Do people understand the difference between a socialist program, and socialist economy?

[surrealworlds]

I feel like im derailing your thread. Its pretty simple, just use a country other than China for your example and your point of Socialist economies vs socialist programs is valid.

 

[NoDak]

Practically they probably are state owned, but so is half of the industries in the US. Our alphabet agencies, banking, oil, media are so intertwined it is absurd.

It's past time to bring Big Pharma to heel, so many of their abuses take place simply because government allows them to.

The level they've stood to benefit from publicly funded and conducted research even compared to most other sectors is laughable. It's the universities and government labs who not only explain the mechanisms for disease and develop therapy strategies but also validate the drug targets and sometimes even identify the prototype compound before the intellectual property is transferred to the private sector for development. There's hardly an FDA approved drug in this decade that the NIH didn't have a hand in.

The NIH, which US taxpayers fund to the order of $35 billion a year. It's a resource they're allowed to utilize carte blanche and there's no intellectual property rights for scientific research, be it in condensed matter physics, bio-chemistry, molecular biology, genetics or any other field. That's not to say the developer shouldn't be allowed to reap a share of spoils for their creations or not have them protected, just that the overall benefits are disproportionate and could probably do well to be spread across the breadth of society a little more than they are.

In terms of patents on the whole across all industries, not only are they difficult to enforce but the transactional costs are exceedingly high these days. The flip side to this is how difficult that makes it for innovative small businesses and even when they do breakthrough, they're often quickly gobbled up and the patent becomes owned by an entity which put up neither the original funding nor research. It's not a massive problem but there's something to be said for class gaps in patenting and it's hardly surprising the majority of holders come from affluent families.

 

[M3t4tr0n]

"means of production, distribution, and exchange"

If your market is operating by supply and demand, and is made up mostly of private ownership, how is that socialism?

Don't you know that if the government helps people with healthcare and better education that the whole country will magically slide into socialism and thats just like a step away from communism?!

 

[VivaRevolution]

I dont understand your point here. You just threw out the names of a government organization, an oil company, a defense company, and a politician. And whatever operation monarch is.
Do those names represent the U.S. economy to you?
Are you saying those companies are socialist ?
What are you saying here?

I'm saying that the FED has government powers, and is ran by private banksters.

I'm saying that we went to war in part to enrich Haliburton and Exxon, because they got their lobbyist into the position of co-president. That is the merging of government and industry.

Operation monarch is the CIA hooking and planting agents among the media, from journalists to editors to management. Again, a merging of industry, and government.

Are these now socialist elements of our country?

If our major industries have occupied parts of our government, does that not make us socialists?

Or is socialism only when government occupies industry?

 

[surrealworlds]

I'm saying that the FED has government powers, and is ran by private banksters.

I'm saying that we went to war in part to enrich Haliburton and Exxon, because they got their lobbyist into the position of co-president. That is the merging of government and industry.

Operation monarch is the CIA hooking and planting agents among the media, from journalists to editors to management. Again, a merging of industry, and government.

Are these now socialist elements of our country?

If our major industries have occupied parts of our government, does that not make us socialists?

Or is socialism only when government occupies industry?

You answered your own question. Socialism is when government controls industry. We have people and groups trying to control our economy with varying degrees of sucess. That doesnt make our entire economy socialist.

 

[VivaRevolution]

You answered your own question. Socialism is when government controls industry. We have people and groups trying to control our economy with varying degrees of sucess. That doesnt make our entire economy socialist.

Well here is an analogy right leaning posters should enjoy.

Socialism is like autism. It exists on a spectrum.

 

[surrealworlds]

Well here is an analogy right leaning posters should enjoy.

Socialism is like autism. It exists on a spectrum.

That works. To be honest all "forms" of government are merging and changing so the lines do blur. We are all on the spectrum!

 

[Cocrehamster]

Democratic Socialists, the wing of socialism gaining traction, according to their website, want to abolish profit. No profit = no capitalism.

 

[VivaRevolution]

Democratic Socialists, the wing of socialism gaining traction, according to their website, want to abolish profit. No profit = no capitalism.

By this logic, it was a really mean trick Dan Savage played on Rick Santorum.

