The doctor has already managed to find time for the service - she’s seen you. Potentially even done the procedure. The hospital has made room for you. The resource is already consumed by you, like a restaurant meal. The question is who is picking up the check, when you already have a subscription service paid for.
The service is not “free healthcare for any procedure ordered by a doctor all the time without limits”, they have the right to refuse something they feel is unnecessary
Why isn’t it “any procedure performed by a doctor all the time with no limits”? Do you think there’s a cabal of doctors doing medical procedures for funsies? And that if such a thing did exist, it would be a bigger problem than some company who has never seen you, never examined you, and you’ve already paid money to, denying the claim because they judge it “unnecessary” when the doctor who did see you claims it is?
Quite possibly! But Google Gemini, who obtains the specs from the same flawed, inconsistent, contradictory, or absent size charts that I have to look at, is not positioned to be the solution to this problem.
People need to be physically sustained. Currently, this means working a job for money to buy (food/housing/medical).
People also need their lives to have value. We are social animals. As a generalization, there is a strong desire to be (viewed as/able to view themselves as) a contributor to the community.
These don’t have to be linked: we have (significantly!) stay-at-home-parents and philanthropists and retired community workers. But in our current values system, it is often linked - having a job in the household is viewed as a moral good. It might be hated, but it’s at least “contributing” something.
If this goes away, and we have millions completely adrift? With no structure to contribute to? Even with the largest welfare expansion in history, I think we’re preparing for a very turbulent society.
This, give me some french fries from time to time and a house and basic food necessities for human-living and I am happy to be creative.
But what I worry about sometimes is when you snatch that away, then you just lead to stress over basic existence.
> If this goes away, and we have millions completely adrift? With no structure to contribute to? Even with the largest welfare expansion in history, I think we’re preparing for a very turbulent society.
Please look around and just try to remember how many things have happened in a year or two, We are already within a turbulent society but yes I also feel like this isn't the end and the cat is sort of out of the box and the world has to prepare itself for even more turbulences/radical changes.
I don't see why you need to armchair philosophize about what people are or what they need "in general." How could we know such things? What we know is we find ourselves in certain historical circumstances, and we navigate. Right now we are, with exceptions like you mention, free only to be a worker or to be, essentialy, a homeless criminal.
This whole prescriptive thing this response and others have where its like "ah surely it is up to us to find some meaning for the masses of plebs in our brave new world" is, IMO, presumptuous at best.
Like literally just give people an actual chance to find their own meaning, and I promise you they will find it. If it seems hard to you or "full of turmoil", that suggests a poverty of inspiration on your end, not everyone elses. Meaning is not intrinsic to our particular mode of production at the moment, in fact, individuals find meaning despite this mode!
I use it frequently for reminders and calendar events when not at a computer, as voice is faster than the mobile interface (with so many screens) for setting something up
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