Comments on: Why Does Socialism Sometimes Seem to Sort of Work, At First?

By: Nbkvqvs

Nbkvqvs — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:13:51 +0000

By: Pozorvlak

Pozorvlak — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:54:33 +0000

You may be relieved to learn that private-only health care appears to deliver substantially lower levels of public health at around twice the cost than, say, a single-payer system like Canada's.

And before you start, I live in the UK, and I'm well aware of the problems of socialized medicine. There's still no way I'd rather switch to a system where my doctors are ultimately beholden to my insurance company's shareholders.

By: M. Hodak

M. Hodak — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:10:24 +0000

Socialism is basically code for cashing in on the wealth created by capitalism. Cashing in always “works” in the sense of satisfying desires for consumption, until the cash and credit run out.

By: James R Ament

James R Ament — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:37:40 +0000

Where socialism “seems” to have worked over a period of time are in countries that have small homogeneous populations – meaning that there is a good deal of cultural history unaffected by “diverse” outside views. Where has this been? I always hear about the Scandanavian countries or New Zealand as the “shining” examples. If that has been valid, it’s hard to imagine it working anywhere else – And history indicates that it hasn’t! Right?

By: Sameer

Sameer — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:09:29 +0000

I think one of the key reasons fails is the lack of creative destruction.

Socialism is ok at doing the same thing that you've been doing, but there's no way for a socialist system to generate innovation. Either within a firm so that it continues to be efficient and can deal with a changing environment, or within a broader economy so that new firms can emerge to address changes in the world. Thus you get stagnation and, eventually, decline.

So thus it looks like its working, because in the short term you don't really need to innovate. But long term, innovation is key.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:48:20 +0000

I understand that Swedish socialism nationalised very little industry – much less than British socialism, for instance, did. That would have left them with a decent source of tax revenue to fund their welfare state.