EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

mobby_6kl posted:

Socialist/communist countries don't have a particularly great track record in terms of sustainable development either because ultimately everyone still expects improving living conditions and a comfortable retirement etc. IMO it'd be easier to just reduce environmental impact via regulation and market mechanisms if people actually cared.

The basic tenet of capitalism is that you can put a price on anything, which is completely incompatible with society saying "But not our future". A sustainable economy will simply have too many "Can't let you buy that, Jeff" rules for capitalists to abide. Either they'd subvert those restraints, as we've seen the last handfull of decades, or the system would transition into something else. Capitalists would basically cease to serve a (dys)function in society if you shackle them enough, like monarchs before them, their authority replaced by more democratically sourced power. (Or "democratically" in some cases.)

In any case, you can still have both a market and a profit motive under socialism, it'd just be regulated into being essentially a junior part of the economy. There'd be the main economy, ensuring basic needs are covered for all, and whatever resources are left over when taking into account the ecosystem would then be available to a regulated socialist market economy. Note that improving living conditions and comfortable retirement are both possible here. I mean, the West would take a hit in terms of useless consumption on the average, but improvements would be possible from the new baseline. Plus a lot of the West would probably be better off emotionally if a minimum standard of living with no obligations was established. A decent chunk materially too, especially the younger generations who increasingly assume retirement will not be a thing when they're old anyway.

That's basically where you need to be anyway in terms of regulations, especially if you want the system to endure. It'd be much easier to convince the societies growing (temporarily) richer that we need to put a break on things if the societies that have hosed up the most are willing to accept parity with those they've looked down on for so long.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 18:46

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 07:38

bagual: Oct 29, 2010; _{_{inconspicuous}}

god you first world leftists are too loving wordy, no wonder you always lose, I can't wait to get my german citizenship sign up for die linke and gently caress poo poo up

re: western living standards, western living standards only are what they are because "the west" subjugated the entire world by military force and stole the resources that allowed them to build their wealth in the 20th century, and capitalism is predicated on this massive transfer of wealth continuing ad infinitum. Under real capitalism aka pax americana the rest of the world will never reach western living standards because the west will continue to coup cajole and destroy third world countries for their poo poo

what can a socialist country do to ameliorate the climate situation? rationally plan society around the many solutions we already have available, like universal grey water reclamation, distributing food that would otherwise be discarded for pricing reasons so as to need less land for agriculture, rationing meat, universal low emission public transit, more efficient city planning that where the state actually tears down the old inefficient configuration, moving people around so as to reduce pressure on environments that are near collapse, subsidizing the rural poor to let their land grow back into natural states when society's food needs are met, universal work from home for jobs that allow it to save transportation, transitioning into agroforestry/permaculture instead of recycling the 70's green revolution forever as soils decay into oblivion... a lot of stuff, and with free education for all who knows what a next generation free from wage slavery could come up with

now the thing is, couldn't social democracy achieve the same without societal upheaval? no.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 18:47

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Owling Howl posted:

Ok but this is where it would be useful to get more specific. If by socialism you mean market socialism with worker owned corporations and profit sharing then the profit motive remains exactly the same and there's no reason to think the environment won't still be a secondary concern.

Yes. However I posit that, for example, a worker-owned factory is less likely to decide to outsource to a factory in a country with less stringent environmental regulations. The capacity to concentrate enough wealth to push tailor-made legislation by buying MPs will also be less of a problem.

mobby_6kl posted:

Socialist/communist countries don't have a particularly great track record in terms of sustainable development either because ultimately everyone still expects improving living conditions and a comfortable retirement etc.

Also they were in a competition with capitalist countries for which one would industrialize the fastest, so the priority was put on productivism.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 18:51

goethe42: Jun 5, 2004; Ich sei, gewaehrt mir die Bitte, in eurem Bunde der Dritte!

A Buttery Pastry posted:

The basic tenet of capitalism is that you can put a price on anything, which is completely incompatible with society saying "But not our future". A sustainable economy will simply have too many "Can't let you buy that, Jeff" rules for capitalists to abide. Either they'd subvert those restraints, as we've seen the last handfull of decades, or the system would transition into something else. Capitalists would basically cease to serve a (dys)function in society if you shackle them enough, like monarchs before them, their authority replaced by more democratically sourced power. (Or "democratically" in some cases.)

