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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (10472)	2/1/2006 11:15:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541472

I'm not sure how it could be one and not the other. Socialism is an economic system. It's about government ownership of the production and distribution of stuff. Like shoe factories or dairies. I have an appreciation of your lust to privatize everything. I'm not sure, though, that everything not privatized could be called socialist. There are, indeed, legitimate government functions. People may have differences of opinions on which they are. And the people who think that most things are governmental in nature are what we call socialists. But the continuum is long and it seems to me that setting the boundary between socialism and capitalism at the point where anything that could theoretically be privatized must be privatized to avoid the socialist label is a bit much and not very useful. "Socialism" only has meaning when contrasted with communism on one side and capitalism on the other. You are leaving faint space on the continuum for capitalism. It seems to me that a better place to draw the line is where material goods or transfer payments come into play, not before. A school is not a shoe factory.

To: TimF who wrote (10472)	2/1/2006 11:28:58 AM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541472

SOTU: Anti-corruption? I have been complaining for several years about elected officials who commit a breach of trust with the voting public. After all, they are in office only as a matter of public trust having been lent to them, via the voting process. The moment it can be demonstrated that they have violated an oath or are in substantial breach of the public trust, which defines their social contract, they should be suspended from duty and charged with a crime. "Each of us has made a pledge to be worthy of public responsibility, and that is a pledge we must never forget, never dismiss and never betray." (Bush 2006) I doubt whether any congressman would sponsor such an anti-corruption bill, but I would certainly vote for anyone who did this in earnest, regardless of their party affiliation.