Related: An epic Reddit answer to 'Why Americans get so little vacation time'
Short answer: Communism lost
http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d8eiv/why_do_ameri...
Short answer: Communism lost
http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d8eiv/why_do_ameri...
> In the United States, socialism is virtually nonexistent.
Except for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Unemployment.
And don't forget the military.
-- http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/21/troops-of-t...
> The military is innately hierarchical, yet it nurtures a camaraderie in part because the military looks after its employees. This is a rare enclave of single-payer universal health care, and it continues with a veterans’ health care system that has much lower costs than the American system as a whole.
-- http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16kristof.html?_r=...
I'm surprised this isn't obvious to most people.
I also find libertarian soldiers extremely amusing.
As for the healthcare, universal healthcare for soldiers is a horribly malfunctioning system in the US, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon.
I live in The Netherlands, a pretty liberal kingdom with excellent social security and unemployment benefits. But don't be mistaken, it's not a socialist country. Not by a long shot. The biggest political parties are liberal-conservative and social-democrats. The latter lean towards the left, but our only true socialist party is much more to the left. They're only the sixth party by size.
Well, they definitely aren't capitalist.
Much of the US believes that to be the case.
In a fun example, an American financial newspaper claimed (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/hawking_british_and_...) that if Stephen Hawking were British and subject to the NHS that he'd be dead. He is, of course, British.
"A political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole".
Most countries are like that, the US and European countries included: those countries own the means of exchange (they decree the fiat money they own as the only legal currency) and they regulate the means of production and distribution (exacting taxes and benefiting cronies).
Moreover, what those countries have is definitely not Capitalism, because capital comes from savings and most (all?) of those countries have a trade deficit (even major exporters) which means whatever game it seems to be they're playing amongst each other isn't the usual praxeological capitalism where both parties profit from a trade. Right now they're playing a game called QE, with Japan winning (which means, losing).
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/09/30/germany-replaces-c...
So why is it socialism for the government to use tax money hire doctors and nurses to help people (e.g. UK NHS which was very clearly seen by its founders as a socialist endeavour) and not socialist for the government to hire soldiers to defend the country from attack?
NB I'm from the UK where it's clear that the public sector here has some of the very best people working for it (in the front lines of the NHS and the military) as well as some of the worst (particularly senior leadership in both organisations).
Most of the Western Europe is ruled by Social Democrats or Socialists of various kinds. While it might be less pronounced in Netherlands or Germany, you could take a look at Denmark, or Sweden, or France, or find out what were the slogans of the latest campaigns in Spain.
According to the dictionary definition of socialism, it requires 'socialization of means of means of production' or 'social ownership'. In the current crop of Western Socialism, this is done via governmental regulations of business and large redistribution of wealth via taxes.
Note that Socialism is not Communism. It can rather well coexist with a market economy, as long as both are somehow constrained, and the economy is strong enough (like in Germany or France, unlike in Spain).
And even supposing there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone, and if you go on vacation somebody uses the opportunity to snatch away your job: isn't that rather a problem of distribution and work organization, not of social welfare? If it's more efficient for organizations to have one person work 40 hours than two persons 20 hours, they'll prefer that.
Because life is better that way.
The employer/employee relationship is incredibly biased. A lot of people simply cannot afford to lose their job, whereas pretty much every employer can afford to fire almost any individual. This means people are willing to work for little pay, poor benefits and no vacation because they are effectively forced to, even though everyone would be better off if everyone was forced to take vacation
You also did not argue the core assertion that the employer-employee contract is heavily skewed to the employer. That has been true for the last 30 years. Productivity has made great inroads, yet pay and benefits have dropped significantly.
So yes, this is a government issue. The employers have a sweet deal and the plebes have no power. But alas, Republicans in the Senate will make sure that much needed reforms won't happen.
In short, the people who can't afford to lose their jobs also cannot afford to fail in business.
Isn't it the job of the banking system to enable people to start businesses?
Out of curiosity, why not?
And frankly, isn't it already the case? Most people are unable to produce enough for their own survival today. They can't grow crops, build a home, even make their own bread. Instead they are specialists at project management, javascript or flipping burgers. I'm not arguing that this is bad or wrong, I am only saying your statement that a society of people with specialist skills would not be possible.
Another direction to go is my grandma did meaningless low skill BS work in an office shuffling papers as a clerk because she specialized in knitting and had amazing knitting skills, but didn't feel like being sentenced to life in a textile sweatshop in Vietnam, or where-ever clothes were being made at that time (Vietnam now, but in the 70s? Surely not the USA by then?). For my own example there's no way I'd tolerate 140 hour work weeks as a medical doctor although I'd probably have made a heck of a doctor, and I'm not living in poverty so forget academics/sciences, and I'm not living urban and working in an open plan office so forget SV. As a hobby I enjoy woodworking but as a profession the pay is bad and the working conditions are awful, also its not very deep so I'd get bored with it long before I retire, so ... no.
So you have chronological problems or retraining problems, and also people that are a skills match but hate the working environment. Maybe in a communist society the central committee could force my grandma to be a textile worker or force me to be a medical doctor or work at a startup, but there would be a lot of force involved.
And what message is that for people: hey, don't learn stuff, because we need your cheap unskilled labor?
Yeah, I guess something like unions could work for that. Oh wait, apparently those are bad, too. Well I guess "just earn enough money" is the best fallback.
Be careful about stereotyping; not everyone who dislikes the involvement of the State is against unions - as long as they're not enforced by law, but voluntary.
An extreme example would be an anarcho-syndicalist, but there are libertarians who support unions as well.