Military is an excellent example of socialism. Why or Why Not?

[zapatos]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

That doesn't make it a social security system.

 

Whatever. It is the Social Security System in the United States. 

[dimreepr]

Just now, zapatos said:

Whatever. It is the Social Security System in the United States. 

Indeed, and if you can't pay; you don't get to live...

[zapatos]

4 minutes ago, Huckleberry of Yore said:

Only if the billionaire payed into social security. 

Or a spouse or parent of the billionaire.

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, and if you can't pay; you don't get to live...

Huh? No executions involved. I don't know what you are talking about.

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Huh? No executions involved. I don't know what you are talking about.

If I have no means to pay, can I be healed, in your country???

[Phi for All]

27 minutes ago, Huckleberry of Yore said:

It seems that capitalism implies unscrupulous and/or fraudulent acts aimed at benefiting the actors likely to the detriment of all others.

Absolutely not. Can't you see that there are times when turning a profit is a great thing? And can't you also see that there are times when something else may be more important?

29 minutes ago, Huckleberry of Yore said:

And it seems that all activities benefiting the entire population are seen as socialistic.

If we build a public library or a public swimming pool, the wealthy probably won't use them because they have their own private ones, but it would definitely be a socialistic activity. And again, you could argue that the wealthy benefit from these things as well because a citizenry that's happy and well-educated benefits the society from the bottom to the top. 

We have too many businesses that benefit from public ownership in an unreasonable way. Prisons are something we should take responsibility for as a public, rather than hiring private contractors who profit from putting bodies in cells. Again, the emphasis on profit changed the basic structure of prisons in the US, unless you think we're such a horribly criminal society that we're justified in housing 1 in 4 prisoners on the whole planet.

[zapatos]

14 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

If I have no means to pay, can I be healed, in your country???

That might best be discussed in another thread.

[dimreepr]

Just now, zapatos said:

That might best be discussed in another thread.

Seems relevant... 

[zapatos]

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Seems relevant... 

How is "can I be healed in your country" relevant to whether or not the military is a socialistic system?

[Phi for All]

57 minutes ago, MigL said:

( at least until the patents run out and they become 'generic' )

It's still capitalistic then, since they still turn a profit on generics. The only thing that's different is they backed out marketing costs, since the generic goes by a different name. IOW, the profit could be just as much or EVEN MORE on generics since you aren't paying to advertise them.

 

1 hour ago, MigL said:

I would consider our infrastructure to be socialist.
Yet contracts are tendered to unionized labour ( another Socialist institution ) with higher profit margins than non-unionized labour; clearly a 'for-profit' Capitalistic result arrived at by Socialist means.

I'm not so sure about unionized labor being socialistic. They're really just negotiating collectively for better conditions in a privately owned company.

OTOH, I suppose better wages is different than more profit, and that's my best gauge for capitalism, the focus on profit. The unions are trying to push for the company to put their worker's well-being ahead of other concerns, so perhaps you're right, they're bargaining collectively to be considered as important as they can be when compared to turning a profit.

[dimreepr]

Just now, zapatos said:

How is "can I be healed in your country" relevant to whether or not the military is a socialistic system?

Well, the military is paid for by all, and logistically, only a few benefit (most of the time)... 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I think once you rank profit above anything else you're trying to do, you've turned it into capitalism.

Hiring a contractor to do food service rather than doing it yourself is more likely a cost-cutting exercise, not an effort to turn a profit at a public school.

 

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Maybe not "all capitalism", but I've often used the socialistic mentality Germany uses wrt maintaining its roads to show the difference between what they do and what the US does. Germany uses private contractors, but they MUST abide by the restrictions set for them, and if you repair a stretch of German roadway, you have to fix any potholes that happen in the next 10 years on your own dime. In the US, however, the emphasis on public contracts is on the private contractor. Their profit is more important, so fixing potholes is something they charge us for, along with repaving the roads unnecessarily every other year.

But they aren't the ones awarding the contract. It's not like a random private company can show up and demand to be paid for doing work for the government.

What you are describing is incompetence and perhaps corruption, neither of which is a designed feature of either economic system.

 

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I think capitalistic practices DO change the basic structure of our socialistic programs. It changes the emphasis when we cater to private interests, instead of forcing private interests to cater to the structure of socialism. Don't you think we would have approached education differently if not for the heavy influence of the private publishing industry? I think we've held onto textbooks a bit too long, sort of like our love affair with oil & gas.

That's one of the difficulties. We have many enterprises that are driven by profit, which leads to conflicts of interest between doing the job they were contracted to do and serving their profit "needs". Insurance and health care in the US, for example. And yet we have slice of those enterprises which falls under the umbrella of socialism (medicare)

 

 

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I don't think it HAS to be this way. I think we should be able to lay out the design of classroom furniture with student's comfort in mind, and then ask for bids to make them. I think that's the way we used to do it. From what I hear now, the schools are shopping from private catalogs these days, from manufacturers who design desks to maximize their profit. It may be a subtle difference in some cases, but I still feel the basic structure of what we want changes when it's required to turn a profit above all else.

That was still capitalism, but my argument is that it doesn't change the school into an agent of capitalism. Its basic function falls under socialism, regardless of the details of its acquisition of equipment and consumables. 

 

 

[iNow]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

As iNow pointed out there are many variations

This actually came up in my exchange in social media (liberals are dumb derp derp...). They had a version of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy where they suggested only one definition of socialism was true: Theirs. My approach, however, was to avoid the word "socialism" and instead refer to institutions like the military as "socialistic."

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Huckleberry of Yore said:

 Means testing has been proposed for social security but as I understand it not implemented yet.

