Ah, but are they really Scotsmen?
Today in Venezuela, we are living the worst health crisis in the country’s history. A person newly diagnosed with diabetes must face the reality that in our country, there are no supplies for diabetes treatment. Although there is social security available, patients don’t have the guarantee that they will be able to obtain the necessary supplies. On the other hand, it is a fact that T1D management costs are high all over the world and also the expenses that a condition of this nature causes. But these expenses in Venezuela are not at all payable because in addition to the health crisis that we are going through, we have a serious economic crisis.
What options and resources are available for a Venezuelan with T1D? What difficulties do they face?**
What we live with in Venezuela is a horror story. If your diagnosis is accompanied by ketoacidosis and you enter a public hospital, there aren’t supplies available at the hospitals to handle emergencies nowadays. You are then informed that you have diabetes and the doctor tells you that you should take insulin, but where can you get it? Then the painful pilgrimage of relatives and friends begins – they start begging to get information about where they can get insulin. You start to lose your strength in your attempts, because in Venezuela, there is no way to find insulin to keep us alive. Despite the terrible nature of this crisis, many people have managed to send us donations. These donations are given to whoever needs it, and I take this opportunity to thank each person who has believed in our goodwill to donate.
https://beyondtype1.org/diabetes-in-venezuela/
‘Broken authoritarian regime’ != ‘socialism’.
Ok, then please explain how a country that allows, and depends on, capitalist corporations to produce and distribute necessities isn’t capitalist.
They do tend to get foreign interventioned pretty quickly, for their own good.
I do agree that capitalism isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and that, like democracy, the concept allows for so many different alternatives that there might not be a need to. But I’m pretty sure most people shouting against capitalism are talking about the unregulated version based on flawed theories that are crumbling at the moment. And I believe more of them know it than you think, it’s just a convenient summary at the moment. One that will probably be co-opted one way or both, looking at history.
Timex
5333
As an economic system, socialism/communism doesn’t work. That’s just how it is. Central planning for the majority of economic production fails. You may be able to get away with minor amounts of this, basically in the hope that the inefficiency caused will be covered up by the capitalist part of the economy.
So that’s where you get things like the Nordic model.
It has capitalism driving the economy, where you have private ownership of the means of production, and then you simply tax the economy to spend money on things that benefit the overall society. This actually works, because the economy actually functions and provides resources to do what you want.
But it’s still capitalism. It still has private ownership of the means of production, rather than nationalized industry.
Those are two different things. As for central planning, it seems to work well for modern China. As long as we’re talking about efficiency, because it’s a dreadful place. And yet, it’s also capitalist.
Well, three different things. Just because you have private ownership of most of the means of production, it doesn’t mean that money, currency and wealth are one and the same thing. Governments create currency out of thin air all the time to influence the economy and the utilization of resources, taxes have arguably little to do with it in the age of fiat (which doesn’t mean taxes are bad, or that there are no limits, or even that the limits would be all that different in practice).
It’s a long way to communism, even radical propositions from Bernie, Corbyn or MMT economists are well within the bounds of capitalism.
Timex
5335
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.
Which is why the idea that “capitalism is bad” is nonsensical.
Capitalism is just an economic system… it’s the only effective economic system. Every prosperous country has a capitalist economy.
Even ideas like Medicare for All aren’t a full break from capitalism, because the medical industry is still privately run. It’s just that the government serves as the buyer of those goods from private industry. Even Bernie doesn’t suggest that the government should take over the hospitals.
I agreed with you above, but I also said anti-capitalist shouts are more of a banner more than a literal meaning. Blame neoliberals for creating the association of capitalism with a “free” unregulated market, because that was exactly the plan.
But I’d be more convinced that it was the final version of economic systems if any alternative didn’t quickly meet with foreign interventionism. On the other hand, seeing socialists argue in neoliberal terms about the economy after the revolution tells me that maybe we should wait on that whole idea.
CF_Kane
5337
I would think the overwhelming majority of folks on the left in the United States would agree with you using the definition of capitalism you are using (any mixed economic system with markets/private ownership).
The reason why millennials have a positive view of socialism is that we grew up with every minor expansion of the social safety net or tax increase derided as socialism by the right in the U.S. Nobody is calling for Venezuela, the Soviet Union, or China to be the model for the United States.
When millennials say capitalism is bad, it comes from the same place. If any expansion of the safety net is socialism, then it is easy to conclude that capitalism, as defined by the American right, is bad. That doesn’t mean we need to end private property.
Doesn’t China just steal everything from capitalist countries? So, central planning is great, when one of the plans is intellectual theft of good ideas from countries where good ideas are rewarded.
I’m all in on Warren BTW. Socialism is my jam.
Matt_W
5339
This is all a semantic argument. When someone says “capitalism is bad” they’re generally referring to the negative features of deregulated free-market laissez-faire capitalism: consolidation of wealth and political power, externalities up the ass, tragedy of the commons, etc etc. Capitalism cum capitalism is neither good nor bad, and completely deregulated capitalist economies fail just as hard as completely centrally planned ones. There are zero modern national economies that are totally capitalist. So when you say something like “Every prosperous country has a capitalist economy,” that’s exactly as silly as someone saying “Capitalism is bad.” They’re both shortcut statements meant to reflect a particular sentiment, not ideological ones meant to be taken literally according to dictionary definitions.
Do you not have it anymore? And couldn’t read the patents on how to rebuild it again?
China does what other industrialized countries did to get ahead. Not that they stopped.
Timex
5341
Virtually every modern, prosperous economy is capitalist, in that the vast, vast majority of industry is privately owned.
Like, Germany for instance… how much of their industry is nationalized? Virtually none, right? I can only think of their rail system as being nationalized at this point, and even that is now becoming partially privatized.
The thing is, as some have pointed out, the GOP created this false narrative suggesting that any social expenditure or safety net is “socialism”. But that’s not real. That was a lie, told to scare folks away from government spending, convincing them that such things are effectively communism.
And this is why Warren states that she’s a capitalist. Because that’s not at odds with doing the stuff she wants to do.
I think that the thing you guys are against isn’t capitalism, but rather corporatism.
Considering they manufactured practically everything I use, there must be more to it than that…
No. What they did was much smarter than that. They took advantage of the inherent greed of capitalist companies by using their cheap labor as a lure.
Companies were allowed to access the Chinese labor market as long as they promised to have X% of their goods produced by Chinese manufacturers. And for that to work while meeting quality standards a transfer of tech and production techniques to those manufacturers was required.
China didn’t steal the tech. Western companies gave it away for a temporary profit increase which ended in their own downfall when those same Chinese manufacturers pushed them out of the market, using advantages bestowed upon them by the Chinese government.
Just so you know, that wasn’t my assertion, but one I was responding to.
My point is they didn’t create anything. Capitalism leads to innovation. Central planning leads to stagnation.
