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[Playergamer]

All the cancer that a the State of California would suspect as a result of the lead cannonball under their Proposition 65 law.

California: Ruining Children's Dreams since 1986.

[SirQuiamus]

No Redking, we ARE single payer*

*(through a byzantine arrangement of backroom deals and revenue streams that will replicate a unified health system through tax and transfer scheme over the course of several decades of gradual adjustment)

*villainous cackling intensifies*

So your plan is to enclose a single-payer-equivalent health care system in an impregnable fortress of bureaucracy to shield it from political detractors and nosy citizens alike? Yes, that sounds exactly like something a liberal technocrat supervillain could come up with – you are very good at evil, sir.

I can sort of understand the realpolitical arguments against rapid health care reform in your dystopian political landscape, but the problem is that "gradual adjustment" via administrative engineering is way too often a convenient way to avoid reforming the system at all, or to discreetly reform it in the opposite direction. You appreciate liberal policy wonks like Hillary for their technical expertise, but has that expertise ever really benefited anyone besides insurance companies and Wall Street executives? And is there any reason to believe that their ineffectual policies will eventually start working, if you just give them enough time? And in the meantime, sick Americans can keep on enjoying the most expensive and inefficient health care system in the world?

This guy has a few choice words about the state of liberal health care policy, with a few interesting links thrown in:

The economy has technically been in recovery for years, but for many Americans there has been no recovery at all, with the worst off only getting worse off. However “mildly emboldened” liberals may have been, Wall Street bonuses continued their forever climb, with their total last year representing double the amount of all full-time minimum wage earners combined. Obamacare, the crown jewel of wonk liberalism, is riddled with problems. The highly-touted co-op system has collapsed. Many people now forced to spend money on coverage that they then can’t afford to use. It turns out that a health care law written for the health care industry mostly benefits the health care industry. Meanwhile Obama’s successor to the crown of high chief of American liberalism, Hillary Clinton, openly rejects the kind of single-payer system that could actually fix things.

Related articles on NYT also point out that most of the uninsured are poor southerners who don't want or can't afford their affordable care, which is hardly surprising since the greedy insurers keep hiking up the premiums with the full approval of state bureaucrats, and you can even lose your subsidies if you forget to file a tax return.

It's not that the system is broken, per se; it's just that it's expressly designed to allow the private enterprises to maximize their profits, which entails minimizing the operating costs, coverage, and quality of the service – which still isn't affordable enough for the poorest citizens. Anything less than a full demolition is not enough to "fix" the system. You cannot "tame" the industry and make it less exploitative/predatory by letting it loose in your bureaucratic maze – that would be like giving the Minotaur a brand new labyrinth to romp around in.

[Strife26]

I wonder exactly how fast a cannonball would have to be moving to wipe out all life on Earth. 0.3%c?

Back of the envelope, assuming a 24 pound cannonball, and using six year old memory of ap physics,

To equal the force of the Dino-killing chicxulub impact, you'd need to be going about 4.1x10^23 meters per second.

I think, possibly, maybe.


Edit: this is (probably?) considerably faster than the speed of light, so it's probably impossible to equal this level of power.


Edit 2: actually, I messed up. Lemee try this again 

Edit 3: 6 x 10^11?

[Shadowlord]

I wonder exactly how fast a cannonball would have to be moving to wipe out all life on Earth. 0.3%c?

Back of the envelope, assuming a 24 pound cannonball, and using six year old memory of ap physics,

To equal the force of the Dino-killing chicxulub impact, you'd need to be going about 4.1x10^23 meters per second.

I think, possibly, maybe.


Edit: this is (probably?) considerably faster than the speed of light, so it's probably impossible to equal this level of power.

If your math says that, your math is wrong, probably as a result of not using relativistic equations.

P.S. I specifically included the words "from a bomber" to make sure I wasn't automatically wrong because of this kind of scenario. (We have no space bombers, after all)

[Strife26]

I certainly did not delve into the realm of relativity for this problem. For anyone who wants to do the math themselves, I assumed a 24 pound object trying to impart 4x10²³ J.

[smjjames]

I wonder exactly how fast a cannonball would have to be moving to wipe out all life on Earth. 0.3%c?

Back of the envelope, assuming a 24 pound cannonball, and using six year old memory of ap physics,

To equal the force of the Dino-killing chicxulub impact, you'd need to be going about 4.1x10^23 meters per second.

I think, possibly, maybe.


Edit: this is (probably?) considerably faster than the speed of light, so it's probably impossible to equal this level of power.


Edit 2: actually, I messed up. Lemee try this again 

Edit 3: 6 x 10^11?

That's almost the speed of light. I think you messed up again.

You do realize that something going 0.99999999999^10^10^10c would still have a hell of a lot of energy in it, right?

[Strife26]

Yeah, inertia increases infinitely as you approach c, I think. I don't know those equations, though.

