b9a2cab5's comments

> I'm actually going to bookmark this conversation as a discussion piece because there's a lot to unpack here, you've been very candid.

Funny, you've got the same attitude of condescending moral superiority as the demographics I mentioned too. You act as if you speak for all people of color (as a white person), who need to be defended by you, the savior. You probably consciously think you're just trying to help. Unfortunately you're not the first person of this type I've encountered on HN.

> Why don’t any other characters have to explain what makes them unique from the rest

They do. Geralt has a huge back story that explains why he's ripped and has a bunch of scars and why every peasant is afraid of him. Yennefer has a huge back story that explains why she's beautiful. If they casted someone ugly as Yennefer then that backstory wouldn't exactly apply anymore would it?

> I would say Black Panther is a story about blackness

Let's use another example then. Narcos - if some Asian guy was the one who auditioned best as Pablo Escobar, would you think that's good casting? Narcos is clearly not about Colombian culture, it's about the War on Drugs. If all the random cartel members are casted as Latino but the leader is Asian you think that's good casting? Or if we look at House of Cards - what if you replaced Garret Walker with a Korean dude. You think that's good casting?

> why does race need to be explained

Because one character is different from all the other people in their supposed race (Nilfgaardian). If there was a character that was taller than everyone in their kingdom I'd expect that to be explained too. Or if the character was white and everyone else was not.

> Growing up my class was all white, except one black kid

That's great, but completely irrelevant in this case. You are trying to impose your own social justice values on a high fantasy TV show. Ironically I find it's always white dudes in their 20s and 30s that have this view of the world. I bet you're white, male, a millennial or Gen Z, you live in a big city, and you work in tech.

Okay, so if Jason Momoa was the one who auditioned best for T'Challah you would say that's a good casting? Because I would say having the supposed leader of a kingdom of black people look completely different from all the people in that kingdom is really poor casting.

> Why are you assuming her blackness means she must have been shoehorned into the role?

Perhaps because every other Nilfgaardian is white. If Nilfgaardians were a mixture then it would be a good casting. Just like if all Nilfgaardians were black then casting a white person as Fringilla would also be garbage casting.

You are free to assume in your fantasy world that outside appearance has no impact on story telling in a TV show but I and many others in the Witcher fanbase have opinions to the contrary.

> Maybe there's a recessive gene that causes some tone difference. Maybe there's some historical war that caused the blahblahblah migration of the whoseits to the whatsits.

I'm not saying the black character is supposed to explain why they're black. I'm saying the writers should have written some reason into the story for why out of all the Nilfgaardians, Fringilla is the only one that's black. The black character doesn't need to be the one explaining it. Otherwise it seems like a poor casting choice because it doesn't make sense within the story. Which makes it seem shoehorned.

> Maybe there's some historical war that caused the blahblahblah migration of the whoseits to the whatsits

And that would have been great backstory to flesh out the universe...

> It sounds like you have some real hangups about race that just isn't shared by the writers.

It sounds like you don't feel like one character that has a different ethnicity than their entire fantasy race seems out of place. If in Black Panther there was a singular white main character and everyone else in Wakanda was black would you feel the same way?

> They're Nilfgaardian and Elves

Right, but the show casts all other Nilfgaardians and elves as white people. If the show casted all Nilfgaardians as black people or gave a story reason for a mixed composition then it would be compelling. But they don't. That's why Fringilla's casting seems shoehorned in.

> There's no sense in which they are black except for the literal colour of their skin

That's the _point_. The writing is completely unrelated to the actors being black. They were casted as black people because the writers/producers wanted black people for the sake of having black people on screen. If there was reference to black culture or some sort of backstory then it would be a _justified casting_ and I wouldn't be complaining.

You don't cast a British person as a Hispanic character in Narcos. Why are random characters in the Witcher magically changed to be black when there's no story reason for them to be black?

> I assumed you had some objection about the actual storyline which does in fact revolve around discrimination against Witchers, racism and genocide and slavery against Elves, culture wars between nations, and cultures domineering others through centuries of abuse and slavery

I actually think the Witcher does a great job at showing the effects of discrimination and racial conflict in this sense.

Many of the characters have been changed (in personality/storyline and in ethnicity) from the books and from the games. For example Yennefer is no longer a mature, smart person but now is a stereotypical "I'm a strong independent woman" character that has the personality of a 15 year old. Triss is completely different from the books and game. Fringilla magically changed to be black even though EVERY other Nilfgaardian is white. Side characters were changed to be black but still act as if they come from the same background as their original book characters. This doesn't make sense in a medieval Eastern Europe type environment.

This is what I mean by shoehorned in. HBO Rome did a great job of integrating racial diversity in a plausible way that made sense in the context of the story. Egypt/North Africa historically had Numidians in major leadership roles. The Witcher does not bother to write a story that makes sense with the replaced characters.

Again, I'm not white and even I can notice these changes.

