At 2:01 PM -0700 on 7/13/99, Rob Cozens wrote:
>> Please do not mix up communism and what became reality under this name in
>>the USSR. Marx' concepts were very different from the way it turned out in
>>the end. What happened in the USSR is often referred to as socialism
>>(which, again, isn't social democracy).
>
>OK Uli,
>
>In my period of classical education the distinction was made between
>socialism as an economic philosophy and communism as a political philosophy
>that imposed socialism at gunpoint.
I thaught they both did.
>
>The model with which I've had closest (but ancient: 1966/67) contact is
>Swedish democracy. (I'm a strong believer in proportional representation.
>In single seat legislatures {eg: US}, it is theoretically possible for
>50.01% of the voting population to gain 100% of the elective offices...OK,
>over time in the case of the Senate).
No it is not. You'd never get 50% of those who are registered to vote out
around here. A joke about Bill Clinton goes something like:
Got 49.9% of popular vote
Half of the registered voters voted
Half of the people who are eligable to vote are registered.
Maybe three-quarters of those existing are eligable to vote.
That give you a shocking 9% voting for him... (the joke goes on,
in various ways, to get down to a single person)
But seriosuly, the fact that you worry about 50.01% taking control of the
US indicates a much larger problem: The government has too much power.
And too much corruption. Consider that when the voters of California voted
to legalize marijuana for medical uses, the police there _refused_ to obey
the law. And they still do refuse. Alledly, they've planted evidence as
well. That is a government out of control. That's more scarry than any
50.01% taking control. A government of, by, and for the people? Not if the
people want to allow dying cancer patients to smoke pot!
>I had already learned to
>love Swedes; this I took as a social statement: "We, the citizens of
>Sweden, have made a bond that every child born into our society shall have
>access to basic medical care and support."
Yes, certainly some socialism/communism/whatever Uli calls it today. But as
I recall, Switzerland is a mixed economy. Don't they, for example, have
private ownership of property?
BTW: I fully expect that someday Switzerland will degrade to mob rule. As
will the United States (as, for example, California cops have done) -- evil
will win.
>
>This is, in part, why I referred earlier to the "weakness" of socialism and
>not its "failure." Socialism is really based on the same sharing-of-risk
>principles as Lloyds of London,
Insurance companies don't take risks. As long as things average out (which
they tend to, over hundreds of thousands of people), they come out ahead.
>applied to society as a whole without (in
>theory; but possibly not in human implementation) the capitalistic
>middleman taking a cut. And one can see it paying off: I haven't looked
>latelay; but the last I knew Sweden's infant mortality rate was well below
>that of the US.
There are temporary benifits of government intervention -- that's how it's
justified. But eventually, it will collapse. Consider that the 1920's were,
in part, a benifit of government intervention into the money supply. But
then came 1929.
