Yeah, a lot of good cardiology and vascular work gets done at the mount hospital in Perth, it’s not that they’re literally useless all the time. Just most of the time.

It is absurd the Medicare doesn’t cover dental. I see a patient once or twice a month delaying dental care because of cost.

I kind of understand the government being cautious about controversial reforms but the libs had literally nothing to say about the recent GP bulk billing changes as it’s just popular. Medicare covering dental care and increasing school funding to meet Gonski targets are almost opposition proof.

Incidentally I am a doctor and I don’t have insurance. I don’t wear glasses, I don’t play sports that ruin my joints and I’m not getting pregnant. There is literally no benefit. On top of which, when I was a junior doctor it wasn’t uncommon for us to have a private patient transferred to the public system when the private physician realised they were actually sick and not just a pay day, the public system treats sick patients, the private system has nice carpet and nurses that smile. We need to remove Medicare payments to private providers and invest properly into public healthcare.

Sorry for the tangentially related rant.

Unfortunately it seems to have been taken down. Not sure what happened there. If it shows up again I’ll repost it

I wonder if this could convince right wingers that it’d be good to nationalise the mines?

And here I thought the the Labor Party didn’t really believe in anything, but they sure do believe in capitalism…

Fixed it for you.

In other news, water is wet.

I agree that both

• teachers are underpaid
• pay is not remotely the main reason teachers leave

Higher pay would help attract more teachers and therefore could help reduce workload if public schools were given the funding to employ them. But low pay is not a major reason why people leave the profession.

Be wary of people applying Econ 101 concepts where they aren’t applicable.

Education is a public good and the market will never provide adequate supply. It requires public policy to provide it. You’re right that if public schools made teaching an attractive option there would be more teachers, but then that’s the point of the article.

Take a glance at the honorable Senator’s comment history. That comment word for word shows up fairly often… Maybe they can explain why @SenatorCollins

There’s nothing inherently wrong here. Taxing gas exports is certainly something we should be doing and allocating the additional funds to the states is clearly a good idea.

Only thing I’d say is that this is kind of a kick the can down the road as eventually gas export revenues will decrease also.

Treating bat bites as serious in areas with lyssavirus, which is incurable once it starts showing symptoms, is very typical. Transmission to humans is uncommon but ruling it out is literally deadly serious.

We all know that we don’t have rabies in Australia, but Australian bat lyssavirus is rabies(almost), the symptoms, transmission, treatment and prevention are all identical to rabies.

On top of this bats carry Hendra, Murray valley encephalitis, coronavirus and god knows what else.

Just stay away from bats everyone, especially in northern Aus.

A few months ago John Quiggin posted this and I find his argument pretty compelling

Are pronatalists living on the same planet?

But even in this extreme case, world population in 2100 only falls to 6 billion, the same as in 2000. I was around at the time, and did not feel as if there were too few people about.

What about the need for workers? One unsatisfactory feature of long-running projections like this is the use of outdated statistical concepts such as the “dependency ratio”, that is, the ratio of people aged 15-64 to everyone else. That made sense 50 years ago, when this range represented the period between leaving school and retiring in most industrial societies. But these days (and it will be even more so in 2100) education continues well past 20 and retirement is often deferred to 70 or more. A look at the age group 25-69 shows that it is going to remain more or less stable in absolute numbers declining only marginally relative to the growing population

Also followed up with this

A billion people would be plenty to sustain civilisation …

I’d like to share my offline perspective here. All online spaces are kind of heightened versions of the discourse, Lemmy less so than other places but it’s still there.

In the real world leftists are generally kind and empathetic people who genuinely want to do good. It’s nice when you find another leftist, I have friends who are various flavours of anarchist and socialist and even some real life, genuine, aging commune hippies now living in town. There is no animosity and we would basically all agree on local direct action or local politics. In my experience even most liberals are just naive rather than genuinely holding counterproductive political beliefs.

It can feel very lonely but you’re not alone.

I love a curlew! such dopey looking things

If you can’t afford the time or travel costs to travel between distant supermarkets, just buy a new house…

It is silly to blame corporations for acting like corporations. What I want is for governments to act like governments and regulate corporations and provide effective town planning.

Maybe re-read my comment

Incidentally I am fortunate to live in a small town with a farmers market, a convenience store, a dry goods store and a small supermarket all within walking distance and very few people don’t use all 4, which is more to my point that if the convenience is there people will use it.

Blaming individuals for systemic failures is almost always counterproductive.

I kind of think “whining” about systemic problems is really important.

It’s really not the consumer’s fault that we have so little competition, that is a regulatory failure. It’s not their fault that town planning places supermarkets far apart and difficult to travel between, that’s a planning failure.

Raising public awareness by “whining” is one of the few things we can do that might translate into change.

While I do agree that housing is such a much more important factor in cost of living than Colesworth gouging but it is a real issue and competition may improve it.

I think that a better solution would be to transition the big chains to some combination of worker/consumer ownership. But increasing competition is the only solution to this one inside the Overton.