More Wisdom by Paul Buchheit

[KeithE]

These are a few of the ways we would benefit with a social democracy:

1. The Super-Rich Wouldn't Make Our Decisions for Us
2. We Wouldn't Spend So Much Money on Security for Rich People - (I had trouble agreeing with this one)
3. We Wouldn't Give All the Credit for a Tech Product to One Person
4. Public Sentiment Would Prevail Over the Demands of Lobbyists
5. Our Jobs Wouldn't Be Held Hostage in Tax Havens



-------------- An aside------------
Don’t be put off by the word “socialism”. It simply means collective action on a common goal when makes sense to do so. All countries are to a degree “socialistic”.

For example
- DoD, can you imagine an individually conducted defense from Communism or Islamic Militarism?
- DoT, can you imagine Transportation routes built by individual transportation to grandma’s?
- FDA, can you imagine the need to test all our food? or drugs?
- Police, to defend offenses against individuals
- EPA to prevent corporations dumping trash and toxins leading to disease (not to mention trashing God’s creation).
- ........... read

Some anti-examples that do not lend themsleves to efficient collective action:
- purchasing products, some countries have provided rations even in peacetime(e.g. North Korea, Poland, Israel, UK - )
- deciding on careers, some countries assign careers (e.g. China 20 years ago)
- religious freedom, some countries deny this (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iran)
- ....

Some are close calls:
- educate our children, I see value in home schooling but also see value to public education to level the playing field (if in fact it did so).

[William Thornton]

Guess he lost me right off by claiming undue conservative influence on public universities. Yeah, go on most any faculty lounge and swing a dead cat over your head. You'll likely hit ten libs for every con.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

It is true that there are more liberals to conservatives on college campuses. .

I attribute that to those most studied (i.e with PHDs) have from their studies made conclusions that are more often liberal than conservative and

[William Thornton]

Yeah...I'll swing the dead cat...you better get out of the way.

[Tim Bonney]

[ET]

[Sandy]

Venezuela is not really a good example of "bad socialism." Western European socialism is democratic, and in fact, most of its socialist countries are also models of small, decentralized, governments with very evenly distributed powers, a weak executive branch, if there is one at all, with most of their government resources invested in the economic sector. Venezuela is a blend of socialist and capitalist interests into an oligarchy that is a sort of elected dictatorship of the wealthy and business interests.