6 Comments

Gosh John, the whole system is just so messed up. I blame almost entirely one problem - misaligned incentives. We have a system wherein:

1) People are incentivized (via government subsidy) to eat foods and non-foods that are making them sick.

2) Healthcare professionals are incentivized (given bonuses that can amount to 100%+ of their paychecks) to give "vaccines," prescribe unnecessary medications and take on new patients that don't even need to be seen.

3) Heavily incentivized revolving door between big pharma and government gives us bad public health policy which, among other things, results in insurance companies being forced to pay to make people sicker!

How do we get (back) to a system where the incentives are all aligned to promote actual health?

What are the minimal number of achievable steps we could take to fix this mess?

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We the People might just be brazen enough one day to demand accountability from our government oppressors for this fascism -- alliance with private business interests at the expense of our health and wealth. That is the only hope -- the rest would be pretty easy, frankly. We must no longer permit ourselves to be "marginalized."

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It takes a lot of effort and management to cook and eat properly. I’m grateful we live on a farm where exercise comes with the day’s work ( no TV ) and real food is the outcome, but for all who live inside a city- I feel for the folks who are bombarded with lies about foods and pills!

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Agreed on all points. :)

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Another great essay. I recently finished Tom Wolf's 'The Painted Word' written in the 1970s. Like his earlier works, he was poking fun at the intelligentsia on a much more profound level than he surely grasped. While I am still very ignorant about cultural/neo-marxists, the basic premise seems to be that it is necessary to attack/deconstruct cultural institutions such as art, literature, education, etc. Language is the weapon of choice. Like a hammer always searching for a nail, the text is always searching for a new application. Running out of resources, it now seeks to deconstruct health as an unearned privilege - and once again ignoring all the work one has done to obtain privilege in this case eating well or exercising. A few months ago, James Lindsay highlighted an academic paper arguing that mentally ill people be allowed to teach children as children should learn how to accept their disabilities. This is just one step over from the right of pedophiles to have access to children.

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“This is just one step over from the right of pedophiles to have access to children.” Bingo, that’s the most important sentence in your comment. Many of the parents are now either too obese to effectively fight against that or too drugged up on pharmaceuticals to see it coming. Or high on recreational marijuana in my state.

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