@Randomizer

oh i'm far from trusting Pharmaceutical companies. that's why i want the fear of god put into them whenever they got to the FDA for approval of a new drug. we're talking prison time for anyone involved in the authorization or **direct** financing of its creation (stockholders and investors separate), massive fines for even small misdemeanors.

withhold negative studies? jail and fines

with that having been said, i don't expect every drug to undergo 12 year trial periods. we need specialized regulation in place...


what i don't think you guys understand is if we do create a pseudo-socialized quasi-insurance scheme that would be the basis for single payer, we STILL need to keep the pharmaceutical companies in check, while making drugs cheap.

in fact, if we nationalize it, we would ABSOLUTELY need to make drugs cheap.


i''m not sure why there's such strong disagreement on what i'm proposing here.

it's the morality of single payer that we should be debating.

And because the American people voted for legislators who crafted weak rules. You get the protection you deserve I guess

This "Jamiet99uk:
Poverty is structural. To eliminate it you must change the economy. No amount of jumble sales and food drives will eliminate poverty."

+100

@Zmaj you said (refering to me) "r. You, on the other hand, talk about corporations, militarized police, and a bunch of stuff that you can't affect in any way. Who is blinded to reality?"

What i do, and what i say, are not one and the same. I can affect corporatism by talking, and i can have a much bigger impact on my local community by doing things which directly affect it.

I can tell you, in the last month i have gotten my scouts to clean up the local river. They collected bottles and cans, and were offered 10c per items. Which was promoted by a local group attempting to add a 10 cents deposit on all cans and bottles, and sent to local representatives as an example of how effective a small charge could be in motivating people to collect rubbish.

I do lots of things to change the world i live in. But thats not really relevant to this conversation.

American libertarians seems too scared of the government and not scared enough of their corporations. Which i believe is a sign of a very effective marketing campaign.

When power shifts from the state sector to the private sector (like when health care becomes privatised) - you inevitably see wealthy individuals getting more interested in controling private entities and less interested in using the state. If the state can't be used to control people (as it is limited from doing in the US by being a liberal democracy) the people who want power have to find alternatives.

They have moved towards propoganda, or advertising as they rebranded it. Towards influencing people, and are accumulating more power with each passing decade. The example of the XL keystone pipeline includes violence by the state against people on behalf of private interests.

Corporate America has effectively subverted the state and taken advantage of the culture of independence to deprive the people of rights, which in a liberal democracy the state is supposed to protect (just like the subversion of the NRA by arms manufacturers, to be anti-"gun safety" - back in the 70s - what was once a group of citizens who were in favour of gun control, because they felt it was the best way to ensure they personally would be allowed keep their weapons and keep them safely, became a corporate lobby to sell as many guns as possible, regardless of the safety of the public... ).

@orathaic

First of all, kudos for your community work. I'm sure that's worth more than anything you (or any of us) write here or elsewhere.

"American libertarians seems too scared of the government and not scared enough of their corporations."

I don't think they're scared of either. They've just experienced first-hand that the government is doing more damage than the corporations ever could.

"They [i.e. the people who want power] have moved towards propoganda, or advertising as they rebranded it. Towards influencing people, and are accumulating more power with each passing decade."

You make it sound like it is a homogeneous group. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, powerful people use propaganda. Yes, they influence the government. But they have different agendas, they fight among themselves, they have wildly different ways to get more power. None of them can monopolize power because others won't let them.

"Corporate America has effectively subverted the state and taken advantage of the culture of independence to deprive the people of rights"

This hair-rising idea was expressed much better by George Orwell: "Freedom is slavery." But I'm not sure you want to be associated with Stalinism.

"that the government is doing more damage than the corporations ever could."

Sweet Jesus, someone REALLY isn't paying attention.

Would the free market have ever gotten rid of sweat shops or set a floor on food safety or found a way to stop dumping of pollution into the air or water? Sure, maybe informed citizens would boycott the worst offenders until they raised their standards, but an informed citizen who is poor needs the cheap item from a polluter more than he needs a good item. He must satisfy his short term need at the expense of his long term welfare. Yes, he has a choice, but not a meaningful one.

Unions once (in the 1930s) had power, and the federal government protected them from states sending in national guardsmen to break up strikes...

Great example of state collaboration with capitalist 'job creators'.

Also a good example of different parts of the govenment fighting with itself.

