Kink and whatever

Occasional shitposts on kink, relationships, sex, politics, whatever’s on my mind Poly top, progressive as fuck, rationalist, pragmatist, atheist and more. I’m open minded. Try to convince I’m wrong!

[deviantdiscourse]

It's my 5 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[funnymemes-and-kinkydreams]

If you're not with this unfollow me, block me, stay far from my blog

[deviantdiscourse]

Thank you to everyone who got me to 100 likes!

[deviantdiscourse]

In the 1950s, US business profits were taxed at a 50+% rate. Today, that’s been slashed to 35%. But businesses still only pay taxes on profits, not income (or revenue as they would call it). And with loopholes they always pay far less than even 35%.

I’ll say it again. This tax only applies to profits. The entire cost of running a business, materials, labor, executive bonuses, rent, machinery, shareholder dividends are all expenses deducted from revenue before taxes.

As individuals, we’re taxed on every penny we earn. And, if we’re “middle class”, at an even higher tax rate than a business.

Sure, everyone gets an “exemption” for being an individual. And many get paltry exemptions for their kids. Plus there are carve outs for home-mortgage interest and catastrophic medical bills that some people get. But I’m not going to count “tax deferred” retirement accounts because that money is eventually taxed. If you aren’t working poor, most of what you earn is taxed.

If individuals were taxed like businesses, housing, food, clothing, transportation at a minimum would come off the top before taxes. Throw in gifts to relatives and dinner out with friends, plus entertainment and vacations, and maybe we start to approach what businesses are allowed to “expense”.

At that point, there will little or nothing to tax. So we need a different solution. And since most of the money is on the side of businesses anyway, let’s look there.

If corporations have all the “rights” of an individual, they should be taxed as individuals. There’s an easy solution to that. Switch from taxing profits to taxing revenue. It would be so much simpler too. No complicated tax filing with tracking expenses or calculating capital depreciation. Make it a graduated tax structure, just like we have for individuals. And if a company can’t figure out how to make that work? Well, just like an individual today, they slip through the cracks… after all bankruptcy is good enough for you and me.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

[lurkeresq]

Then deregulate. Want to make the medical industry less horrifyingly bureaucratic? Get rid of the laws mandating that bureaucracy.

[sighinastorm]

You astonish me.  Go back to the 1980s.

[deviantdiscourse]

Sure, @lurkeresq more bullshit, “I suffered so everyone else should too” excuses for why the current US healthcare system is not a cruel mechanism for sucking the wealth from ordinary people into the pockets of the rich. It’s not the bureaucracy. It’s not the few percent added to process your medical bills. It’s the huge profit margins raked in by monopolistic for-profit hospitals, mammoth insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and specialist MDs.

If you have good insurance, your insurance company actually negotiates lower prices. The US government does that for Medicare, keeping allowed charges so low that many doctors refuse to take those patients. But, the government is prevented from doing that for Rx prices because the companies lobby corrupt politicians. Also, as hospital systems grow into monopolies they can keep prices high. The US government could tell those greedy hospitals to fuck off and set better reimbursement rates. Even better, the government could take over healthcare and trim ALL the profit from the system. That works very well in other countries as evidenced by actual outcome measures where the US ranks piss poor!

I’ve seen US healthcare from the inside for 20+ years. The worker bees in the “bureaucracy” really want to help people. But the employees are helpless. This is capitalism and the system is engineered to be extremely efficient. But, the system is corrupt. We need universal healthcare like every other industrial nation. We need to shut down the money vacuum.

[lurkeresq]

The regulations which artificially hold down the number of licensed and practicing doctors (driving up doctor salaries to multiples of what they are elsewhere)...are also regulations! The massive balooning of health insurance from a rarely-usedand cheap hedge against catastrophic sudden costs to an overarching umbrella governing just about every type of medical care more significant than going to CVS for some tylenol or Theraflu...increases bureaucratic overhead!

Look, I know the inside of Medicare and healthcare provision a bit too. Not 20+ years, but some. And I don't doubt that many of the bureaucratic worker bees in the field legitimately are trying to help people (others of course are just in it for the paycheck, like any other white-collar administrative industry). But subjective intentions don't matter much when the entire system is ossified and scleroticized to within an inch of its life.