Netflix is already on the way down. They infused all of their new shows with wokeness. Every new show feels like woke concepts are shoehorned in without regard for their impact on the story that's told.

Look at the Witcher for an example. Or if you want to see this kind of shift happening over the course of a show, look at Madam Secretary. Season 1 didn't feature any of this crap and showed a strong woman main character that wasn't shoehorned in, by the last season everything was about "hurr durr let's ban guns and white men suck".

I'm not even white and I can notice the excellent storylines being ruined. It's like the writers don't know how to write a story with woke concepts that's actually strong so instead they shove it into every successful show until the show isn't successful anymore. HBO and Disney are going to eat their lunch at this rate with more compelling content.

According to your profile, you're not even a U.S. citizen, how can you purport to understand anything in the U.S. when you don't vote here? When you repeatedly post in favor of one political slant as a foreign national that's no different from Russian troll farms getting paid 50 cents a post to spam politics online.

> I'm completely uninterested in this. Unless tied to income it's a regressive tax that punishes the poor disproportionately along the axis of marginal utility of money.

Nobody asked your opinion. I was simply stating mine.

> However, you have failed to answer my core question

I don't feel a need to prove to you I've answered anything. Like I said, you are conversing in bad faith.

> Medicare for all is coming

Is that why Democrats lost elections in swing states in 2021 by double digit shifts compared to 2020?

Double pay is quite common over the holidays for any hourly role. Flight attendants are unionized so they're far from making minimum wage. This article is really not news, every decent company pays double time over the holidays.

My argument is simple: Medicare for All entails higher taxes on high earners, which stunts wealth building and economic mobility, especially for high earners who grew up in poverty. This can be easily seen by comparing, for example, salaries of software engineers in Europe and the United States. Medicare and Medicaid are intended to take care of those that _can't work_, but Medicare for All is intended to take care of people that _choose not to work in a higher paying field they dislike_.

> private cover is so good

I would pay for a single payer option if everyone paid a flat fee for insurance that wasn't income based. I'm against the income redistribution part of Medicare for All, for aforementioned reasons.

> Why do 75% of those covered by Medicare think the system is working very well

Once again, polls are incredibly misleading and dependent on the wording used in the survey. You need only look at surveys of Obamacare vs. the ACA to see this effect.

You continually try to engage in asking the same questions by claiming to not understand all the statistics I've given you and I don't believe you're conversing in good faith anymore. Goodbye.

> This could not be less relevant

It shows you that the "rich" you're discounting wield substantial political influence. Manchin wasn't the only one that killed the bill, House democrats also said they'd kill the bill during the merging of Senate/House versions if there wasn't a SALT repeal.

> By the way 70% of Americans support Medicare for All so I'm not really worried about the popularity of the position

Do you know how these surveys work? They literally just ask people how much they support "Medicare for All". They don't present any concrete policy or implications of implementing M4A. That's why "Obamacare" got way less support than "Affordable Care Act" in polls. Please understand the stats you're quoting at the very least.

> 26,000 Americans die each year due to insufficient medical coverage. You willing to bet not a single one is a small business owner?

And hundreds of thousands of people die from benign illnesses like the common cold and the flu each year. What's your point? I bet we can find someone in Germany who died because of wait times too, that doesn't mean we can use that to generalize to everyone.

> Speaking of straw men, this is all attributable to the fact the Germans manage to cover 100% of their population for $5,595 per capita, vs America's covering 40% via a socialized program and 60% via private cover for $11,000 per capita?

This has no relation to the impact of universal healthcare's higher taxes on wealth building. It is a fact that it is harder for working professionals in Europe to build wealth compared to the US.

> This argument doesn't hold water

Cost of living is not so high in NY and SEA. You can rent a luxury apartment in SEA for less than $2000/mo, which is comparable to Frankfurt. Only SF is insane. And German cost of goods is around the same or more than US, so I don't know where you're going with your PPP idea. You need only look at the cost of electronics, gasoline, food, etc. to see they are about the same.

> But of course this has nothing to do with healthcare

Yes it does. Implementing M4A would require heavily taxing high earners. I'm giving you an example of how a high earner would be unable to build wealth under European-like taxation. But it seems like you are unable to understand the idea that high taxes unfairly penalize high earners who came from poor families. I.e. implementing M4A's taxes would penalize economic mobility. Perhaps you came from a family with wealth already.

> Luckily the rich are a minority and this is a majority rule system

Hmm, is that why the Build Back Better Act got killed in part by House Democrats wanting a SALT cap repeal? "The rich" you're thinking of excludes a large percentage of high earners who live in high CoL areas but are not wealthy. I'll remind you 20% of California earns more than $162k [1]. That's a lot considering the win margin of the general election and most CA state propositions. Enough to tip elections.

> And not dying if a small business owner gets sick has a long run boost to the economy

"Small business owner dying because they got sick without insurance" just doesn't happen. This is a strawman.

