On a friend’s Facebook thread, I recently posted the following. It was in response to a rather sanctimonious rant saying things defending socialism since Venezuela isn’t the only socialist country in the world. Also, the person asked if the millions going without health insurance in America mattered.
Without the wealth that only free markets, free people and capitalism can create, there’s nothing to socialize. There’s nothing to redistribute. There’s nothing to steal or give away. Does that mean nothing to you? It should. Because in order to have wealth redistribution, you first have to get wealth! In order to socialize the means of production – which is what socialism is — we have to make everyone a ward and/or slave of the state. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Those are Karl Marx’s words, and that’s the essence of socialism. The capable and the hard working are the slaves of the incapable and the lazy under socialism. Not everyone in need is lazy, but socialism legislates and institutionalizes laziness. It treats someone else’s income as a legal RIGHT, merely because they have more and for no other reason. That’s morally wrong; what YOU’RE proposing is morally wrong, so you cannot and will not shame me. You’re the one who should be on the defensive for what you’re advancing—not me.
Authentic compassion and kindness – not the government-mandated kind — should be left to private charity, and individual acts of kindness, or to well-run private charities — not to an inhumane, bumbling, incompetent and command-and-control slave state. Sadly, you’ve been brainwashed into thinking that this isn’t what you’re advocating, but it is.
As for health care: If we had a free market in medicine in the USA like we have a (relatively) free market for groceries, clothing, smart phones, computers and automobiles, the vast majority would be able to afford it. Not that health care should be cheap. Doctors and nurses train for years and have huge bills to pay off. At times, their work is thankless but it’s still life-saving. They save lives, for God’s sake. And you want them to be the equivalent of postal employees or bus drivers? They deserve every penny they get. If you want doctors to make the same as just about anyone else, or perhaps just a teeny bit more determined by some corrupt politician who makes more than any of us through trading favors, then good luck with the kind of health care you will receive when you need it most. Most of our health care in the US is government subsidized and controlled – even before Obamacare, in the form of Medicaid and Medicare. Those programs started in the mid-1960s! If you don’t like the state of medical care in the US, don’t blame it on capitalism. It’s more socialism than capitalism. And it has been for at least half a century. I am in health care, and have been driven out of the whole Medicare reimbursement system. It’s not the low pay so much as the demoralizing and dehumanizing regulations and rules, which often make no sense and are insanely contradictory. Try working in the medical field—I bet you don’t—and then see how highly you think of these government-run programs.
Western European countries are floundering economically the extent to which they have a welfare state. And they’re only able to have a welfare state the extent to which they have lots of free market capitalism. Check your assumptions.
With socialism, SOMEBODY is providing the loot, goods and services that you’re prepared to give away (it’s not yours, by the way, no matter how sanctimonious your tone.) So your moralizing and shaming do not move me. The fact is, you will never be able to nationalize anything without either the consent or the neurotic guilt of the people who hand it over to the dictators you love so much. Venezuela is the consistent embodiment of the socialism you’re advocating. You can’t just write it off as a freak occurrence. The same happened in Soviet Russia (1917-1991), for decades in China before it moderated to state-run capitalism, and Cuba. Why does socialism fail every time it’s tried? Why does it fail the degree to which it’s implemented? YOU, not myself, have to answer those questions before you throw us all into the servitude of a welfare state, whether on the scale of bankrupt European states (who depend on the U.S. to prop them via low tariffs and other favors) or the totally devastated former Communistic states, along with North Korea and Venezuela today. If you like those places so much—go live there!
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1, and see “Michael Hurd” on MeWe.