8 thoughts on “Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism”

  1. I personally support medicare for all: I would like for all Americans to have health care, and I would like to remove that obligation from employers. It would make changing jobs easier, and it would allow employers to offer full time jobs for positions they now only offer as part time, to avoid health insurance costs. It would keep families from going bankrupt from medical costs. It woudl do a lot of great things.
    I also believe that the cost per patient will be reduced when we remove health insurance companies from the picture.
    Many Americans want this, but are tricked out of pushing for it with that scary word that Mises and others equate with some kind of evil black magic: ‘socialism’.
    I feel this word is applied like a club, to keep us from adopting a sensible social program that would benefit our country.

    • I personally support high quality health care availability at a reasonable cost for all.

      “Medicare for All” is not that.

      “Medicare for the Elderly” and its more evil twin “Medicaid for the Poor” are quite frequently the antithesis.

    • Governments always impose quotas when offering health care. ALWAYS.

      Consumers always increase demand when a good is perceived to be free. ALWAYS. That’s why governments have to impose quotas.

      Americans are not tricked out of health care. They don’t want quotas. They want elective surgery. They want a variety of drugs available. They want to choose their own doctors. They want to manage their own health care. They don’t trust bureaucrats to do it, and after the last two years, they never will.

      Anyone remember the immortal wisdom provided by a past president?
      If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
      If you like your plan you can keep your plan.

      So, who was the trickster?

      And we should remember, the best planners of a centrally controlled economy were employed by Gosplan in the old USSR. There were none better.

  2. Von Mises had no concept of the original position (or veil of ignorance) problems. In part, this is because Rawls hadn’t formally formulated them yet, although they certainly were implicit all the way back to Mills. More importantly, it’s because Von Mises came from a privileged original position — Austro-Hungarian nobility. And that’s not to say that converse problems never occur in, say, “radical community organizer” economic rants (some of which are overtly racist and would punish others for their ancestry); it’s only to point out this particular blind spot/prejudgment of merit. We do the ideas no favors by completely neglecting their origins or context, and in particular the post-war disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire (and noble privileges) as backdrop.

    Whenever anyone entirely dismisses an entire established school of political economy as having no redeeming value whatsoever, it’s worth asking cui bono (and, correspondingly, whether there’s an implicit conflict of interest) and, further, whether there’s an idiosyncratic definition being employed. (One can substitute “literary movement” for “school of political economy” equally well…) As Humpty Dumpty said, “By ‘Glory’ I mean a good knock-down battle” — and in this instance, damned few socialists (or social democrats) would recognize Von Mises’s definition of socialism as their own beliefs.

    • One can empathize with why children would want bottomless barrels of candy without believing that bottomless barrels of candy are a good idea.

    • damned few socialists (or social democrats) would recognize Von Mises’s definition of socialism as their own beliefs.

      Observation would show damned few socialists know the definition of their own beliefs.

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