jahaja

I'm pretty sure that you are just a troll, but how do you substantiate this outrageous claim?

I guess I misunderstood you? Because that's what I'm saying. That it would require substantial wealth to be able to have significant control over your own care.

"Far less control over your own care" implies a very small, and wealthy, subset of the population.

Yes, but vastly different. Universal health care certainly won't come with a dozen pages of fine-print. It doesn't have pricing levels either. You won't hear: "Oh, you should've chosen our premium plan for that!".

No. I never said anything about Spain and southern europe.

Overall unemployment isn't worse historically. Not sure why you cherry-pick youth as if it invalidates the overall stat somehow. But even that stat isn't worse historically.

"Have health insurance" is not comparable with "is covered by universal health care" without a lot of clarification.

1. It's dependent on employment.

2. It comes with various forms of limits, out of pocket payments, and other caveats.

3. It comes with a profit motive for the insurance company to decline coverage.

etc

So fundamentally, "Am I under the threat of financial ruin if I were to get ill?" is still very much alive even with health insurance.

Northern Europe haven't had significantly more unemployment even though the labour costs and regulations are much better than in the US. How would you explain that?

> Free markets are based on voluntary cooperation.

Indirect coercion due to lack of the means of subsistence is not voluntary.

> Socialism is based on forced cooperation.

It's not. Socialism is not Stalinism.

> so the trend now becomes 'equity result', which will make nobody wants to work hard anymore, that's socialism at its worse.

Do you have a source for this? I'm very very left I haven't seen something like this being promoted anywhere.

> US is moving to that direction, fast.

No, it isn't. The current president is Donald Trump for crying out loud. It can barely even get less in that direction.

> I would rather keep working my way up instead of seeing socialism-for-equity-result here.

Why should people be required to artificially "keep working hard" if there's enough resources to not?

> money is not from air

It certainly is though.

So your take is that the poor is just intellectually inferior? What a 200 year aristocrat throw back.

"Harsh" is very relative. I would be very surprised to see anyone caught using drugs for the first time, or even the 3rd time, not just getting a fine unless they're in possession of a larger quantity. The maximum sentence is 3 years, which I would assume would require a substantial criminal record.

Sigh, and we're back to vague generalizations with zero effort nor intent to go beyond superficialities:

> What’s wrong with it is every time someone tries this it ends up hell on earth.

No surprise that you latch on to tone policing either. I rest my case.

What a pathetic non-reply. Those are direct questions to vague statements you made in that comment.

It's clear now that you're not going substantiate anything since it would just display your ignorance.

Could you be less vague and specify examples of people and ideas that you are referring to? It's hard to reply to these vague generalizations.

Who are these people that are not arguing for implementing their ideas democraticly?

What undemocratic ideas are they proposing?

What example do you have of something that started democratic but "then before you know it" ended up with oppression and totalitarianism?

Finally. So it's just about the USSR and its off-springs as I thought.

Deny? I'm not denying anything, I'm saying that you're projecting those things onto people with fundamentally different ideas, a.k.a democratic ideas, not totalitarian.

So which "whirls" killing millions are you referring to?

Why are you being deliberately obtuse? The sentence I quoted:

> I don't know but I'm not sure we should keep trying as millions of people end up dead every time someone gives it another whirl.

What is this sentence referring to if not trying to associate future attempts at egalitarianism with Stalinism?

So what are you referring to with that sentence?

The problem here is that too many of the detractors of socialism only recognizes a single version of it, a.k.a USSR and its off-spring. It doesn't matter how much democratic socialists were against it (and persecuted by it) at its inception, during its reign, and after its collapse.

What example do you see of Socialism that started out democratic and still went down in misery?

> I don't know but I'm not sure we should keep trying as millions of people end up dead every time someone gives it another whirl.

This reflexive comment regarding any sort of resemblance of socialism?

You're projecting Stalinism onto people who are fundamentally seeking more democracy. It just shows your own ignorance, wilful or not.

I see no reason at all why corporatist, crony, regulatory capture etc Capitalism isn't the natural outcome of capitalist capital accumulation (and thus power). The incentives to pursue those things seem completely logical to me.

> A lot of the program seems to have rested on subsidies and incentives, which are nice ways of saying you're relying on a profit or investment motive.

I mean that's just an implementation issue. To scale fast at that time, the government paid already existing corporations to build but kept ownership of the completed buildings. The point is that it's still a state venture and the profit motive/investment, "free market", was essentially suspended. So without this kind of government program the market, because of profit/risk/investment motives, won't build this.

> it seems to rest heavily on profit motives

What part are you referring to?

> I would love an example of housing for everyone in locations that meets their needs, achieved in a timely manner, in a way that removes profit and investment motives.

Well, on the other hand, is there something inherent in housing that requires those motives?

This just confirms my point even further.

Uhm. The economy is no deity. Man made and man can change it. Growth (GDP) is not a measurement of human happiness or even living standards, just capitalism.

Sure, there's additions. But I would be careful to deduce consumer choice from what is most risk-free/profitable, a.k.a. the market. Cheap, decent quality "projects" would also be rented out in no time. But the profit margin and risk assessment isn't in favour of that.

This is a good start: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

Yes, Sweden ~1990. There was an agency responsible for adapting housing availability after need. If there was a shortage, it was acted upon. Then the whole homeownership wave, markets etc came.

Sorry but to imagine that labour costs and unions are somehow responsible for the housing shortage is just a strange distraction. We had labour unions in Sweden with good working conditions & benefits etc etc all along that period. The goal to inflate the price of housing is the main issue.