Of all the movies Kinski has done I saw Aguirre and "The Great Silence". I really liked Aguirre because it has a more positive vibe to it. The anti-happy-end of "The Great Silence" is also very appealing, yet really depressing.
Nevertheless, certainly one of the best movies I've ever seen. You can say what you want about Kinski, he was a great actor and I highly recommend watching at least some of his movies.
Well, in theory anarcho-capitalism should also ensure a fair distribution of resources. It's one of several currents of the Libertarian philosophy. I found an interesting write-up about some real-life Libertarian societies here: [1].
The most prominent problem with the view on resources is, that the prevailing mindset about nature is that it's a free resource. Which is fatally wrong! Again, in theory anarcho-capitalism should fix this also, but personally I don't trust individuals overcoming their greed for a greater good.
I don't buy the idea that there are no free resources in the world. It seems very obviously false, it seems isomorphic to labor theory of value, and leads to logical contradictions (such that value is not monotonic in effort). At minimum, there are other actors in the world that produce value; take for instance a hen producing an egg. The egg is valuable and is produced by the effort of the hen (scavenging for food). Yet we cannot assign this value to any person, it just comes for free from nature.
I was thinking more about resources like clean air and water. Humans used to pollute rivers and air because they treated it as a free resource. However, the cost of air pollution are health problems.
> I hope one day to be as passionate about _something_ as he seems to be about everything...
The last time I've been so passionate about something was when I was around 10 or 12. Since then I've trained myself to be (and act) not so passionate anymore, because it'll make you look like a weirdo to most people. However, it brought me to a point where it's hard for me to get excited about anything at all, not to speak of expressing it properly...
The real hard part comes after the initial novelty and the quick progress fade away: Staying motivated to do regular workouts without getting faster or lifting more weights every week.
This also applies to healthy eating habits. Once you've reached your target weight and the novelty wears off, it's much harder to eat clean. Personally, I like pizza once per week, usually on Friday, as celebration and reward that it's finally weekend.
For exercise it boils down to discipline. At least for me. Plus, I feel really, really bad and get in a terrible mood if I cannot physically exert myself every day.
Seconded. There is a lot of noise on what diet is superior and which one works best. Intuitively a person knows when they've over indulged just as when we pull back when putting our hand in a flame. We just don't do it anymore, and design our lives around not ever having it happen again.
My only problem with this is the victim-hood that happens when this high carb crap clamours for our attention in ADs and the media. Invariably you will get victim-hood and people gorging and gulping their way to negate such imagery. I know I don't look at a McBigMac the same way when I've had one.
> one Twitter post away from having your pick of three companies
Can't concur on that one. I've been looking for more than a year for a job after graduation and getting through those interviews was hard. But maybe it's different here in Europe.
Not sure which part of Europe you are speaking of, but I have to pay around 15% of my income for the (mandatory) insurance, which then provides me with (almost) unlimited health care. If you are unemployed it is a lot harder to get health benefits, especially if you are a foreigner and haven't worked (==payed for the insurance) before. Just saying, that it's not like "come here, we have free health care and everything".
Anecdotally I can tell you that I also need regular medication (not in the same range as you, but still), and I was unemployed after college for some time. I got the meds, but only because my parents paid the minimum "social tariff" for health insurance, which is around 150€/month.
One of our (US) employers pays about 10% - 15% of our combined total compensation (read: salary plus "other personnel expenses") for a $250 deductible health insurance plan. And that's just the insurance premium. Dental is extra. 20% co-pay. Bills are always a surprise and full of errors. Sometimes the same service is coded in radically different ways, leading to claim denials and hundreds of dollars of variation in what's billed. It can take six months for a provider to get paid. People here routinely finance life-preserving medical treatment using credit cards. The per-practice administrative overhead for dealing with private insurance claims is estimated by quite a few (peer-reviewed) papers at between 15% and 30%.
If the wrong one of us changes jobs, all of this comes crashing down and I'm back to reading 200-page policies, figuring out what network I'm now in, and trying to determine if I can still see my normal doctor.
15% of after-tax income for no-questions-asked health care, sans any form of billing, sounds like a utopia to me.
Honest question: How do you handle health care issues?
And how do you plan for times when you're more likely of not being able to do physical work anymore (in your 70 or 80s)?
If you live in a country that doesn't have health care for all, you need to move.
Take note that I moved from Australia to Canada 9 years ago. It's a long process. It's a lot of paperwork. It's worth it if you get healthcare, no doubt about it.
> And how do you plan for times when you're more likely of not being able to do physical work anymore (in your 70 or 80s)?
Government pensions in both Canada and Australia are actually more than I usually live on, so I'll be fine if that's all I have, but I'm also putting money into retirement savings accounts that will supplement that (which also means I pay extremely little income tax when I am working).
I also won't be surprised if I wind up doing "reverse retirement" as my brother calls it - live life now while my body allows it, then work more when my body is giving up and I'm not so excited to be outside hiking/biking/snowboaring.
I live in Germany, and health care at a bare minimum is around 150-200€/month, which is the "social" tariff.
We also have a pension system, but you also need to pay a monthly contribution, depending on your income.
There are many elderly people who barely get along with the government pension right now. I think it'll only get worser in 30+ years.
The idea of "reverse retirement" is appealing, but I don't know if I'd have the motivation to go to work in my 70s, when everybody around me is retiring. But it's probably a very subjective issue and I'm a bit torn about it.
> I live in Germany, and health care at a bare minimum is around 150-200€/month, which is the "social" tariff. We also have a pension system, but you also need to pay a monthly contribution, depending on your income.
How much do you pay into those if you're not earning anything?
> How much do you pay into those if you're not earning anything?
Afaik (and I really don't know for sure, because luckily I had never the misfortune to need it) it is paid by the welfare system. However, there are many rules and obligations to be edible and honestly, I wouldn't want to have to deal with the bureaucracy. There are several steps towards this. First, after becoming unemployed, you'll receive unemployment support, but only if you've worked before! They also demand that you use your own savings and securities to support yourself. After that runs out, you'll receive the bare minimum monthly allowance, which is around 300 to 400 Euros per month. You don't get that easily. As long as there are relatives, the state is very likely to get the money from them first. You'll also get free housing, but that's also far from what one desires (bad neighborhood, very small, etc.).
> Do you still get health benefits when unemployed?
Very likely, because health insurance is mandatory for everyone. So the system is built upon the idea that those who are able to pay also support those who are unable. However, it is very frowned upon to "abuse" this system and rest in the social hammock (that's a very literal translation, sorry). That's because the whole social system is regarded as a safety net, but not for individuals who don't want or can't contribute.
