And what you call "these insane ideas" is actually following articles the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as approved after the second World War. Do you consider basic human rights to be insane?
Also worth noting, most things are not "for free" in Europe. The little rights we have our ancestors fought hard for, and they are being dismantled as we speak in the name of neoliberalism. Not so long ago France had one of the best Education and Health systems of the world, but that ship has sailed because of the desire to privatize everything and sabotage public infrastructure in the name of private profit. See also David Graeber's talk on managerial feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-11241-from_managerial_feudalism_...
I get better healthcare in South Korea that is both cheaper and more effective than in Germany or Austria.
What objective problem can you bring up? Wait time is propaganda, not worse than in the US. Private healthcare is simply immoral and barbaric, a constant, externally determined demand for something should not be exploited. And one nation level insurance is the cheapest and best way for everyone (other than the billionaires owning private healthcare facilities and insurances)
>Private healthcare is simply immoral and barbaric, a constant, externally determined demand for something should not be exploited.
Except you are talking worst case scenario "The US".SK's healthcare is not completely private owned.Quite the opposite actually.
And yet...it's both cheaper and much more efficient than anything in Europe.
How about having some realistic expectations?
As a society, we definitely can do it. The question is do we want to? Unless, of course, you have some compelling argument explaining why we couldn't have all these nice things despite having an abundance of resources.
The former is incentivized by individual lifestyles. In a capitalist system, everyone needs their own fridge and food. You need to be pretty rich to employ other people to cook for you (go to the restaurant), or cook for yourself which requires more infrastructure (therefore more pollution). Maybe popular canteens would help? https://dinnerdocument.com/2019/04/30/i-dream-of-canteens/
About mutualized waste, some loss is due to food traveling incredible lengths to reach supermarkets. Strongly incentivizing local production could help for that.
The biggest waste generation machine is competition between supermarkets. All supermarkets need all of their alleys full of food. If supermarkets were a public service (without competition), they wouldn't need to overflow with food that will end up in the trash. If you have never worked in a supermarket, you'll be SHOCKED by the amount of meat and dairy products ending up in the trash every week.
Third kind of mutualized trash is due to financial incentives. When markets decide that your product is worthless, you'll just throw it away. The fact that capitalism even makes "negative prices" possible is fucked up. When producers destroy TONS of food/milk because selling it would make them loose even more money, how is that even a thing?
So there's plenty of room for improvement on food waste, and all of them have more or less to do with abolishing the capitalist system.