[Derek]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

and there are a lot of things about the status quo that are great, but people rarely notice them unfortunately. for example, i like not having famines, i like having drinking water and electricity, central heating and air conditioning, affordable private independent transportation, i like my private health insurance, and i like not having compulsory military service, and i wouldn't give up any of that voluntarily.

I mean, you can enjoy those many freedoms in other countries but with an added social safety net. Though I refuse to believe you like your private health insurance. I assume you're grateful to have it, but it makes no sense when the resources for a universal system are there and not being taken advantage of.

but there are many ways to reach universal healthcare. government takeover of the medical profession is not the only one.

Like? What other power is going to tell capitalism no? Revolutionary power?

what interests are those? and i don't know about the cases she prosecuted, honestly.

She rejected criminal justice reform every step of the way as a prosecutor and is now turning around and supporting it because of the way the tide has turned and electability reasons, for example. She jailed mothers for their children's truancy. How can anyone trust her?

anyway i guess you never read about comissars and informant networks and gulags under communism.

I have, I know a lot about that stuff. I never said I want to replicate early 20th century Russia, just that Lenin and his writings are very influential for modern day leftists and that it's more complicated than "lenin bad man!!!".

"progressive" rule means big government, which means a big law enforcement apparatus. from the car that drives around looking for unlicensed tv sets to the enformence of alcohol monopolies, price controls, etc., anything unsanctioned requires a cop. the bigger the government, the more prosecutors you need to prop up every rule.

i don't know if you realize you paradoxical position here.

I mean, I'm talking about fundamental change to a broken capitalist system. The idea that progressivism will lead to a huge police state is funny red scare nonsense considering the amount of surveillance and policing going on right now. It's a total red herring to present that as an obstacle to a fairer society for all. What up NSA.

i'm old enough to have seen the end of stalinism. why did the east germans need to corral people? lmao. please, man. when everything belongs to the government, the government belongs to the few and the elite, and the authoritarians are in charge. it is the logical conclusion of these theories. no amount of wordsmithing can change that.

What is the logical conclusion of capitalism? Make no mistake, capitalism cannot sustain itself forever and it seems that countries will either grasp onto socialism or fascism as the ball drops. Government already belongs to the few and the elite due to factors that capitalism has facilitated. Didn't we just have a scandal were elite schools are basically pay to play institutions for the rich? These people go on to high positions of power but without the cognitive ability to lead and emphasise with real problems.

i grew up in various latin american countries with various degrees of socialistic policies. they were all a fucking disgrace and only succeeded in distributing poverty and increasing corruption.

for a contemporary scenario just look at venezuela. please.

You're not going to agree with me but there has never even been a true socialist state! Lenin's end goal was to shift his party's autocratic position into a socialist state after seizing power. Whether you want to believe he would do that and whether that method is justifiable is up to you. I don't really have an opinion on that aspect of him. Venezuela seemed to suffer more due to capitalist world economics and American neo-imperialism than anything to do with socialism. I don't know any leftist who sees Venezuela's case as anything other than an empty "BUT WHAT ABOUT" rebuttal used by bad faith right wingers.

the foremost fiction is that they are FREE, of course. there is no such thing as free goods and services. everything must be paid for. we have unlimited desires, but limited resources which has alternative uses. so every economic choice is a tradeoff. the tradeoff is the cost.

if you begin from the fallacy of free good an services, and no scarcity, and no tradeoffs, you're just operating in fantasy space.

Again, a lot of other countries have these things. They are subsidised greatly by the government through fair and proper taxation. I don't see how this is a fantasy. I would never trade the NHS with private health insurance and no one who lives here under a universal system would either.

see, this is what you need to know what you're talking about before making up "theories".

the guy who makes little money actually receives taxpayer-funded healthcare through the government. obacamare actually forces you into medicaid when you don't make enough. so this imaginary person with his gofundme you're talking about is already receiving berniecare.

i actually know actual real cancer patients who get cancer treatment this way and they don't have gofundmes.

Here's what I found (and already knew) with a quick google search:
GoFundMe CEO: One-Third of Site's Donations Are to Cover Medical Costs

People Are Raising $650 Million On GoFundMe Each Year To Attack Rising Healthcare Costs

"But the big business of GoFundMe is now medical bills. Since the company’s founding in 2010, it reports having raised $5 billion. Of that, a third went to the 250,000 medical campaigns the site conducts annually. Simple multiplication suggests that the number of people who have sought help has run into the millions."

Just because you have not met cancer patients who have had to resort to desperate measures to get help does not mean that there aren't MILLIONS out there who are just shit out of luck from no fault of their own. This is just one tiny sliver example of the many issues that a for profit system generates.

good luck selling "scandinavian system" to america. i don't think the culture is there, and i don't think that people will like the tradeoffs once they actually experience them.

getting mandatory health insurance is hard enough. government takeover of the health industry-- many will hold their noses and vote for trump.

so we'll see how that goes. show me something solid and some figures instead of rhetoric. but i know that printing infinite money *does not work.* give everyone 'free dollars" and inflation ensues. good luck decreeing price controls to control inflation, lol. we'll all start paying with swiss franc or yen.

I don't think it's there yet but it's changing. Studies show that a large percentage of young people engage more with socialism politically than anything else now, and that's because they have grown up in a capitalist world and haven't (and will probably never) see any of the benefits that their parents were given. I wonder if anyone didn't like the "trade off" when national health systems were implemented in other countries? No, people cherish their free healthcare and fight for it everyday away from the hands of right-wingers that want to sell it bit by bit to the private sector. The NHS was one of the best things Britain ever implemented and was done during the post-war economic downturn. Why implement it during tough non-economically viable times? Because anthropological studies were done and the health disparity between the rich and the poor were so obvious and unjust that it was the right and dignified thing to do. Many can hold their nose all they want but it's the right and dignified thing to do.

shit. i didn't know the IRA was active again. or was it a prank? damn...

Nah it was part of a huge bomb scare epidemic that happened that day. Multiple universities and hospitals were effected.