Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare)

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Aetna's stock has only gone up since Obamacare passed. They are whining about "losses" but doing quite well

See - this is the thing. Hypercapitalism at its worst. More, more, more and its never enough.

It's not "hypercapitalism." It's just capitalism.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. I like socialist policies for those aspects of an advanced society that are expensive but of large mutual benefit. But I like well-regulated capitalism and its incentives for innovation for other things.

[Schlich]

Aetna's stock has only gone up since Obamacare passed. They are whining about "losses" but doing quite well

See - this is the thing. Hypercapitalism at its worst. More, more, more and its never enough.

It's not "hypercapitalism." It's just capitalism.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. I like socialist policies for those aspects of an advanced society that are expensive but of large mutual benefit. But I like well-regulated capitalism and its incentives for innovation for other things.

What benefits does capitalism provide that socialism can't? You say incentives for innovation but I'm not sure I follow. Market socialism is a thing.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Aetna's stock has only gone up since Obamacare passed. They are whining about "losses" but doing quite well

See - this is the thing. Hypercapitalism at its worst. More, more, more and its never enough.

It's not "hypercapitalism." It's just capitalism.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. I like socialist policies for those aspects of an advanced society that are expensive but of large mutual benefit. But I like well-regulated capitalism and its incentives for innovation for other things.

What benefits does capitalism provide that socialism can't? You say incentives for innovation but I'm not sure I follow. Market socialism is a thing.

Probably semantics - when I think 'socialism' I think communism and state ownership of the means of production. i think you are talking about european style democratic socialism? I don't have a problem with that at all. I think they've got the mix of socialism / capitalism pretty well figured out. IMO. YMMV. Past results are not a guarantee of future returns. I'm OK, You're OK. Whatever floats your boat. Etc., etc.

[Schlich]

Aetna's stock has only gone up since Obamacare passed. They are whining about "losses" but doing quite well

See - this is the thing. Hypercapitalism at its worst. More, more, more and its never enough.

It's not "hypercapitalism." It's just capitalism.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. I like socialist policies for those aspects of an advanced society that are expensive but of large mutual benefit. But I like well-regulated capitalism and its incentives for innovation for other things.

What benefits does capitalism provide that socialism can't? You say incentives for innovation but I'm not sure I follow. Market socialism is a thing.

Probably semantics - when I think 'socialism' I think communism and state ownership of the means of production. i think you are talking about european style democratic socialism? I don't have a problem with that at all. I think they've got the mix of socialism / capitalism pretty well figured out. IMO. YMMV. Past results are not a guarantee of future returns. I'm OK, You're OK. Whatever floats your boat. Etc., etc.

I'm not talking about state socialism and I'm not talking about democratic socialism. I'm talking about market socialism, wherein workers and/or consumers democratically control the means of production, and the markets function how markets normally function. Just to clear the air.

[Diddy]

This:

So are people moving up or are we creating a class that relies on assistance because they don't know anything different.

The best thing for all Americans is for everyone to be employeed and contributing.

Is pretty damn condescending.

How so?

Preface: someone PM'ed me and said that the tone of my post came off a little combatitive, and I apologize for that if so.

But anyways, I know you didn't exactly say it this way, but the implication of your comments, from my end, is clearly part of an overarching narrative that "poor people are just lazy and if they work harder they'd be fine". The condescension comes in because while there may be a negligible amount of people "gaming the system" so to speak, there are immeasurably more people who are working 60, 70 hours a week and still struggling to pay their bills. To suggest that providing these people with public health care would cause them to be even lazier does not give those kinds of people with dignity they deserve.

That wasn't what I meant at all

[pioneer98]

Maybe you can help me understand market socialism better. The obvious concern is if the means of production and allocation of capital were 100% Democratically controlled, would this mean every decision has to be put to a vote? That could lead to delays in implementing changes, or maybe some changes that only a minority want never get made ("tyranny of the majority"). Either of these things could create a black market since the primary market can't make supply meet demand.

Maybe it would work like a lot of corporations already do, with a board of directors that hires a CEO. The difference would be the board would be elected Democratically by all voters instead of just shareholders. That would basically end up like a lot of city governments where voters elect the mayor and aldermen, and then they go and hire an administrator to run the day to day operations. Is that the idea or something else? I have a lot of questions about how that would work as well though. Help me understand how this would work more in practice.

[Schlich]

That wasn't what I meant at all

I fail to see how else your comment fit into the context of this thread at the time it was made. Even if it wasn't what you meant, it was a pretty clear implication of what you said.

Maybe you can help me understand market socialism better. The obvious concern is if the means of production and allocation of capital were 100% Democratically controlled, would this mean every decision has to be put to a vote? That could lead to delays in implementing changes, or maybe some changes that only a minority want never get made ("tyranny of the majority"). Either of these things could create a black market since the primary market can't make supply meet demand.

Maybe it would work like a lot of corporations already do, with a board of directors that hires a CEO. The difference would be the board would be elected Democratically by all voters instead of just shareholders. That would basically end up like a lot of city governments where voters elect the mayor and aldermen, and then they go and hire an administrator to run the day to day operations. Is that the idea or something else? I have a lot of questions about how that would work as well though. Help me understand how this would work more in practice.

I think you're getting at the basic gist of it. There are a lot of different ideas of how to organize businesses democratically that are unfortunately outside the scope of this thread and, if I'm being honest, currently outside the scope of my own understanding. I'm learning more every day though. Direct democracy is not a commonly-advocated-for system, if I understand correctly. I think most theories at the very least operate under the premise which you alluded to, would be to elect a board--with or without a CEO-- that each represent people affected by that corporation or industry, including workers (i.e. a labor union), consumers, activist groups, interest groups, etc.

I don't know enough about how businesses operate on a day-to-day basis to give a more complex picture, but I do know that these things have been fleshed out extensively by socialist thinkers and that resources are out there. A couple of buzzwords you can google are mutualism and syndicalism. You might have to dig a little to find something accessible.

[Schlich]

I'd also like to add, there are other ways of incentivizing innovation besides market forces.

[Diddy]

That wasn't what I meant at all

I fail to see how else your comment fit into the context of this thread at the time it was made. Even if it wasn't what you meant, it was a pretty clear implication of what you said.

I guess if that's what you want it to mean your going to interpret it that way. Not at all what I meant but that doesn't fit your adgenda so your twisting it.

[Arthur Dent]

Re: market socialism, this is a good article:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the- ... the-black/