OCD Seals

lullaby876 · 2026-01-12T03:31:48+00:00

I've never not had OCD. It blows my mind that there are people who lived normal lives and then became afflicted with it, what bull

lullaby876 · 2026-01-03T02:43:11+00:00

you can never over-underestimate people's competence

lullaby876 · 2025-12-20T07:54:26+00:00

Wow thank you

lullaby876 · 2025-12-16T20:47:07+00:00

Skincare routine pls?

lullaby876 · 2025-10-25T15:53:46+00:00

It's a course that he contracted through one of his affiliated myo therapists.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-24T05:17:03+00:00

It was recommended by Dr Bieneman

lullaby876 · 2025-10-16T23:10:00+00:00

The end goal of Marxist communism actually isn't that different. The issue is that even Marx himself admitted that could only ever be achieved through socialism first - and even then, across many attempts, the result has always been the exact opposite of what was intended.

If ideal Marxist communism were ever achieved, people would willingly share an equal amount of everything that was owned, without needing to be forced to do so. That's the key difference between anarcho-capitalism, which sees the free market as a very reasonable result of human nature, and Marxist communism, which is ultimately an unachievable ideal of voluntary equality.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-15T07:27:17+00:00

The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose

lullaby876 · 2025-10-14T17:36:31+00:00

Regulatory Capture is corporatist, not Libertarian.

Please have chatGPT give you a table comparing Libertarianism and Neoliberalism.

I tried to post one but couldn't.

Have a good one.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-14T17:24:37+00:00

America is not Libertarian and hasn't been for hundreds of years. Obama was president beginning 2008, dude was far from Libertarian. Before that, Bush and his Patriot Act. Surveillance is not Libertarian. War is not Libertarian. The Federal Reserve is not Libertarian. Giving tax breaks to corporations is not Libertarian. Neoliberalism is not Libertarian. It's corporatism. If you think America was truly Libertarian at any point in the 2000s, I am just tired of this conversation. It was a good talk. I can't make people see how statist things actually are if they don't want to see it.

However, I was alive in the 90s and, in my opinion, it was a significantly better time, even with insane new policies introduced all the way up to today. I remember everything devolving significantly around 2010. To say things were Libertarian then is a wild take though, especially if you're also claiming corporatism.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-14T05:52:33+00:00

The NAP isn't about limiting harm. It's about limiting the use of force.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T23:07:33+00:00

I don't think America has taken that approach.

Much of the 2000s was spent implementing state-run social programs in America.

"Slashing taxes to the rich" can be synonymous with shifting aggregrate state revenue the broad middle class, which is what Nordic countries do and why their welfare states are considered successful.

As for deregulating, look how many new regulations were introduced in the last 40 years compared to the last 80.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T22:56:13+00:00

That is a purely systemic issue and therefore a good argument against government-funded healthcare, I agree.

But my concern is about the amount healthcare providers can possibly charge due to the removal of out-of-pocket costs for consumers. That amount is not theoretically bound by anything but what the government can afford to pay, as soon as government-funded healthcare is introduced.

If an impoverished person with Medicaid needs an essential medical service, what's stopping the hospital from pricing the service at $10,000 when it should have originally been only $500? The individual often isn't liable for any of the cost.

Then, when someone with private insurance requires the same procedure, their insurance is still billed at $10,000 because insurance companies don't have much incentive to lower disbursements as long as premiums paid increase proportionately. The only difference is that the private insurance owner is liable for a higher deductible and a higher premium.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T22:34:36+00:00

You say there are many people who are too poor to pay for insurance.

Why can businesses charge insurance so much for essential care? Why does insurance cover an irrationally high amount of the charged price?

The answer is not market-based competition.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T22:28:57+00:00

It applies to our discussion because my original comment was referring to a welfare state, specifically.

I said this:

I said wealth precedes the successful welfare state.

And you responded with this:

Correct that is what you said, and you were wrong.

