> My second thought is what is going to happen in Europe once they have to beef up their military spending as the US has shown to be an unreliable partner.
I don't understand, what do you think may happen? Do you think Europe will collapse because they have to increase their military spending?
All of the EU countries combined have a lower GDP and a higher tax burden than the US. If they have to then spend more, tax rates will go up.
The other issue is that it is going to be a painful process to decouple their economies from exporting and importing between the US. But that’s also going to be necessary.
How much of the worlds pharmaceutical discoveries come from research and the approval process of studies done by the US? Maybe things will turn around. But right now, there is an anti-vaxxer with no medical background in charge of HHS. They are already purging and editing medical studies.
It’s going to take 5-10 years to see the fallout of the US losing its place on the world stage.
I’m more concerned about the effects on Latin America. Flights are short and cheap to and from the US and I would much rather beef up my Spanish than learn another language from scratch.
> If they have to then spend more, tax rates will go up.
Speaking for Germany, which is also the biggest economy in the EU, this is not necessarily true. Germany has notoriously low, more or less no debt and a lot of room to shift the tax burden towards the very rich like wealth and inheritance taxes, which are pretty much absent right now. It's a "very rich country", but the median wealth is actually quite low, comparatively. Germany could easily mobilize many, many billions before touching income tax. Investing in military and tech will also create jobs and so on.
This whole tax comparison is tiresome, since the real question is about quality of life, not numbers. It's tradeoffs countries decided upon. Great if you can keep most of it, but also lose it all if you trip badly. And overall I am quite happy to get "robbed" by the government so people can afford a living without actually robbing/shooting me on the streets. Here is the stats on people shot dead by the police in all of Germany (~84M people): https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/706648/umfrag...
Not sure where you are going with the rest of the argument. Sounds like the US will suffer just about the same here. So, what's wrong with moving to Europe? By the way, there is a country speaking Spanish in Europe too ;)
Honestly, looking at the potential crisis ahead, I am very happy Europe isn't deeply dependent on the "service industry", but tangible products. And with ASML, Zeiss and the highly capable chemical industry in the EU, I feel like we are better set up, theoretically, to bring home chip fabs, than the US replacing all the highly specialized machine parts produced across Europe, which run power generation and research facilities. And If tomorrow FAANG would exit Europe, we may survive that too lol. But we do have to get our shit together, which isn't guaranteed.
> Denmark's medical system generally will not prescribe Adderall for ADHD.
Not sure about Denmark, but at least in Germany immediate release stims for adults are not covered/approved. Neither methylphenidate, nor amphetamine. However, both are covered as extended release formulations (e.g. Medikinet/Ritalin adult, Elvanse adult). And both can be prescribed as IR, or XR privately, which means you have to pay for it yourself (e.g. ~20€ per for 50 pills Ritalin).
That would make much more sense, though if I got this wrong at the time, then I suppose my mistake further illustrates how difficult it was for me to plan for the move (I even reached out to the Danish health service). Alternatively, maybe I'm incompetent or have a terrible memory.
I think the general sentiment is correct, as the US is, for better or worse, much more laissez faire about prescribing and approving certain medications, like opiates and psychotropics. Which means, if something less common works best for you, there is a chance you won't get it in Europe, or at least it's not accepted as first-line medication.
Generally, if a medication is available on the market (can be purchased by pharmacies), a doctor can usually prescribe it to you privately ("off-label" etc). However, this implies they are accepting legal liability, if things go wrong. E.g. an ADHD psychiatrist may prescribe immediate release methylphenidate to an adult, but probably wouldn't take the risk of abuse with IR amphetamine, or "experiment" with "newer" drugs like guanfacine, which is not approved for ADHD in Europe. It's mostly a mentality difference tho, I think.
Another thing is, finding a psychiatrist knowledgeable in ADHD in adults may be a painful process to begin with. Depending on where you are your options may be very limited and if the doc is an idiot you may be stuck with them for the moment (depends heavily on the country). Smaller medical issues can be a bit bothersome with socialized healthcare processes, but it's really paying off when you become seriously sick, or unemployed. And of course, in Europe you got more leisure time, so you have more opportunities to break your legs hiking ;)
Sometimes the overall trend in quality-of-life improvements (democratization, healthcare, education, ...) are attributed to capitalism, when in reality almost all of these positive developments happened despite the capitalistic influences, at best, but usually in grave opposition to it. Capitalism has never brought us public infrastructure and education, environmental, food and workplace protections, social welfare, or universal healthcare. All these have been heavily fought for against capitalist interests, paid for with suffering, blood and tears. Where regulation is weak, life is hell. Outspoken free market absolutists/apologists tend to be people, who think of themselves as top predators, entitled to power and influence, always privileged, yet sooo unfairly treated in a more egalitarian system. (Everybody is gangster until they get punched in the face...) I think, these days political economy is, contrary to popular belief in entrepreneurial circles, mostly in agreement about the dynamics at work here: For the general case, free markets don't work without regulation. The most important markets (existential goods) are prone to natural monopolies.
This shouldn't be surprising really, since profit doesn't relate to broader human welfare directly, how could putting selective pressure on this single metric directly cause prosperity?! It's coincidence or human confounding factors/intervention leading to good outcomes, despite any free market ideology. Without the causal link, any argument about efficiency or stability is void. Ideological capitalism, or free market absolutism is the Torment Nexus of Goodhart's Law.