 

[Madmick]

The thread title says it all. Do you understand the difference between a socialist program like Medicare, or social security, and a socialist economy?

Do you understand that having universal health care, is different then Venezuala, or Cuba's economy?

I ask, because when you conflate the two, you make socialists of us all.

You folks conflating supporting a socialist program, with a socialist economy are the ones turning socialism main stream.

I am not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist.

I don't care what Bernie said. I don't care if he supports socialist programs. That does not make him a socialist.

If you believe in a market economy, you are not a socialist.

Discuss...........

 

[NoDak]

government occupies industry

And creates it, like Silicon Valley.

https://www.ft.com/content/8c0152d2-d0f2-11e2-be7b-00144feab7de

Many of these technologies have their financial roots in government grants, that supported early research into complex concepts, or military contracts, that provided revenues alongside commercial sales of an early product, such as semiconductors. Such products form the technical foundation of modern electronics from radios to phones to computers.

“All of modern high tech has the US Department of Defense to thank at its core, because this is where the money came from to be able to develop a lot of what is driving the technology that we’re using today,” said Leslie Berlin, historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University.

Even the networking backbone that supports the modern global internet was first built by researchers funded by an early iteration the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA provides money from the Department of Defense to develop technologies for military use.

Many technologies used widely today are rooted in DARPA-backed research, from the user interface that powers a Windows laptop to Siri, the voice of the Apple iPhone. Siri was developed out of a project backed by SRI International, a nonprofit research organization with funding from DARPA, which aimed to integrate various aspects of artificial intelligence into a virtual assistant that could learn and evolve without constant follow-up coding.

The SpaceX fanboys are hilarious too, utterly oblivious to how much of an impact public funding and national agencies have played in even getting it off the ground, or how instrumental they'll be in turning those dreams into future reality. Musk has already received well in excess of $5 billion in government funds by now and isn't getting anywhere near Mars exploration nevermind colonization without the NASA arm of JPL for instance - a federally funded R&D center - that has utterly mastered the game of deep space navigation/exploration and are in an entirely different league. They were putting landers on Mars over 40 years ago and have traveled into interstellar space.

 

[ocfightfan]

True.
https://www.investors.com/politics/...-bernie-sanders-to-stop-calling-it-socialist/

The Danes apparently have grown weary of Sen. Bernie Sanders insulting their country. Denmark is not a socialist nation, says its prime minister. It has a "market economy."

 

[D3thr0n3d K1ng]

Hory Zhit, is Trump a secret Marxist?

 

[NoDak]

 

[WTF2008]

The thread title says it all. Do you understand the difference between a socialist program like Medicare, or social security, and a socialist economy?

Do you understand that having universal health care, is different then Venezuala, or Cuba's economy?

I ask, because when you conflate the two, you make socialists of us all.

You folks conflating supporting a socialist program, with a socialist economy are the ones turning socialism main stream.

I am not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist.

I don't care what Bernie said. I don't care if he supports socialist programs. That does not make him a socialist.

If you believe in a market economy, you are not a socialist.

Discuss...........

Wait. I want to talk about this.

You think that socialized health care isn't socialism?

You're out of your mind.

Trump is somehow both a Nazi and a Russian.

Yet, you are pushing socialist ideals. Weird.

 

[ocean size]

This made my day

 

[VivaRevolution]

Wait. I want to talk about this.

You think that socialized health care isn't socialism?

You're out of your mind.

Trump is somehow both a Nazi and a Russian.

Yet, you are pushing socialist ideals. Weird.

Socialist programs are different from a socialist economy.

Do you disagree with this statement?

 

[WTF2008]

Socialist programs are different from a socialist economy.

Do you disagree with this statement?

I don't. I can see the difference. But can only differentiate them based on my own biases.

 

[VivaRevolution]

I don't. I can see the difference. But can only differentiate them based on my own biases.

Bias like Universal Health Care works, and you want it, but only when you turn 65?

 

[WTF2008]

Bias like Universal Health Care works, and you want it, but only when you turn 65?

Bias like I want things like I want them.

Universal health care only kind of works. As was evidenced by that baby that would have died if they didn't bring him over from the UK.

Dead babies or universal health care?