With regards to fascism and Nazism, the vast majority of people can agree that those are simply bad ideas that are inherently bad. With regards to socialism, though, there are a significant number of people who feel that it isn’t bad, but rather, a good idea that was poorly executed - perhaps even the same for Communism.
I am ***not ***trying to make this into a debate about socialism (we’ve had numerous threads about that,) but rather, about the broader concept of - what things are bad ideas that are simply bad, and what are good ideas that just weren’t done the right way?
Is prevention of illegal immigration a good thing, but locking them up in cages is the wrong way of doing it? Is gun ownership a good thing, but done the wrong way in America? Etc. etc.
This seems like a recipe for having multiple discussions on contentious topics at the same time and both your examples are of a completely different nature than socialism and fascism.
Regarding “prevention of illegal immigration” for instance there are those who considers the right solution to be “make all immigration legal”, but it’s a different kind of philosophical discussion whether “prevention of illegal immigration” is inherently bad, given the current laws, so even those might not be entirely in that camp.
Trying to define the premises of such a sub-discussion, while doing the same for “gun ownership” and “etc. etc.”, does not seem like a worthwhile endeavor.
In many nations with UHC they either rely on private insurance as a major insurer if not the sole insurer, or they have private insurance as an option to supplement public insurance. In those systems people have affordable health care, nobody goes bankrupt and nobody gets surprise bills in the mail.
But private insurance in the US is a nightmare. There are endless ways they can avoid paying the bills. Because the public sector underpays, private insurance overpays resulting in higher premiums. The private insurance death spiral means prices spin out of control and are only kept under control by making insurance more and more evil, cruel and unreliable.
Done right, private insurance has a positive role in a universal health care system. In America private insurance is run with such evil and cruelty that many people are calling for a full ban and just a single public payer system.
Socialism and Communism describes a type of authoritarian government where people dont even have the freedom to get rich. It was a horrible, no good, bad idea. Except perhaps in small voluntary communes.
“Democratic Socialism” is a government where taking care of it’s citizens comes first, where much tax is funneled into social programs. Nordic model nations are a great example. The USA has many socialist programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, etc.
Illegal Immigration is a bad thing, because it’s based upon racism and Xenophobia. We could fix it (for example) by having a free and easy guest worker system, allowing farmworkers to come and work where needed. This doesnt mean open borders.
Gun ownership is America isnt a bad thing, and this will quickly degenerate into another gun debate.
So I’m going to offer a more meta observation: It may well be that some “good ideas that are/were poorly executed” may be “good ideas” in theory; but human nature being what it is, they don’t have any real chance of being well-executed. In which case I don’t think they really count as good ideas after all.
I’m not even sure I can agree with the premise. When I was growing up I remember hearing more than once, “At least Mussolini made the trains run on time.” Even Snopes discussed it.
Similarly, it’s been debated for nearly a century whether the Soviet Union would have been better if the Mensheviks had succeeded Kerensky’s government rather than the Bolsheviks.
Law enforcement. Punishment. Putting the “good people” in charge and letting them make the decisions that the rest of us must obey. These all appear to be excellent ideas for which there have been really unfortunate implementation problems, but I think they have fatal flaws at their core and are therefore bad ideas to start with.
How would the mensheviks being in charge be anything other than good compared to the bolsheviks? It seems they would’ve avoided all of the excesses and ineptitude of Stalin and their moderate policies would’ve worked better long term.
The death penalty. I have no problem with executing monsters, but the way it is implemented in the US lets the guilty privileged escape the death penalty and the poor face it even if innocent. Better to have none at all than to execute the innocent.
We do it better. Gavin has more or less eliminated it for the moment, so if you are counting that as doing it right, I agree. I’d have to do a lot of research to be convinced we’ve done it right when we actually were executing people, though.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with socialism. The basic idea is that some things are better off being provided by the government as a public service (and paid for by taxes) rather than through private entities that are seeking to generate profits.
Good examples are public schools, police and fire departments, highways and bridges, mail delivery, and prisons. In many countries, you’d also have hospitals and clinics on the list.
I feel that socialism doesn’t work as well when it comes to developing new forms of business and in sectors of the economy where customer choices are a key factor.
That’s possible, but things got better in the ussr after Stalin died just as they got better in China after Mao was gone. Not perfect but one person can fuck a lot of things up even in an autocracy.