If it's free, then you are the product [LWN.net]

If it's free, then you are the product

Posted Sep 8, 2026 8:41 UTC (Tue) by taladar (subscriber, #68407)
In reply to: If it's free, then you are the product by linuxrocks123
Parent article: A note on subscription prices from LWN

It is quite dishonest on your part to suggest that all taxes paid on both income and sales are used to fund healthcare exclusively.

Besides, more rigorous studies than your back of the envelope calculation have concluded that people in the US pay about twice as much on healthcare as everyone else.

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If it's free, then you are the product

Posted Sep 8, 2026 19:19 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (2 responses)

Of course we spend more on healthcare per capita. We're a bunch of fatasses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesit...

3/4 of Americans are fatasses versus only 1/4 of Canadians. Fatasses have a _LOT_ more health problems. You don't think MAYBE that might have more to do with our increased per capita healthcare spend than "gr33dy 1n5ur4nc3 c0mp4n135?"

Astoundly, as far as I can tell, NO ONE doing these per capita healthcare spending comparisons has ever bothered to try to normalize by percentage of fatasses -- even though you'd OBVIOUSLY have to do that if you wanted to generate good numbers. I therefore infer that those people must have a goal other than generating good numbers.

Please, stop

Posted Sep 8, 2026 19:22 UTC (Tue) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (1 responses)

As noted, this is not on-topic for LWN. Please end this thread, thanks.

jake

Please, stop

Posted Sep 8, 2026 19:27 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

Okay. Off-ramp here: https://soylentnews.org/~linuxrocks123/journal/20649