[quote]vroom wrote:
I don’t know how to put this, but there are things that capitalism cannot do.
Sometimes, such as the case for a common military, the government steps in to provide those services.
Is that socialism? We pay taxes to the government for national defense. How horrible!
I can also see paying taxes to make sure every child has a chance at an education is a horrible thing as well. Damned socialism!
Also, I think the world would be a much better place if nobody could afford any type of serious health care. I mean, can’t those person live on the street for the rest of their short lives, once they get injured? Damned socialism gets in the way again!
Although I agree that NASA is not the most efficient use of money on the planet, should there never have been any space initiatives? Should we have waited another thousand years for private industry to finally decide to take the risk?
What about the Internet? Without the government doing research with our hard earned tax dollars, it never would have been brought into existence.
Maybe if we could stop arguing comic book politics about the evils of socialism, taxation and so on, we’d see that there is no perfect system, and theoretically, governments are supposed to help overcome those imperfections.
However, perhaps the problem is that we don’t really want “other people” to succeed. Health care, education, and so on makes it easier for people to get by in this world… and without them the rich would have even more advantages over the rest of us.
Yes indeed, we should argue for the benefit of the rich, because us poor folk certainly deserve no comforts! Damned socialism![/quote]
I agree with most of this, but capitalism can do these things, the way I see it, central gonvernment is an invention of rich members of a capitalist society to keep the other 98% from killing them every century or so, and to more efficiently handle common defense etc which was primarily a need of the rich. So the central government becomes as strong as the rich allow it to become to meet their needs and not have a revolution, and in a country like the U.S. it works its way down one level at a time to the poorest. We don’t take care of everybody, but we make sure that there are few enough really poor people to inconvenience us (everyone else). Then we appease the low middle class enough to move them to the middle side instead of the poor side should the needs to take sides happen. Then we give the middle enough hope that they can get super rich that they see things a little through the eyes of the rich.