The more we can cut out middlemen between medical practitioners and patients (and the more practitioners we empower to treat patients) the easier this will be for everyone, and the cheaper. Government should fund/subsidize hospital and clinic operations *directly* to help defray the costs of large capital expenditures that would otherwise excessively drive up service costs to patients.

I suspect we agree about pharmaceutical IP reform, though. It's currently a disaster and desperately needs pruning.

[deviantdiscourse]

I’m returning to this topic because the shortage of MDs in the USA is back in the news.

Why America Has So Few Doctors

As a matter of basic economics, fewer doctors means less care and more expensive services.

Years ago I had long discussions with a fiscally conservative good friend about the broken US healthcare system. He clued me in on the shortage of MDs as a deliberate artificial constraint that drives up the cost of medical care.

We ended up agreeing on almost every point. The irreconcilable gap we came to was how much should the US pay for healthcare. With healthcare at that time at 18% of GDP and rising, he didn’t see it as a problem. In a capitalist economy, he reasoned, if people want to spent 25% of GDP on healthcare, that’s their choice. I disagreed vehemently, saying with all the profit being squeezed from a necessity like healthcare, we could instead be spending that money on other important needs, not lining the pockets of already rich people.

Today, with the ultra-wealthy become the stupendously, ridiculously wealthy, I think my position is even stronger. We need to make all healthcare in the US not for profit. We need to increase the number of qualified medical professionals. We need to invest public funds in research and make those advances available through nonprofit manufacturers. Healthcare is a human right, period!

[priestessofthepoeticprophesy-de]

[deviantdiscourse]

While there’s some truth to this portrait of boomers as myopic, deluded and selfish, I think it’s far too simplistic and ignores the drivers behind this “boomer entitlement” story. Those boomers who made it and got rich, fat and happy are still too small a segment of the population to have created the current crises through their indifference alone.

No, the real culprits are those who were wealthy long before the boomers came along. The boomers and their parents made up the largest and loudest block of voters from the 1930s through the 1970s when all of the impactful economic and social legislation was passed. They belonged to unions. They supported a 90% income tax rate on the super rich.

It was those with extraordinary, generational wealth who regained control of the political levers, and the public’s perceptions, who tore down the government programs intended to lift ordinary people out of poverty. They did it by pandering to the fears of middle class and poor white boomers, just as the OP describes.

But I believe that had we not allowed the oligarchs to regain control, to feed the ugliness of racism and white privilege, we would be in a better place to have the long overdue conversation needed to address the racial, economic and social disparity that never went away, was merely masked by the perceived prosperity of the “golden” decades of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

To cast the current crises we face as a generational problem, blaming the boomers, simply plays into the hands of the wealthy in the same way that blaming immigrants or lazy poor people does. This is 100% about the ultra wealthy vs the rest of us. It’s a class struggle, not a generational divide or a racial divide.

There are so many, many more of us. Our only hope is to set aside the differences we’ve been told are meaningful and focus on our real opposition. We need to vote as a block in our own interests to take power back from the wealthy.

[deviantdiscourse]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/24/arbery-video-conviction/

I didn’t know it was one of the murders, Greg McMichael, who shared his own video of the crime. That’s stunning to me. The divide between my reality and his, where a hateful murder, an execution, is justified. He was so sure his heinous act was righteous, but maybe deep down felt some need to justify it, that he went public in the hopes that his people, white people, would praise his heroism in defending them from a dangerous black man in their community, that the acclaim from his people would quiet that voice of uncertainty.

[onelittlekingdom]

Having threesomes/orgies makes us poly if we're only loyal to one person emotionally?

February 3, 2021: Afternoon

Good morning Anon. I’m afraid you don’t have it yet. Let me see if I can help you understand polyamory better. I’ll confess that I’m still learning about it myself, so will appreciate others who have lived in it longer using the back of this post to add additional enlightening information.

Monogamous and Polyamorous Relationships:

Monogamy

Dating or becoming emotionally involved with one person. All your romantic, emotional, and sexual eggs go into one person’s basket. One does not behave romantically or sexually with others if they are involved in a monogamous relationship.

