patrick.net

gsr says

There is a big difference in believing that the grass is green on the other side and living on it. Please go live there at least experimentally as a real resident. The average wait time for doctors is 4 months.

And like I said, irrespective of their few centrally planned programs, Germans are FRUGAL in many other respects, unlike the West Coast socialists. Check out down-payment requirements on their mortgages. You have to see why Germany does not have housing bubble while every other neighboring country does.

WTF is the grass is greener on the other side bullshit? I have zero interest in living in germany, france is much more my style. The point was germany was considerably more socialist than the US. It is. Period. No question. There are 2 huge major social programs healthcare and education in germany that US doesn't have. Unions are strong and protected. Unions are represented by law in corporate boards. Down payment requirements and doctors waits have zero relevance to the level of socialism. Where did you get the doctors waits crap from anyway? Want to document that? Look up International Profiles of Health Care Systems 2013. The US has worse waiting times than germany in every category. Germany has 0% waiting 4 months or more for elective surgery, the US has 7%. Don't let facts confuse you.

gsr says

You are disputing the data from Heritage based on your anecdotes. There are many aspects of economic freedom. In some aspects, New Zealand is indeed more free. If you want a detailed balanced view, you can read this. http://www.westga.edu/~bquest/2000/nzealand.html

You give me a detailed balanced view of one of my countries of citizenship based on a 15 year old article by a University of Guatamala professor working for a libertarian think tank in south dakota who spent 2 weeks in NZ? Is this a joke? I like to think almost a decade living, working and doing business in the country would give me just a tiny little bit more in depth knowledge than someone on a 2 week vacation. I could be wrong. This is the idiot who said you could build a house in NZ with no license? No visible poverty? There's no visible poverty anywhere if you stay away from it. He should have taken a night walk in places like south auckland, ruatoria, or kaiti in gisborne, except for the small problem that as a pakeha in a really bad maori neighborhood he wouldn't have survived to write the article. That is not a joke, you can get dead in the maori gang area's really quick. People have been killed walking around with the wrong color bandana for the gang's turf. Even someone with as limited knowledge as your professor agrees with me the heritage.org ranking is wrong. If you had bothered to read far enough you would have come across this sentence "If New Zealand was really the 3rd freest place on earth, then, in my opinion, we would be in truly sad shape. It is interesting that the Heritage index is now used in part to decide who gets USA aid, which makes one wonder how objective results can remain. In my opinion, the Heritage Fountation has the rankings quite wrong"

I'm disputing heritage.org based on things like they state you can start a business in 1 day so NZ is economically free (an assertion repeated ad nauseam by every libertarian blogger on earth) without ever bothering to take 2 minutes to check that this is totally false except for some trivial hobby types of businesses. That makes heritage.org's credibility pretty much shit in my book. My "anecdotal" experiences are the result of personally dealing with the actual laws and regulations on a day to day basis. I know this might be hard to grasp, but those same laws and regulations apply to every single person in the country, not just my "anecdotal" case.

The only place I've found the NZ is more economically free is lawsuits. Almost everything is done with mediation. There are no lawsuits for accidents. The public medical system takes care of injuries and the accident compensation commission (ACC) takes care of lost wages for all accidents. The concept of suing someone because you got hurt just doesn't exist. There are very few lawyers in NZ. They do business transactions, wills, trusts, divorces criminal,etc.. The general feeling is if you busted your ass then you should have known better. So there is no problem setting up businesses that would have prohibative (like the insurance company saying NO WAY) insurance costs anywhere else. Like the free fall off the sky tower in downtown auckland. Insurance is quite cheap and isn't even required for auto or business, but there would be a mandatory ACC levy. You would be a fool not to have insurance of some kind, but it's not required. Playgrounds in NZ would terrify the average american parent.

I bet a lot of problems will start to be addressed when next generation that doesn't have benefits starts to retire.

Strategist says

The more a country practices capitalism and democracy, the greater will be it's economic success.

Is there any socialist or communist country that could have produced one of these?

P N Dr Lo R says

Is there any socialist or communist country that could have produced one of these?

Is there anyone arguing in favor of socialism? I think the point is that completely free, unregulated capitalism is bad too. Both ends of the spectrum are not ideal, so implying that the more capitalistic a country is the better, is incorrect.

Even Hong Kong has some socialism, as well as Singapore. It would be impossible for people to function in those places without heavy government subsidy and involvement in Housing, just for starters.

I'm pretty darn sure everything will get a whole lot worse first before it gets any better. Politicians aren't really solving problems, they are just growing their own pocket books. Selling us off to China, cost of living have been going up, benefits down... not a good recipe.

tatupu70 says

Is there anyone arguing in favor of socialism? I think the point is that completely free, unregulated capitalism is bad too. Both ends of the spectrum are not ideal, so implying that the more capitalistic a country is the better, is incorrect.

thunderlips11 says

Even Hong Kong has some socialism, as well as Singapore. It would be impossible for people to function in those places without heavy government subsidy and involvement in Housing, just for starters.

