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Comment by birken | Hacker News Reader

A recent episode of "The Weeds" podcast was all about this [1]. I highly recommend listening to it and the podcast in general.

The general thoughts are (especially for those poo-pooing the findings):

- The cause is likely a massive increase in drug overdose deaths, whose average age of death is lower than other common causes (>20% year over year increase, mainly opioid-related) [2]

- The drop in life expectancy is not happening in other countries, just the US (not measurement error)

- It's sort of a big deal, especially if you consider that opioid-related deaths could be going down, or they could be accelerating, we just don't have the data. And if they are accelerating this could be much worse than it already is.

1: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/voxs-the-weeds/e/52748846

2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/monthly-drug-ove...

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Also of note - how closely related opioids are to poverty and desperation. From reading recent studies, economy in the US is halving - on one side are people desperately fighting for their lives agaisnt an unstoppable force of wild capitalism, the other half is enjoying the wild benefits of digital globalized capitalism, and the benefits of software expanding everywhere and finance controlling the world.

The entire power of the rest of the industries (film, media, pharmaceuticals) seems to rely on copyright, which is genius, since the US has guaranteed all other countries have to play by its rules as far as copying goes through GATT and all the other trade treaties signed since. Looking back, all of it has actually been brilliant, outside of disconsideration for what the destruction of industry would do for the middle class (See Vaclav Smil's comment - "without manufacturing there is no middle class"). But the idea of copyright, and replicating the US model of agressively pursuing violations of it everywhere, was genius in the digital age - it's a way of permanently entrenching and making sure no competitors can arise, because almost anything can be copyrighted, therefore any similar enough competition is opening itself up to a copyright violation lawsuit. Basically, the US has been rebuilt along the lines of the same people who decided all of this back in the 1990s as a way to construct a new american empire (which I'm fine it btw, I prefer it to its competitors), and the result has been the mass anihilation of livelihoods in the rural and industrial areas. The result of this "error in judgement" has been Donald Trump - anger at the establishment and a willingness to anihilate it all in exchange for a promise to return to the Valhalla of yesteryear, when making a living was easy and the government was making sure all boats were rising with the tide, instead of leaving some behind.

Anyway, back on the topic of opioids - in Portugal we had this problem. We solved it by decriminalizing drugs and treating hard drug users as people in need of help. Perhaps, in the end, we will inspire the rest of the world to follow suit. It has always been my hope.

> Basically, the US has been rebuilt along the lines of the same people who decided all of this back in the 1990s as a way to construct a new american empire

This reminds me of the great collapse in Russian life expectancy for Russians after the end of communism: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/09/02/dying-russians/

The country became extremely unequal and was effectively looted by its oligarchs.

> a willingness to anihilate it all in exchange for a promise to return to the Valhalla of yesteryear, when making a living was easy and the government was making sure all boats were rising with the tide, instead of leaving some behind

Quite a lot of people said they would have preferred to remain under totalitarianism in the Soviet Union than to die of hopelessness in the post-Soviet crony "capitalist" wasteland. I hear there are even people in Portugal nostalgic for Salazar?

Oligarchs backed by the west in many cases.

Note how Russia was a cuddly uncle all the years under Yeltsin, while the oligarchs ran rampant.

Then came Putin, the oligarchs were beaten into submission, and suddenly Russia was back as the big bad bear.

Why does Russia try to blame The west for this and their other problems rather than trying to take some responsibility for their own affairs? No, the Russian oligarchs plundering Russia was not a CIA plot, Clinton and Bush weren’t the masterminds of it, and there was little the west could do in preventing this from happening, because they had no control over Russia.

Likewise, Russia’s problems today are not the west’s fault, no matter how much Putin tries to claim otherwise.

From this perspective it's the same under Putin, just different people. They just make it look like it's not and massively brainwash people in every possible way. GDP goes down. Money flow out of country is growing. Poverty over the country. Corruption in every political institution (even on highest level). Speech freedom is dying (there are just a few media who still are brave enough to criticize the government).

>the oligarchs were beaten into submission

Only those that politically opposed Putin. The rest thrived.

Also the fact that we now are aware of the opioid problem and are starting to really crack down on over-prescription of pills causing addicts to turn to heroin or fentanyl has to be a big factor. What percent actually OD on pills?

This is something also covered in the podcast. Instead of an over-prescription problem you now have a heroin/fentanyl problem which was expected but assumed to be temporary without prescription pills as an introduction to these drugs. It doesn't look like solving the over-prescription problem is helping at all though.

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