In any case, you can still have both a market and a profit motive under socialism, it'd just be regulated into being essentially a junior part of the economy. There'd be the main economy, ensuring basic needs are covered for all, and whatever resources are left over when taking into account the ecosystem would then be available to a regulated socialist market economy. Note that improving living conditions and comfortable retirement are both possible here. I mean, the West would take a hit in terms of useless consumption on the average, but improvements would be possible from the new baseline. Plus a lot of the West would probably be better off emotionally if a minimum standard of living with no obligations was established. A decent chunk materially too, especially the younger generations who increasingly assume retirement will not be a thing when they're old anyway.

That's basically where you need to be anyway in terms of regulations, especially if you want the system to endure. It'd be much easier to convince the societies growing (temporarily) richer that we need to put a break on things if the societies that have hosed up the most are willing to accept parity with those they've looked down on for so long.

Thank you for the first real answer to what a socialist world could look like. That's the kind of vision you can use to convince people. And even if some of the most vocal posters in this thread see that beneath themselves, convincing people, getting a majority behind you is a prerequisite for a revolution. At least if you want to do more than just go around and murder people you don't like, like the RAF. It's the only way to minimize bloodshed and avoid a follow up autocratic regime. But then, if you have a majority, you don't need a revolution.
Btw., has there been any socialist revolution in a working democracy? Russia was a monarchy, Cuba a dictatorship, China occupied by Japan, the former Warsaw Pact came out of German occupation and/or a fascist regime (although there it also wasn't a revolution but Soviet imperialism that brought socialism).

# ? Sep 6, 2020 20:56

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

NihilCredo posted:

Just so we're clear, this is what you refer to as a serious attempt at describing a socialist society?

Yes, do you have any problems with that?

# ? Sep 6, 2020 20:57

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

there is no guarantee that we will manage to avert disaster under socialism. there is only a guarantee that we will *not* avert disaster under capitalism, for reasons i've gone into earlier itt

# ? Sep 6, 2020 20:59

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Libluini posted:

Yes, do you have any problems with that?

It seems a little bit half baked.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 21:01

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

suck my woke dick posted:

It seems a little bit half baked.

as it will necessarily be since a comedy forum is not an appropriate venue for political manifestos

# ? Sep 6, 2020 21:06

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

And I came up with this poo poo when I was like 16, so it would be more surprising if it wasn't half-baked. It's a map to a better society than our current system of eating ourselves until mankind is extinct, though.

If I had the time, I'd be reworking my manifesto of course. But alas, my boss would probably demand I work instead of rebuilding society and my free time is suffering under the burden of too many hobbies already, to the point where I'm sometimes running at 3-4 hours of sleep.

But if I'm ever getting rich enough to stop working, or if I enter politics, you'll be the first to know when I start changing society for the better!

# ? Sep 6, 2020 21:15

steinrokkan: Apr 2, 2011; Soiled Meat

bagual posted:

god you first world leftists are too loving wordy, no wonder you always lose, I can't wait to get my german citizenship sign up for die linke and gently caress poo poo up

I hope your idea of loving poo poo up mostly consists of attending anti-immigrant rallies.

Also I'm sure the anti-Western party of alienated East German workers will be keen to welcome an American expat with open arms.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 21:26

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Cat Mattress posted:

I posit that, for example, a worker-owned factory is less likely to decide to outsource to a factory in a country with more stringent environmental regulations.

True

nimby posted:

I live in Belgium where healthcare is mostly socialized. My wife has a form of type 1 diabetes and when she goes to the doctor for an issue relating to diabetes it's free of charge.

If we lived in a capitalist society such as the USA we'd either be bankrupting ourselves to keep her alive and healthy or we'd be beholden to our employers as they dangle the unspoken threat of removal of employment-sponsored healthcare insurance.

In the current covid crisis the state had lowered the bar for temporary furloughs so as to keep the population from killing itself through going to crowded workplaces back in March/April/May. Lots of people weren't fired so they could go back to their still-existing jobs after the first wave was mostly over.

Under pressure from the economy and the capitalist system people went back to work and more measures were eased (some with the consent of the advising virologists, some not) which resulted in a second wave that's not really clearing up right now.

Under a strictly socialist system more people could've remained at home without the fear of losing their job and starving. Under an authoritarian socialist system we could've violated people's liberties and quashed the virus when it became clear it was a pandemic like China had done. This would have been a terrible thing from a humanitarian viewpoint, but the current situation is imo equally terrible.