Examples of Monogamy are apparent in your everyday world. These are the vast majority of relationships that you will see happening during your lifetime. A common goal within monogamous relationships is often the desire to meet one person to marry and have as an only partner for the rest of your days. 

Non-Monogamy

Dating or becoming emotionally/sexually involved with more than one person at the same time. 

An example of a non-monogamous relationship might be someone who is young who is interested in dating many people at the same time and pursuing each of those relationships. Another example might also be a husband who steps out of his marriage to cheat on his wife. In both instances someone is dating more than one person. One of these is ethical, and one is not. Let’s look at the two types of non-monogamy...

Non-Ethical Non-Monogamy

(Head Low Polyamorous Relationships) This is what you are practicing if you are in a monogamous relationship with someone, but pursue other emotional/sexual relationships without informing them. This is having other/multiple relationships outside of a partner’s consent. This is commonly referred to as cheating, and is a cruel and dysfunctional way to carry on relationships. 

Ethical Non-Monogamy

(Head High Polyamorous Relationships) This is when someone dates/becomes involved with multiple people at the same time, and are open and honest about it with everyone they are dating. This is having relationships with other people with all your partners’ consent. 

Examples of Ethical Non-Monogamy: 

1. A kinkster who identifies as poly, finds a caregiving dominant who also identifies as poly. This caregiving dominant serves most of their kinky needs and desires, but is not a sadist, and does not like giving impact. Same kinkster then meets a sadist who identifies as poly. Kinkster engages with both partners in discussion about dating someone new and receives consent from existing partner to do so. Now kinkster is having all their needs met and exploring a consensual relationship with both partners. 

2. A couple who decides to invite someone into their bed, discusses it together, and then follows through with a consensual partner. 

3. As stated above, anyone who is dating multiple people who all understand they are not the only one the person is dating. 

4. 8 people getting together to consensually have an orgy one afternoon. 

Basically anytime you are being open and honest and are consensually relationshipping with more than one person, you are practicing ethical non-monogamy. 

Whether you identify as polyamorous person or say you are monogamous and temporarily enjoying polyamorous behavior is another matter. The couple who invite a third into their bed may very likely identify as monogamous, but want to briefly visit some of the joys found in polyamory. I hope this helps you understand the difference between monogamy, non monogamy, and ethical non monogamy a little better anon. 

I personally look forward to reading people’s additions to this post over time. Teach me more about being polyamorous. 

JD

[polybabygirlbunny]

This is pretty close, but being a poly person myself, there are some clarifications that I would make:

All polyamourous relationships are a type of ethical non-monogamy, but not all types of ethical non-monogamy are polyamourous.

There are lots of kinds of ethical non-monogamy. It may involve three or more people in the same bed, it may involve one or both partners having random sex with or dating other people. The part where it develops into polyamory is when it becomes a committed, loving relationship. The key components of poly are love and relationship. Relationship usually has some sort of commitment tied to it. Ethical non-monogamy means that you are having sex and/or relationships with more than one person and all parties are aware of the arrangement. It doesn't become poly until love/ relationship /commitment enter into it. That is my understanding.

[deviantdiscourse]

I’ll second @polybabygirlbunny , in my understanding poly describes any configuration of ethical, emotionally committed relationships with multiple partners. Having multiple sexual partners, ethically, but outside of an emotionally committed relationship is swinging. Having no emotional attachments is playing the field 😂

Polyamory only succeeds with honesty and respect between all the participants. In many ways it’s more work - but can be more fulfilling - than a monogamous relationship. Managing your own feelings and being respectful and supportive of other’s feelings is work with only one partner. Adding more people multiplies the effort needed. When it works, the intentional honesty that makes poly relationships work avoids the traps many monogamous relationships fall into.

Let’s be honest. Those idealized relationships, where two people complement each other so well that they fulfill one another completely, are extremely rare. But society teaches us that we should seek that perfect, harmonious union with our soul mate. And as a result many people are unhappy. Couples break up. Half of marriages end in divorce.

Polyamory starts with the acknowledgment that expecting one person to meet all of your needs is unrealistic for just about everyone. On top of that, poly people realize that they’re able to love more than one person. Love isn’t a finite resource. We can give and receive as much as we like and we’ll never run out.