> You'll still have your chance lol

Average house price in Frankfurt is 7200 euro/sqm [2]. Tell me again how you can pay for a 200sqm house (=1.4M euro) when European software engineers make less than half of what American engineers make and get taxed more? A new grad at Uber in Europe makes 87k EUR [3]. A new grad in the US at any big name tech company makes more in the range of $180-200k. So your pay is more than double and you get taxed less, meaning you build wealth in the range of 3x as quickly.

[1]: https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/california-househ... [2]: https://www.ft.com/content/3e4f8c40-1dca-447e-a3c4-69911cfc1... [3]: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

> As someone who would be on the giving end of that, I'm fine with it, honestly. I won't always be on top.

And I and many others are not. You should recognize that this is a _political_ issue where there is no objectively better outcome. Higher taxation has long run drags on innovation and wealth building. The tradeoff is yes, we don't have universal healthcare. I'm okay with that if it means I have more job opportunities and ability to build my wealth.

> In the US anesthesiologists make 400K USD median, in Canada 335K CAD median

Just because the gap isn't 5x doesn't mean there still isn't a huge gap. $335K CAD is $235K USD. And Canada has comparable CoL to major US cities so you're losing real purchasing power there.

> That's not hyperbole, and don't take my word for it

Take a look for yourself at the data in Table 4 [1] sourced directly from each country's government reporting infrastructure and decide for yourself whether you would accept those wait times. I wouldn't accept a 2 month average wait time for something as simple as cataract removal, that's for sure. The quality of life loss in that time is immense.

> Ok, and they shouldn't. I'm sorry. It's not sustainable, it's not affordable. They're taking pay cuts.

Good luck passing any legislation over the lobbying of the AMA then. You're suggesting fundamentally untenable legislation that will never pass in the US. Aka bikeshedding. This is exactly the reason progressives can't get any legislation passed in Congress.

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016885101...

> Healthcare is the great equalizer

By income redistribution I mean most progressive proposals aim to heavily tax high earners to fund healthcare for lower income individuals. That money would otherwise be used by those earners to buy their first home, build retirement wealth, etc. Ever heard of HENRYs?

> MediCal is set up to be punitive to the poors like all Medicaid programs. A Medicare system isn't.

Citation is needed here. A lot of good doctors in my area won't take Medicare patients because Medicare reimbursements are too low. We also know from European systems that because everything is triaged based on need that wait times end up being very long if you don't have a life threatening condition. You also need to consider that American doctors make substantially more than European ones. If you compare the pay of specialty doctors in the NHS to ones in the US the difference is something like 5x.

> What getting everyone on the system does is it makes the political class beholden to the needs of the individuals

That is your perspective, and I think it's a naive one. I think it would prevent reforms that drive efficiency. Think of what happens when anyone talks about making Medicare more efficient: they get attacked as anti-elderly and portrayed as wanting to cut benefits. Or the same for military spending. At least the free market (which healthcare is not right now, but it could be) is ruthless about creating efficiency.

> Socialized medicine is no more a partisan issue in most countries than a socialized fire department or sidewalks.

Funny that the UK argues about NHS funding a lot then.

That is not the plan put forth by Medicare for All advocates. There is a strong undertone of income redistribution in progressive proposals for single payer.

I would also expect that if the government was taking that money my health benefits would be at least as good as they are now. And I don't think that will be the case. When I was a kid there was a period where I was on California MediCal and I distinctly remember getting glasses with _super_ thick lenses because all MediCal would pay for was the cheapest frames and lenses.

> I strongly suspect that a socialized medical program in the US would not actually cost individuals any more than they're paying now

The definition of progressive taxation means this is not the case for anyone making more than 100-150k, given current tax brackets.

Medicare already is 1/3 of the federal budget and I can assure you someone making low 6 figures definitely pays more in tax than 3x $900.

No, the article says exactly why:

> Texas-based Christus Health early this year said on its website it planned to defy the rules because its comprehensive list of prices “will only be useful for our competitors.”

Because publishing prices leads to actual competition.

Have you ever tried to bike to work regularly? There are a huge number of problems, at least in American cities that aren't NYC:

- drivers don't give a crap about cyclists

- every time it rains everything you wear gets mud all over it - no bike lanes in a lot of roads

- terrible public transit, either you sit next to people who smell like pee or the train comes every 30 mins or there are no bike racks or your bike is likely to get stolen if you leave it alone for 30 seconds

- if you need to pick something up on the way to or from work you basically need to wheel around your bike in the store because otherwise it's 100% getting stolen by some guys with an electric saw

- some American cities are very hilly, so any commute longer than 2-3 miles becomes very tiring

I don't think cheap overseas labor will dry up for at least another 30-50 years. There is still all of Africa for factory owners to exploit and underpay. And most of Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia.

> managerial elite that decides it's cheaper to just print money and buy stuff elsewhere

Hah, that doesn't even begin to touch the moronic stuff that gets taught in b-schools.