• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    The point is we’re getting “innovation” at the expense of people. That person says they have no teeth because they can’t afford dental care in America since for-profit healthcare is another feature of capitalism.

    • TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I find it beyond infuriating that dental isn’t even considered healthcare per se. It requires entirely separate “insurance,” all of which is hot garbage. I need my wisdom teeth out, because they never fully erupted and now they’re rotting in my gums. I shred my cheeks eating because I can’t afford the $5,000 they quoted me for an oral surgeon. My dental “coverage” only pays out a max of $2,000 annually so I just deal with it and pull out the chunks as they break off.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        $5000?!! That is insane.

        In the UK, dental care isn’t free (unless you’re below 18, a student, unemployed, pregnant, have been pregnant in the past year, or there is a serious risk to your wider health), but it still caps out at £307 for the most serious dental work. Most people here are furious about it costing anything at all.

        Though getting prompt dental care has been way harder after the COVID backlog…

        • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          And $5,000 isn’t even out of range. Kids needed a couple fillings? $1,000 with insurance. Grandma needs a root canal? $1600 with insurance and Medicare.

          It’s a huge fucking racket and the fact that it still exists decades after Obamacare is extremely frustrating

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This is one of the forms of alienation Marx talked about. Products aren’t made because they’re good or needed, but because they’re profitable

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Well, the point is also that it’s not useful innovation. Profit is prioritized, not utility. Sometimes that results in useful innovation, but frequently it results in potentially useful innovation being avoided because it’d cost too much with a low chance of return on value.

    • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      But there are plenty of other capitalistic societies where health care is covered for all like Canada. You can reign in capitalism and manage it and have socialism in the same system. The issue in the USA is not capitalism, it is out of control capitalism.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s cronie capitalism. We don’t actually have a free market and we don’t get actual competition.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I never understood why everyone blames capitalism, when almost all of the places they spout as being great…are built with capitalism money…

            • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Right and further, when you look at the people complaining about capitalism and ask them if they shop ethically…you know making sure their coffee beans are fair trade, their clothes makers are paid a living wage, their veggies are picked by those fairly compensated etc etc let alone slave labour in the mix, they almost always look like a deer in the headlights. They say they hate capitalism but they seek the lowest price therefore they reinforce the behaviour they hate.

              • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Nailed it. I don’t eat fast food anymore because of the cost. I’ll order out from a local restaurant because it’s a few bucks more than fast food at this point, and I usually get my meal quicker. Panda Express? Nope… I’m going to the local Chinese place and getting double the food for the same cost and the Chinese immigrants there are awesome people who make bangin’ food.

    • KptnAutismus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      we have capitalism in europe, but also healthcare. this just proves america bad, but not capitalism bad.

    • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Not true at all. Your country is just sold to the highest bidder. Don’t pretend you are a democracy. Don’t pretend you are a capitalism society.

      Please admit you are a slave of your corporate masters and that they need you toothless. It’s called a corporatocrazy (sic.).

      Europe has 418 hotsauces (incl from USA and Cuba) and nobody needs to have toothpain (but replacing them with expensive implants may require more money as average person has)

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Corporations being in control of a nation is the ultimate goal of capitalism. So I think I will call the U.S. a capitalistic society. One which has come very close to reaching that goal.

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Capitalism is an economic system. Extreme capitalism leads to corporatocracy like the US, which makes it a political system.

          I don’t even think we disagree on anything… You are just confusing words/symantics

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Nope, not true. Capitalism in its base is just the fact you are free to exchange with others.

          Businesses should not be allowed human rights. And especially not to influence politics (even if through third and such parties like lobbyists and superpacs)

          • grte@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            That’s not what capitalism is. People have been exchanging things long before the 1600s. Capitalism is about allowing private interests to own a state’s productive capacity for the purposes of profit.

                • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  The word government isn’t even in that entire article. Maybe quote a specific part instead of idiotically linking a main Wikipedia page…?

                  • grte@lemmy.ca
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                    1 year ago

                    Okay, allow me to copy/paste the relevant section, the first sentence.

                    Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.

                    Meaning individuals (aka private interests) own and control the means of production with the goal of generating profit, rather than they be publicly controlled, which is to say controlled by the government.

          • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            You’re wrong, and you don’t know you’re wrong.

            If you care at all that you might be wrong, you would read David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” and learn more about this.

            But you won’t, because this is the Internet.

            • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              My take away from that book is that we should fight the oligarchy to demand the re establishment of a Jubilee.

            • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              F u tanky moron. Extremists are always bad Left wing as much as extreme capitalism.

                  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    I’m actually a little upset he called you a tankie before he called me a tankie. If he’s gonna call anyone a tankie it should be me. Am I not being radical enough?

              • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                They’re right though. Freely trading goods and services is commerce, and an economy based on commerce is a market economy.

                Capitalism is specifically a market economy where the means of production are owned privately by an investor class, who increase their wealth exclusively by “profit”: a discrepancy between the value the workers in a company contribute, and the compensation paid to those workers (Price- Cost [including wages] = Profit).

                There are non-capitalist market economy models. Like market socialism, in which economic production is still generated by private companies in a free market, but those companies are owned by the workers themselves rather than by non-employee shareholders.

        • JustMy2c@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Capitalism isn’t necessarily EXTREMIST. I can be limited, actually it IS in ALL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. however, in some shithole countries like the US of aholes, it’s limited in the wrong ways because of lobbyists and meek population being distracted by bread and games.

      • jack55555@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Speak for yourself. The Netherlands still has seperate dental insurance, and even those don’t cover everything, fixing your teeth can still cost a lot here, and minimum wage people stopped going to the dentist.