For many people I’ve talked with, time management is the biggest challenge. Making sure that all partners involved are having their needs met fairly and respectfully takes work, communication and trust. Plus a lot of flexibility and understanding.

If you’re poly curious, read and ask a lot of questions of poly people. Single people can easily dip a toe in the poly pool, especially if they can meet others with some experience. Those in a monogamous relationship have to consider the trust level with their partner. There’s a big gap between, “I love you and want to understand why you’re curious about poly,” and, “what do you mean I’m not enough for you?” And there’s not much in between.

[hopefulmisanthrope]

I dunno, guys, I think "I feared for my life" as a murder defense comes off a little more believably when you don't arm yourself with an assault rifle to drive to another state specifically intending to participate as an agitator against a protest, especially after months of tensely charged protests around the country. There's not a way to spin that that doesn't come down to You Meant To Cause Trouble Then You Did.

[deviantdiscourse]

In a rational world with rational people, this would be self evident. We left orbit a while ago and are now lost in the twilight zone of white fragility and fear fueled racism…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

[lurkeresq]

Then deregulate. Want to make the medical industry less horrifyingly bureaucratic? Get rid of the laws mandating that bureaucracy.

[sighinastorm]

You astonish me.  Go back to the 1980s.

[deviantdiscourse]

Sure, @lurkeresq more bullshit, “I suffered so everyone else should too” excuses for why the current US healthcare system is not a cruel mechanism for sucking the wealth from ordinary people into the pockets of the rich. It’s not the bureaucracy. It’s not the few percent added to process your medical bills. It’s the huge profit margins raked in by monopolistic for-profit hospitals, mammoth insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and specialist MDs.

If you have good insurance, your insurance company actually negotiates lower prices. The US government does that for Medicare, keeping allowed charges so low that many doctors refuse to take those patients. But, the government is prevented from doing that for Rx prices because the companies lobby corrupt politicians. Also, as hospital systems grow into monopolies they can keep prices high. The US government could tell those greedy hospitals to fuck off and set better reimbursement rates. Even better, the government could take over healthcare and trim ALL the profit from the system. That works very well in other countries as evidenced by actual outcome measures where the US ranks piss poor!

I’ve seen US healthcare from the inside for 20+ years. The worker bees in the “bureaucracy” really want to help people. But the employees are helpless. This is capitalism and the system is engineered to be extremely efficient. But, the system is corrupt. We need universal healthcare like every other industrial nation. We need to shut down the money vacuum.

[pandumbic]

I was one of the lawyers who helped win marriage equality. And yes, the GOP can take it away

And they might not even need another landmark legal battle to do it

[nodynasty4us]

From the November 8, 2021 opinion piece by Dan Canon:

The fatal flaw in my reasoning five years ago was this: I didn't take into account that the courts could simply do nothing in the face of rabid, uninhibited, GOP dumbf**kery. There's little risked by doing nothing. Non-action doesn't grab attention, doesn't demand a response, doesn't warrant a backlash. Nothing is powerful.

That's what we're seeing happen with Roe. Texas and other red states have trotted out the wackiest abortion bills you can think of every session for years now, but they haven't been able to implement the worst of them because they've been stopped by the courts. With SB8, an utterly bonkers bill that allows private citizens to become abortion bounty hunters, Trump judges finally said, "eh, let's just see what happens if we let this one go into effect."

...

What if the courts refuse to make a clerk's office issue licenses? What if a mayor declares that all same-sex marriages in their city are null and void? What if a governor orders executive branch officials to destroy all formal recognitions of same-sex couples? If the federal courts elect to do nothing, Obergefell could be effectively overruled in a county, region or an entire state. The Supreme Court wouldn't have to write a single word for that to happen.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

At that point, it's off to the races because EVERY law in the country becomes unenforceable. The system only works because everyone agrees it works, so if conservatives just decide that they don't have to follow laws anymore, then liberals and progressives can do the exact same thing (though the liberals wouldn't, they would continue to adhere to the broken system and keep suffering defeat after defeat because their opponents aren't playing by the same rules anymore).

