Private expenditures are one thing, socialized costs another.

Tho I will add that he very might well agree to what you’re saying. It’s just not implied in that post.

I mean, maybe we could grant them a religious exemption from the insurance mandate altogether? Like, we’ll pay for your prayer treatment but you have to sign off on not showing up in our emergency rooms if the lord doesn’t work.

Conversely, we should probably be encouraging Christian scientist missionaries, you know, to bend the curve.

When all modern democracies have come to a similar point there will be no one left to drive the prosperity train. I fear things will be even closer to the edge.. but not quite getting into the hole still.
Democracies have a way of backing away from total destruction when it becomes too apparent, only to push back towards it a few decades later. Mediocrity is the rule not the exception. It is the point of equilibrium in all modern democracies. America will be no exception and is now quite far along down that path already.

Advancing technology is the only reason we still have increasing standards of living. Technology still advances fast enough to compensate for and overtake democracy’s inherent stupidity. Democracy is nothing but a massive boulder attached to the rocket that is technological progress.

On some level, advancing technology actually allows for democracy to be even more inefficient than it normally could get away with. Democracy is only as bad as it can afford to be.

I am not worried about social chaos or anything like that. I’m worried about stagnation and mediocrity.

Because there is no talk about democracy as such (the framework) but only about specific policies or implementers, there is no hope in the foreseeable future within existing political systems. We need an escape mechanism for those not content with it.