I Don't understand the Issues with Obamacare

[Bean Machine]

This is music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjAF7D4l91M

[Galt]

Lets be even more clear, your views are bullshit and they do not concur with the evolution of the human. Do you really think there would be no taxes in Socialism? The hard labor would be from the same people who labor now except the employees would be the owners of the company. The real leaches would be gone. The corporation would turn into a co-op and there would be no use for CEO's a board of directors or especially a stock market. The workers would have a vote in every decision.

I never said they'd be no taxes under socialism. I said that socialist parasitical organisms such as the NHS will have a very hard time finding sources of revenue once they drive genuine production underground. See, not the same thing.

One of the major things socialism would be about in the beginning would be taking power away from corporations and giving it to the people. No manufacturing would be state owned it would all belong to the employee's. The state would only exist to make sure people have basic needs and the state that would exist would be completely democratically ran by the people (old school Greek democracy, because fuck Plato and Socrates and their republic).

You'll find that current corporate structures and employee stock options actually allow workers to own the means of production proportionately to the value they contribute. If this is your definition of socialism, then we'd be already living your dream, were it not for all of those meddlesome state managed services, such as the NHS.

Eventually technology would be allowed to advance to the point where people do not need to do any real work and they would be able to focus on art or leisure. Robots would basically do all the hard work. If a robot was to break down another robot would fix it.
This only sounds like a utopian fantasy because it hasn't been done yet but it can be done.
One day people will look back on the era we are living through and ask why we were so inhumane to each other. This era of leaders will be looked on as barbarians.

Ah yes, the classic socialist-utopia-could-exist-if-robots argument. I'm always amused when a socialist tries to defend the practicability of his confused, juvenile wet-dream by invoking science fiction.

Good post. I didn't know you were a socialist.

He's not, certainly not by your standards. Whether he realises it or not (I'm going to assume not), the world he just depicted allows for a nearly completely free market, and does not attempt to peg value to labour time. It also doesn't allow for crap like nationalised healthcare.

Nathannn—a forward thinker.

[re:dream]

I am a bit of an outsider to this debate, not living in the US. But as someone who works on the periphery of public health policy, I have to say that the depiction of Obamacare as anti-capitalist seems really odd. As far as I can see, the opposite is true: it seems to me that some form of socialized public health system seems to be essential to keeping a stable capitalist system going. It could certainly promote much more efficient use of resources.

Here in South Africa, where we have a kind of two-track system very similar to the American health system, it has produced an insanely inefficient system. If you tot up what we pay as a nation for health care per capita, the results are really poor. A lot of this efficiency is due to an enormous expenditure on health related resources in private hospitals that are seriously under-utilized, while hundreds of thousands of people who can't access the private hospitals go untreated.

Thing is, health is not simply an individual matter. Diseases spread. An investment in a public health system is, in the long run, an investment in the productivity and competitiveness of the population. (Rural productivity in South Africa, for instance, has been hugely damaged by the failure of the state to roll out anti-retrovirals; a failure greatly motivated not only by Mbeki's odd ideas on HIV and AIDS, but also by his concerns about cost. Until a group of health professionals did the sums and showed that the amount of money saved in the long run by the roll out of anti-retrovirals now would be much more than the costs of the roll-out.)

So a strong argument can be made that a rationally run capitalist society would have to involve some form of system to ensure affordable care for the mass of the population. As far as I can make out, watching from afar, the main opposition to affordable care in the US seems to come from rent-seeking big pharma, which stands to lose out of profits, and the marginalized white working class, which is hugely dependent on social security, but which does not want to see the economic cake being shared with all kinds of new claimants.

[Galt]

Yes, it's a public matter. Our minds and bodies belong to society. We should have forced vaccinations, and gas retards and cripples.

Because public health.


*This has been a sarcastic post.

[re:dream]

*This has been a sarcastic post.

A departure from the norm, then

[Galt]

I will refer you to my 2.5 non-sarcastic posts of last month.

[re:dream]

Everyone has a bad day every now and then.