We can't really tell how a democratic socialist society (ie a democracy divorced from capitalism) would act in the current Western world because there are none and realistically never have been. It's also impossible for me to theorize how such a society would look like as I'm not educated enough to do so. I'm just a dude on the internet, not a political theorist. I do know that under the current system we're letting people be homeless, letting people starve and letting sick people die by the hundreds of thousands.

This is the EU thread, we're all living in some form of social democracy with free healthcare.

Isn't the "authoritarian" part doing all the work here? Welfare and healthcare you already get in the social democracies of Europe. The stuff you don't get here is curtailing a pandemic via extreme state force.

The "state owns the means of production" thing seems to not really be doing much work in your post. As far as stuff you won't get in, say, Norway or the UK goes, it's really just the authoritarian rule.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 22:15

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

V. Illych L. posted:

there is no guarantee that we will manage to avert disaster under socialism. there is only a guarantee that we will *not* avert disaster under capitalism, for reasons i've gone into earlier itt

I think you're actually trying to make socialism look really poo poo ..?

Let me just pitch laissez-faire capitalism and make it sound much more appealing: "in the future, Elon Musk will invent a magic space battery that will stop climate change and make iPhones run forever, if only we remove all regulations from billionaire-owned companies". I think this sounds more realistic than the masses being convinced to revolt for your bleak .01% chance of survival dystopia.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 22:18

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

Cingulate posted:

I think you're actually trying to make socialism look really poo poo ..?

Let me just pitch laissez-faire capitalism and make it sound much more appealing: "in the future, Elon Musk will invent a magic space battery that will stop climate change and make iPhones run forever, if only we remove all regulations from billionaire-owned companies". I think this sounds more realistic than the masses being convinced to revolt for your bleak .01% chance of survival dystopia.

you would, since you're an adherent of magical thinking

# ? Sep 6, 2020 22:20

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

like the only objection i got to my model of why capitalism is incompatible with averting disaster was smwd saying that we could get a corporate-fascist coup regime which could conceivably avoid ecocide which i can accept but don't really see as something i'd need to argue against as such

# ? Sep 6, 2020 22:24

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

V. Illych L. posted:

like the only objection i got to my model of why capitalism is incompatible with averting disaster was smwd saying that we could get a corporate-fascist coup regime which could conceivably avoid ecocide which i can accept but don't really see as something i'd need to argue against as such

Because your vague, incoherent pseudo-philosphical laments about the ~nature of the economy~ is not adding anything to the discussion and is clearly contradicted by observable reality. The private sector does reduce efficiency and increase sustainability all the time, when forced to through legislatives means. There are examples of highly developed mixed market economies that did not experience meaningful growth for decades and still chug along fine. There are examples of wealth inequality decreasing in mixed market economies. There are examples of the public sector growing in mixed market econmies. No autocratic command economy was ever free of a private sector(there are estimates that up to 20 % of the Soviet economy were operating through the private sector at times, mainly in the form of black markets. That's roughly in the same ballpark as in Sweden in the 90s, an evil democratic "capitalist" country)

# ? Sep 6, 2020 23:02

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

goethe42 posted:

Btw., has there been any socialist revolution in a working democracy?

Chile. 9/11 never forget.

# ? Sep 6, 2020 23:32

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

GABA ghoul posted:

Because your vague, incoherent pseudo-philosphical laments about the ~nature of the economy~ is not adding anything to the discussion and is clearly contradicted by observable reality. The private sector does reduce efficiency and increase sustainability all the time, when forced to through legislatives means.

the only emissions drop that's even remotely large enough to save us in the last 40 years came from the corona shutdowns. corona shutdowns have been mostly cancelled now because ~are economies~ though

GABA ghoul posted:

There are examples of highly developed mixed market economies that did not experience meaningful growth for decades and still chug along fine.

and they are universally painted as complete failures. see: "lost decades"

# ? Sep 6, 2020 23:43

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

GABA ghoul posted:

The private sector does reduce efficiency and increase sustainability all the time, when forced to through legislatives means.

