• Adalast@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    You know what has radicalized me the most? Getting a fucking math degree and understanding precicely how evil capitalism at large, but insurance companies in particular, is. To see the falsehoods they peddle because the consumers of their propaganda do not know what is being said. To see how they skirt and cheat every guard rail put in place to make sure that there is some level of ethics using statistics and a bit of other math bullshit. It is disgusting, egregious, and downright infuriating.

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Same for me. Getting a law degree.

      Read tens of thousands of pages. Hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of cases, law review articles.

      Story after story of police and corporate America fucking poor people.

      In 2024 there are still companies arguing that asbestos is safe. Anything less than chattel slavery with strict runaway slave laws is insufficient for these psychos.

      • Benjaben@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        That’s a really interesting perspective. Was that material you sought for personal reasons or a required part of your education? Any specialization involved, if the latter? (I’m pretty ignorant about y’all’s schooling)

        • Good question. I’ve wondered how people could go to the same schools as I, sit through the same classes, and have wildly different political views. But it’s that they come into it with a different lens.

          Example, There’s a Supreme Court case about a woman who was charged with obscenity for possession of porn. It didn’t belong to her. It was her boyfriends, maybe husband. Police came in with a warrant for his arrest, but he wasn’t there, and they wanted to squeeze her for information on his whereabouts, so they charged her with possession of porn he had squirreled away in the basement.

          You’re could read that and be like “good, the police had a warrant and she should have cooperated, she had her turn in court and was convicted of possessing it, and we might disagree now but that was just the law of the day.”

          Other students who were less ignorant, more fun to be around, and usually much better students and people read that and be like “could you believe these obvious racists jammed up this innocent woman over a porn mag just to serve a warrant?”

          Speaking for myself, I could see that they were out there right now pulling the same type of shit and I thought now they’re going to have to go through me, once I get my card, let’s fight about it.

          Then you start practicing and the lines start to blur a bit, things become grey, and you start to drink your own Kool Aid, whatever that may be. If you go defend corporations, you’re going to start thinking maybe they should have more rights, maybe they aren’t getting a fair shake by all these whiny plaintiffs and their surviving family members. You go prosecute criminals, you’ll think there is danger everywhere, suspicious of everyone.

          I found a happy mix of picking and choosing cases of all kinds, now, but spent my formative years representing employees who got hurt at work. My Kool Aid was like “employees are being fucking by corporations, watch them or they’ll fuck you too, and insurance companies are evil, life sucking leaches.” So, my Kool Aid has no artificial flavor, right?

          I did do a lot of extra reading as I was eic of the law review and a top student, able to remember obscure footnotes in great detail; reading stories and then drawing on them to remember rules and policy reasoning is very natural for my memory. Worked out well.

        • melisdrawing@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          I have this eerie feeling that any large amount of legal documents is going to contain mostly stories of those with means fucking the rest of us.

          • Benjaben@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Me too, actually. Would be some (maybe a lot) work to get set up, but it’d be interesting to run ~all of it through some classifier / analytical models and find out.

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
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      12 hours ago

      I’ll give you a couple of caveats. (1) There is such a thing as Mutual Insurance, where the company is owned by its policy holders. Assuming they don’t have massive overheads, there is at least an ethical version of insurance that does exist. And (2) C’mon USA, get your fucking act together and do government health insurance. (signed, Canada)

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        10 hours ago

        Canada

        If we’re not careful we’re gonna a vote in a scumbag next election whose people want to do away with healthcare access and put it back on “my death panel is my credit limit”.

        • Troy@lemmy.ca
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          10 hours ago

          Yes. It is always a battle. Unfortunately the pendulum will likely swing right next election, but hopefully we can limit the damage. Everyone is tired of Trudeau – combined with a lack of a counterpunching charismatic leader anywhere else means a lot of Canadians will hold their nose and vote PP. Fuck them all. But it’s going to happen, sadly.

          The Canadian Future Party doesn’t have a hope in hell, but they at least have a promising platform. First past the post is bleh.

      • DerArzt@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        We have some insurance vendors that are mutual, but when it comes to health, vision, and dental you don’t get much of a choice (unless you want to spend even more money and go with a different plan than your work supplies assuming that it’s part of your benefits package in the first place).

        I speak as a member of the country that indeed needs to get our shit together (like come on, every other country has this figured out).