St. God’s: Insurance Slot Machine

The other depressing thing besides the FloorMaster that Joe sees as he walks through St. God’s lobby is the insurance slot machines.

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He sees a man with a blank expression and a bleeding head wound above his left eye, who stands a bank of slot machines. The backglass of each has diagonal logos advertising BLAKDIX capsules (n.b. the wallpaper advertises BONERAX), telling players they can play while they wait, and that they can WIN FREE MEDICAL CARE. The reel strips don’t show bells or fruit, but rather, pills. The blood from the head wound shines in the lights.

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This is the future that the GoP and insurance companies want.

Games and games of chance don’t obey standard usability principles. The point of them is that you don’t know if you’ll get what you want. So a regular analysis won’t do.

Slot machines are fairly standardized, and the only things these particular ones seem to be missing is a paytable. If you don’t know your slot machine lingo, that’s an information table, presented on the backglass, explaining what combinations of symbols pay out and how much. Three z-packs? Congratulations! You don’t have to die of sepsis today! No player should put money in a slot machine without knowing what the payout might be. And these machines don’t have them. In the real world, this wouldn’t fly. But in Idiocracy, it’s perfect. Let me explain. Of course it’s going to get political fast.

The shock of this half-a-second beat comes from the immediate recognition that the man is bleeding, and the half-a-second later realization that he’s standing at a slot machine to try and resolve his problem. Why isn’t he getting care? Why does he accept this? Why would anyone? This is stupid, you think. And you’re right. It’s stupid and inhumane that the richest country in the world would not use some of its wealth to take care of its citizens. Yet 44 million Americans have no insurance and another 38 million have inadequate insurance. That means nearly one-third of Americans are just hoping that they don’t get sick. If they do, they risk either getting that help and going bankrupt, or living in pain, getting worse…maybe dying. Also, you know, their kids.

No one wants to get sick. So in our system, we have the uninsured gambling with their lives.

This isn’t just how it has to be. Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the only exception. There’s an idiotic idea that America somehow gets great medical care in exchange for this, but that’s just a self-serving lie. The Commonwealth Fund did an extensive comparison of the healthcare in 11 developed nations, and the U.S. fared the worst. And individually, we pay about twice as much per capita than other developed nations. So our system is the most expensive, AND the worst, AND abandons ⅓ of our citizens to rolls of the healthcare dice. How can it be this way? Who is in favor of this? Healthcare for profit, of course, and that’s a GoP speciality.

We know that Democrats lead the way on healthcare reform. The Affordable Care Act was remarkable for how far it got with Obama facing a historically obstructionist Republican Congress, and the GoP has been trying to undo it since. Insurance companies know that the GoP is their friend. In 2012, the insurance industry donated nearly $55 million to parties and candidates and 68% went to Republicans. They know.

Which brings up back to the slot machines. People who stand at a machine that looks like it might give them healthcare (gosh, it looks like a slot machine. It must pay eventually, right?), without any indication that it actually will, are idiots, and any system that allows this is an Idiocracy.

We have one tool to combat making this image any more of a reality, and it’s a vote.

Fighting Idiocracy

Voter suppression tactics (undertaken in the bad-faith argument against voter fraud) include closing polling places near traditionally Democrat strongholds. What can you do?

Drive them yourself

If you have seats to spare make a broadcast on social media channels. Or offer to people who may face transportation challenges.

Join Find a volunteer driver group

Carpool the Vote seems dedicated to this cause, but is currently not accepting any more sign ups, but it would be worth checking in on the site to see if they open up again. I couldn’t find an alternate system, but if anyone knows it, speak up in the comments.

Share information about discounted and free ride-shares

Lyft is offering 50% off rides to and from polling locations on election day. Unfortunately I can’t find a way to donate to Lyft so they can make it free, so I will note that Uber—though a company with a much worse track record as a corporate citizen than Lyft—has promised free rides. (People have to have the latest version of the app, so also encourage them to update it.) Get that word out to people who can use it. Post on neighborhood Facebook groups, Slack, and NextDoor channels.

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Get people to the polls so they exercise their right to vote.

Kubris

Perhaps the most unusual interface in the film is a game seen when Theo visits his cousin Nigel for a meal and to ask for a favor. Nigel’’s son Alex sits at the table silent and distant, his attention on a strange game that it’s designer, Mark Coleran, tells me is called “Kubris,” a 3D hybrid of Tetris and Rubik’s Cube.

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Alex operates the game by twitching and sliding his fingers in the air. With each twitch a small twang is heard. He suspends his hand a bit above the table to have room. His finger movements are tracked by thin black wires that extend from small plastic discs at his fingertips back to a device worn on his wrist. This device looks like a streamlined digital watch, but where the face of a clock would be are a set of multicolored LEDs arranged in rows.  These LEDs flicker on and off in inscrutable patterns, but clearly showing some state of the game. There is an inset LED block that also displays an increasing score.

The game also features a small, transparent, flat screen that rests on the table in front of him. It displays a computer-generated cube, similar to a 5×5 Rubik’s Cube, made up of smaller transparent cubes that share colors with the LEDs on his wrist. As Alex plays, he changes the orientation of the cube, and positions smaller cubes along the surface of the larger.

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Alex plays this game continually during the course of the scene. He is so engrossed in it that when Nigel asks him twice to take his pills, he doesn’t even register the instruction. Nigel must yell at him to get Alex to comply.

Though the exact workings of the game are a mystery, it serves to illustrate in a technological way how some of the younger people in 2027 disengage from the horror of the world through games that have been designed for addiction and obsession.

War game equipment

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The recruits practice their war skills with capture the flag games. Each participant carries visible-laser weapons (color coded to match the team color) to fire at members of the other team, and wears a special vest that detects when it is hit with a laser, flashing briefly with red lights on the front and back and thereafter delivering a debilitating shock to the wearer until the game is over.

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