Not enough though. Peak per capita oil consumption happened in like the mid 70's, but it should have been nearing zero two decades later, rather than esssentially being flat since then. Even worse, it's partially due to coal and gas picking up the slack.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 05:31

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

GABA ghoul posted:

Because your vague, incoherent pseudo-philosphical laments about the ~nature of the economy~ is not adding anything to the discussion and is clearly contradicted by observable reality. The private sector does reduce efficiency and increase sustainability all the time, when forced to through legislatives means. There are examples of highly developed mixed market economies that did not experience meaningful growth for decades and still chug along fine. There are examples of wealth inequality decreasing in mixed market economies. There are examples of the public sector growing in mixed market econmies. No autocratic command economy was ever free of a private sector(there are estimates that up to 20 % of the Soviet economy were operating through the private sector at times, mainly in the form of black markets. That's roughly in the same ballpark as in Sweden in the 90s, an evil democratic "capitalist" country)

no, the drive towards consolidation is pretty uncontroversial. even if you don't follow marx's argument about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, this specific tendency is both theoretically present in neoclassical economics and has been observed, e.g. by piketty. simply looking into stock market trends demonstrates the relative advantage of big players in the late capitalist economy

where i diverge from bourgeois economists is that i don't see how we're going to mobilise politically to break up the major companies without basically a revolutionary situation. more to the point, the drive towards consolidation means that capital is forced into investments which are not merely profitable, but *optimally* profitable, and which combined with our ever-lowering cost of shifting goods and money around means that a country which attempts to seriously regulate its mobile businesses will quickly face capital flight as everyone goes elsewhere, viz OD's note about worker-owned facilities not being likely to flee. we can see this today in my own country, where the (still quite strong) unions haven't negotiated a real terms wage increase for about a decade, and the government has chosen to inflate costs down rather than commit to an active industrial policy which isn't just chucking cash at the big companies

individual countries surviving in stagnant states isn't really a counterpoint to this, because the perspective isn't that of the nation, it's that of capital. since emissions are global, the problem cannot be solved by modelling any single country - not least because a part of the problem is the immense and cheap mobility of capital, as noted earlier

you absolutely cannot demand someone justify their position on this stuff without making some basically philosophical statements on the nature of the economy, because that nature is precisely what the argument is about. unfortunately, statements about the economy factor into a discussion about the economic structure of capitalism and the need to abolish it

V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Sep 7, 2020

# ? Sep 7, 2020 07:55

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Cingulate posted:

True

Cute edit. Because that happens all the time under capitalism. Every day there's news about factories in Bangladesh closing to be relocated in Switzerland. There's just something about more stringent regulations that appeal to capitalists so they go for it all the time.

You disingenuous piece of poo poo.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 08:12

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

i would like to specify that i do see old-school social democracy as a genuinely socialist project, but that ideology doesn't exist anymore and their achievements are being reversed at an alarming rate

# ? Sep 7, 2020 08:17

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

Truga posted:

and they are universally painted as complete failures. see: "lost decades"

hoooooo boy do I have bad news for you about what they will call the decade where living standards dropped by half, a banana or a steak costed a tenth of a monthly wage and the government put grandma and grandpa into concentration camps for counter-revolutionary activities/protesting

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Not enough though. Peak per capita oil consumption happened in like the mid 70's, but it should have been nearing zero two decades later, rather than esssentially being flat since then. Even worse, it's partially due to coal and gas picking up the slack.

Agreed. This still doesn't make total ecological collapse certain under mixed markets, nor does it mean that a violent revolution will bring a better outcome. Ffs, this thread failed to correctly predict the corona emission slump even one year into the future and you are gonna tell me you know what human society and economy will look like in 30 or even 80 years with certainty?

V. Illych L. posted:

no, the drive towards consolidation is pretty uncontroversial. even if you don't follow marx's argument about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, this specific tendency is both theoretically present in neoclassical economics and has been observed, e.g. by piketty. simply looking into stock market trends demonstrates the relative advantage of big players in the late capitalist economy

where i diverge from bourgeois economists is that i don't see how we're going to mobilise politically to break up the major companies without basically a revolutionary situation. more to the point, the drive towards consolidation means that capital is forced into investments which are not merely profitable, but *optimally* profitable, and which combined with our ever-lowering cost of shifting goods and money around means that a country which attempts to seriously regulate its mobile businesses will quickly face capital flight as everyone goes elsewhere, viz OD's note about worker-owned facilities not being likely to flee. we can see this today in my own country, where the (still quite strong) unions haven't negotiated a real terms wage increase for about a decade, and the government has chosen to inflate costs down rather than commit to an active industrial policy which isn't just chucking cash at the big companies

individual countries surviving in stagnant states isn't really a counterpoint to this, because the perspective isn't that of the nation, it's that of capital. since emissions are global, the problem cannot be solved by modelling any single country - not least because a part of the problem is the immense and cheap mobility of capital, as noted earlier

you absolutely cannot demand someone justify their position on this stuff without making some basically philosophical statements on the nature of the economy, because that nature is precisely what the argument is about. unfortunately, statements about the economy factor into a discussion about the economic structure of capitalism and the need to abolish it

Again, all of this is contradicted by basic observable reality.

