Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to I have no problem at all with such things.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.
ER — (archived)

My point is that the choice is not always between corporate control of all human economic activity, and massive government bureaucracies. There is a middle ground. Upon reflecting on why that type of social organization is so rare today, I concluded that there are two primary reasons: the need and ability or government social agencies to monopolize and regulate all public activity, and the competition of private business which finds the Mutual Aid model a threat to their profit. (Those medical societies were always under attack by the traditional American medical establishment, as "socialist").

Those societies declined because private insurance became cheap, widespread, transportable and "free" (through the employer), and because the cultural solidarity and political unity of the people who worked for it was diluted by integration with American society. Now that private employment insurance is fading, or skyrocketing in price, only government socialization and welfare remains as an alternative.

Socialism does not necessarily mean government monopoly. It can be a successful and effective grassroots movement, and it can coexist and even compete successfully with entrepreneurial capitalism.

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