You should listen to yourself.
âA free market capitalist system that chooses to pay for social programs with their taxes is still capitalist since the government does not own the labor.
[/quote]â
Owning part of your labor is still owning your labor.
But how did they pay for that?
Bithug?
You seem to be under the misapprehension that capitalism sprung forth the moment that money was invented. Youâd be off by several millennia. Healthcare existed long before capitalism, too.
In a pure capitalist system, every individual would pay their healthcare provider directly, and not be fouled by the paying of taxes for indirect services. Health insurance itself wouldnât exist, as an inherently unnecessary middleman. Itâs inefficient, and a leech on the economy.
Weâd have more choices, too, without the FDA hassling us about âfake medicineâ that âdoesnât workâ
Choices are good, right?
You donât have to pay me to use my street to get into your home- you have a choice.
I fully understand the difference between the economic system of capitalism, the invention of trade, and the development of monetary vehicles.
Who claimed otherwise?
Capitalism is not the opposite of services provided for by taxation.
Capitalism does not preclude arbitrage or any other kind of âmiddlemanâ, pure or otherwise. All this is completely besides the point I made which was that the European countries that have âuniversal healthcareâ have it thanks to, and funded by, their free market economies, not socialist economies. If someone has an example of a European country who has a socialist economic system providing their residents universal healthcare, I am all ears. Picking appart things I have not actually claimed, however, is not usefull.
You certainly implied (whether you meant to be that nuanced or not) that the capitalist part of the socialist-capitalist hybrid government model of Scandinavian counties âpaid forâ their universal healthcare, and left it as a fait accompli, while insisting that everyone who disagreed provide evidence. Your only evidence for your assertion was that âmoneyâ was exchanged for âhealthcareâ thus âcapitalismâ was responsible. Both money and healthcare existed long before capitalism, so your argument is fundamentally flawed.
Then you did not understand me. My post was in reply to someone stating that the socialist european countries had universal healthcare. Since there are no countries in Europe, that I know of, with a socialist economic system I asked for examples and off to the races we went. None of the Nordic European countries with great universal healthcare have a socialist economic system, they all operate as free market capitalist economies. I was wondering if the poster was incorrectly equating a social program paid for with the fruits of capitalism to âsocialismâ or if they knew of an actual socialist country in Europe.
Either way, Pryor was awesome and I miss his witt and candor. Iâm gonna crash.
None of the Scandinavian countries have a âfree marketâ capitalist economy (the USA certainly doesnât, either; hint - the largest employer is the government). Each Scandinavian country has a hybrid socialist-capitalist government-moderated economy.
You canât just cherry pick parts of systems and miraculously attribute those parts the credit for the rest. Itâs disingenuous. Itâs also strongly frowned upon here to demand evidence from others, especially when you arenât offering any yourself.
I can see why we were unable to understand each other. You thought I was speaking of âpureâ capitalist free markets, and âpureâ socialist economies and the world has only hybrids of varying levels. Just replace every instance I say âcapitalistâ with âmostly capitalist hybrid economic systemâ, and anywhere I say âsocialistâ with âmostly socialist hybrid economic systemâ.
From the article above from @Flatliner :
1. Do the governments of Scandinavian countries own the means of production or distribution of goods in their respective countries?
The governments of nations, like Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, do not own the means of production or the distribution of goods.
It is true that the role that these Scandinavian governments play in production and distribution is different than in other countries in the western world â and people may disagree about the morality and efficiency of that â but âownershipâ does not accurately describe their involvement.
Does that mean that libertarian socialism and market socialism are actually capitalism? 
Not that I expect the original commenter to acknowledge the existence of those, their entire argument relies on people ignoring them.
Correction: you did not make yourself understood. There is an important difference.
Though, from your recent posts, this claim is more of a deflection from your obvious movement of goalposts in order to cling to the frayed threads of your original argument.
You cannot reasonably claim that any economy where government contracts and spending makes up a significant portion of the GDP, either directly, through social programs, or through benefits to the people of the country, is somehow predominantly capitalist.
Iâm just frustrated by the entire concept. People have grown up in a society where every question of âwhere does it come fromâ is answered âfrom the store, of course.â Food, clothes, medicine - they all come from the shelves of a store. And it makes them think that âhow do we pay for it?â is a suitable substitute for âhow do we do it?â It strikes me a little bit like a god. Like there is a big store in the sky that will sell us healthcare if only we pay the shopkeeper enough money.
Due to climate change, the day is quickly approaching when Americans are going to have to start paying the real price for goods and services instead of the neoliberal globalist subsidised one. It will be rough (rougher if attacks on the middle class continue), but the questions will then become: what has real value and what are we as individuals and/or as a society willing to pay for it? The answers could be interesting in both good and bad ways.
It was not goalpost moving. It was frustration with your creative hair splitting. My original point stands unchanged.
Itâs all about how evenly distributed that healthcare is. People matter, not how much they can afford, and Canada is a great example of a healthcare system, paid for via taxes, that is evenly and universally applied to all.
So wait, when you said:
You didnât mean that revenue is generated by the capitalist side of the economy to pay for the socialist side, you meant that revenue was generated in a hybrid capitalist/socialist economy (including the healthcare system itself) and that the production of the whole economy (again, including the healthcare system) pays for the healthcare system.
Now I understand why you thought you were stating a bland fact, even if, as I said initially, âpays forâ is a bad framing of the whole issue.
Especially bad when those who are most prone to moan âhow do you pay for it?â are also most reluctant to reduce military or police budgets.
âThatâs libertarians for you â anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.â â Kim Stanley Robinson
Worse than that, even Libertarians and conservative deficit hawks who would be honest enough to insist on cuts to the military and the police still rely on people ignoring the very non-theoretical benefits of Keynesian economics. This is why, in the middle of a pandemic, the GOP is fighting tooth-and-nail to deny unemployed people stimulus cheques (just as Republicans fought FDRâs New Deal in the 1930s).
Itâs a particular blindness to history, economics, and basic business sense to see government spending only as a cost-centre in the context of a large modern economy. But in my experience, Libertarians who have the ability to effectively run a budget larger than one for a small middle-class household have always been thin on the ground.
Socialism is when the state owns the means of production.
None of the european countries has a socialist economy, the economies are capitalist.
Social programs paid by capitalist economies are funded by capitalism.
Socialist programs funded by socialist economies are ⌠you get the point.