The trend toward more globalisation has reversed in the west.

States and legislation can and do move toward more oversight and regulations.

Manufacturing jobs do not return no matter how much state intervention happens because the majority of job losses were due to automation, not outsourcing.

Business are heavily regulated in most of europe, compared to the us, and cost of business is much higher do to environmental and social standards and the european economies still exist.

And any kind of violent revolution that is not global will lead to massive flight of educated and qualified workers from the affected areas, absolutely annihalting the local economies. This ain't the 19th century anymore. Everything of value needs some kind of white collar desk jockey with at least one uni degree to run.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 17:48

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

total ecological collapse is a forgone conclusion at this point, the question is what we'll do to survive it

the current neoliberal order seems to be enforcing the status quo until it's too late to do anything since everyone in power will be dead by the time it matters

GABA ghoul posted:

hoooooo boy do I have bad news for you about what they will call the decade where living standards dropped by half, a banana or a steak costed a tenth of a monthly wage and the government put grandma and grandpa into concentration camps for counter-revolutionary activities/protesting

yeah, also complete failures. therein lies the problem, op

# ? Sep 7, 2020 17:55

oliwan: Jul 20, 2005; by Nyc_Tattoo

my secret tip for a happy life: don't have kids. this way you also don't burden your kids with having to fight in the upcoming climate wars.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 17:59

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

Truga posted:

total ecological collapse is a forgone conclusion at this point, the question is what we'll do to survive it

the current neoliberal order seems to be enforcing the status quo until it's too late to do anything since everyone in power will be dead by the time it matters

Restating the central dogma of your religious belief to soothe yourself?

# ? Sep 7, 2020 18:12

nimby: Nov 4, 2009; The pinnacle of cloud computing.

Cingulate posted:

This is the EU thread, we're all living in some form of social democracy with free healthcare.

Isn't the "authoritarian" part doing all the work here? Welfare and healthcare you already get in the social democracies of Europe. The stuff you don't get here is curtailing a pandemic via extreme state force.

The "state owns the means of production" thing seems to not really be doing much work in your post. As far as stuff you won't get in, say, Norway or the UK goes, it's really just the authoritarian rule.

While we are living in states with mostly free healthcare, there's enough pressure from more capitalist ideologists to curtail that. There needs to be socialist push-back just to maintain the status quo and it's failing.

A lot of the current measures are socialist in nature. The governments are/were subsidizing people to stay home and not be productive, while paying for their healthcare. That's a socialist system already working. The problem will be in a year or two when the markets start to forget why the currently incurred debts were so necessary and start charging higher interest fees, forcing nations to cut back on social spending. A capitalist society that continuously needs more socialist measures to keep itself upright is eventually going to collapse and take a lot of people with it, whether through cataclysm or fascism.

In my personal opinion, a more socialist state would be more authoritarian by nature. Because you'll need to be taking away some control people have for the benefit of the region/state/environment. If everyone could do what they want, you'll end up in a situation where some people's excess are spoiling the efforts of everyone. You can already see this happening today with facemasks. A group of people will inconvenience themselves for the greater good, another group will do it because it's mandatory and a group will rebel and not wear them (or wear them wrong) out of spite.

An alternative could be a massive (re-)education campaign to make people be more environmentally conscious, but putting people in camps like that is going to be the absolute worst option and lead to untold tragedies.

I'm not in favour of violent revolution, but I am a bit scared for the future while I'm seeing the right/far-right making gains like they have been. Cutbacks on social spending has been happening for years now and all the blame for the problems people face is being foisted on foreigners or on the state itself, eroding support for democracy. I very much hope that a leftist resurgence is possible and coming relatively soon to help everyone instead of just the rich.

(again, I'm not a great political thinker, just a dude on the internet, so there's definitely going to be holes in my arguments and I've probably used logical fallacies without realizing it)

# ? Sep 7, 2020 18:26

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

nimby posted:

In my personal opinion, a more socialist state would be more authoritarian by nature. Because you'll need to be taking away some control people have for the benefit of the region/state/environment.

