Hard, in this sense, does not necessarily mean negative or bad. And the safety nets are often illusions (see: insurance, for one example).

There's a balance of course, but I believe most people would benefit from harder lives (in the natural/physical sense). Modern life being more comfortable and easier is actually bullshit. If your life is driving through traffic hours a day to go to a place to sit in front of a computer by yourself to send out messages by chat and email, that is a very hard life. You are forsaking nature and an eon of evolution to satisfy what exactly?

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buran77 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Hard does not mean negative or bad

It does when it applies to your life. (Edit to reply to your edit) A bit of physical activity doesn't make your life harder. A lot of it might. And almost only hard physical activity is pure punishment, even literally used as such in labor camps.

> the safety nets are often illusions

Safety nets are sometimes illusions, they are mostly helping. Like an airbag they only need to work once to prove their worth.

> see: insurance, for one example

Insurance saved the livelihoods of millions of people, sometimes many times over. Rebuilding houses, repairing equipment, covering medical expenses, or critical services. Sometimes they fail you.

Do you know many people who wish for a hard life? For the homeless life? To not have any sort of insurance?

> There's a balance of course [...] You are forsaking nature and an eon of evolution to satisfy what exactly?

The balance.

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nonameiguess 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Insurance saved the livelihoods of millions of people, sometimes many times over. Rebuilding houses, repairing equipment, covering medical expenses, or critical services. Sometimes they fail you.

This one always gets me. I've had 7 orthopedic surgeries in the past decade. I couldn't walk without a cane or tie my own shoes in 2016 and today I can skateboard, run marathons, and squat double my bodyweight. I've had my house flood from a burst pipe on the top floor, had my HVAC condenser struck by lightning, had a city dump truck crush my parked car. Insurance has saved my ass so many times that I could pay a hundred grand a month in premiums for the rest of my life and still come out ahead.

People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

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thoroughburro 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

I’ve experienced plenty of my own claim denials. In fact, I had to stop treatment of my chronic condition due to the last one. This is certain to cause my knees to fail in a few years.

You think they only exist in headlines? Then get your own head out of the news and talk to real people.

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hamdingers 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What a horrific misattribution. Doctors, nurses, the people who built and maintain the facilities they work in, and generations of researchers saved your life.

Insurance is the rent-seeking middleman that exists between you and them for no purpose other than to shave a percentage off forthemselves.

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nonameiguess 3 days ago | parent [-]

That is ridiculously unfair. We're talking totals in the tens of millions for these procedures. You can make a very good argument it should be paid for by some other public means and I would not necessarily disagree with you, but given that doesn't currently happen, insurance did a lot more than just skim off the top. They paid for the work. And I'm not aware of any society out there right now that publicly provides free to the consumer home and auto repair.

I agree that the providers themselves, along with the basic science and engineering that made their work possible in the first place, deserves the bulk of the credit, but nobody was attacking physicians and scientists here.

For what it's worth, in plenty of other Reddit-style "everthing sucks and I'm pessimistic about technology" threads, I'm out there touting these same stories as examples of science and technology making the world better, as many of these procedures either weren't possible or had far worse success rates as recently as 20 years ago. This just wasn't one of those threads.

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hamdingers 3 days ago | parent [-]

I appreciate this backpedaling, but within the context of the thread your first comment credits insurance with your 7 orthopedic surgeries, and to that my response is more than fair.

I'm not sure what to make of the non sequitur to reddit threads though.

	▲	close04 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Your take is non-sensical and obtuse, and the attitude is not much better so I’d hold off on the celebratory self-pat on the back. The people who do the job should get a lot of the credit. But none of them do it for free. Insurance is there to make sure you can pay those people for what needs to be done in the aftermath of very unlikely but very high impact events. A lot of people pay very little so a few people don’t have to pay a lot. The industry has a lot of failings but this doesn’t wipe out the utility of the service.