The competition between corporations is merely to most effectively exploit/oppress the human&natural resources. Occasionally the likes of internet service companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook) and non-profit organisations (like the wikipedia foundation) get together to oppose the Internet Service Providers (ISPs undermining net neutrality laws, having already formed an effective monopoly amongst themselves). And while it is in the customer's interest to get greater service provided at lower costs, there is no reason to assume those same companies currently fighting the good fight will not find ways of exploiting their customers' data when given half a chance.

The US FCC correctly protected net neutrality under previous attacks, and we'll see uf the current government does the same.

The government also needs to put protection in place to prevent abuse of personal data.

I don't think comparing my arguement to stalinism is quite the trump card you think it is. I have made no arguements in favour of Stalin's philosophy or policy. Meanwhile since you bring up Stalin, free market capitalism did kill millions in orecisely tue same way as Stalin did, famine created by inappropriate distribution of food resources which harmed the poorest and weakest the most.

At least Stalin did it most by incompetence, the British government explicitally wrote about how a drop in population would 'do the irish some good'. So the only thing comparable to Stalin, in this conversation, is the horrific results of following an ideology to the extremes.

Actually, capitalism is killing millions as we speak. After all, corporations have done irreparable harm to the very life on earth with their propaganda to stop climate action so they could earn higher profits at a cost of billions of lives. Capitalists make Nazis look like amateurs frankly.

@Ogion, I disagree. The Nazis willfully/intentionally targeted people for death. Capitalists conduct doesn't rise above the standard of reckless or willful disregard. So in terms of intent, the Nazis were worse. In terms of lives lost, the Nazis proximately caused the deaths of millions while Capitalists generally are no more than a producing cause. Throwing around Nazi comparisons is seldom effective. See Godwin's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
First one to mention Nazi's loses.

I was going to respond to the multitude of comments on page 4, but I couldn't do much better of a job than Yanik has already done, so I'll just respond to the few where I believe a little more could be said.

"America ORIGINALLY was very libertarian. we had social issues which was the problem: slavery, sexism... all of that. but the founders never wanted this bullshit."

This, so much this. This country was practically founded on libertarian ideology. You know, the whole don't steal our money through taxes thing that caused the revolution in the first place. There was no income tax, there were no social programs, there was basically a small military, courts, and a post office. That was it. The authoritarian regimes that occupy Washington now trying to impose their way of life on everyone else came much later.

"they attack in packs, but it doesn't make their ideology any stronger (or smarter apparently)"

It is just as I said. A tunnel vision, emotional, arbitrary group think that forcefully attempts to impose its will on others.

@MajorMitchell

You, like many others most likely, seem to be missing the point entirely. I never said that nothing good could come from taking tax payer's money and using it to create some sort of social good (which is subjective). But, the ends do not justify the means. The problem is that there is no moral/ethical authority for the government to make the decision to do this other than the authority it grants itself. If it were any other individual/group attempting to take this money to perform a "social good", it would be deemed theft. There are other ways to obtain the same benefits, in this case, the immunizations. Private individuals/groups can and almost always do a better job of delivering these types of goods and services, in a moral/ethical manner.

@Hauta

Public charity is an oxymoron, there is no such thing.

@Manwe, we are not bound to live by the same rules that this country was founded on. Otherwise, we'd be stuck with slavery, etc. I think I would really dislike you in real life. Let's make sure we never meet.

Godwin knew nothing about actual Nazis. I grew up in part in Germany and my father was enslaved by them. Godwin's law is stupid beyond belief and leads Americans to their naive fetishizariom of Mazis and steadfast refusal to learn a damn thing about how Nazis gained and then maintained social and political control. Those are incredibly dangerous lessons to forget.

Yes, they were intentionally killing people, while oil coming abuse merely knowingly disregarded the deaths they cause (don't forget the companies that kill people through pollution, dangerous products, etc). However, the scale of knowing recklessness is much greater. Is it this much better to know you're killing and millions and not give a shit rather than setting out intentionally to do so?

Enslaved? I've learned about concentration camps where there was forced labor prior to death but I am unfamiliar with "mere" enslavement. Why was your father enslaved? And why didn't your family leave immediately after the war?

A lot of Eastern Europeans were taken for slave labor, not for concentration camp internment. They needed people to work and slaving among teenaged Eastern Europeans was a way to do that. My Dad was front he Baltics. He did leav as soon as he was able, but I went to Germany as a high school student on my own many decades later and learned about Nazis in history class where believe me, Germans make a detailed and serious study of dictatorship (don't forget a lot of the country went from Nazi rule to Communist rule) to make sure German citizens know and understand how to stop authoritarians. They're a lot more intensely anti-Nazi than Americans are understandably.

