By that definition the whole of Western Europe would be a socialist state. Government services like these do not equal socialism.
I live in The Netherlands, a pretty liberal kingdom with excellent social security and unemployment benefits. But don't be mistaken, it's not a socialist country. Not by a long shot. The biggest political parties are liberal-conservative and social-democrats. The latter lean towards the left, but our only true socialist party is much more to the left. They're only the sixth party by size.
It's endlessly bizarre to see Americans throw around the word "socialist" as if it was a curse. Western Europe is made of social democracies. Northern Europe in particular has made the choice to live with high taxes and better social services. It does not mean that they are governed by unelected oligarchs, they get the same kind of elected oligarchs as the rest.
There has been a concerted campaign in the US to convince people that other countries' social services are inefficient, dangerous, and hated by their populations.
Most of the Western Europe is ruled by Social Democrats or Socialists of various kinds. While it might be less pronounced in Netherlands or Germany, you could take a look at Denmark, or Sweden, or France, or find out what were the slogans of the latest campaigns in Spain.
According to the dictionary definition of socialism, it requires 'socialization of means of means of production' or 'social ownership'. In the current crop of Western Socialism, this is done via governmental regulations of business and large redistribution of wealth via taxes.
Note that Socialism is not Communism. It can rather well coexist with a market economy, as long as both are somehow constrained, and the economy is strong enough (like in Germany or France, unlike in Spain).
"Government services like these do not equal socialism."
So why is it socialism for the government to use tax money hire doctors and nurses to help people (e.g. UK NHS which was very clearly seen by its founders as a socialist endeavour) and not socialist for the government to hire soldiers to defend the country from attack?
NB I'm from the UK where it's clear that the public sector here has some of the very best people working for it (in the front lines of the NHS and the military) as well as some of the worst (particularly senior leadership in both organisations).
"A political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole".
Most countries are like that, the US and European countries included: those countries own the means of exchange (they decree the fiat money they own as the only legal currency) and they regulate the means of production and distribution (exacting taxes and benefiting cronies).
Moreover, what those countries have is definitely not Capitalism, because capital comes from savings and most (all?) of those countries have a trade deficit (even major exporters) which means whatever game it seems to be they're playing amongst each other isn't the usual praxeological capitalism where both parties profit from a trade. Right now they're playing a game called QE, with Japan winning (which means, losing).
> Every day before dawn, brave men and women of different races and backgrounds rise as one, united by a common cause. They march together in formation, kept in step by their voices joined in song. These workers leave their communal housing arrangements and go toil together “in the field.” While they are out doing their day’s labor, their young are cared for in subsidized childcare programs. If they hurt themselves on the job, they can count on universal health care. Right under your nose, on the fenced-in bases you drive past on your way to work or see on the TV news, a successful experiment in collectivization has been going on for years.
> The military is innately hierarchical, yet it nurtures a camaraderie in part because the military looks after its employees. This is a rare enclave of single-payer universal health care, and it continues with a veterans’ health care system that has much lower costs than the American system as a whole.
(shove the healthcare part aside for a second) to a certain degree, all firms are 'socialist', because they are banding together to not compete with each other. This is the central interesting problem in the 'theory of the firm' which deals with how in a capitalist system groups of individuals band together to not compete. This definition, then is meaningless. Socialism is when a central authority organizes the distribution of labor and resources under the threat of force.
As for the healthcare, universal healthcare for soldiers is a horribly malfunctioning system in the US, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon.
no it's not. The organization is corrupt from the top. My father is a medium-level executive there. Years ago, he reported that there was black mold in the senior care facility and exposed several million dollars of overbilling by doctors. For his troubles, he was rubber-roomed (paid six salaries to sit in a room with no windows and no responsibilities). This is not an incident that made the major media. Other, more publicised problems exist, in the Phoenix office, and notably at Walter Reed, during the Bush tenure and wars in afghanistan and iraq. But if you seriously have such a belief in the VA, GO ASK 5 VETERANS what they think of it.
I have trouble taking seriously a post "educating" us about history that asserts Russia was part of the Axis Powers up until Germany attacked Russia. The pact that grew into the Axis was specifically created to oppose communism. Germany attacked Russia in violation of an agreement, but that agreement hardly made Russia part of the Axis.
That seems so completely misguided. Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you? Isn't it just a matter of earning enough money to afford a vacation? I doubt rich people worry as much about little vacation time - they buy those expensive yachts and then have only two weeks per year to ride them?
