"DevilsPGD" wrote in message
...
In message beCUk.1513$o15.959@edtnps83 "Chom Noamsky"
was claimed to have wrote:

How much longer is socialism going to have to support the capitalists and
"free" markets?

Capitalism handles this situation nicely, when a company gets too
inefficient it gets replaced either by more efficient competition and it
modifies it's own behaviour or implodes under it's own weight.

That's fine and all but the process of adapting or imploding takes time. In
the meantime there are about 500,000 jobs that depend on the industry. When
a single industry employs that many people and becomes such a major economic
cornerstone, losing it is not an option. It needs to be fixed and made
competitive again without losing the jobs or the industry.

The bail-outs are the problem because they unfairly allow an inefficient
company to continue to operate.

How did it get to this point? These companies have a lot of lobby clout.
While the competition was gearing up for $100/bbl oil, the domestics were
lobbying Washington or Ottawa for relaxed fuel and emissions standards.
They did this so they could keep the marketability of SUVs and trucks up,
which on average are 4x more profitable than economy cars. They were
gambling on the price of fuel staying down to keep their vehicles
marketable, but it didn't and they got caught.

Socialism can be made to work, the problem is controlling greed.
Capitalism can be made to work, the problem is avoiding socialism.

Greed on Wall Street is what caused this recession. That's because a
certain amount of regulation is needed to stop the pigs from gobbling and
cheating. The right-wing agenda for the last 25 years has been
deregulation. This is the culmination of their efforts.

People get hurt in both systems, the trick is to find the middle ground
to avoid too many people getting hurt at once. In this respect certain
things in a capitalist society need to be regulated, banking, insurance,
infrastructure, education, courts, safety and defense (both national
defense and police), and probably a few others.

I've always believed in regulated capitalism. It's when the playing field
get slanted on way or another that the trouble starts. If the playing field
is kept level then the competition is genuine.

The type of regulation can vary, for things like health, a crown
corporation is likely to be effective. Private hospitals can't get away
with charging $7,000/day if a crown hospital charges $100/day and you
can bet that private insurance will pay a maximum of crown payouts. You
can solve the problem of needing qualified doctors (and other medical
staff) by having the gov't fund the student loans and then letting
doctors work off their loan in crown hospitals and faculties while
paying them a reasonable wage at the same time.

The local NDP candidate suggested the same thing about forgiving doctor's
student loans if they contract to stay in Canada for a minimum of three
years. I suppose that would be a solution, but doesn't that amount to
favouritism? Why not everyone else who has a student loan? Just because
someone chose to become a geologist or an engineer shouldn't determine how
nicely government treats them. What they could do is stop capping MSP
billings or increase the caps. That means doctors who want to work harder
could earn more. The local GPs I know can only make up to $100,000, the
caps won't let them bill more no matter how hard they work. It's
inefficient because it doesn't utilize doctors to the maximum potential.

The only case where you really need to nationalize is infrastructure,
police, courts, and defense. Capitalism isn't capable of managing
natural monopolies, so you generally need to nationalize those. You
need some degree of safety, and you really don't want a private police
or court system as they simply have too much power.

The problem today is that for whatever reason we're not willing to let
capitalism prune the massively inefficient wasteful companies and
instead feel the need to maintain them in their inefficient state.

Explain that to the people (aka voter) whose livelyhood goes down the tubes
with that pruning.