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Comment by RevRal | Hacker News Reader

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Just to be clear I wasn't actually disagreeing with you. Just adding to what you said.

So you don't like the phrase "tea-bagging" and you don't like someone seemingly decreasing a group of people's relative value. I'm on your side.

Saying "tea-bagging" was lazy. Forgive me. As for the second cause for offense (perhaps too strong a word), well someone has to be qualified to make decisions. That's why we're a republic and not a democracy, because a mob (a group of people) can be ignorant.

And keep in mind that I was talking about technical understanding, not intelligence.

Anyway, I don't really have time for this right now, which is part of the reason I wasn't too careful choosing my words before. And this post will probably turn out to be not-so-fleshed out too, which I don't really care about right now.

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I tend to get a little touchy about this type of "word" stuff.... Your right, mobs are often ignorant, but some of the key moments in our history of civil rights were described by one side as mobs.

I am not sure technical understanding is really the necessary item. I think it comes down to understanding the implications on your daily life. I know I get caught up in explaining the technical workings of things, but the best explanations to a general audience are almost always the little stories about what this will do in real life (tech example: technical specifications vs an Apple product introduction).

I guess I am in "the technical understanding makes it much easier to see all the implications, but I think understanding just the implications is good enough" camp. I am not sure this is a good thing, but with all the stuff in life, it might have to do.

Taking an example, I think the whole school webcam spying story is ripe for this type of thing. Really, I think the technical understanding is well above the heads of most people (including some tech writers I see). But, the implications won't be lost on any father of a teenage daughter. I expect that with our current media's prejudice towards the juicy, if the student who was suspended at the start of this was female and not male, well...

I appreciate why you're touchy, but think about it:

GOVT DEATH PANELS!

That's all you need to know, to realize that the assessment of "semi-facts, lies, and emotion blended into an easily palatable gruel" is, in fact, the majority of Tea Party-er thinking.

Not all of the people who are against socialized healthcare believe the "death panel" idiocy. Not all of them pretend they're doing some revolutionary act by joining the Tea Party.

But they're all hopelessly ignorant of how socialized medicine really works. And what the word "socialism" means.

Many of the people you believe are stupid tea partiers are actually posers attempting to make the tea party look bad.

http://crashtheteaparty.org/

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/tea-party-crasher...

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/04/15/crashers-they-came-they...

The party needs no help looking bad, they're doing quite well as it is.

Well, putting the whole bill http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3590/text on a billboard would be rather tough, so that's the sound bite that summarizes some of the believed implications of section 3403.

This actually goes along with the back and forth between myself and RevRal. To have a technical understanding of the bill, you probably need to be a serious specialist lawyer (after waiting for the RFP and rule making). Since most people don't fit those qualification, you tend to see people explaining the implications to people. One of the implications mentioned is cutting off money to do life saving procedures based on a medical panels ruling. In a world where people use the words "prolife" and "prochoice", I don't think "GOVT DEATH PANELS" is such a stretch.

(now to really wander) As to government socialized medicine. I grew up under US gov provided health care. They very nearly killed one family member, lost critical records on another, and misdiagnosed my and my brother's backs. I don't think all of those people are "hopelessly ignorant". I would imagine quite a few have family members "served" by the VA. Go google IHS and "don't get sick in June".

Here is a link I found. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,540965,00.html

It is well established that socialized medicine entails rationing.

> It is well established that socialized medicine entails rationing.

Every system entails rationing.

In a private system, your resources and your choices determine how decisions are made.

In a "public" system, govt decides. Yup - they'll take resources that you might have used for for your care and spend it on someone else and deny you care.

We already hear "we're not going to pay to care for fatties or smokers". If they're not going to get care, I think that it's wrong to take their money. That's just me.

At the risk of being further downvoted :). The proper definition of "rationing" is ; Government allocation of scarce resources and consumer goods, usually adopted during wars, famines, or other national emergencies. http://www.answers.com/topic/rationing

The conflation of private and governmental actions is exactly one of the things that has gotten us into the current troubles. If I choose to buy cake and not pencils today, I am not rationing myself. If the government says I can only have so many pencils or cake, I am subject to rationing.

Government is the only authorized agent of force. Private citizens are not allowed to force others to do their bidding. That is against the law: you cannot take my cake from me by force. Unfortunately, with our government becoming more and more unlimited, the force it can exert is correspondingly larger.

> At the risk of being further downvoted :). The proper definition of "rationing" is

irrelevant.

You're absolutely correct, but that's now how this discussion works, even if both of us wish otherwise. (And yes, I upvoted your comment.)

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