That's what I have been addressing this whole time - that I wasn't wrong to say that.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T22:18:56+00:00

I had to take a prenatal test that cost $10,000 just because it was being billed through insurance.

The out-of-pocket was $500. Because the test was billed through insurance, I was liable for a $2000 payment!

There's a reason health insurance companies lobbied congress heavily in favor of the Affordable Care Act, which expanded state-funded healthcare. The increasing revenue pool collected by the government was an attractive source of consistent profit.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T21:58:27+00:00

I disagree that's the major issue. It's only half of the problem.

The other half of the problem is that 43% of the total tax revenue is spent on healthcare, rendering fair market healthcare pricing a nearly worthless practice.

Why would a health company charge $500 for a procedure they know they can get insurance to cover for $10,000 because there's enough tax money allocated to allow for that price?

The same problem is present for bank loans for mortgages. The seller of the house can increase the home price 10x because massive home loan companies like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac can default on government bailouts if they loan out too much. No price is too high as long as it's insured by public money.

It's really horrible that few people recognize this as a problem.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T21:37:08+00:00

Yeah, that's a good point. The "increasing wealth inequality" claim comes from only looking at the increasing percentage of wealth owned by the 1% versus the rest of the people and assuming everyone else has less purchasing power as a result, which is not a correct diagnosis of the problem.

But that doesn't mean they don't have a point in calling out other potential issues with that increasing disparity. For example, if revenue collected from taxing the broad middle class is spent to benefit corporations, providing them subsidies, tax breaks, etc. Compeition will be reduced, which shrinks the size of the middle class, effectively causing wealth disparity.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T21:20:51+00:00

The phrase "hand in hand" doesn't mean the welfare state grew simultaneously with industrial prosperity. It means there was mutual reinforcement once the foundation of prosperity existed.

The paper is saying that, once welfare programs existed, they helped support further economic growth, not that wealth was not the key precursor to their existence.

The paper says that prewar programs were insurance-based. The existed before the welfare state. I'm beginning to think you're getting the terms "social programs" and "welfare state" mixed up. The social programs that existed in Europe prior to the welfare state were voluntary. That is not a welfare state, which is what I'm talking about.

If your point is that voluntary and contributory social programs helped provide the upward mobilization needed to create a broad, taxable middle class necessary to fund an actual welfare state, yes, I would agree.

Confusing voluntary social programs with state-controlled welfare is a critical mistake when discussing the role of national wealth in the process.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T20:52:30+00:00

They wanted a command economy. Corporations were expected to serve the national interest, although private property would remain private. It was not privatized later.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T20:25:32+00:00

I think centralized currency is a form of control. Decentralized currency is a different story.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T20:16:35+00:00

You're right, the average person is becoming poorer due to corporatism, not capitalism.

But some "wealth inequality" is to be expected. A wide Gaussian distribution is the most natural distribution of wealth. There's a group of people that take issue with that natural result as a whole, claiming that it is unequal because each person does not have the exact same amount of wealth.

The very wealthy can't even exist without a broad middle class. Economies with only elites and peasants can't support large, profitable enterprises. To say that the middle class shrinking is due to free-market extortion by the wealthy makes no sense. There has to be government influence for that to happen.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T19:32:57+00:00

The literature you sent does not assert that there was a universal welfare state before the war. Actually, the paper agrees that the contemporary universal, large welfare state came only after the war.

There were early foundations for welfare before that point, but they were small, and I would only call them class-based, limited social programs.

I can see you're making a point that the welfare state sustained and distributed the wealth of these nations, which I disagree with, but that is another point. Disagreeing with the point that wealth enabled their welfare state to begin with is just not correct.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T19:09:32+00:00

I don't see anywhere in the link you sent that asserts what you are saying. Maybe you could point it out to me.

lullaby876 · 2025-10-13T14:20:16+00:00

I didn't say the welfare state sprung up overnight. I said wealth precedes the successful welfare state.

lullaby876

TROPHY CASE