No society can have 100% of either socialism or capitalism. Someone has to feed the orphans, and someone has to create the wealth.
The right balance to create wealth, and provide a minimum standard of living is absolutely necessary. Where to draw that line is the question.

tatupu70 says

Is there anyone arguing in favor of socialism?

Anyone who says the military should be funded is arguing in favor of socialism. As is anyone who likes Social Security, the most popular policy in the United States.

Oh, and there is Jesus Christ, the mother of all socialists.

Dan8267 says

tatupu70 says

2015 Jul 25, 12:00am
Is there anyone arguing in favor of socialism?

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahwhoooohoooohooohooohooohooohooo

Only a top tier Democratic Nominee - both in 2016 AND in 2020!

www.youtube.com/embed/QThknQs-gIc

(and most of the rest are calling for UBI, Open Borders, and Nationalized Health Care)

Is taking care of orphans socialism?

bob2356 says

Capitalism is defined as when trade, industries, and the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned.

Close, very close; one word change would illustrate the difference between Capitalism vs. Socialism/Slavery much more clearly: "privately owned" => "Competitively Owned." An absolute monarch or an all-powerful dictator "privately owns" the entire country but that is not Capitalism. The Kim family and the Castro family have de facto private ownership (but not "Competitive Ownership") of their respective countries, despite their "Socialism" labels. Competitive Ownership (and letting the public make choices individually instead collectively, and letting the individuals bear the result/fruit of their own choices) is what makes Capitalism work.

Dan8267 says

Anyone who says the military should be funded is arguing in favor of socialism. As is anyone who likes Social Security, the most popular policy in the United States.

Oh, and there is Jesus Christ, the mother of all socialists.

First of all, Dan, aren't you supposed to be an atheist? God/gods (and including Jesus Christ) in religions can theoretically be successful central planners because the thesis is usually/always based on the axiom that God/gods (and including Jesus Christ) is/are all-knowing (Omniscient). When we can find someone who is Omniscient (and Omnipotent), I'd gladly embrace socialism managed by him; however, as far as we know, all living human beings make mistakes, so socialism (i.e. central planning monopoly) will always fail miserably after a while. Socialistic central planning can seem to work for a short time period (lasting a few years to 2-3 decades) in a backwards country precisely because their central planning agent already has the template of more advanced economies laid out in front of them. That's precisely why Japan could develop rapidly in the 1950's through 1970's, and China from 1970's to early 2000's, by making goods and services according to American consumer demands (the out-sourcing corporations translating those consumer demands to feasible work-orders). As soon as they have mostly caught up technologically (in hardware), they lost their ways and wasted their accumulated capital on capital destruction such as extreme luxury cars and real estate speculation.

Military, in the absence of breakthrough technology, faces the N-squared law (which drastically penalizes individualism). What fundamentally transpires in military action is not socialism as you think of it, but slavery: to the subjugated first and ultimately also to the population that furnishes the all-conquering military in the long run (as the manager/owner of such a military would have no use for its domestic population when it can enslave foreign populations for higher profit). However, given human nature bowing to that which is more powerful, not having a military powerful enough to defend oneself (and beat down rising threat overseas if one is already in a dominant position) would be suicidal! The post-WWII condition of one country having the most powerful military at least theoretically embracing the ideals of liberty and individual self-ownership, and incurring huge domestic political cost when waging wars overseas, is about as good as it has ever been for humanity. The usual condition in human history was a country that could not internally feed itself (due to despotism) fanning out and looting and destroying all the wealthier neighbors that had manged to find a workable economic system (getting rich, but facing demographic programs due to girls raised in wealth tend to be more reluctant to reproduce, and boys raised in wealth tend to avoid fighting).

Reality says

Competitive Ownership (and letting the public make choices individually instead collectively, and letting the individuals bear the result/fruit of their own choices) is what makes Capitalism work.

Bingo bango

theoakman says

Is taking care of orphans socialism?

Private charities competing against each other to get funds from individual third-party donors is not socialism.

Socialist "orphanages" funded by governments all over the world may well be engaged in the business of harvesting organs and tissue from lost children and adults. Many refugee agencies in Europe funded by governments and NGO's most likely do (may well be the real reason behind the promotion of the refugee waves). Planned Parenthood getting government funding and NGO funding also do the harvesting.

Just because someone works for a "non-profit" or even the government doesn't mean he/she stops being selfish or stop having self-interest or even stop having ever-growing greed. It's only consumer choice switching to some other vendor that can keep greed in check. That requires Decentralization and Competitive Ownership, not centralized government-sponsored agencies monopolizing aspects of the economy.