We're headed that way no matter which side the courts are on; if they're conservative, they make the rules apply to one side and not the other. If they're liberal (which they aren't), then the conservatives will just ignore them by saying that the constitution doesn't explicitly give the courts the power of judicial review. The courts gave themselves that power in Marbury v Madison, but there's no article or amendment that says they can do that, everyone just agrees to it. Conservatives are saying judicial review only exists when they want it to, so it'll break down and everything will become lawless.

There's no telling what would happen next. Both sides will never come together to pass any more amendments, so how would they keep society from breaking down when there's no longer equal protection and equal enforcement?

[deviantdiscourse]

What happens when the most powerful country in the world slides into anarchy? Not the naïve, left-wing, pseudo-anarchy, but full on Mad Max (original) Anarchy! That’s where this leads when the law no longer applies and the people with money and power do whatever the fuck they want.

[deviantdiscourse]

It’s like conservatives have this weird amnesia thing going on. Literally everything that happened more than 15 minutes ago, since the last commercial break on Fox, never happened in their world.

[guerrillatech]

[deviantdiscourse]

Obama’s drone strikes killing civilians as collateral damage is probably a war crime. It was, from my perspective, difficult to justify as a response to terrorism. But to find that the real justification was political cover against republicans is deeply tragic. Having to appease chicken hawks by murdering people shows to deep rot at the heart of “American exceptionalism.” Obama accomplished great things as President in the face of extreme obstructionism. But continuing the war on terror will forever be a dark stain in his legacy.

[tearsinthemist]

The Patriot Act is 20 years old. It shouldn't survive to 21.

[deviantdiscourse]

Americans embraced this radical surrender of our constitutional freedoms out of fear, fear stoked by those in power, desperate to appear to be taking bold action in the face of their failures to prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans on that horrible day. We willingly surrendered our privacy in fear of an imaginary threat that brown skinned people far away would again seek to endanger our lives. Yet we learned nothing from all of this, even after Snowden sacrificed his own freedom to reveal the horrible depths of our government’s intrusive practices.

Once again, Americans are being herded with fear. This time it’s fear that our freedom is endangered. But it’s the invented - not Constitutional - freedom to be selfish, to endanger our family, our friends. And just to pile on, fear that people far away, or those who come from far away, are stealing our very way of life.

Stop being herded. Look for the man behind the curtain. Who benefits when we act from fear and anger?

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

[the-davest-of-uncles]

It's not Congress' job to provide things that aren't allowed for by the Constitution.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

“Costs are only half what we spend in the US”

Japanese population is 126 million. US population is 330 million. If they’re less than half our population and still spend half what we do, then they’re paying more per person for healthcare than we are.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

That's... that's the point?

"something something constitution," so? Write an amendment or law?

I want a healthcare system on par with Japan for if/when I need it. I'd rather my taxes go towards that than turning Syrian kids to skeletons or something.

[nerdymouse]

We should expect more for our country. Conservatives love to hate on taxes but LOVE not getting anything from their taxes.

[publiusmaximum]

The US Constitution, Article 1 section 8 is pretty clear that:

"Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"

And to @theconstitutionisgayculture: the post should have said "per Capita" spending. Here's a graph:

How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries? - Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker

In this chart collection, we take a look at how U.S. health spending compares to health spending in other OECD countries that are similarly

[deviantdiscourse]

I don’t understand why some people are stuck in this mode of, “I don’t want the government to do shit for people!” We are the fucking government, of, by and for the people. If we decide we want to collectively pay for healthcare, then we pay for everyone to have healthcare. Just like if we want to pay for the military to protect us from China and Russia. And like how we pool our money to pay for roads and fire fighters and schools. Why is healthcare any different? It makes no fucking sense people! Pull your head out of your ass and figure this out. It’s pretty simple really.

[deviantdiscourse]

Who knew there is such a thing as spambot likes? Suddenly my post became popular… I looked and the blog names were all a word-word-number pattern, obviously randomly generated. And they’re all blank too.

I’m scratching my head trying to figure out why a spambot would be liking some random post over and over…

Any idea? Is there a spammer willing to come out of the shadows and explain this weirdness?