The lobbyists for the doctors are at it again.
I don’t know why they don’t teach kids about this freshman year.
Not ALL of the US economy is built atop crony capitalism.
I know that we didn’t totally understand all the implications of this when I was young. But now we do. We should really be talking to students, freshmen year, about what types of markets exist in different segments of the economy.
You all talked to me about these problems for years. So, I can’t say that I didn’t know. I knew about medicine. I didn’t know about software.
But software markets are different than medicine because it’s newer. The market is more international. I don’t know if you can call it, “slavery,” but there’s a lot less enforcement of labor laws in software. You bump into LOTS of places where there is absolutley none. You see more of what might be described as, “sweatshop,” style workplaces.
I’ve actually interviewed at one business in town that was activley advocating for those employees. The guy told me in the first interview that every employee they hired was under threat by a foreign government. Their families back home were being threatened. They were scared to death, and they needed American advocacy. That was one of the more positive scenerios I encountered. I didn’t feel qualified to provide them the assistance they claimed to need, so I passed on that role. I hope they found someone who could help.
But more often, the threats are within the company. Threats come in the form of, “You do what I say, or I will take your work permit.” Employers use that leverage over foreign workers to fix wages at really low levels - sometimes $2.15/hour.
That market behavior, at a large scale, helps them fix wages of American workers. But they aren’t super interested in American workers because we naturally have more resources than foreign workers. We have much more negotiation power. They use arbitration laws, NDAs, and market fixing to increase leverage over us. They import enough low wage, vulnerable workers that markets for Americans largley evaporate.
FTC has, of course, huge concerns over practices by the tech industry.
I would like to work in an industry that does not have the same level of market fixing - something at least a little capitalist because that’s the only way that I can survive when I’m trapped in a relationship with medicine as a patient. There’s enough extortion there to make me finacially vulernable enough. I don’t need more of that.
What industries should I look at? I have one thing in mind.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that I’m not going to have access anymore to medications or medical devices through my insurer. I don’t know if that is retaliatory or not. It doesn’t really matter because I can’t fix it. The patient community lost the ability to sue far too long ago. They will never uphold their contractual obligations to fill prescriptions.
I won’t have sensors anymore. I won’t run a pump without sensors.
I had that stuff when I was young and I could push boundaries and work in physically demanding environments. I could work in the snowy backcountry, run up a mountain, and pull patients out of the woods on a sled with a sensor and an insulin pump. I’m too old for that ■■■■ anyway, now.
But I’m not going to be driving 2.5 hours, one way, to work without a sensor either.
So, my strategy is to find an industry close to home that has need and functions in a capitalistic way. That will be my target. That strategy feels practical.