@orathaic

"Unions once (in the 1930s) etc."

I have no idea what you're talking about and it's irrelevant anyway.

"The competition between corporations is merely to most effectively exploit/oppress the human&natural resources."

How do you imagine production without using natural resources? Also, how do you imagine a market without human labor? Of course they want to be more effective.

"The US FCC correctly protected net neutrality"

Of course it did. The state doesn't want any competitors in the area of surveillance. It's called Big Brother - a nod to your good friend Orwell (and Stalin) again.

"free market capitalism did kill millions in precisely the same way as Stalin did, famine created by inappropriate distribution of food resources which harmed the poorest and weakest the most."

Stalin confiscated grain from Ukrainian peasants. Several millions starved as a result. I have no idea how that relates to capitalism.

It is not just oil companies and environmental destruction that kills people. Tobacco companies hasfisregarded safety and lied about their products. Apple pays forproductsto be assembled in factory where they have to install suicide nets. Capitalism itself supports an ever increasing income inequality... (With all the associated problems of poverty, crime, self-segregration and gates communities)

Without access to healthcare these problems are greatly exacerbated. And it is intentional. Now the more socialist amongst us believe in Universal healthcare as a basic human right. Obama did his best to create a system which insured more Americans (and passed something which helped, even if it was a small improvement on a crappy system). Most socialists would have decried that system if a Republican president had created it, because it is terrible (and infact it was originally a Republican idea, adopted at the state level).

But i was comparing some of the clearest deaths attributed directly to capitalism, just to contrast with what some people think is the terrible soecter of Stalinism.

Ok, i agree Stalinism was really fucking shit, millions died of starvation; just like under Capitalism. Good thing i'm not advocating either system then, isn't it?

@"Stalin confiscated grain from Ukrainian peasants. Several millions starved as a result. I have no idea how that relates to capitalism."

As an Irish citizen, i usually refer to the great famine, where the British exported cash crops while explicitally letting Irish farmers die. There was enough food, but free market policy was to let those farmers die*. But... That's not the worst famine under British rule/free market capitalism. For that you need to look at India.

I am shocked by your ignorance in these matter, so i will provide a link.

*you will note the similarity between Stalin's Russia taking Ukrainian grain, and the British government exporting Irish grain.

@Ogion

"how Nazis gained and then maintained social and political control"

Believe it or not, it was not through capitalism and free market. Quite the opposite.

@orathaic

Do I really have to point out that "British rule" =/= "free market capitalism"?

I just can't pick one so many Indian famines to choose from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7991820/Winston-Churchill-blamed-for-1m-deaths-in-India-famine.html

@orathaic

In fact, your example works against you for other reasons too. One of the main causes of starvation in Ireland were the Corn Laws, enforced by the British government. The very opposite of a free market.

@Zmaj, in Ireland in the 1840s it was an exicitally free market policy.

The land owners were often absentees living in England, and they shipped out the food grown on their property, the state only protected their property rights, and their freedom to export food. It was very much free market capitalism at work.

Why are people confusing capitalism with forms of government?

socialism combines the two, government separates the economy and government as much as possible. if there's a social problem, it's because the government isn't doing its job, protecting the rights of the people.

even for libertarians: if the rights of the people are CONSTANTLY being infringed, if instead of 16,000 murders a year we have 1.6 million:

it's the government who was to keep order. they have to step up.

"for a ramshackle cobbled together private insurance system that costs the US twice as much and delivers half as good results as socialized health care systems"

That must be why so many Americans travel across the border to get their healthcare from Canada. Oh wait...

@orathaic

look up "Corn Laws"

as a proud irishman myself, i can say it wasn't the FREE market that oppressed us

I do kind of wish Manwe would put his money where his mouth is and forego social goods provided by taxpayer money, such as by stopping using the internet

The fact is that actually public goods are quite well defined in policy and economics and usually amount to benefits that leave society better off but that cannot be handle efficiently by the private markets. By denying such things exist, the US is pretty inefficient and wasteful

Zmaj, look at Lord Russel's 'lassize-faire' approach to somving to food crisis in Ireland. And the disasterous consequeces which the island has yet to recover from.

Yanik is right, capitalism is not a form of government.