Socialism in Venezuela has made illiteracy a thing of the past

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socialism involves centralization, nearly by definition....

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Actually, it doesn't. Socialism involves worker control over the means of production. That has been the basic definition of "socialism" for a century and a half or more. It is true that the Leninist branch of Marxism has traditionally been in favor of a vanguard that leads the proletariat, but the centralized state-run economy that they instituted in the Soviet Union ended up having some of the the same basic problems that a capitalist economy has -- in fact, many socialists refer to the Soviet model as "State Capitalism".It is indeed true that many socialists will say that some degree of centralized coordination has a place in a socialist economy, but that is true of capitalism as well.Edited to add link.Edited to add another link:
Here is a decent article on the definition of Socialism. Notice that the actual meaning of the word can depend on the context and the ideology of the writer.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 07-Nov-2005 10:17 PM

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Basically other industrialized nations manage to provide more health care to a greater number of people for less money than the US.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

I'm not a socialist. But I'm not anti-socialist.Any political system can have excesses. There have at times been excesses of socialism. At present our economy is being undermined by the excesses of neo-conservatism.

It works for some things. Free markets work for other things. In the real world, you're never going to have a system that's fully capitalist, or fully socialist. Private owned business and competition provide the best of some services; public-managed services provided by the government work the best in other areas.I heard on last night's The West Wing that government-run Medicare has a cost of administration overhead of only 2% of its budget. Even the most efficiently-run private health insurance companies and HMO's have admin overheads of upwards of 25%. Can anybody read that and tell me that national medicine is a bad idea?My buddy's from England, where he lived most of his life. The other day he told me a story about how broke he used to be, and somewhere in the middle, he's talking about how he went to the hospital after being injured, and I'm all like "wait... you can go to hospitals in England even if you don't have any money?"And then I was like "oh, right, you can, because England and those other countries are civilized." I mean, it blew my mind that you could have a country where basic, essential medical care was free. Can anybody tell me why that's not a good idea?

Waiting lists for critical surgery are one reason the US does not follow England and Canada's lead. Compensation for doctors leading to less innovation and quality is another.Check the whole story.As far as socialism as oppossed to capitalism, unless you have the government outlawing private ownership by the owners, you don't have socialism. Just because some workers corporately own a company does not mean you have socialism. All you have is a worker-owned entity in a capitalist society.The idea that you don't have state control and can still have socialism is a myth. Socialism means beaurocrats have the ultimate power on how business is done. This in turn often leads to excessive corruption.

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The idea that you don't have state control and can still have socialism is a myth.

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randman, I am a socialist, I talk with other socialist, and I even subscribe to a socialist magazine. I know what socialism is. The links I supplied in a previous post (#16, above) pretty much describes how I understand socialism and what it may entail, depending on the writer.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Less quality? A lot of people in America are getting no treatment at all. How is that better quality?I mean, of course we don't have waiting lists for critical surgeries - a lot of the people that need surgery can't afford to have it. Well, here it is. In England and Canada, everybody has access to the same quality of care. In America, we have the best care in the world - for the rich. The quality of care for everybody else is worse than in England and Canada. Ah, so a government-run health care system isn't socialized medicine? Hey, I'm just going with the terms already established for debate. Substitute "run by the government" for "socialism" in my posts, then. I don't see any evidence of that in various American government-run businesses. The Post Office still gives you the best value for your money in terms of package delivery, and made money while UPS and FedEx were running massive deficits. The Social Security system uses something like 1% of its budget in administration; compared to the massive fees you'll incur from brokers in any business-world investment. And as already stated, Medicare is 20% more efficient than any corporate HMO.Basically, when you turn the management of a service over to shareholders, the quality of service suffers. And well it should - publicly-traded companies have a competing objective; a legally-binding fiduciary responsibility to make money for their shareholders, not necessarily provide quality service to customers.For the selling of wigets, sure, there's no better solution than capitalism. But for the providing of necessary services to the people that need them, the corporate model simply isn't appropriate; a legal requirement to maximize shareholder value means that customers will suffer.

What would you include under "necessary services"?

Can you back up the 1% percent claim for overhead costs in social security please?As far as essential services, do you think food is an essential service? Seems like the market in America does quite well that regard.It's hard to say as far as utilities since they are not really under a free market despite most socialists arguing the big energy companies are capitalist, but clean water, electricity and fossil fuels are available whether they are considered the result of capitalism, socialism or a mix of both.I think a big problem with excessive socialism is excessive taxation which makes it hard to compete in a global market which is why some nations like the Netherlands are moving to some more free market reforms.Socialists and liberals can win all the "job protection" and union wages they want, but if the whole factory or industry moves overseas, what have they gained?

