Science Forums 2

[lemit]

You're right. It doesn't seem that either capitalism or socialism can exist by itself. That seems almost biological, but then this is a science site.

It's simply impossible given our history and traditions to imagine socialism here. But capitalism has only worked in a system of tight regulation. The stock market, after nearly eighty years of neglect, has reminded us recently why it wasn't neglected eighty years ago by completely repeating what it did then. Free enterprise, if left free, seems to be full of lemmings hoping everybody else will jump but they themselves will be able to stop.

Our healthcare system already has NIH, NLM, CDC, VA, Medicare and Medicaid, and Military Hospitals. (I'm forgetting a bunch of things--there are several unused letters of the alphabet--anybody else?) We can have a government-run alternative to private health systems very easily; we already have one. So the complaints by the private companies that they can't survive alongside a government-run system don't make sense; they're doing it already.

I hope people can realize that extending a government-run plan to the few categories of people who aren't already covered by some kind of plan will not be the end of the world. Not much will change.

--lemit