stays behind bars for a very long time.
Giving profit-oriented actors incentives to increase prison population by supporting criminalization rates to continue skyrocketing is not some far out lefty concern. It's a I-Would-Like-Not-To-Live-In-A-Police-State concern. The profit incentive is extremely powerful, and we all know that it does push people to do ethically troubling things. You know, as a business owner, that it would probably profit you to do a lot of incredibly shady things that would harm either your customers or employees in ways that they may not even know about at your own gain. You probably also would never do these things, many of them because they're just Bad Ideas for the long run, but also because you have some kind of standards. But it would be naivete to think this is universal, or even that it is common. It doesn't take a moustache twirling villain to cut a few harmless corners for more money, and the more abstract and vast the enterprise gets the more that harmless corner-cutting turns into a kind of sourceless brainless malice that creates things like the American incarceration problem. So to help your private prison or even your public prison make its costs, you start renting your prisoners to people. it starts positive sometimes, like helping them learn a craft they can practice when free. But it will always end in longer stays, longer hours, less choice in participating. Renting them out becomes easier to profit off of then the check the government is giving you, and very quickly as it is in much of America today, you use a combination of overt coercion and social engineering to make sure that your partners never lack for cheap labor.
5123935
You're right, I could. But there is sort of an honor system. AND, there is also the consumer's ability to note any corner-cutting - in any industry, and take their business elsewhere. It's the other side of profit based incentive, cut too many corners and you lose profit. No, it's not perfect, but it does work.
However, I agree that such things should not apply to the prison system. Which shouldn't necessarily be privatized. Really, though, fixing any problems like that would only require moving the cheese.
5123953
If youāre open to educating yourself about some of the points that
5123935 brought up, Adam Ruins Everything is a very good source for humorous and engaging deconstruction of common societal myths. Hereās the full episode of āAdam Ruins Prisonsā. https://vimeo.com/190311923
5123956 I'm aware of the situation.
In 2017, 70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. But, nah, apparently the war on drugs is a sham. Oh, but God help all those poor people that want to commit suicide! You know, it has just now occurred to me that this isn't even hypocrisy. It's doublethink. Hypocrisy is knowing one thing and ignoring the other. Doublethink is knowing both things at the same time, even though they conflict.
It's mind-boggling to me that you would say such a thing...
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
5123964
Wait do you actually think arresting people and locking them up for doing drugs makes them do less drugs?
also drug addiction is directly tied to poverty and not having a good support network. My homeless friend was able to get clean because I flew her out of her situation and gave her a place to detox and a social support network. Not because some asshole cop arrested her and a judge threw her in jail.
Furthermore, a lot of people start overdosing because of legal opioid over prescription. But most drugs that you canāt really overdose on like shrooms and marijuana and acid are also deeply criminalized, sending millions of peopleāoften young black menā to jail for years for no reason.
5123966 The 'war on drugs' is a broad phrase, and doesn't mean using one method to stop drug use. It doesn't even refer to any one particular type of drug. Prescription meds are very much part of the problem.