Ask Lemmy

To me, it's all about rational return on investment providing economic incentives to achieve what we want to achieve.

My favorite example to explain what I mean is my own personal health insurance. I have a chronic medical condition that requires constant medication, frequent visits to specialists, and expensive medical tests and procedures. There is simply zero chance that I will ever pay enough in a monthly premium to cover what I cost. Meaning I am always a net financial loss for a private, for-profit insurance company.

This gives a private company every incentive in the world to obstruct and deny my care in hopes that I'll get frustrated and give up, or maybe even die and get off their books forever.

The government, on the other hand, has a positive financial incentive to keep me healthy. If I am healthy, I am working, paying taxes, buying goods and services that contribute to the economy, and hopefully contributing something beneficial to my community. Only the government (acting as a proxy for "society") naturally profits from insuring my healthcare.

This is why I believe we should have fully socialized medical care. Because there are some specific things that only the government has natural positive economic incentives that align with what is beneficial for the general public.

Whatever those things are, they should be socialized. And generally those things are basic life sustaining things like food, housing, medicine, education, utilities.

I'm fine with privatized capitalism in a very restricted, heavily regulated niche form. But all the basic necessities should be socialized.

What do you like about capitalism?

It makes me feel like I fit in on internet discussions!! We're on the same team :)))

I like it because it works for its use case. Its use case is for sectors that have plateaued or no longer need (or never needed) the pressures of competitive marketplaces.

Good examples are things we have now in the USA that are socialized:

• Public education
• Public libraries
• Social security
• Medicare/Medicaid
• Public transportation
• Public parks, beaches, and recreation areas
• Law enforcement agencies
• Fire departments
• Public roads and highways
• Emergency medical services (EMS)
• Public broadcasting services
• Veterans Health Administration
• Public housing
• Unemployment insurance
• State and national museums
• Water and sewer services
• Public utility companies (in some areas)
• Postal Service

Now, you might say some of these suck, which brings me to my next point:

The only time social programs don’t work or don’t work well for their use case is when a minority of rats get into the system and chew and scheme their way to power and cannibalize it for their own gain. This breaks capitalist principals in their systems too, so I guess it’s not really a socialism issue.

justice

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