Can you show where any nation has adopted socialism without government control?

Shelter, food, clothing, heat in the winter, adequate preventive medical care, pre-natal care, emergency services, basic education and information services. In other words, everything you need in order to be hired for and hold down a job. Asking someone to pay money for those things is a bootstrap problem - i.e., nobody hires the homeless, but how do you pay rent + deposit without a job?

Just a moment...

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Administrative costs account for only 0.6 percent of total Social Security retirement and survivors benefit payments. According to the most optimistic estimates, even private accounts plans with very limited choices and services would have administrative costs more than ten times as high.

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Why, because you get fed? As it turns out, 10 million Americans go without enough to eat. Interestingly enough, people at or near the poverty line pay, from a casual survey, almost twice as much for basic groceries than the affluent, largely as a problem of environment - the sort of deals you're used to from your local massive Superdupermart aren't avaliable to people living in the inner city; nobody opens big box stores in places like that.So, no, I don't think the free market is doing well in that regard. It's generally the case that when industries in an area raise wages, they actually increase profits. Unlike the rich, the middle classes spend almost all of their capital locally, where they live, so increasing what they have to spend has an enormous effect on local economies. Mandating increased wages has led to increased profits in every instance that I'm aware of.

And 2005 US capitalism means you have clerks at an insurance company deciding when you're "well." But, nah, the medical biz doesn't have any corruption.....

You beleive all thatr tripe. If you do, I hear there's some ocean-front property in Montana for sale.Sorry, but the reality is globalism has meant factories closing down and moving overseas, and that being replaced with other industries here. Socialism doesn't work too well in a global economy.Now, that doesn't mean some welfare-type programs are not necessary, but keep in mind that the average worker being forced to fork over 15% of his earning power for social security and medicare is not getting a good deal. The libs and socialists are defrauding the low wage worker of any chance for a decent retirement via excessively high FICA and medicare taxed. It's a bad deal for him. If that same money was invested where those making more money invest, such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, those people would be far better off.But the socialists and liberals are standing in the way of that.Why do you think that is? I don't think any objectively minded person can justify taxing poor people at such a high rate and then giving them a paltry return, regardless of the claims of "efficiency."The reality is social security is a scheme whereby the government can collect taxes to spend on programs from poor people at an absurdly high rate and get away with it because they essentially lie to those people and tell them they are giving them a good deal. Social security is a means by which government profits from the backs of working America and takes in more than it spends out for retirement so government pork spending can be funded. That's socialism and liberalism for ya, imho!

A lot of that has to do with regulations. Unfortunately, the doctors are poor business-people and allowed the insurance industry to take over their industry. They thought it would enable more people to get better care, but was short-sighted. It used to be doctors just did a substantial amount of care "pro-bono" as the lawyers state, but they thought the insurance thing would make it that more people paid them when in reality it just created another level of beaurocracy that wasn't necessary.The solution, imo, is:1. Most people resorting to catastrophic insurance only, and paying the rest out-of-pocket. Heck, the government could offer universal catastrophic coverage to encourage this. If you incur over a certain amount of medical bills and that equals a certain percentage of one's wealth, the government picks up the tab.The reason this is so important is you cannot lower health-care costs while increasing demand, and as someone who has had health insurance with 4 children and who has not, I can tell you if you have insurance you are far more likely to go to the doctor (just inc case) than when you do not, but most of the time, it's unnecessary. Moms have gotten so bad that if their child gets sick and has a fever, they go to the doctor because, you know, "it might be strep" or some such. But if they had to pay out of pocket, they could just give their kid some children's tylenol, and if the fever breaks, they will probably get better with bedrest.In fact, what happens is all these kids take a bunch of unnecessary antibiotics which increases allergies and helps breed resistant strains. Plus, it's often a lot cheaper to pay out of pocket than pay regular insurance. Insurance really works better if reserved for more catastrophic bills.2. The other thing we could do is offer some basic services and screening for serious illnesses in free clinics to those that can't pay for such things. For example, it makes sense to offer a dental clinic free to anyone that wants it in a poor neighborhood so that these same people don't wind up in the emergency room with more serious issues. Imo, a lot of this could be accomplished via private charities with tax credits given for people that donate.