In my proposed system, everyone who works for a business has an equal stake in the profits and an equal say in how the company is run. There could still be a hierarchal structure if necessary to coordinate everything, but the managers have no more power than anyone else. They would also be part of larger worker’s councils that they send recallable delegates to to coordinate economic output for the good of society as a whole. The capital will be distributed collectively by the worker’s councils based on need.
I don’t support a centralized, planned economy like people like to always portray socialism and communism as. I support bottom-up socialism, where there is more decentralization and democracy directly in the workplace.
I’m okay with your proposed profit sharing and governance - if it grows organically. There’s certainly an increase in the popularity of co-op owned businesses.
Perhaps one way to achieve that reform with market forces would be to reform Wall Street so that Boards are more accountable to Johnny Shareholder and one of the benefits of working as an employee would be a share of profits, or outright share ownership. But keep in mind employees can collectively be steered toward ownership in a company and it can still end up being a disaster (see Enron).
That’s the thing, I wasn’t an angry young man, I was a leftist but in reality more of a social democrat when I look back. Content with more moderate changes and even supporting the Dems. I even served in the military during two wars I opposed. It’s only been over the past 5-6 years or so that things have gotten so bad that I realize radical change is the only way for our society and our planet to survive.
So now I am a somewhat angry almost-middle aged woman who is fed up with the status quo.
Ultimately it can only grow organically to a point, and that point is when it starts threatening the capitalists’ way of life. They need to be overthrown and their capital seized if there is to be any progress.
There wasn’t the slightest chance of expanding Medicaid by itself. So as I understand, it, if you were President, nothing would change.
I realize the temptation, when you favor something, as I favor the actual Dutch system, and as you may favor an on-steroids version of the British system, to hope that your idea is the only practical alternative.
Obama initially had a public option in the ACA to his credit, and this was when the Democrats had a majority in the House and Senate during his first two years, but conservative Dems joined the Republicans in opposing it and so it was never part of the final bill.
Taiwan’s system “works” largely because doctors and nurses are paid little, and hospitals will resort to means to get ancillary income that would be unthinkable in America (such as opening 7-11 type convenience stores inside the hospitals, etc.) And patients are known to abuse the system by seeing doctors for things as mild as common colds. And even then the system is projected to be in the red; there is a real push to increase the premiums now in order to keep the system afloat.
It could still work in America; it would just have to be much pricier though. Doctors and nurses in America wouldn’t accept the low pay (even if it were an adjusted-for-US-purchasing-power salary.) And the copays or deductibles would have to be steeper; you couldn’t get a hysterectomy for a $30 deductible like my mother did.
Progressives won’t get anywhere trying to sell their programs on the basis of efficiency and saving money. Their successes (in the workplace and on environmental protection, for example) aren’t noted for efficiency but for making people’s lives better.
Effective selling points include fairness and security.
Tell voters “we’ll save you lots of money!” and after they stop laughing, they’ll be inclined to vote for another Trump, or Trump Lite.
That’s why you should sell things in the language and value set of the people who you want to buy it.
“Medicare for all! Why? Because I look after my neighborsl - it’s the American way!”
“Forgive student debts! The US is the best country in the world and we need clever people to ensure that we stay number 1! Or aren’t you a patriot? USA, USA!”
No, but Trump was already set as the Republican candidate. What you should be asking is if those Republicans would have held their nose and voted for anyone but Biden, and the answer is a big fat no. Bernie had zero chance this election, Biden won because he is not scary.
You have to counter the ‘Socialism’ label that’s coupled with images of starving Cubans and Venezuelans in shoebox lid rafts (by … somehow … showing happy Northern Europeans with their new baby and a ‘bill’ for $0.00, or a cancer survivor who doesn’t ‘survive only to face bankruptcy from the bills’ – hard to distill).
You have to counter “Death Panels” when it comes to health care (maybe by images of Montgomery Burns denying valid claims from sick people who’ve always paid their premiums on time).
You have to counter fear.
You have to disabuse somebody of a position that they came to out of fear and passion, rather than out of careful consideration of ample facts.
Talk about a heavy lift.
And for some – maybe most conspicuously, the acolytes of (tel)evangelicals – fear is what’s for breakfast.
Yeah, much better to lie to people and tell them that if only they work hard enough one day they can get their own factory; of course while making it practically impossible for that to actually happen, since you don’t want more competition.
This sounds like a general move towards more libertarian values (the good and the bad).
What is that? AFAICT it was a horrible primary process. I have never before seen a primary with no incumbent that only had like 2 or 3 candidates participate in the first primary. We ended up with an inexperienced candidate that had never run a competitive campaign and there were a bunch of self inflicted injuries from the DNC conspiring against the bernie campaign to the optics of feeding debate questions to hillary.
