The alternative, as far as I am familiar with the counterargument to this viewpoint, would have been to loosen the requirement of "unconditional surrender" of Japan, and possibly to demonstrate the bomb by dropping it on an unpopulated area. Inviting Japanese scientists to a staging ground for a controlled demonstration was also on the books.

Now, assuming the US top brass were convinced Japan was not going to surrender, the argument presented here is quite valid. Bombing a live target certainly had the most shock value, and the bombs were likely in quite limited supply. (I confess, I don't know how many there were at the time.) A continued conventional war would have been horrendous.

But... Were the Japanese really unwilling to surrender, and if so, why? According to what I've read... Well, let me just quote the story, I've seen this in a number of texts:

"At the conclusion of the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill held a press conference. Roosevelt said that he and Churchill…

…were determined to accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Germany, Japan, and Italy…

Churchill said later that he was surprised by this statement. Churchill adds that he was told by Harry Hopkins that the President said to him:

…then suddenly the Press Conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it; and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant “Old Unconditional Surrender,” and the next thing I knew I had said it."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/04/jonathan-goodwin/roosevelt-demands-unconditionalsurrender/

It was Jonathan Glover who I first read giving this account of events, but I don't remember what his source was. The argument he and others make, though, is that the Japanese did signal their willingness to surrender, but were not willing to do so unconditionally. This is because they feared the emperor might have been deposed and put to trial, which was simply unthinkable to them. If this is true, then dropping the bombs may have been unnecessary and even before the bombs, the war effort in the Pacific could have been ended through diplomatic means.

All this does leave one with some disconcerting questions. Would Allied leaders really have refused to reconsider their demands of Japan simply due to prestige and the need to show resolve? Was there no diplomatic backchannel? Certainly the fog of war must have played a part in the decisions made. I haven't been able to find a source beyond hearsay for what, exactly, the Japanese diplomatic position on surrender was. Considering this debate still goes on, no such source is likely to surface.

What stands out here, to me, as the saddest thing is: it seems countless lives were lost for lack of solid information and communication between enemies. Had Japan and the Allies been able to negotiate further, had the allies dared show their nuclear hand, had they made it possible for the emperor (while not a nice guy by any means) to be protected, how many lives could have been saved? Unfortunately, no-one has the benefit of hindsight when it's most needed.

I can't help but think of the Cuban missile crisis - what would have happened, had a similar failure to communicate occurred at that time? It was very close...

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

I don't think he's correct in how much things cost. Different hospitals in different locations in the U.S. charge considerably different amounts for say a hip replacement. You can't accurately generalize costs like this.

It's interesting to note that he says Americans go to the doctor less frequently than Europeans. It'd be interesting to find out the reasons why, if this is in fact the case. This goes along with what he says that Americans are not "sicker" than Europeans or "other people."

Also, to say Americans pay more for healthcare does not take into account how much Europeans pay in taxes in order to get whatever healthcare they get. So it's not clear where he gets that Americans pay more for healthcare or how he measures that.

Also, in places like Italy, you get "discounts" on healthcare if you don't ask for a receipt, pay in cash, etc., bringing costs down as the providers can then avoid having to report that income. For similar reasons, the statistics on how much people actually spend on healthcare doesn't reflect this underground economy.

He's correct that doctors are paid more in the U.S. There's also the IP/patent problem and the FDA and other trade restrictions that limit the availability of drugs which jacks up prices in the U.S.

He's also advocating cronyism here as a good way to lower prices, which, I assure you, is not a good way to go. I can tell you that doesn't lower any prices in the long run. But in the short run, it's like giving all government business to Walmart so that they can keep prices low. That works until ... they put competitors out of business. Then they jack up prices again, once their monopoly is ensured.
He, of course, advocates centralized planning to keep costs low. That's why Cuba has "cheaper" healthcare. That's also why Cubans are mostly poor.

The reason you can't negotiate effectively, as he says, is not because healthcare is different from any other service or good, but because of all the burdensome regulations and protectionism that surrounds it.
Basically he either doesn't know what he's talking about or he has some other agenda -- like, for example, being "hip."

I think he's also not talking about average individual healthcare costs, but how much the "country" as a whole, spends on healthcare, which is quite different.

@ Kofi-My comment came from a place of personal contention regarding the effectiveness of a hunger strike-suppose there have been a few that have affected some drastic change-How does one call attention to the plight of the unfortunate.....in a Cuban dungeon??? Gotta be a better way-throw doo-doo at the guards, swallow your own tongue, act crazier than your torturers...(got a hundred of these, just kill me already!)

No, No no no no no. You are not going to sit there and tell me that Kennedy was a good guy. That murderous mother fucker who waged a Terrorist War on Cuba before the Cuban missile crisis. And is responsible for the genocidal chemical war against South Vietnam.

Not gonna happen, that man was a piece of shit, and he doesn't get any credit for saying anything progressive.

I was thinking the same thing. If this had happened during the Cuban missile crisis we'd all be dead.

Funny story. My sister and her boyfriend went down to cuba for a week long vacation at one of their resorts. The resort was kind of a bust, but they met a dog along the beach that was scavenging crab shells and whatnot, anything she could eat. So, after it was there on the second day, they decided to smuggle her into their room.

For the week, they fed and took care of the dog, named it Lucy, and decided they wanted to take her back with them. So, they tried to add the dog to the cargo list for their plane, but found they couldn't because she hadn't had her shots.

They then found a lady who takes care of a lot of stray dogs to take care of Lucy until they could come back down and get her. Turns out, the lady was also friends with a Vet who could spay her and give her the shots she needed while she was there.

