It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Last week, the CEO of United Healthcare was shot in the street in New York. As I write this, the killer is still uncaught. Current ish coverage link: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/08/us/brian-thompson-unitedhealthcare-gunman-search-sunday/index.html A lot of the media has been focusing on how people on social media are not exactly sympathetic to the victim, with many people having mixed feelings, and some clearly supporting the killing. In general, wealthy CEO's of large companies are viewed with a certain amount of disdain, and health insurance companies are generally perceived as evil. In this case, the intersection of both makes it easy for people to rationalize this murder as a "good thing", and sympathize with the killer. I have thoughts, which are somewhat more nuanced. The problems with the current health insurance industry in the US have been around for a while, but were sorta amplified by Obamacare (aka the very disingenuously named "Affordable Care Act",...

This might be a long post, but in the context of the current election, and broader, I wanted to write up a primer on how inflation works. This is a hot topic at the moment, and one of the strongest talking points in politics, particularly within the right-leaning circles. It's also one of the least understood topics generally, and thus one of the easiest to inaccurately blame on people or actions for political purposes. Furthermore, actions related to inflation are the perhaps surprising cause of several pressing societal woes (eg: housing prices, wage stagnation, etc.), so it would be great if the general population better understood what was going on. So, hopefully, this will help. What causes inflation Milton Friedman (famous economist) once observed: "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." This is, broadly, true: inflation happens when more money is competing for the same amount of goods and services, and thus the people with the goods ans services...

Something I've been thinking about recently: Often when someone (or a group of people) commit some heinously evil act, the media (and/or their supporters) will try to promote a narrative of the importance of focusing on why they got to the point where they were "compelled" to that type of action. They (the supporters) will insist that the motivating factors should be addressed if we (society) want to prevent that type of societally destructive behavior in the future, and that just focusing on the actions in isolation doesn't properly account for all those responsible. You can see this in numerous different situations; here are some examples. In Israel/Gaza, supporters attempt to justify the murderous terrorist actions of Hamas by pointing at the conditions in Gaza. In the case of mass murderers, supporters will often insist on asking why the deranged individual was driven to commit acts of murder, and if more societal support might be possible. In cases of ubiquitous ...