[smjjames]

Maybe Trump will beat Clinton via superior OODA loop? http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-2016-fighter-jock-213761

OODA loop is explained in the article (though I guess you might be familiar with the concept strife, and yes, I know you're a tank pilot, not a jet pilot).

[Strife26]

Maybe Trump will beat Clinton via superior OODA loop? http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-2016-fighter-jock-213761

OODA loop is explained in the article (though I guess you might be familiar with the concept strife, and yes, I know you're a tank pilot, not a jet pilot).

I familiar with the concept, but not the acronym. Best quote in the article:

Unlike your average candidate, Trump doesn’t require facts to make an argument. He doesn’t even need an argument to make an argument:

[mainiac]

You appreciate liberal policy wonks like Hillary for their technical expertise, but has that expertise ever really benefited anyone besides insurance companies and Wall Street executives?

Yeah.  If you are poor, the affordable care act was a big fucking deal.  If you were already rich, the effects were more subtle and hard to notice.

Related articles on NYT also point out that most of the uninsured are poor southerners who don't want or can't afford their affordable care,

Yeah cuz the supreme court allowed the state governments to remove their subsidies.  The south has a lot of conservative state governments.

This is really the case in fucking point.  Due to a fluke of the supreme court, it's the law of the land in some places and not the law of the land in other places.  The places where the law to give healthcare to the poor was veto'd dont give healthcare to the poor.  The places where the law was implemented give healthcare to the poor.  From this we should conclude that the law fucking works.

And this is why it would be really nice if the democrats could get a workable majority again and make sure the law applies to those poor people in the south as well.

It's not that the system is broken, per se; it's just that it's expressly designed to allow the private enterprises to maximize their profits, which entails minimizing the operating costs, coverage, and quality of the service – which still isn't affordable enough for the poorest citizens. Anything less than a full demolition is not enough to "fix" the system. You cannot "tame" the industry and make it less exploitative/predatory by letting it loose in your bureaucratic maze – that would be like giving the Minotaur a brand new labyrinth to romp around in.

But you can lobby this complaint against any capitalist economy.  The communists did exactly that.  The fallacy was they assumed that all profit seeking behavior was destructive.  It's not.  Profit seeking behavior can have incentives that align with consumers.  Just go to any mall to see that.

The problems with the healthcare industry was that the incentives of profit seeking didn't align with the patients.  They still dont align.  But just pointing that out misses the fact that the incentive problems are a lot, lot less bad.  The way an insurance company maximizes it's profit is to now treat people more efficiently rather then drop them.

And yes, premiums are rising.  Premiums have been rising for a long time.  But the quality of insurance is also rising.

This guy has a few choice words about the state of liberal health care policy,

That guy starts out by bashing the New Republic, a magazine that was taken over by a bunch of racist reactionaries and is about as liberal as the wall street journal.

Maybe Trump will beat Clinton via superior OODA loop? http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-2016-fighter-jock-213761

My take is be careful of post hoc explanations that are too clever by half.  Maybe Trump has good OODA loops.  Or maybe he was running in a field where every frontrunner was seriously flawed and the republican establishment was too delusional to see that.

[Shadowlord]

I certainly did not delve into the realm of relativity for this problem. For anyone who wants to do the math themselves, I assumed a 24 pound object trying to impart 4x10²³ J.

4*10²⁴ J is approximately 1,904,762 tsar bombas, given Wikipedia's estimation of its yield at 210,000 TJ (terajoules).

The Davy Crockett on the other hand had a yield that Wikipedia estimated as 0.042 TJ, which is 4.2*10¹⁰ J.

So I attempted to do the relativistic math even though it probably isn't actually needed. I think I may have made a mistake with the algebra because the answer wolfram alpha spat out makes no sense to me. Out maybe W|A is just weird.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

m/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)*c^2=j

(c^2*m)/(j)=sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)

((c^2*m)/(j))^2-1=-v^2/c^2

-v=sqrt((((c^2*m)/(j))^2-1)*c^2)

v=-sqrt((((c^2*10.89 kg)/(0.042 TJ))^2-1)*c^2)

Result of running that through on wolfram alpha:
"v = -2.33*10⁷ sqrt(1 c^2)"
Maybe it just looks weird because it didn't boil it down to m/s, and the answer is 2.33*10^7*c?

[smjjames]

I'm confused, is that still faster than light? Probably should move this derail to the mathematics help thread or something though.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, which is probably a good indication that I did something wrong.

[RedKing]

Doesn't matter. When Trump is Emperor President, we're gonna have the best cannonballs. They'll drop so fast, you wouldn't believe how fast. We don't need to waste time doing math, alright? They're gonna be big, they're gonna be fast, and they're gonna leave a yuuuge crater. And we're gonna drop them on ISIS's family, and that'll be that. Problem solved.

[mainiac]

No human race, no problem
-Donald Trump.