A large part of the control being taken away is control over other people through employer-employee relationships though. Or landlord-renter relatiobships. Both of which are enforced by the state. The only difference is in whose service that authority is wielded.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 18:38

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

GABA ghoul posted:

Restating the central dogma of your religious belief to soothe yourself?

no, i'm just reading the news. i'm sorry you had to find out this way.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 19:03

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

nimby posted:

While we are living in states with mostly free healthcare, there's enough pressure from more capitalist ideologists to curtail that. There needs to be socialist push-back just to maintain the status quo and it's failing.

again, this is just not true. it feels like something that MUST be true according to your dogmatic beliefs, but it's. not. loving. true. you can't argue with basic reality.

Here is public spending on healthcare for a couple selected developed nations.they all had massive increases since 1990. (there were probably exceptions in europe and around the world, but on average, there was a massive increase)

# ? Sep 7, 2020 19:04

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Or we could give regular people actual power over their own lives for possibly the first time in recorded history.

Lol public spending on healthcare increases due to so many capitalist reasons. Let�s list a few:
Patents on medicine being privately owned
Increased privatization either in direct healthcare or health insurance, introducing a profit motive and thus incentive to increase spending for the sake of it where previously there was none
Private pharma companies recognizing they stand to make more money treating a lifelong disease rather than curing it outright and thus directing research in this direction
Regulatory capture by same companies preventing the state from using its negotiating power to lower prices from medicine to medical equipment

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Sep 7, 2020

# ? Sep 7, 2020 19:04

mortons stork: Oct 13, 2012

A more accurate measure would be infrastructural measures. N. hospital beds, how many hospitals, polyclinics, local surgeries etc. italy, for instance, despite nominally increasing healthcare expenditure has witnessed a steep decline in all those metrics. My very own hometown went from about 5 in hospitals, polyclinis and so on to one consolidated structure in the city and another one 30km away, with one very cramped and resource-starved ER and the bare minimum of hospital beds. Also, nominal increases in expenditure don't say much about possible investment cuts, as again, resources could've been taken out of the planned increases to ensure expenditure just about keeps pace with inflation, but does not allow for expansion. This is also another thing that has happened in Italy.

e: this is important, as ageing populations naturally imply greater health expenditure. the question is: has the services overall expanded or is it being stretched

Just from the graph posted above, the UK NHS is being deliberately starved of resources, having reached just about the lowest per capita hspital beds in europe by the start of the covid crisis iirc, so already we know that the number doesn't tell the whole story.

e: and again, expenditure does not mean coverage or effectiveness, as the usa very helpfully exemplifies for the whole world with its insane per capita expenditure and worse outcomes than just about any other developed nation

mortons stork fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Sep 7, 2020

# ? Sep 7, 2020 19:30

nimby: Nov 4, 2009; The pinnacle of cloud computing.

GABA ghoul posted:

again, this is just not true. it feels like something that MUST be true according to your dogmatic beliefs, but it's. not. loving. true. you can't argue with basic reality.

Spending has increased because the costs have risen for a multitude of reasons, among which there is an increase in healthcare prices, an increase in remedies for long-term ailments and a growing elderly population.

What hasn't increased is the actual care people get. Ask nurses if they've got enough time to actually care for people instead of just doing the minimum to keep people alive before their time allotted for that room is up. Ask doctors if they enjoy 24 hour shifts with another 24 hours of stand-by. Belgium had a lot of nursing home residents die in the spring due to lacking covid preparedness, in part because we had no strategic stock of facemasks. A previous administration had made sure there were 5 million masks in stock for (I think) the swine flu pandemic that turned out to not be as dangerous as predicted. The masks were destroyed by the current minister of healthcare because they were too old (reasonable) but not replaced because it'd be too costly. I can't really fault her because hindsight is 20/20, but it was definitely a budget motive that made her not renew the stock.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 20:08

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

mortons stork posted:

the question is: has the services overall expanded or is it being stretched

Guess it depends on the metric you use? Like, you can use resources freed up by closing a village clinic to open up a state of the art MRI center. So while you now have to drive 20 min longer to get a wart removed from your rear end, you also have access to a state of the art MRI center for when your brain cancer returns. Is that better or worse service? The nature and quality of healthcare services has changed so drastically over the decades that it's probably very hard to come up with any good metric for this.

Even something like "access" is really complicated. Like, while we are closing smaller village clinics here in Germany too, we also have seen the number of doctor visits per capita more than doubled over the last two decades.

nimby posted:

Spending has increased because the costs have risen for a multitude of reasons, among which there is an increase in healthcare prices, an increase in remedies for long-term ailments and a growing elderly population.

