"Freedom" thread or something

Slartibartfast wrote: I'm mostly liberal or progressive if you will and make no bones about it.  Politically there is some libertarian overlap.  Much less so when it comes to republican and conservative.  Probably the closest I come is democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders.  I don't have a problem with capitalism as long as it is tempered with socialism.  This may seem like a bit of a contradiction... Basically if you want a system where capital reigns supreme you have to take care of those who don't have capital to begin with.  If everyone starts out at the beginning with x amount of capital, then it really is up to you whether you succeed or fail based on your own initiative.  The reality is many don't and are set back from the beginning.  I believe government should attempt to level the playing field, but you can't guarantee outcomes.

In my heart, in ideal happy land, I still support Social Democracy. Well, I highly respect it at least.
A free market, capitalist economy tempered with socialistic aspects.

The nordic countries always rank high, (usually near the top if not the top) in rankings of : Ease of doing business, labor market competitiveness, they embrace free trade, private owned business, low property tax, even decentralized wage control (I believe some areas don't have minimum wage but just contracts) while featuring an extensive welfare program and social programs.
They are highly ranked, strong capitalist countries but with great levels of income equality.

Pretty much the perfect system to me.

Problem is their large governments are also pretty corruption free and efficient, and they were crafted in agreement from everyone as the countries went from agrarian to industralized. So it was a unique environment.
The government issue alone makes it impossible here in the US. Also their tax burdens are like 60% which is just a lot...though I admit, a few years ago I didn't care and actually wanted that

Why I changed Slart is I realized 1) our government is f**ked. 2) there is no way to "help the middle classes" while sustaining the programs I wanted. 3) we DO need to reduce our deficits here and abroad.
It hit me the only way to fix the government is to reduce it. If that happened we could lower taxes across the board, including property and sales taxes which are regressive. It'd also force us to end our foreign policy. Oh and ending the fed/returning to gold standard will ease inflation, also a tax that hurts middle class and working people most.
So yeah, call me a limited/efficient liberal now.


Edited by JJLehto - March 20 2012 at 12:00

The T wrote: ^The problem is, what beginning? The beginning of each person's life? The beginning of time? Even if everybody somehow was made to start from zero with the same amount of capital (I don't know how but let's just say it's done), in a few years things will be back to normal (that is, people will be rich and people will be poor). Do you have to start again? And how do you this? You just give them some capital? What if they waste it as it's very likely to happen? You give them more? It's too difficult.

Well, if you are born into a wealthy family, you have more opportunity due to education, etc.  If you tax the wealthy, then you can give assistance to those who weren't so that they might get the possibility of Horatio Alger kind of thing.  Yeah it's "redistribution of wealth" and you know I don't give a rat's ass about it.  If you drive down wages and benefits of working people they don't have much of a fighting chance.


Edited by Slartibartfast - March 20 2012 at 11:30

^The problem is, what beginning? The beginning of each person's life? The beginning of time? Even if everybody somehow was made to start from zero with the same amount of capital (I don't know how but let's just say it's done), in a few years things will be back to normal (that is, people will be rich and people will be poor). Do you have to start again? And how do you this? You just give them some capital? What if they waste it as it's very likely to happen? You give them more? It's too difficult.

Yeah for real. I can actually respect Marxism at least. 

You're no marxist Slarti. I'd say a weak socialist at best. 

^ Not a jab at him personally, but often times people try to hide their relative ignorance by refusing to state any beliefs of their own and instead cracking half-sensible jokes devoid of fact at others' arguments.

The T wrote: I would love if everybody here could comment on this article. Granted, is from Time magazine and by someone known to be on the left side of issues but it can be reasonably discussed. He basically kind of defends Obamacare as a step forward. We don't like it, but he raises the point of how other societies have some sort universal healthcare (not necessarily government-run) and they are way above the US in health rankings by typical standards of measurement. Opinions?

Unfortunately, I'm no expert on the systems of the two countries mentioned so a compare and contrast to possibly align the data with free market principles cannot be done by me. I would guess some of the myriad restrictions of the US system don't exist in those countries. I don't know though. Comparing costs across cultures is ineffectual though. There's so many cultural differences that render that analysis worthless. You could go down a bunch of statistic possibly correlated with health care costs. The first one I picked was Calories per person per day. The US intakes 3770 compared to 3420 for Switzerland and 2970 for China (Taiwan number not available - data 05-07). Of course, actually dietary considerations probably prove much better estimates than raw caloric intake, but still it's just pointing out that the spending per capita numbers don't tell the whole story. That's not saying that those countries don't actually have superior systems. I would think that they do. However, this isn't a free market vs universal coverage situation as the author seems to imply. It's one mixed market compared to another mixed market.

The T wrote: ^Exactly. The disappearence of the state in marxism is not really such. Their opposition to the burgueois state and the classic feudal state if we can call it that way is based on class, not really in the idea of making a governing body disappear. Their proposed dictatorship of the proletariat can't be understood in any other way but in the imposition of a ruling body, a governing group of people, hence, in a way, a state. I see tour point though.

I agree that it doesn't happen in practice, but it still exists in the idealistic manifestation of the philosophy. Plus, the anarchocommunist sect is pretty orthodox in Marxist teachings.

horsewithteeth11 wrote: Got 10 out of 10. Pretty easy honestly.

First comment I see
"The secret is to attribute the ones that sound like an educated monster to Hitler, and the dumber-sounding ones to Santorum."

How terrible is it that's true?

Do I have a deadline?

Just like the Libertarian party: pretentious, needlessly long, out of touch.