A big issue I have with certain forms of socialism

If you are born with a disability or condition, become injured in sport or war or develop something in old age through no fault of your own whilst being a productive, healthy member of society, I completely understand socialised healthcare for such people if they have paid into it.

However, I find something immoral about the idea of someone who has put a lot of money into exercise equipment/gym and healthy food, and time into exercising and preparing healthy meals, to then have to pay for the surgery of someone in their 40s who has just had heart failure as a direct result of going to mcdonalds every day and their only exercise being a couple minute walk to the cinema. Money that he could have put into the healthier man's children, or his hobbies, or into a business.

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Keraunos · 36-40, M

This is rather like saying there's something immoral about the idea of someone who has put a lot of money into buying and meticulously maintaining an off-road-ready SUV to then have to pay for the regular upkeep of paved roads in his area.

The argument is sensible enough on its face, but unfortunately, different values and modes of reasoning are ultimately required for organizing individual and societal life. The most radical arch-capitalists tend to conceptually treat society as though it is simply an aggregate of individuals who have little to do with one another aside from moving money among themselves, while the most radical arch-socialists tend to conceptually treat individual people as little more than component cells in a containing society, for the sake of which they exist.

In this case, whatever indignation may arise from seeing the tutelary consequences of a life poorly lived subverted at taxpayer expense, a bloated and labyrinthine bureaucracy surrounding socialized healthcare which determines who is eligible for what services and why will ultimately produce worse results, and the inevitable cases in which people who have fallen into unpreventable health problems through no fault of their own are denied treatment and left to die on some technicality will produce far greater indignation for anyone who values people more than money.

Who is "taking" from who at the societal level proves to be partially subjective anyway, and one can frame things in nearly anyway they please depending on what is accepted as axiomatic to the socioeconomic arrangement and what is considered not-set-in-stone. For example, in the United States, where I live — is it the middle-aged fast-food grazer himself who has taken your tax money? Is it the Department of Health and Human Services, which has spectacularly neglected some fairly basic public health PR work — of the kind done in Finland, for example, where a two-decade PR campaign about the health hazards of excessive salt consumption was waged, leading to decreased overall national medical costs, lower average blood pressure among its citizens, reduction of strokes and heart disease by 80%, and an improvement on average life expectancy by nearly six years? Is it corporate lobbyists such as the Chamber of Commerce, who have managed to reduce the total corporate contribution to the U.S. tax pool from 23% to 7% over the last five decades, thus thrusting more of the financial burden of maintaining this person's onto individual taxpayers? Is it pharmaceutical lobbyists who have managed to raise the cost of this individual's treatment far beyond what is necessary to turn a good profit or what could be charged in other countries? Or is the U.S. Congress itself which goes about the business of implementing the agendas of these lobbyists — who are after all only rationally pursuing their own self-interest — at the expense of their constituents?

A creative enough person could distribute conceptual emphasis in such a way as to make a persuasive firebrand's argument for any of those and more being ultimately "to blame". A more important question might be: would socialized healthcare be less objectionable at the margins if it was implemented alongside serious plans to resolve the problems alluded to in the previous paragraph?

pianoplayingsteve · 31-35, M

@Keraunos I'm going to sound blunt (partly because it's getting late) but "public health PR work — of the kind done in Finland". it is not rocket science. I doubt there is any literate person past the age of 10 that does not know that fresh vegetables, real meat, water, fruit etc and decent exercise are needed to be healthy. And that Mcdonalds, energy drinks and biscuits are bad for your health. Does anybody ever think "ooh I put on a bit of weight, it must be the lettuce/running"? I dont think awareness is an issue at all. I think the issue is people caring enough in a world where we can just walk to the supermarket and get all the food we can eat, do a desk job that doesn't require a 100% healthy body, and plenty of people who pretend that being obese is fine.

I dont think the SUV analogy quite fits. Imagine there was socialised fuel, but rather than measure each person's share by litres of fuel, it was just however much it took to fill your car, and you get refills as soon as the fuel is over. Now imagine some people decided to drive in the most fuel inefficient way possible, and then still demand the same share as the more careful drivers.

" Is it corporate lobbyists such as the Chamber of Commerce, who have managed to reduce the total corporate contribution to the U.S. tax pool from 23% to 7%" That's only because when you tax someone who makes their money producing a product or service they will cover that tax by upping their price.

To me, it is not so much an issue of who specifically took that money, more that the money was taken against that person's consent. If said person does not agree to have a certain portion of his labour seized, he will be physically forced into a small cell for an extended time. Yet this person has not infringed on the safety or property of any other person. And socialism and government is just an idea, government does not actually produce anything. It takes from the labour and property of individuals. Individuals require their own labour and property to be able to contribute to society. The less they have, the less they can contribute. Eventually it collapses, I believe. Everything becomes expensive to cover the cost funding the different services, covering the records of all the taxes, all the regulations, and the tax gatherings. The productive then become less independent and then require more social services, which require more taxes and after a while everyone gets dragged down to the same low level.

And even that aside, the attitude I get when I talk to socialists. The attitude is always "I dont understand money, i cant be bothered to, and I dont want to take risks so ill get the government to do money things for me. But that also means they have to do the money things for other people who might want to learn how to manage their own money". And this subcontracting of their thinking quickly moves to other areas.There are so many socialists I know where you can't really have an interesting conversation about anything. And I mean anything. Any kind of thought about some science idea? "leave it to the experts", any thought on films? "leave it to the experts", everything just becomes a contracting of all thoughts to some authority. In every thing. Literally all you can discuss is "the weather is nice, I enjoyed that burger" or things directly related to their job. I swear some socialists dont even think through what you've told me, they are just socialists because they want someone else to do their thinking.