What hasn't increased is the actual care people get. Ask nurses if they've got enough time to actually care for people instead of just doing the minimum to keep people alive before their time allotted for that room is up. Ask doctors if they enjoy 24 hour shifts with another 24 hours of stand-by. Belgium had a lot of nursing home residents die in the spring due to lacking covid preparedness, in part because we had no strategic stock of facemasks. A previous administration had made sure there were 5 million masks in stock for (I think) the swine flu pandemic that turned out to not be as dangerous as predicted. The masks were destroyed by the current minister of healthcare because they were too old (reasonable) but not replaced because it'd be too costly. I can't really fault her because hindsight is 20/20, but it was definitely a budget motive that made her not renew the stock.

Well, it's great that we agree now that under "capitalism" public healthcare is actually expanding, instead of being curtailed.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 20:49

nimby: Nov 4, 2009; The pinnacle of cloud computing.

GABA ghoul posted:

Well, it's great that we agree now that under "capitalism" public healthcare is actually expanding, instead of being curtailed.

Health expenditure is expanding, the actual care lags behind and the gap is widening. It's taken frequent protests by the healthcare workers and the Belgian communist party to actually get a funding increase for the sector late last year. If the classical liberals had their way we as a nation would be even more understaffed and overworked to handle the current crisis.

# ? Sep 7, 2020 21:03

mortons stork: Oct 13, 2012

Has the nature of healthcare provision evolved to the point where hospital beds, ICU beds, and overall presence on the actual territory are now outdated? The village clinic vs MRI center is also never the deal you get if you're living in a rural area. You just get your hospital shutdown and gently caress you. Like 40% of Italians have to change region to get the healthcare they need, and access is also a shaky prospect outside large cities. Closure of provincial infrastructure is always a net negative to those living there. Specialized centers can only be sustained in large urban areas anyway, where the specialization of a structure is warranted by the existence of multiple redundant general care providers. Territorial medicine being defunded is unequivocally bad, and a contraction of service and access.

Consolidation also often results in lower capacity overall. I mean, if you live in a country where the state hasn't entirely been captured by domestic and foreign capital and is now intent on cannibalizing its economic tissue to fund private growth, or if you live where the beneficiaries of that cannibalism live, and have as of yet left your society mostly alone, you might be forgiven for thinking that consolidation goes hand in hand with investment and expansion. That is not reality for a good portion of EU residents, I'd argue.

e: let me just add that efficiency ought to be pretty low on the priority list for the creation of robust public infrastructure, as you need redundancies, especially vital stuff like healthcare, food production and distribution etc. But you can extend that to most public infrastructure. Shutting down a village's railway connection because of 'efficiency' is insanely lovely and betrays the whole purpose of having publicly funded infrastructure in the first place.

mortons stork fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Sep 7, 2020

# ? Sep 7, 2020 21:04

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

GABA ghoul posted:

Guess it depends on the metric you use? Like, you can use resources freed up by closing a village clinic to open up a state of the art MRI center.

lol

no, what happens is that you close up local clinics so as to balance the budget because the state has decided public services have to work just like private enterprises and turn up a profit, so:

areas that don't see enough patients to turn up a profit get to no longer have healthcare because gently caress you
new installations will not be paid by closing up old ones, they'll have to pay for themselves by increasing the cost to the patient
public service? what's that? gently caress you. what do you mean you pay taxes even though you no longer have a hospital, or a train station, or a college, or post deliveries more than twice a week, etc.? well yeah of course you pay taxes, everybody's gotta pay taxes, it's the social contract, in exchange for your taxes you get to have, well, where do you live? the province? gently caress you, you should move to the capital city where housing is 5000 �/square meter/month if you want services.

# ? Sep 8, 2020 07:28

Zombiepop: Mar 30, 2010

GABA ghoul posted:

Here is public spending on healthcare for a couple selected developed nations.they all had massive increases since 1990. (there were probably exceptions in europe and around the world, but on average, there was a massive increase)

Are you even european? Do you read the papers? What are you trying to prove here?

Cost goes up = service expanded or what? Cause thats dumb as hell.

# ? Sep 8, 2020 07:51

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

GABA ghoul's the only one who has posted any data here, right?

# ? Sep 8, 2020 08:56

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

nimby posted:

While we are living in states with mostly free healthcare, there's enough pressure from more capitalist ideologists to curtail that. There needs to be socialist push-back just to maintain the status quo and it's failing.