Case in point, while politically we're perpetually negotiating the extent of social darwinistic fallout of the capitalistic order, knowingly, but below the radar of affect, we're spending our planet, our long-term existential foundation three times over. Now, you don't need an academically forged "capitalistic system" in place to get self-inflicted crisis, as any preindustrial culture which transformed their prosperous island into desert rock can attest (over-consumption leading to terminal erosion), it's the lack of informed regulation in the interest of humankind.
If you think profit doesn't relate to human welfare directly then I welcome you to head into any economically depressed third world village and turn it into a utopia. Oh wait, you can't maintain the sizable bureaucratic structure and intellectual workforce when over 90% of the population is engaged in subsidence farming by necessity in order to not die of starvation.
You quite literally take the productivity of capitalism for granted and assume that its products are simply the natural state of existence, and that in the absence of the evil capitalist you would have instant magical utopias. Such folly is like thinking that if you got rid of the evil and heavy pollution-spewing engine burdening your car, you would then go even faster without any of that pollution. The work being performed is vital, even though it is outside of your ideologically blinkered willful inability to understand.
The rapid growth of education depended upon capitalism and the rise of paper-making and printing operations which themselves are dependent upon profit seeking and the price discovery mechanisms. More importantly it depended upon there being a market for books a middle class which could usefully apply those results.
If you find yourself wondering "why didn't revolutionary invention X, Y, or Z take off at this period even further in the past" the usual answer you get is that they lacked an essential prerequisite for its deployment.
You are mixing everything up and honestly seem to be a bit hysteric. Nobody rang the red door. Nobody is talking about magical utopias. You can calm down and stop barking.
I made an argument for sane regulation and its role in history. Since you are not even addressing the direct casual relationship and generously conflate capitalism with industrialization, I won't engage further.
Youtube and Reddit are the worst. I am pretty convinced the aggressive blocking is not because of abuse, but because VPNs actually have become a problem for tracking and data mining.
I have the suspicion the IP blocking is somewhat coordinated between Youtube and Reddit, to maximize annoyance and discourage VPN usage, since I frequently find exit server working for either one of them, but not both. Disrupting the ping pong of social media for VPN users, seems like an effective strategy to influence their behavior. And since they are natural monopolies respectively, they hardly risk alienating anyone doing so. Similar to how cookie banners are abused to modify people's sentiment on privacy regulations in favor of data mining. Even many tech people believe annoying cookie banners are the EU's fault, when common practice is either malicious compliance, unwarranted or straight illegal.
That said, it is actually fucking annoying. Then again, just a nuance in the greater enshittification and rapidly growing dissatisfaction with the web overall for me.
>Youtube and Reddit are the worst. I am pretty convinced the aggressive blocking is not because of abuse, but because VPNs actually have become a "problem" for tracking and data mining.
FTFY (added scare quotes)
I don't see blocking tracking and data mining as a problem at all, but rather a very good thing.
How could they not. The word `wealth` or idea of "money" is completely misleading here. It's cancerous accumulation of resources and influence. They are completely detached from consequential reality. The human brain has not evolved to thrive under conditions of total, unconditional material abundance. People struggle to moderate sugar intake, imagine unlimited access to everything. And it's an inherently amoral existence leading to the necessity of unhinged internal models of the world to justify continuation and reward. Their sense of self-efficacy derailed in zero-g. Listen to them talk about fiction... They literally can't tell the price of a banana, how can they possibly get any meaningful story told? All that is left is the aesthetics and mechanical exterior of narration. How can there be love or friendship with normal people grounding you? You could make everyone you ever met during your lifetime a millionaire, while effectively changing nothing for yourself. Nobody can be this rich and not lose touch with common shared reality.
Billionaires are shameful for the collective, they should be shameful to everyone of us. They are fundamentally most unfit for leadership. They are evidence of civilizatory failure, the least we can do is not idolize them.
This isn't some new, or innovative technology. Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDSC) has been studied for a long time and there even is an active community of enthusiastic DIY experimentalists. tDSC is certainly interesting, but it is also inherently limited, evident by lack of praxis/application. If tDSC is proven effective for treating ADHD symptoms you can relatively easily have the same thing (probably better) as an opensource project, 3D printing and FOSS. Not going this route is kinda sus to me. Pretty sure this was a business looking for an idea, not the other way around. Probably targeted at TikTok diagnoses not eligible for controlled meds and clout-chasing "biohackers", who will gladly preach the good news through affiliate links.
I doubt tDSC will ever beat stimulant medication, which is a cheap, safe and very effective treatment option, for almost a century. Some studies even show MRI evidence for long-term normalization of (young) ADHD brains with stimulant medication. Retarded formulations have a very low abuse potential. The biggest problem with these meds is legislation and stigma. And lately supply chain issues...
Oh, and the advertised thing is most definitely not a "brain-imaging device" lol.
> taking them even if you don't need to isn't going to be harmful
I think, the transporter for calcium is the same used for some other minerals. So, if you're not mindful (about timing), you may be competitively blocking the absorption of e.g. zinc, which is much more precious nutritionally - zinc is very important for immune function and healing, while deficiency is common.
Calcium supplements can cause constipation, which may be not very fun after giving birth... Not to mention the implications of (lack of) quality control in the supplement market, by proxy, for a rapidly developing human being. Which substances are part of the formulation, other than calcium salts? Does the adult portion of copper or X accumulate in a mother's milk?
Not saying, you shouldn't take calcium supplements. But really, any supplement can be harmful, if consumed without need or consideration. (Fun fact: Vitamin A supplementation increases lung cancer risk!)
I don't understand, what do you think may happen? Do you think Europe will collapse because they have to increase their military spending?
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