Applied Philosophy

Let us assume that the US will implement healthcare reform that provides adequate care to those without insurance and those who are underinsured, what would be the consequences of such a move?

For the sake of argument I will assume that any reform is actually affordable. Increased healthcare will result in the following:

1. Longer lifespan: This will put pressure on both Medicare and Social Security from the state point of view, while putting more pressure on family members who have to care for the elderly from an individual point of view.

2. Increased disability: This has been the case with the military, improved battle care resulted in increased rate of injured soldiers putting pressure on the veterans infrastructure that could not support them. Is society (economically) ready to support the increased number of disabled people?

3. Lower child coast: Children might be the future, but they coast money even before they are born. If healthcare coast declines, then this will most likely spur childbirth, which is good in principle, in practice it will put pressure on the education system from the kindergarten level all the way up to higher education, it will also means millions of people entering the labour force 15 years down the road, will there be jobs for them?

4. Increased unemployment: Some claim that a 100,000 die in the US each year because of lack of insurance, this means that providing insurance will mean there are 100,000 who either want a job or dependent.

5. Doctor where are thou? The West has been suffering medical professionals shortage for decades, their first solution is to suck publicly educated professionals from poor countries, then from the former Warsaw block countries. Now the whole world is in the grip of the shortage.

“State officials have acknowledged the problem. “Health-care coverage without access is meaningless,” Gov. Deval Patrick said in March.”

—Doctor Shortage Hurts A Coverage-for-All Plan

Nothing ruined the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia than adopting financial and social systems totally unsuitable for their needs and unsupportable by their economies. Providing health subsidies had the same effect as any public subsidy would have, namely a bubble. When the economy started to crumble in the seventies the result was a collapse that caused the death of millions (through war, hunger and disease).

Credo

I believe that the current level of human productivity can easily support 15 to 20 billion people around the world. This can happen, I believe, without the harmful practises of industrial agricultural and with a higher level of sufficiency. I also believe that development of land in Africa, Siberia, Central Asia and South America can open the possibility for a total world population of 25 billions.

In How to Reform Schools and Educate People I wrote the following:

Separation of girls and boys is the number one priority of secondary education, without this initial condition whatever system is implemented is doomed to failure. Secondary education was always separate, not only in space but also in style and subject. Only recently has the mixing of adolescent males and females been accepted as ‘normal’, while for centuries these two have been kept apart-for very good reasons.

The Guardian newspaper published the following article on its front-page:

“Girls are far more likely to thrive, get GCSEs and stay in education if they go to a single-sex school, according to new research, which reveals pupils who are struggling academically when they start secondary school reap the biggest rewards of girls-only schooling.
The analysis of the GCSE scores of more than 700,000 girls taught in the state sector concludes that those at girls’ schools consistently made more progress than those in co-ed secondaries.
The fact that pupils with the lowest test scores when they started secondary made the biggest leap in girls’ school will reopen the debate about whether more children should have access to a single-sex education in order to drive up results.
…
However, other leading academics said the research was more conflicting. Alan Smithers, director of education at Buckingham University, said: “We know across the piece that the main variables relating to exam success are pupil characteristics, social background and quality of teacher. There is very little space for gender in the classroom to make a difference. Where it apparently has an effect it relates to other factors, such as the aspirations of the parents who want their daughter educated in a single-sex school. But if this is true it will change our understanding.”
Sue Dunford, headteacher of Southfield School for Girls in Kettering, said: “It’s a question of confidence in the way girls develop. It’s cool to be very good at anything in a girls school – maths, sciences or physics. No one will ask why you’re doing a boys’ subject. Girls who lack confidence can thrive more in girls-only schools. We don’t have boys competing and distracting, so girls can really go for it.”"

-Girls do better without boys, study finds, 18 March, The Guardian [my emphasis]

Alan Smithers is talking nonsense, what he says is exactly what the financial wizards of Wall Street said, he closes his eyes and sees only his ‘model’.

The Guardian also had an opinion piece about this story by Anne Perkins:

“Today, single sex schools are best. It’s in the land of pleated skirts and firm but fair women teachers that the best environment, and the best teaching, is found for girls to thrive. But other studies have come down as often in favour of co-education, or at least undermined the claims for the advantages of single-sex teaching by factoring in other circumstances like parental ambition and catchment areas.”

-Kudos in the land of pleated skirts by Anne Perkins [my emphasis]

In my post I wrote:

Schools for girls should be run by stern commanding women who resoundingly suppress the destructive tendencies unleashed by oestrogen. Girls at this age are highly vulnerable and they should be chaperoned and supervised at all times.

Ms. Perkins continue:

“Now if you put boys and girls who have been socialised like this into school together as puberty strikes, then what the girls think the boys think of the girls is likely to be a pretty key part of their self-esteem. And that is what the research finds – that attractiveness to the opposite sex is a much more important element of self-esteem in co-ed schools than in single-sex ones.
In my experience, single-sex schools leave most girls with a freedom to experiment, to be themselves, that might be denied to all but the most confident in co-eds. And even if the iron hand of gender conformity strikes the moment they get to the bus stop, there is at least a rival source of self-esteem from within the classroom.
Girls in single sex schools undoubtedly yearn for male company (and, speaking personally, berate their parents for depriving them of it). But they can escape, anyway during school hours, from being validated by their success in attracting it. “

-Kudos in the land of pleated skirts by Anne Perkins [my emphasis]

The problem is exactly that “girls…yearn for male company” at that age, that is exactly the reason they should be kept apart! Like keeping hydrogen and oxygen apart, both elements have of course a ‘yearning’ for each other and if they should come in contact with other an explosion is the only result.

Introduction

The single most important task of society is to educate the next generation and prepare it for life. Sadly education is everywhere a total failure. Education does not consist of sending children to schools, education does not stop when a person reaches a pre-determined age or receives a formal certificate from an institution. Education is a life long journey of guidance in which the older generation passes on the knowledge and wisdom of humanity to the younger generation.

The social process of education has completely broken down. The current generation are not even equipped to educate their offspring; they lack the basic understanding of child rearing and guidance. They themselves have had substandard education; this was due to large-scale social movement, the destruction of the family structure and most importantly state interference in the education paradigm.

In this post I will present general principles. These are not my invention, they do not reflect my personal opinion and they surly do not reflect my own upbringing, so I cannot be accused of favouring my own culture or childhood and presenting it as an ideal-a large number of writers in the last century moved from rural to urban society, their writings usually reflected the rural ideal of life presented as an ideal for humanity at large.
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