[nathannn]

I never said they'd be no taxes under socialism. I said that socialist parasitical organisms such as the NHS will have a very hard time finding sources of revenue once they drive genuine production underground. See, not the same thing.


You'll find that current corporate structures and employee stock options actually allow workers to own the means of production proportionately to the value they contribute. If this is your definition of socialism, then we'd be already living your dream, were it not for all of those meddlesome state managed services, such as the NHS.


Ah yes, the classic socialist-utopia-could-exist-if-robots argument. I'm always amused when a socialist tries to defend the practicability of his confused, juvenile wet-dream by invoking science fiction.
.

Nathannn—a forward thinker.

Are you huffing a few cans of paint a day?

I just dont see how the fuck anyone with a solid mind can compare the stock market to a co-op when they are not the same at all.
Once again since your thick skull didn't get it.. The stock market would not exist, employee's would each own THEIR OWN share in the company. No outsider would be allowed to buy in and make money without working there hence the "real leaches would be gone".

Your idiotic claim that employees already have ownership is full of shit. Right off the bat the ceo is usually given the most shares (not equal is it?) then the shares trickle down from there. FULL TIME EMPLOYEES are allowed to "buy in" to the company, they are not given their fare share.
Then you have the ultra rich who do nothing but buy and trade their shares of the company even though they don't work there.

My claim about robotics being science fiction? Were cars science fiction? What about the airplane? Is your mind so small that it cant imagine more than what it see's?
The fact is everything will eventually be automated by robots. We have two choices for how that future ends up 1. The capitalist way where it becomes inevitable that we will be controlled by the robots due to the nature of the free market and the corporation or 2. Socialism were we control the technology.

Like I said "galt" (we mine as well call you anonymous poster)
Your views have no place in the evolution of the human but.. I like how some one else put it better in another thread: Your views have no place in the evolution of human civilization.... AT ALL.

If your views had a symbol that symbol would be a brick wall.

[Galt]

Your views have no place in the evolution of human civilization.... AT ALL.

[retracted]

[nathannn]

Your views have no place in the evolution of human civilization.... AT ALL.

Perhaps you'd like to gas me like your kind did all the other Jews?

Typical extreme capitalist response.

Actually I want you to live a long happy life without the burdens of worrying if you may lose your house or job or what will happen if you become disabled will you be able to afford medical or dental if needed. There are no real safety nets right now. Everyone that is in the middle class is one pay check or accident away from homelessness.

But first I want you to realize that capitalism hasn't worked in the best interest of everyone, the free market is a gimmick that creates monopolies and the corporation creates slave labor.

[scott nathaniel]

^
The middle class is a gimmick as well. It's an illusory and yet scarely real place where one is comfortably "made." This is not meant to imply that there are not those who have worked extremely hard to reach this illusory class; it's meant to imply that once this destinatin of delusion has seemingly been reached, people seem to stop. Why go further when one has 'made it.'

[Galt]

I've been informed that my last comment is not the sort that is welcome on this forum, and so I'd like to retract it. I'll post a more civilized response to Nathannn later, just after I finish injecting some crocodile into my one good remaining limb.

[re:dream]

injecting some crocodile into my

I am trying to erase this image from my mind...

[Galt]

Are you huffing a few cans of paint a day?

I just dont see how the fuck anyone with a solid mind can compare the stock market to a co-op when they are not the same at all.
Once again since your thick skull didn't get it.. The stock market would not exist, employee's would each own THEIR OWN share in the company. No outsider would be allowed to buy in and make money without working there hence the "real leaches would be gone". Your idiotic claim that employees already have ownership is full of shit.

This is not ownership. Ownership implies the right to sell. Hence the existence of co-ops implies to existence of a stock market.

It is amusing to see your confusion over grammatical possessives leach into your grasp of economics. And do note the correct use of the word "leach".

My claim about robotics being science fiction? Were cars science fiction?

Yes, cars were once science fiction.

we mine as well call you anonymous poster

We yours as well do a lot of things. To borrow from Funken, socialists will start off by writing the posts, then figure out the grammar later.