Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

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Prodigal Son
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by Prodigal Son »

SteveUK wrote:but you cannot have profit in the provision of health care. It is not fair for someone to be denied treatment on their abiltiy to pay.
Not the same thing at all. It is perfectly possible to have a system in which the provider sets prices but in which no one is denied access to the service based on their ability to pay. It is simply a matter of subsidizing the patient. You do not have to nationalize health care to achieve this. In fact, this is how dentistry works in Canada. Dentists are not covered under the health program, but poor people receive subsidies. The difference between dentists and doctors in this country is that if you want to have a family dentist, you can find one, and if you want to have a family doctor, you can't.

Again, the Canadian and UK systems do not eliminate profit, they regulate access and prices.

In the US, if a rich person and a poor person develop cancer, the rich person gets immediate cancer care and the poor person gets none.

In Canada, if a rich person and a poor person develop cancer, they both have to wait in a long queue for an available doctor, hoping that they don't die before one becomes available. By law, the rich person cannot pay for private cancer treatment, even though they would shorten the queue for the poor person as well. As a result, the rich person becomes a medical tourist, pouring his money into the medical system of another country, and the poor person sit in the queue and waits.

Neither scenario is ideal, but ideology on both sides prevents any meaningful exploration of alternatives.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by SonyAD »

None of you have anything to complain about. I am happy euro diesel 4 went down a little from the USD 7.50 a gallon it cost last month.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by watkins »

When the price of gas quadrupled in under five years, we do have something to complain about. Just because conversions put your prices at nearly $8 a gallon doesnt mean much. Fuel has always been more expensive in the rest of the world.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by wannabe »

watkins wrote:When the price of gas quadrupled in under five years, we do have something to complain about. Just because conversions put your prices at nearly $8 a gallon doesnt mean much. Fuel has always been more expensive in the rest of the world.
exactly. i'm sick of the rest of the world ragging on us b/c we complain about gas prices. they quadrupled too fast.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by SonyAD »

watkins wrote:When the price of gas quadrupled in under five years, we do have something to complain about. Just because conversions put your prices at nearly $8 a gallon doesnt mean much. Fuel has always been more expensive in the rest of the world.
Of course it wouldn't mean much to you that I'm happy the price for diesel went down to USD 6.84 per gallon this week.

It didn't mean much to me when your twin towers collapsed. Your administration using it as pretext in lying you into a war of aggression for oil and private profiteering does, though.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by mtheis »

SonyAD wrote:Your administration using it as pretext in lying you into a war of aggression for oil and private profiteering does, though.
Here ya go.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by watkins »

SonyAD wrote:
watkins wrote:When the price of gas quadrupled in under five years, we do have something to complain about. Just because conversions put your prices at nearly $8 a gallon doesnt mean much. Fuel has always been more expensive in the rest of the world.
Of course it wouldn't mean much to you that I'm happy the price for diesel went down to USD 6.84 per gallon this week.

It didn't mean much to me when your twin towers collapsed. Your administration using it as pretext in lying you into a war of aggression for oil and private profiteering does, though.
Lets see...

Honestly, I dont give a rat's behind if youre happy.

Our prices have changed more drastically than most of the rest of the world's and yet we still get nothing for the prices we pay. Health care? Whats that?

Not caring about the collapse of the Twin Towers is, frankly, selfish and utterly moronic. Just because it happened on American soil does not diminish the importance elsewhere. The were part of the World Trade Center, after all.

As for our administration, I hate it. And Im more than smart enough to see what it has done. Which clearly you havent. The war was never for oil. Bettering the world, yes. Getting back at Saddam for the issues with Bush Sr, certainly. But not about oil, at least not to a degree to be concerned.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by SonyAD »

There is a fundamental misconception about war profiteering in the sense that people assume that war profiteering and steering foreign policy towards such only qualifies if the whole nation profits. Not so. Only those who matter and those who shape foreign policy need and do profit from it for the war to qualify as one waged for oil and profiteering.

The misunderstanding probably stems from the mistaken belief that the administration gives a rat's ass or feels obliged in any way towards its electors, the nation, its people, etc. That the good of the nation or people as opposed to a select few has any bearing on their decisions, especially as far as Republicans are concerned.

