logic_man
Registered: Oct 2010
Posts: 1489 |
07-31-12 12:54 AM
Quote from failed_trad3r:
No, still 99% of voters for for either socialist party in the USA. 99% of Americans are socialists still.
Can we distinguish between legitimate "public goods" and "socialism" for the purposes of discussion? There are a lot of people who want the government to function in its proper role of providing public goods, of which there is a specific definition (military and police being one of the most obvious and least contentious). One of the problems of dealing with socialists (hardcore or softcore) is that they want to turn everything under the sun into a public good, even when it doesn't meet the definition. Thus, they will say that medical care is a public good, even though it clearly is not, except insofar as it relates to communicable disease, where the government should definitely play a role in quarantining diseased individuals. That's it, though.
Or they will call things "market failures" as a justification for turning over control of that aspect of society to the government when there really is no market failure or market failure was caused by government interference to begin with, so granting the government additional powers compounds the issue.
Calling everything "socialism" is unhelpful, though, and is part of the general trend toward sloppiness and imprecision in language.
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