In deep blue districts. How many purple disctricts did the democratic socialists of america win? Zero? It does you no good to win California by the largest margin in history.
It’s more like “sit down and grow up” And you will never get “your turn” that’s not how democracy works. It’s not a seniority system. You don’t ever get a turn until you can convince the majority of american voters that your ideas are attractive. But they’re not. They’re not even attractive to the majority of democrats.
How are you going to do that?
AFAICT, the party isn’t exactly putting the far left center stage.
Yes, and to 80 million people Biden represented safe and sane. I’m not sure you would get that many people thinking Bernie was the safe sane choice.
By definition, you cannot. If you ever did, you’d be conservatives trying to maintain the status quo.
You say this like you think Bernie would have done better against Romney.
The riots preceding the defund the police crap didn’t help.
Normal led to the coronavirus?
No, they don’t. They lost by 10 million votes and they still think they can win. In fact some of them are so sure of it they are paying lawyers millions of dollars to prove that they won.
Or it was the defund the police crap.
What? No. We nominated biden because he could win and bernie could not.
So you want to give up on about half the country?
[quote=“Boudicca90, post:78, topic:924912”]
They have been brainwashed through years of right-wing media to believe in this fantasy they have created where they are the heroes[/quote]
This is not unique to them.
I consider myself a liberal but not sure I’m a progressive. Progressives seem more socialist than liberal these days. Or do you think they’re the same thing?
How would doctors get paid?
I think it’s more than that. You’re asking them to take a chance on something that could make things worse.
One of my relatives is an ER doctor and he was concerned about how Obamacare would impact the delivery of emergency services in his poor community. Sure it looked good on paper but the emergency room was getting by with a manageable loss that was covered by the increase in hospitalizations. Now he is an ardent fan of obamacare because a large portion of the “uninsureds” that created the loss turned into medicaid expansion patients that were able to create revenue for the services provided. When I talk to him about universal healthcare, he seems concerned about how that might upset the applecart.
Sure, if you don’t mind being ignored.
You can have some of those or you can have none of those. You cannot have all of those. Not right away.
If the gay rights groups made their push for gay marriage by saying they wanted to have gay marriage and the right to force vendors that had a religious objection to gay marriage to cater their weddings and force catholic churches that otherwise rent out their facilities for things like music recitals and community meetings to also rent out their facilities for gay weddings… I don’t think it would have happened. But people were ready for gay marriage and we got it.
Now they can argue about the rest but at least they have gay marriage. I think the absolutist position of the right on this issue is part of what doomed them. If the right had come out and given in on civil unions earlier, I don’t know that we would be here today.
I think you should abandon unpopular ideas until you have safely ushered the popular ones past the finish line. Then you might find that other issues you care about start getting more popular. Get universal healthcare and it might get people thinking about free public colleges. Get free public colleges and it might get people thinking about forgiving student debt. Get forgiving studetn debt and you might get people thinking about higher minimum wages, etc.
I knew I loved my wife when I met her but i didn’t ask her to marry me right away. I asked her on a date. That went pretty well, so I asked her on a second date, etc. It was incremental. If I asked her to marry me right away, I don’t know if I would have gotten past the first date.
But there are socialist countries around the world and it doesn’t work there either.
What you are describing sounds pretty close to communism.
That capital represents the past labor and risk of capitalists, we can argue about the extent to which this should be inherited but mot peple in the USa owns a little peice of the pie through their 401K, their pensions, their insurance policies, etc.
We can adjust how profit is distributed between labor and capital (and we probably should) but this is an incremental goal that can be achieved through labor laws and taxation.
I agree generally but I disagree here. Free ought to be free. Do we believe that higher education is something that should be available to all who qualify regardless of ability to pay or should it only be available to those who can bear the freight? Free university education for those who make the cut is more universal than universal health care, it is more free to the consumer than universal health care. Outside of the former english colonies, the best schools in the country are frequently the top public universities that also happen to be free.
I think the platform is “we’re going to give you all of that rich guy’s stuff”
I think progressives sometimes forget that a lot of the progress we made came at times when things were pretty much awful, and people were willing to try something new even if it seemed to go against their ideology.
It’s actually “We will take all of your oppressor’s stuff and give it to you if we win!”, but that is much more of a long-term goal, not something we focus on when advocating for individual issues or more short-term goals.
No, that is why we are growing so much over the past 5 years, because things have been pretty much awful and have been for quite some time. And Biden’s neoliberalism will just make things worse as he will screw over the people at the bottom even more to make his buddies and donors more wealthy.