As for the twin towers collapse not meaning much to me, at least compared to the price of fuel and, implicitly, a whole host of other commodities which your war grossly impacted and which, in turn, grossly impact my life and my friends' and family's life...

Did you feel for my dad dying from a heart attack at work at 50? The starving in Africa? The AIDS sufferers there? Do you feel personally for the plight of each and every innocent caught up in the current Georgian-Russian?

No, of course not, if you're being honest to yourself. They're not family, friends or your people. You haven't met any of them personally.
You don't even know they exist or existed.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by Prodigal Son »

^^ I believe the technical name for the above is narcissistic personality disorder.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by Nychold »

Prodigal Son wrote:^^ I believe the technical name for the above is narcissistic personality disorder.
+1. I'll admit, I'm not up to date on everything going on in the world, at this exact moment and past, but I will say that I do care what happens in this country and all the others.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by watkins »

SonyAD wrote:No, of course not, if you're being honest to yourself. They're not family, friends or your people. You haven't met any of them personally.
You don't even know they exist or existed.
Do I know them individually? No.
Do I know their exact struggles? No.
Am I a good person? Yes. As such I care for the people of the world as a whole. Which is why I try every year to donate as much as I can reasonably afford to good, honest charities. And I am empathetic and appologetic to the suffering of others. Only those who have done great wrongs or have proven theirselves unworthy in other ways recieve less or none of my hopes for a healthy life and happy future. People who do not care for others or the health of the entire human race fall into this category.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by wannabe »

SonyAD wrote:No, of course not, if you're being honest to yourself.
actually, i HAVE thought about them. daily, actually.
SonyAD wrote:They're not family, friends or your people.
what does that have to do with anything? and yes, i have friends in a third/fourth world country.
SonyAD wrote:You haven't met any of them personally.

actually, i HAVE met some starving people personally. it hurts. especially when you're carrying like 2 suitcases and a backpack full of stuff (clothes, medicines, etc for GLA), and all they have is what they're wearing, if they're wearing anything. it hurts. but you can't give even a gourde to one person, or you'll have the whole entire CITY of port-au-prince asking you for money. at 1million+ people, its just not possible. i could go on.
SonyAD wrote:You don't even know they exist or existed.
yes i do. i've met them. i have some in my family (my sister was failure to thrive in the haitian orphanage (same one above, GLA). before she became a member of my family, my parents were down there, volunteering, and spent one-on-one time with her, got her eating again, paid attention to her, gave her LOVE, attention, food, just the basic things a kid needs to survive. she's now 40lbs and almost 7 years old :)

it may not be africa. its acutally CLOSER than africa, its Haiti. it doesn't have to be africa. next paycheck i get, i'm donating $50 to the orphanage, and spending $28 to help another missionary in haiti, get their ministry going. when i traveled to haiti, i bought stuff from the locals, to help them out.

you should try it sometime. makes you feel good inside.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by SonyAD »

That's the key difference.

I find it easier to give money to homeless/pan handlers that cross my way than rip myself up over the plight of people I'll never even meet and for whose situation I am not the least bit responsible. It's a hell of a lot more honest than praying for the plight of statistics.

But don't get me wrong, given a choice I'd much prefer that my govs' foreign policy with regard to spending my taxes abroad would rather engage in humanitarian aid and disaster relief in Africa than support imperialist wars of aggression and war profiteering on the part of US juridical persons.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by Prodigal Son »

In a mature human being, sympathy for one's fellow human beings should not be based on feeling alone. We should not have to feel another's pain in order to recognize that they are in pain. We should not have to feel another's pain in order to recognized that we have a responsibility to them to help them in their time of need. To help someone because we feel sorry for them is not a virtue: we are acting to relieve our own feelings. To help someone because we recognize our duty towards them, even if our feelings are untouched, is a virtue, since we are then giving something of ourselves and receiving nothing in return.
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Re: Toyota Tercel VS. The Fuel Pumps.

Post by NonChalant »

+1

I felt the pain of the world trade center collapse because it happened mere miles from where I was. The destruction and pain was everywhere around me so it was very close to my heart. I could never feel the pain in Darfur, but I can recognize it and sympathize the exact same as I did with my friends who lost family/friends in the attacks. To do any less is apathetic and inhumane.
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