crimsonshrouds said:
I've seen quite a few forums that talk about socialism but very few people know what it is and dont know why people fear it.
Here are the definitions to socialism provided by merriam-webster.com
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
I hate socialism because it gives the government to much power and obama's idea of a government run health care is a huge step into socialism. He pretty much argues that the government should run the healthcare to make it "better" and then the arguement could be made for anything else the government wants to control.
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
I tend to prefer Heinlan's quote "You can either have safety or freedom, never both".
But I tend to agree, I also feel that despite what they claim a lot of nations that have socialized medicine rely on the capitolist US to keep it propped up. Capitolism leads to competition to produce the best products and services. Despite what a lot of people tend to think it's the US and it's markets that keep a lot of companies producing, and it's one of the reasons why big drug companies like Pfizers and Merck do so much business here and set
up these complexs and so on.
If there wasn't the potential for monster profits, people would not put monster funding into the development of new drugs. The problem with socialized medicine is that the goverment ultimatly winds up deciding that a doctor or drug company will get X amount of money for a given thing. Why develop all these new procedures for billions of dollars if your not going to make a return on your investment? They do go down in price after a while, but to begin with a new drug or piece of microtronics that took hundreds of thousands of man hours and millions upon billions of dollars isn't going to be worthwhile.
I firmly believe that capitolistic competition fuels innovation. Even developments in other (socialist) nations are made knowing that the new product/procedure can be pimped in the US and other capitolist countries whether they say so or not.
I'm sure others will disagree, and I see all sides of the debate, however I believe Obama's plan (and indeed the idea of socialized health care) comes with more disadvantages in the long run than it will solve. Please keep in mind that this comes from a disabled person (retired on social security) that has a lot of medical things he simply cannot do easily if he needs to, and who would benefit at least in the short term. I simply realize that despite the personal gains, it's the wrong thing to do for the nation as a whole. Most people do not think this way and instead focus on "what is good for me right now". This kind of health care plan is basically people signing away long term freedoms in society for short term gain.
It should be noted that there are other similar things going on. The usual boogieman for these forums (at least for me) is of course the idea of the goverment having more direct control over regulating free speech in order to "protect the children from violent video games, sexual content, and hate speech".
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