It's there before you reach the full retirement age, and if you have other income, the benefits can be taxable.

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

That was still capitalism, but my argument is that it doesn't change the school into an agent of capitalism. Its basic function falls under socialism, regardless of the details of its acquisition of equipment and consumables. 

I thought your argument was more that mixing private with public approaches doesn't alter the basic structure of the public model, because I agree that the schools don't become agents of capitalism. But I do think the basic function of the public approach to education changes when the priorities are skewed to favor private contractors.

As an example, I would cite the No Child Left Behind program, and the changes it brought to Texas schools because of the focus on testing, and the focus on buying Neil Bush's private company's guide to NCLB testing. That was more than just profiting from government contracts. The public education process changed to make it more profitable for private contractors, not to better educate the population.

[John Cuthber]

The US has a bigger military expenditure than the next six or so countries put together.
You certainly do not need that sort of excess to defend your homeland.

So the question is ; why spend so much government money on it?
And the answers are (among others)  that:

it provides employment.

It provides a mechanism for giving education and training

It provides a mechanism for research and development.

Those are all fine socialist ideals.

There's also a number of veterans' programs that also tick the box.

It's also clear that many warriors (I think that's the term for army, airforce and naval  operatives) are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the society in which they were raised.

That's a much more concrete self-sacrifice than voting to pay higher tax rates to support the country's values.

Now there's a bit of a glitch that some of the R&D is outsourced to private industry but, apart from the senior staff who get paid obscene amounts for very little risk or work, those companies' employees are practically speaking paid by the state too.

 

[dimreepr]

No 'ism' is perfect, in every Orwellian way; may I suggest we learn to deal with the one we currently live with...

[swansont]

20 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I thought your argument was more that mixing private with public approaches doesn't alter the basic structure of the public model, because I agree that the schools don't become agents of capitalism. But I do think the basic function of the public approach to education changes when the priorities are skewed to favor private contractors.

As an example, I would cite the No Child Left Behind program, and the changes it brought to Texas schools because of the focus on testing, and the focus on buying Neil Bush's private company's guide to NCLB testing. That was more than just profiting from government contracts. The public education process changed to make it more profitable for private contractors, not to better educate the population.

That’s corruption and bad policy but IMO still socialism 

[Phi for All]

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

That’s corruption and bad policy but IMO still socialism 

I wasn't arguing that public education stops becoming socialistic when influenced by the profit concerns of the capitalistic elements, just that the basic function of public education is often negatively influenced by those elements. The focus on testing was widely seen by professional educators as an investment opportunity for private elements rather than a way to improve the quality of education. If you design a system to favor profit, and then apply it to a system that's supposed to benefit the public, you're at least changing how the system's success is measured. 

And there's also the problem with applying profit growth models to systems where growth is necessarily limited (only so many children in the district, only so much any child can learn, only so much land to build schools on). Private contractors need continual growth for their products and services, and that's often at odds with public strategies.

[DimaMazin]

Everything is ineffective in socialism therefore military development is the most important.

[John Cuthber]

59 minutes ago, DimaMazin said:

Everything is ineffective in socialism therefore military development is the most important.

That does not make sense.

59 minutes ago, DimaMazin said:

Everything is ineffective in socialism

That is not true.

59 minutes ago, DimaMazin said:

Everything is ineffective in socialism therefore military development is the most important.

That is a non sequitur.

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, DimaMazin said:

Everything is ineffective in socialism therefore military development is the most important.

I grew up in 70's Britain and I was educated for free in a school where 90% of my fellow students lived in social housing (council houses as we called them) and that was true for the vast majority of my fellow Brit's. It was very effective, much more so than now, in almost every way; sure our economy has grown since we dismantled that model, and for a brief time we all seemed much richer; but that was a false dawn, because now our midleclass children can't live as comfortably as I did in a single, unemployed, parent home.

So frankly, you're talking bollox.

Edited March 7, 2020 by dimreepr

[swansont]

2 hours ago, DimaMazin said:

Everything is ineffective in socialism

As opposed to what other systems?

[iNow]

At least in the US, the right doesn’t tend to have valid arguments or logic. Instead, they have bumper stickers and lemming-like adherence to whatever they’re told to be afraid of.

[dimreepr]

6 minutes ago, iNow said:

At least in the US, the right doesn’t tend to have valid arguments or logic. Instead, they have bumper stickers and lemming-like adherence to whatever they’re told to be afraid of.

Unfortunately, we're catching up... 🙄

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, DimaMazin said:

Everything is ineffective in socialism therefore military development is the most important.

This is one of the reasons I resent the term. Blanket generalizations are all you're going to get from anyone using an -ism to argue about specific issues. 

Are there any countries with no public roads, where you pay a toll every time you drive? No public sidewalks? What happens with capitalistic endeavors when the public/state doesn't own the airports and seaports?

 

 

One of my parameters for socialistic practices is that they're a bottom-up approach to the economy. The exact opposite of Reagan's Trickle-down theory, which we've basically been doing since right after the Eisenhower administration. Instead of giving public support and aid to the folks who already have all the money, a bottom-up approach would beef up the economy based on the people who actually spend their money instead of sitting on it.

And I'd like to tie that to the military by pointing out that having a publicly-funded military is supposed to remove greed from the equation of professionally arming your citizenry. The more private, capitalistic entities you have involved, the more you need to question whether you're defending your shores or just killing humans for profit. Of course, if that were true, you'd expect to see a lot of bloat and unnecessary spending stemming from using unlimited growth business models on a public institution. Such a military would be enormous, far out of proportion to the rest of the world's forces.

Edited March 7, 2020 by Phi for All
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