A lot of the current measures are socialist in nature. The governments are/were subsidizing people to stay home and not be productive, while paying for their healthcare. That's a socialist system already working. The problem will be in a year or two when the markets start to forget why the currently incurred debts were so necessary and start charging higher interest fees, forcing nations to cut back on social spending. A capitalist society that continuously needs more socialist measures to keep itself upright is eventually going to collapse and take a lot of people with it, whether through cataclysm or fascism.

In my personal opinion, a more socialist state would be more authoritarian by nature. Because you'll need to be taking away some control people have for the benefit of the region/state/environment. If everyone could do what they want, you'll end up in a situation where some people's excess are spoiling the efforts of everyone. You can already see this happening today with facemasks. A group of people will inconvenience themselves for the greater good, another group will do it because it's mandatory and a group will rebel and not wear them (or wear them wrong) out of spite.

An alternative could be a massive (re-)education campaign to make people be more environmentally conscious, but putting people in camps like that is going to be the absolute worst option and lead to untold tragedies.

I'm not in favour of violent revolution, but I am a bit scared for the future while I'm seeing the right/far-right making gains like they have been. Cutbacks on social spending has been happening for years now and all the blame for the problems people face is being foisted on foreigners or on the state itself, eroding support for democracy. I very much hope that a leftist resurgence is possible and coming relatively soon to help everyone instead of just the rich.

(again, I'm not a great political thinker, just a dude on the internet, so there's definitely going to be holes in my arguments and I've probably used logical fallacies without realizing it)

I really respect this. You're spelling out what you mean, you're correctly recognising the scary things as scary, you're actually talking about specific things you think should be done and so on. Everything else gooncialists in here are studiously avoiding.

I do think however you're effectively arguing not for common ownership over the means of production, but for left authoritarianism, with the "left" being more of an afterthought. I think you are basically saying: states should be more powerful, they should do what experts have established is correct, and force it through, plus more welfare.

e:f,b

Cingulate fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Sep 8, 2020

# ? Sep 8, 2020 08:59

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 07:38

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

GABA ghoul posted:

hoooooo boy do I have bad news for you about what they will call the decade where living standards dropped by half, a banana or a steak costed a tenth of a monthly wage and the government put grandma and grandpa into concentration camps for counter-revolutionary activities/protesting

Agreed. This still doesn't make total ecological collapse certain under mixed markets, nor does it mean that a violent revolution will bring a better outcome. Ffs, this thread failed to correctly predict the corona emission slump even one year into the future and you are gonna tell me you know what human society and economy will look like in 30 or even 80 years with certainty?

Again, all of this is contradicted by basic observable reality.

The trend toward more globalisation has reversed in the west.

States and legislation can and do move toward more oversight and regulations.

Manufacturing jobs do not return no matter how much state intervention happens because the majority of job losses were due to automation, not outsourcing.

Business are heavily regulated in most of europe, compared to the us, and cost of business is much higher do to environmental and social standards and the european economies still exist.

And any kind of violent revolution that is not global will lead to massive flight of educated and qualified workers from the affected areas, absolutely annihalting the local economies. This ain't the 19th century anymore. Everything of value needs some kind of white collar desk jockey with at least one uni degree to run.

globalisation hasn't reversed unless you're looking exclusively at aggregate direct foreign investment? actual production is more internationalised than ever, per international tonnage:
https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/rmt2019_en.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjnk6qyjNnrAhWMl4sKHSJ-BO0QFjANegQIGBAI&usg=AOvVaw0KubuysqTReDv_KYHJpmdf

moreover, even direct investment has mostly dropped off *between richer countries*. DFI in the poorest countries continues mostly apace:
https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2118

this further indicates that the actual production of things keeps being moved around, and that the race to the bottom is very real. even if it didn't, though, it wouldn't necessarily mean that the trend was meaningfully reversed, it could easily just be a new normal where countries haven't dared increase the cost of doing business for the past several years, an observation borne out by the basically stagnant median real wage in the EU for the past decade or so, and the lack of any really serious anti-business legislation, including wrt the environment.

so no lol it's not contradicted by 'basic observable reality' it's contradicted by a rather strained definition of globalisation and a simultaneously naive interpretation of the data

now, i'm sure you're going to find another interpretation which lets you keep believing what you're believing, because that's the nature of 'knowledge-driven' discussion of this sort and why it's largely pointless. data of this sort is always ambiguous enough to be twisted into almost any narrative you want it to be according to one's ideological framework, and is thus mainly useful as rhetorical framing for a predetermined position in a context like this

# ? Sep 8, 2020 09:20

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