I do, yes

Determinism makes the claim that all actions are caused by beliefs, desires, and temperaments. The problem comes when one's beliefs and desires, for example, come into conflict. Each person must choose their paradigm of thought to break this contradiction. It's in this process that people have free will.

@☭ Anon ☭ Not really, no. I'm willing to concede most of the precepts of determinism, including the idea that one can reach new conclusions deterministically. However, I don't see a way out of the contradiction brought about when beliefs, desires, and/or temperaments conflict with each other.

For example, suppose I am deliberating over whether or not to eat a bowl of ice cream. I feel like having the ice cream (temperament), but I also believe that resisting it will lead to a more desirable outcome in the future (desire). How do I make this decision? My point is that comparing temperaments to desires in this case would be like comparing apples to oranges unless I adopt a paradigm of thought that states that one is categorically superior to another.

But why make decisions according to utility at all?
I'll put it another way: Why operate by beliefs as opposed to desires and temperaments? It can't be reduced to a belief that operating by beliefs is better since that would be begging the question. It can't be reduced to either of the other two either because then we would be operating by desires or temperaments and the same circular logic would occur (desiring to operate by desire & feeling like operating by temperaments). None of these three fundamental causes can explain why I chose one over the other. What can?

Those different values we interpret as beliefs, desires, and temperaments are still not directly comparable, though. Animalistic instincts and genetics often determine what our temperaments are in various circumstances, but they don't determine why we weigh beliefs or desires as more valuable than our temperaments or why people change their paradigms of thought.

Yes, exactly

People operate by certain paradigms that can change gradually over time, yes

Listen to boring music

I certainly have doubts

UBI seems more realistic than free healthcare from the argumentation I've seen from Yang, but neither one seems to be an ideal solution to the problems they're designed to solve

I don't think either is practical. Among other reasons regarding either policy individually, most of our positive developments in practicability have been towards decentralized control rather than centralized control of industries e.g. the Internet providing a platform for a greater diversity of companies. Many of our negative developments in practicability have been towards centralization e.g. monopolistic malpractice. Thus, the centralized elements of both of these policies concern me.
I also don't think it works on an idealogical level. As long as there is scarcity in any industry, the goods of that industry cannot be made free. If a good loses all of its scarcity, it would become a right and I would support making it free. For now, though, we are far from a post-scarcity economy in any respect, most certainly in regard to healthcare and money itself.

Some countries that have tried universal healthcare have been moving towards privatization as of recently. Even the countries that have implemented government healthcare most successfully offer it alongside the private option e.g. Switzerland, Denmark. Even then, the private options remain very popular in those countries. I don't think the problems with healthcare in America are inherent to the privatized nature of our healthcare. Many of the expenses in our healthcare system derive from red-tape regulations and masses of paperwork. This problem will likely be alleviated by AI programs in the future. They also come from a lack of competitiveness in the industry. We can make policies that force hospitals to be more transparent about their prices and we can promote competition in the insurance industry by promoting co-op health insurance plans as a competitor to the traditional insurance companies. Finally, I believe we make it too difficult for foreign medical workers to be able to practice medicine here. Increasing the supply of medical workers could also help decrease healthcare costs. None of these problems are likely to be solved by universal healthcare. Meanwhile, we would lose the healthcare system that is credited with a very large amount of modern medical breakthroughs. While our healthcare system is definitely flawed in many ways, I don't believe making it universal is the solution to those problems. If one wishes to argue for universal healthcare, they will have to explain how it would keep the benefits of private healthcare, how it would solve the problems with our current system, how it would avoid the pitfalls many other countries have run into in their implementations of universal healthcare, why healthcare should be free even despite the presence of scarcity in that market, and why it should break the current trend of increased practicability being brought about by decentralization rather than centralization.

Everyone pays into public healthcare through taxes, so that would present unfair competition. Price caps may provide short term benefits for consumers, but they have negative long term effects on medical research and development funding. Market distortion as a result of price capping has led to a decrease in revenue of $18-27 billion per year for all medical providers in OECD countries. As a result, global medical research and development loses $5-8 billion per year, which causes 3-4 fewer new molecular entities (NMEs) to be invented per year. The estimated value of those NMEs' benefit to medical consumers is estimated at $4.9-7.5 billion. In short, unless price capping is being used to bring stability to a market (e.g. agriculture), distorting the market leads to adverse long term effects

Source:

Private healthcare companies compete for the customers' money. If the public option was funded by taxes, then it wouldn't even have to compete in that regard.
Understood. As I said earlier, I believe decreasing the price of healthcare is important and that there are better ways to do so than price capping
A large part of the reason why the infant mortality rate is so high in the US is because the US has a broader definition of when a baby is "born". In Europe, a < 1 lb baby at 21 weeks' gestation is not considered born and is therefore not included in the infant mortality statistics. In the US, that baby would be considered born and would be included in the infant mortality statistics

The point is that America is (ostensibly) not great

I'm patriotic in that I support national values

No, it isn't subjective

It's speculative, not subjective

There's no point to the group's existence except to perform violent acts against anyone who disagrees with modern progressive leftism

Exactly, that's their only reason for existing