So, a week goes by, and my sister flies back down to Cuba to get Lucy. The return flight was the day after she got there, so the lady taking care of Lucy allowed my sister to stay for the night. She gave my sister a room and put Lucy in it, and a second little puppy that needed to be separated from the rest named Tommy.

All night, all Tommy wanted to do was play with my sister and Lucy, and was heartbroken when she took Lucy to the airport the next day. Turns out, the weather was too hot for animals to be in the cargo bay that day, and they wouldn't allow my sister to take Lucy that day. The lady taking care of Lucy said "I'll get you your dog, but only if you promise to take Tommy too"

My sister agreed, and reluctantly got on the plane, once again sans dog.

Half a month goes by, and finally we hear from this lady saying that a stewardess on Air Canada agreed to take the dogs with her to Montreal for free.

Long story short, my sister now has two Cuban dogs.

How do you know if your dog is Cuban? has been added as a related post - related requested by bareboards2 on that post.

Even though Cuban is kinda of a douche, I support him here.
Is there a link to a video of that Shark Tank episode? I'm curious to see how he debunked that scammer.

Laughing at the Rombots, still regurgitating bullet points and other foolishness. So sad, bitter, angry, and ignorant. Four more years of listening to them whine and parrot shit they saw on FOX.

An outside driver came into work last week, the day after the election, and told me about the Republican "stars" that are just waiting for a chance (Rubio and someone else). It says a lot about these nutters. All they need is some Cuban "star" (who lied about his family's reasons for coming here so he would look more pitiable(?) to Cubans in Florida, btw, but lying doesn't bother these idiots) to get some of the latino vote away from the Dems (apparently). He went on about Obama's offshore accounts and other nonsense and just got louder and more shrill with every jab I gave him. It was wonderful. When I suggested he change the channel once in a while, he started screaming (seriously) that he watched FOX (I didn't mention FOX) because it was the only station that gave both sides of an issue. LOL! He even used Alan Colmes as an example! LOL!

I'm telling you, their brains just don't work the same. It's like there is some latent Neanderthal gene at work or something, or, as Jeff Foxworthy once said, a family tree that doesn't fork.

Red states need more lions. Win for lions. Win for the world.

If the US wants him, he won't end up on our soil. If anything it'll be Cuban soil.

>> ^Hybrid:

You think this isn't about getting him extradited to the US via Sweden? That's one thing I and nearly everyone else in this thread do agree on. Be in no doubt, if Assange ends up on Swedish soil, he will end up on US soil soon after.>> ^Babymech:
Hybrid, don't be ridiculous. It would be illegal for Sweden to extradite him to the US. It would be political suicide for any Swedish politician or authority to be anywhere near involved an extradition to a country that practices the death penalty. Barbarians.

>> ^swedishfriend:

>> ^Yogi:
Hey look, it's a moron calling an idiot, "stupid."

Uhh, not sure who is who amongst your pronouns but Mark Cuban is a genius and was making perfect sense here while the host was making no sense so...


Mark Cuban is a person who owns a basketball team, and doesn't matter. The host talks about sports and doesn't matter. Fuck the both of them is what I'm saying.

>> ^Yogi:

Hey look, it's a moron calling an idiot, "stupid."


Uhh, not sure who is who amongst your pronouns but Mark Cuban is a genius and was making perfect sense here while the host was making no sense so...

Actually, I am not that well travelled.

Deustchland? Is that Germany? I think I'll start.

What would it be like if we all did this? I love the idea.


In reply to this comment by Krupo:
>> ^bareboards2:

It's one of my biggest pet peeves, how folks from other countries don't pronounce a country's name the way the country does.
Cuba. Kooo-ba.
I was talking to a Cuban citizen in Heathrow Airport (I'm American) and when I asked where he was from he said, "Kooo-ba." Then did a mental shake, and said "Er, Cue-ba." I was shocked that my entire nation mispronounces his country's name, and he feels like he should CORRECT HIMSELF for my benefit.
This is wrong on so many levels, I can't hardly stand it.
It has been Kooo-ba ever since for me. And I listen carefully for other country's CORRECT NAME.
Ironically -- humorously -- the United States of America -- the United States -- can actually be translated into other languages, so I don't hold other country's to my own personal standard.
Have you ever heard a Southern say "Italian"? "Eye-talian." My father, with a Masters Degree in Engineering from MIT, say "Eye-talian." "High-why-yah."
My god.


So... you don't ever say Germany?

I agree that it's cool to say things in the "local" language, but a lot of the time you're basically pronouncing the country's name in English rather than in the local language. Like Polska vs Poland, Ukraine vs Україна etc :

>> ^bareboards2:

It's one of my biggest pet peeves, how folks from other countries don't pronounce a country's name the way the country does.
Cuba. Kooo-ba.
I was talking to a Cuban citizen in Heathrow Airport (I'm American) and when I asked where he was from he said, "Kooo-ba." Then did a mental shake, and said "Er, Cue-ba." I was shocked that my entire nation mispronounces his country's name, and he feels like he should CORRECT HIMSELF for my benefit.
This is wrong on so many levels, I can't hardly stand it.
It has been Kooo-ba ever since for me. And I listen carefully for other country's CORRECT NAME.
Ironically -- humorously -- the United States of America -- the United States -- can actually be translated into other languages, so I don't hold other country's to my own personal standard.
Have you ever heard a Southern say "Italian"? "Eye-talian." My father, with a Masters Degree in Engineering from MIT, say "Eye-talian." "High-why-yah."
My god.


So... you don't ever say Germany?

I agree that it's cool to say things in the "local" language, but a lot of the time you're basically pronouncing the country's name in English rather than in the local language. Like Polska vs Poland, Ukraine vs Україна etc