And even supposing there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone, and if you go on vacation somebody uses the opportunity to snatch away your job: isn't that rather a problem of distribution and work organization, not of social welfare? If it's more efficient for organizations to have one person work 40 hours than two persons 20 hours, they'll prefer that.
> Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you?
Because life is better that way.
The employer/employee relationship is incredibly biased. A lot of people simply cannot afford to lose their job, whereas pretty much every employer can afford to fire almost any individual. This means people are willing to work for little pay, poor benefits and no vacation because they are effectively forced to, even though everyone would be better off if everyone was forced to take vacation
Isn't it also the responsibility of the individual to gain skills that are valuable? I don't think what you describe is true for Software Developers in Sillicon Valley, for example. How much vacation do Software Developers in the Valley usually get?
The Silicon Valley is not indicative of jobs in the US. What some developer there gets has little/no bearing on what happens elsewhere.
You also did not argue the core assertion that the employer-employee contract is heavily skewed to the employer. That has been true for the last 30 years. Productivity has made great inroads, yet pay and benefits have dropped significantly.
So yes, this is a government issue. The employers have a sweet deal and the plebes have no power. But alas, Republicans in the Senate will make sure that much needed reforms won't happen.
Still, how much vacation time do Sillicon Valley developers get? If they also only get two weeks, it would invalidate the theory that people get no vacation because they are so much under pressure to not lose their jobs.
Because most new businesses fail. So the people best suited to start ones are people with a safety net: a lot of cash saved up, or a well off family to support them.
In short, the people who can't afford to lose their jobs also cannot afford to fail in business.
Have you tried getting a loan from the bank to start a business? Fat chance. And if your business fails, you still gotta pay the bank back its loan (which doesn't solve the problem in the original post. The underprivileged still can't afford to fail).
not everyone can be a software developer, and frankly we can't have a society of people who only have specialist skills. There will always be a need for people with minimal skills to do low-skill jobs. They're doing work that has to get done too.
> frankly we can't have a society of people who only have specialist skills.
Out of curiosity, why not?
And frankly, isn't it already the case? Most people are unable to produce enough for their own survival today. They can't grow crops, build a home, even make their own bread. Instead they are specialists at project management, javascript or flipping burgers.
I'm not arguing that this is bad or wrong, I am only saying your statement that a society of people with specialist skills would not be possible.
You're not really disagreeing, except on terminology. You're defining "specialist skills" as "narrowing down your work away from (do everything that allows me to live on my own)", whereas your parent meant "specialist as opposed to <easy>". For example, someone working the checkout in a shop is technically a specialised job (by the definition you're using), but in the context of our current culture it's easy enough that a vast majority of people could "become specialised" in it almost immediately.
For my first 10 yrs out of school there was no job market for network operators specializing in BGP. Then I did that for a bit less than a decade. Then due to consolidation and mergers there's no work in that field anymore (other than the stereotypical "move to SV/NYC").
Another direction to go is my grandma did meaningless low skill BS work in an office shuffling papers as a clerk because she specialized in knitting and had amazing knitting skills, but didn't feel like being sentenced to life in a textile sweatshop in Vietnam, or where-ever clothes were being made at that time (Vietnam now, but in the 70s? Surely not the USA by then?). For my own example there's no way I'd tolerate 140 hour work weeks as a medical doctor although I'd probably have made a heck of a doctor, and I'm not living in poverty so forget academics/sciences, and I'm not living urban and working in an open plan office so forget SV. As a hobby I enjoy woodworking but as a profession the pay is bad and the working conditions are awful, also its not very deep so I'd get bored with it long before I retire, so ... no.
So you have chronological problems or retraining problems, and also people that are a skills match but hate the working environment. Maybe in a communist society the central committee could force my grandma to be a textile worker or force me to be a medical doctor or work at a startup, but there would be a lot of force involved.
In Hungary (which is considered a shitty place to live) I get 23 days of paid vacation (with weekends considered it can be more than a month). I also don't have to work overtime.
> Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you?
Yeah, I guess something like unions could work for that. Oh wait, apparently those are bad, too. Well I guess "just earn enough money" is the best fallback.
Yeah, I guess something like unions could work for that. Oh wait, apparently those are bad, too.
Be careful about stereotyping; not everyone who dislikes the involvement of the State is against unions - as long as they're not enforced by law, but voluntary.
An extreme example would be an anarcho-syndicalist, but there are libertarians who support unions as well.
Short answer: Communism lost
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