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Comment by mudil | Hacker News Reader

Well, Soviet Union was pure socialism.

It was also a corrupt, repressive, single-party, authoritarian regime, which was the important ingredient for its badness and eventual downfall. Its economic policy likely just made it fail faster, which I think is what sets China apart and has made it more successful. That, and more-advanced technology that has made mass surveillance more practical.

It comes back to distribution of power and if you believe power is all corrupting or not.

You either have some guys in charge managing things, or you attempt a distributed/mob rules mentality in regards to policies and legislation. Either way in a socialistic system the government is THE governing body, and there aren't really any checks and balances other than the very body managing it. Which goes back to the question of whether or not you can trust the government.

IMHO the debate between the extreme right and extreme left is more about philosophy than policy.

Is the lack of checks and balances a necessary feature of a socialist government, or is it just that the Soviet Union didn't have checks and balances, by design?

Socialism lacks checks and balances because it's a decentralized/distributed model of rule. Now in reality it's possible the military could exist as a pseudo "check and balance". But checks and balances do not exist as a defined construct in socialism, by being distributed it argues it doesn't need checks and balances, because it's run by the people.

Secondly checks and balances are arguably anti-socialism even, because it would introduce a backdoor/round-a-bout way of enacting rule that wasn't endorsed and driven by the people. So no, the lack of checks and balances isn't just a Soviet Union thing, it's a socialism thing, otherwise it isn't true socialism.

Well this is off-topic but Soviet Union was an expansionist superpower whose elite ultimately seized control of production and capital. Whatever you mean by "pure socialism", it at least should aim for ownership of production capital to be distributed among the people. Soviet Union was not for the people as much as the elite that was leeching off the working class.

This is how Medicare For All looks like.

Look at much of the Western world which has some sort of single-payer or government healthcare option. They have lower healthcare costs than the US, generally better outcomes, and are in no danger of public revolt or economic collapse.

Equating "government subsidized healthcare" with "authoritarian regime" is just arguing in bad faith on your part.

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