SPOILER:




socialism isn't necessarily bad.

5/27/2008 11:00:27 PM

Actually, Ludwig Von Mises explained why socialism is always retarded, destructive and fundamentally unworkable in 1920.

http://mises.org/humanaction/pdf/ha_26.pdf

Quote :

"The director wants to build a house. Now, there are many methods that can be resorted to. Each of them offers, from the point of view of the director, certain advantages and disadvantages with regard to the utilization of the future building, and results in a different duration of the building’s serviceableness; each of them requires other expenditures of building materials and labor and absorbs other periods of production. Which method should the director choose? He cannot reduce to a common denominator the items of various materials and various kinds of labor to be expended. Therefore he cannot compare them. He cannot attach either to the waiting time (period of production) or to the duration of serviceableness a definite numerical expression. In short, he cannot, in comparing costs to be expended and gains to be earned, resort to any arithmetical operation. The plans of his architects enumerate a vast multiplicity of various items in kind; they refer to the physical and chemical qualities of various materials and to the physical productivity of various machines, tools, and procedures. But all their statements remain unrelated to each other. There is no means of establishing any connection between them."

Quote :

"The paradox of “planning” is that it cannot plan, because of the absence of economic calculation. What is called a planned economy is no economy at all. It is just a system of groping about in the dark. There is no question of a rational choice of means for the best possible attainment of the ultimate ends sought. What is called conscious planning is precisely the elimination of conscious purposive action"

[Edited on May 28, 2008 at 5:47 AM. Reason : ]]

5/28/2008 5:47:30 AM

Quote :

"you know damned well what I mean, though, so quit being a date-nazi on the matter. pretend I said 100 years instead of 50, ok?"

I hope you realize that medicaid and medicare were the direct result of attempts to socialize medicine. They were the compromises that went into action.

I also don't think you want to use the 100 year metric either. Until the New Deal, that was the time period for the largest growth in the Federal Government. New powers were created, new departments were created. Really, have you ever taken a history class?

You right to use historical analogies is still revoked.

5/28/2008 8:40:35 AM

not to mention that plenty of things seemed absurd 100 years ago that don't appear to be so absurd now. even social developments that are the result of no government interaction. while you're statement may hold true that 100 years or 50 years ago something may have seemed unnecessary, your statement does not prove that its a change which results from failure in planning and government rather than a need that has risen.

5/28/2008 9:20:08 AM

Quote :

"I hope you realize that medicaid and medicare were the direct result of attempts to socialize medicine. They were the compromises that went into action."

and both of those have a had a huge impact in creating the problems we have today, by the way...

I did a poor job of noting to what I was originally referencing; namely, I didn't reference it all. I was referencing one of the first posts that tried to suggest how nationalizing oil is remarkably different from nationalizing healthcare. My point, which the date-nazi is trying to avoid, is that just because it seems irrational today to socialize something doesn't mean that it won't, at some point, be "common sense" to do so.

5/28/2008 7:37:43 PM

fuck wrong thread

[Edited on May 28, 2008 at 8:14 PM. Reason : .]

5/28/2008 8:14:38 PM