Fiat economies means that the western world does not pay the true cost of oil, 50 to 70 bucks a barrel seems expensive, but it is in reality underpriced, just like the 5 dollar baggie of crack cocaine, there is no actual raw material supply side shortage, and the dealer network in effect denotes the cost of production because they control that side of things as well as supply and sales.
Medical care is a nice example.
A previous posted said UK health care was crap. Depends how you look at it.
When I was in Spain my dad was diagnosed with leukaemia, as things progressed he has a couple of minor heart attacks and developed emphysema too, I was living in the richest area of spain, and of course money was no object blah blah blah.
From 1997/8 till 2000 dad had literally world beating medical care, and I mean CARE, as well as treatment, on good days he was no more infirm (apparently) than old folks generally, he could drive, walk 100 yeards at a time, climb stairs, even do light work for an hour or two, on bad days at the other end of the monthly treatment cycle (that's just how it worked out with white cell counts and transfusions and periodic potent drugs to kill excess white cells etc) it was 10 yards at a time, little energy, and do on.
I paid, back in 1998 money when luxury flats were still available overlooking the kings palace at marivent for equivalent of 17000 pounds, or 20000 pounds would have bought a farmhouse in the hills with a few hectares of land, about 250,000 pounds over those 3 years for his medical treatment, literally the best treatment money could buy, cost me damn near every penny I earned.
I remember one weekend I pulled 18 hour shifts changing a generator over in one of the boats, same weekend dad was in hospital having blood transfusions, on the sunday evening I got paid for the job and the boat pulled out, about 2000 pounds, so I went to the hospital, checked them out and paid the bill, went across the road with them to the bar, bought dad a beer, mum a brandy, coffee for me, with the cafe bill that was that 2000 pounds gone.
don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge 1 penny of it, but I earned and paid a quarter of a million pounds worth of medical bills in 3 years, and I was poor, sometimes had to struggle to pay 150 pounds a month rent for myself, worked 7 days a week.
dad decided he wanted to come home to the UK, basically to die, which he did in 6 months, main difference was the national health service, which is totally free at the point of delivery, couldn't afford the intensive drug treatment, literally could not afford mercaptuparina and other drugs, or the regular blood transfusions etc, so in 6 months he went downhill and basically one day went into hospital up the road here and simply gave up.
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If this sounds like an indictment of the NHS, it ain't, the NHS is absolutely fucking wonderful, and is alone enough reason to try to enter this country. The NHS works on triage, those who can wait for treatment, those who need treatment now, and those who aren't going to benefit much from treatment.
NHS ___HAS___ to use triage, because NHS is banned from producing its own drugs, have to buy them commercially, and drugs from big pharma is why we have triage.
Break a leg, suffer a heart attack, or have a baby, and triage puts you at the front of the queue, no expense spared....
Need a kidney transplant or hip replacement and you go on the waiting list, eventually your turn will come.
Have a chronic or acute illness and you will get treatment and a bed etc, but managers have to decide, spend the money on keeping you alive another year, or deliver ten babies and deal with two heart attacks and 17 broken limbs, one or the other, cost there ain't an unlimted budget.
If I had not been in a position to pay for the finest medical treatment that could be had, dad would have had to rely on the spanish state medical system, which at the time wasn't as good as the NHS, after all it had the same budgetary problems.
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The average worth of a human life in the Uk now is about 1.5 million pounds, ALL governments do this, if that road is an accident blackspot then how much it costs to remedy is balanced against how many lives are lost there.
I don't have a problem with this.
I have a problem with companies, which are treated as individuals in Law, yet if they were indivuduals would be diagnosed as psychopathic by a shrink (I am not joking) (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality) externalising everything in the name of profit.
This is not, "we have 1000 infected people, and only enough vaccine for 500, so who do we save?" but this is "we have a marketplace of 1000 infected people, we have a drug that we want to sell at 1000 bucks a pop, se we will sell to the 50 people who can afford it, and the remaining 950 infected people will infect others and increase our customer base, while the 50 we immunized will serve as our advertising that we have a cure."
The only problems the NHS has are because corrupt government pass corrupt laws about intellectual property, copyright and patents, and create protected markets that the NHS cannot enter, but must purchase from. Zero free market economy.
Every single one of you reading this has DNA in your bodies that you inherited from your parents, which is owned and backed up by patents and other laws attributing sole rights to big pharma.
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Patent law by the way is the new fiat economy, it is what the worlds true leaders (follow the money) eg the corporations, are setting up to replace the barrel of oil, which replaced gold, etc etc.
If I own the patent rights to a bug that works yoghurt style to convert plant material into biodiesel, then I can stop you owning or using that bug, or any byproduct of that bug, and if you don't like it you can do hard time in pound me in the ass penitentiary along with the rapists and murderers.
Iraq and Venezuela are in the current axis of evil because they want to screw with the current fiat economy by selling THEIR oil in a currency of their choice, eg Euros.
India, Brasil, China and others are in the next axis of evil, because they want to screw with the replacement fiat economy, by manufacturing and selling things without paying the patent hegemony tithe.
Today if I grow monsanto GM crops on my land and some of it blows in that strange stuff called wind and propogates the way plants have since time began and ends up growing on your land, monsanto on my behalf sues your ass off and wins, one less local competitor for me to fight against, or at least one less who can afford a new tractor or combine this year, cos you blew it in court.
In a few years time I won't have to find any monsanto GM crops on your land, you will have to prove, and pay for same, that NO monsanto GM crops are growing anywhere, by having your entire yield scanned, grain by grain.
I won't have to do this, even if some of your natural crop propogated across to my land, because God doesn't own any patents.
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If you think you can opt out of this and retreat to the mountains, think again, we could if we wanted to today produce a coating to corn flakes that curdled fresh milk for natural pasture cows, but remained inactive when it detected a monsanto steroid in the milk.