My point was that socialism is a economic policy designed to equalize the difference between ability and need. Everyone in the US has the same need for physical security from foreign threat. Everyone contributes equally by virtue of being a citizen. You could almost say the military is a communist institution rather than socialist. But I dont it fits into any mold.

Im willing to accept it being socialist or not, however. Thats not the point here. The point is that Obamas plan for Healthcare is to follow the marxist socialist economic policy that the industry should be nationalized and its resources distributed based on need, not ability. Capitalism is a doctor and a patient negotiating a trade. Socialism is the govt forcing the doctor to work based on how much the patient needs the product.

I don't believe the military owns the means of production, or is a means of production. The point that it is socialist is ridiculous. It is merely the cost of having a nation.

But insurance is a "means of production"? Out of curiosity, what is it that you believe that phrase means?

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

In a service economy, it certainly is. No more far fetched than banking being a means of production.

Remember, we're trying to relate to what Karl Marx thought. He is, after all, the father of Socialism.

i'm done with the whole 'Obama is a Socialist' argument. It's pointless fodder. Facts are facts. Every aspect of our country has been moving towards full Socialism for the last 100 years. I could call every president and almost every politician over the last 100 years a 'Socialist' because of the programs they encouraged and voted for.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Calvin Coolidge, you're right. Milton Friedman said the natural progression in any culture was toward Socialism. It's remarkable how much freedom still remains in America, after a constant assault against it. Reagan did stem the flow but didn't reverse it.

We could prove Friedman wrong, but it'll take a lot of work.

while i see your point about 'personal' freedoms still being 'somewhat' intact, those are still being slowly chipped away piece by piece. In fact, once they take away our right to bear arms, we will officially have fewer personal freedoms than many other nations and that's pretty sad.

It sounds more as if you object to Obama's phrasing of what is occurring than the specific paradigm. For instance, your statement that "everyone contributes equally by virtue of being a citizen", used in defense of some government provided service, sounds about as Marxist as you can get. But, I don't think that you actually believe in the virtue of any principles, per se, that would be described as "Marxist". And, generally speaking, I think that you tend to favor free market principles more than most, even on the Republican side of the aisle.

But there is an inherent problem here in trying to pin the 150 year old philosophies of the market at the time to current markets and policy. Everything about our economy is "managed market" wherein all westernized nations have abandoned the feudal or anarcho-capitalist market and adopted managed economies which are manage to varying degrees. And, what we're talking about here is whether or not to slightly increase the amount of management, in this case or in cases like reducing taxes or privatizing a chunk of social security, whether to decrease it. In the eyes of Marx, squabbling over whether or not to toss the proletariat a bone of shitty government healthcare would be irrelevant and probably offensive - his principle sticking point was the idea of "wage slavery" and entrenched class immobility.

These problems do not exist as they did in the days of Marx (or in Czarist Russia), nor do solutions for them, as a matter of course. Instead, in a relatively stable, managed market economy, we've seen only mild vacillations between regulation and de-regulation, and we seem to be (predictably, with the Democrats) heading for a period of mildly increased regulation. And, that's it.

It seems unlikely to me that people's actual concern is the nationalizing of some service - there is plenty of precedence for that already and no great objection. I think it's more the fact that it comes packaged from the Democrats with a (falsely) populist message and that it tends to pander to what a lot on the GOP side of the aisle call "class warfare". But, I suspect that this is an instance of the Democrats not practicing what they preach. In short, I don't think that Obama is offering up a proletariat owned bureaucracy that distributes according to need. I think it far more likely that this will result in shuffling money from some members of the proletariat to other members of the proletariat, while lining the pockets of some bourgeoisie interest and creating the illusion of populism.

Edit: I should also offer that I don't support the nationalization of industry, nor do I think that it's current existence justifies doing it with more things. I'm saying what I'm saying here merely to point out that whatever Obama may be doing is more "business as usual" than "proletarian revolution".

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I don't think that Karl Marx gave a lot of thought to whether the government ought to pacify the masses by having them fill out forms to get the government to pay for doctor's visits.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Driving a car is a privlege not a right. Existing is a right protected by the constitution and forcing people to buy somthing simply for existing is a violation of that right.

Hot Air Blog Archive Can Congress force me to buy health insurance?

Very few support a equalised tax rate and favour redistrubitive mesures. Very few support total deregulation of buisness and most support basic equality mesures. All essentally socalist policies (By the standard of this thread)

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Not here they don't. I would say it's a pretty even split (no matter what they say on the news).

That's why a majority of people don't even vote.

I think when one cuts through all the hyperbole, I think that is actually what we are witnessing.


The problem is that I don't see the nuts and bolts guys actually coming up with targeted regulation that will actually prevent economic meltdowns like we witnessed last year.

With health care, I think they also should have started with targeted regulation and moved on to do more after implementation.

I'm disappointed in the ability of our legislators to draft good/relevant legislation and I wonder about the actual will of the experts to fight for what they know we need to do.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

I think it's fairly clear if Karl Marx was around today, and he still hadn't learned anything from history, he'd be for a single payer nationalized health care system, assuming he couldn't unionize all private health care providers.

/shrug/

Okie-dokie.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson