Episode 235 with Christian Einfeldt (MOVED)

[Aia]

Was it just me or there was someone else that though the suggestion to follow countries like Germany, in which you have to pay "feeds to subsidize" artists is a bad idea?
Enjoyed the episode, and I am considering to donate a 500 Gb hard drive to it. However as soon as I hear that, I was putted off by the thought of introducing more "socialism" into the world.
Obligating people to pay is never a good principle. Doesn't matter the cause. And I like the cause for open source software. Nevertheless, forcing feeds is not a solution. Compulsion is always seeing in my book against freedom.
Please make your thoughts known.

[allix]

I did not actually fully understand what he meant. Maybe one of you guys caught the name of this system?

[Tsuroerusu]

Was it just me or there was someone else that though the suggestion to follow countries like Germany, in which you have to pay "feeds to subsidize" artists is a bad idea?
Enjoyed the episode, and I am considering to donate a 500 Gb hard drive to it. However as soon as I hear that, I was putted off by the thought of introducing more "socialism" into the world.
Obligating people to pay is never a good principle. Doesn't matter the cause. And I like the cause for open source software. Nevertheless, forcing feeds is not a solution. Compulsion is always seeing in my book against freedom.
Please make your thoughts known.

Before I say anything, I should state that I'm a reformist socialist myself, specifically speaking, I'm a social democrat.

Now that we gotten that one off the run-way ...
I did not know that Germany had something like this, I would like to know the details of it, if anybody knows of them, to see how it's working.
In general, I think a system like this is perfectly fine IF, and only IF it's designed to benefit the people (To be a little poetic sounding), and not greedy corporations. If the public finances the work musicians do, then it's nothing but perfectly legitimate for the public to share and exchange what the public essentially owns. If I paid a programmer to write a program for me, you can be damn sure that I wanted to own the copyrights for that program, so I can do what I want with it, and not be restricted.
In my opinion, a copyright system's sole purpose should be to encourage musicians, film-makers, writers, artists, software developers etc. etc. to create works for the good of the public, it should never exist to serve greedy businesses that are only out to make as much money as possible, and screw the public in the process. I think that when somebody publishes something that can be copyrighted, then that person should have exclusivity on the ability to make money off that which he or she has published for a period of 10 years (In a few cases, one could argue that artistic integrity is important, so restricting the ability to make non-commercial derivative works could be legitimate in some cases), after which it should go into the public domain.
Now our system of public funding of media culture comes in (In recent years in Denmark, the public's money have been spent on building an opera theater, what a waste of money! I think had those millions of DKK been spent on a system like I am proposing, it would have benefitted the public to a much larger extent). Let's say that a certain work, whatever it might be, was popular amongst the public, which one could find out from say the amount of downloads on a P2P network or things like The Pirate Bay (If you go to The Pirate Bay, it's quite easy to find out that the movie Spider-Man 3 is more popular than say a homemade porn video) then you could calculate a sum of money that artist would receive for his or her service to the public. In other words he or she would make a living from doing something that they might be good at (Writing books, making music etc.), so the copyright system has served it's purpose, by motivating a person to create and publish a work, the motivation being that they could make a living if they create something that the public likes (If they make crap, tough shit! Who wants to pay for crap!!), by using a skill of theirs. In this hypothetical system of mine, non-commercial exchange of this work would be permitted, commercial-use was reserved for the author for 10 years.
This is the kind of system I think would be a good thing, however what I am against is a taxation that simply gives the tax-payers' money to the existing system, for them to use to repress the public further by buying laws to take away our freedom. That I think would be absolutely absurd and ridiculous, because why should the public's money go towards something that does not in any shape or form, benefit the public!?!?

Obligating people to pay is never a good principle. Doesn't matter the cause. And I like the cause for open source software. Nevertheless, forcing feeds is not a solution. Compulsion is always seeing in my book against freedom.
Please make your thoughts known.

I think that mindset is flawed in many ways.

In Denmark, we have some of the highest taxes in the world ("The Danish welfare model is accompanied by a taxation system that is both broad based (25% VAT and excise) and with high income tax rates (minimum tax rate for adults is 39.6%)." Source: Wikipedia.), but we also have some of the highest standards of living in the world. In our country, a citizen can't not have healthcare coverage (Which you might argue goes against absolute freedom, but that is essentially the same argument the BSD camp makes against the GPL, in my opinion). This system is not run by some company, it's essentially run by the state as part of our very large public sector (Which employs over 800.000 people). Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the term for it is a single-payer health care system (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare), which in my opinion is the only truly universal health care system (Because if people has to be able to afford health care, no matter how cheap it is, there's always gonna be people who go uncovered, which inevitable results in disaster, because there's ALWAYS gonna be people who can't afford it).

If we go back to the logic of "Obligating people to pay is never a good principle. Doesn't matter the cause. ... Compulsion is always seeing in my book against freedom.", well, I'd just like to ask, is absolute freedom essentially freedom for everybody? Definitely not, from my perspective. If freedom of speech was so absolute that you could use it to get away with sending death threats to other people, that would impede other civil liberties, so restriction that specific area of freedom of speech is legitimate, but yes it does restrict the absoluteness of freedom of speech. And in the case of obligatory high taxation like we have in Denmark, well, I think it's done extremely well for us, we don't have people dying because they can't afford health care, we don't have people who can't afford to go to school (In fact, our system facilitates people of over the age of 40 to redo a high school education), you'd be extremely hard-pressed to find people who're starving, the number of homeless people is also extremely low and in many cases if they wanted to get out of it they have a very real-life chance to do just that (It's not just a theoretical chance/opportunity).
Just my two ... err. ... many cents, I guess!

Sorry that that ran a little long, but hey you asked for it!

[Aia]

I think a system like this is perfectly fine IF, and only IF it's designed to benefit the people

What people? All the people? Most of the people? Or perhaps a selected group of people as this kind of ideas always end up favoring.

Looking beyond that. Let's write a little bit about the most likely consequences of imposing a “software feed” to subsidize free open source “programmers/projects”.

Unavoidable would be the creation of a organization ( it could be several as many times is the case ) that will collect the feeds ( makes sure that every one is paying ) Do I dare to name it RIAA?
With time this organization will be very powerful, since it will handle the who and how this money is distributed, after the proper deductions “allowed” for internal functions, of course. No doubt that scandal will suffer from time to time concerning “improper” handle of funds ( I am being highly speculative based in my best guess ).

Who will have the right to subsidize money? Any one proclaiming to be a programmer doing some open software? Of course not. Selective criteria needs to be draft. Which undoubtedly will lead to bias.
Needless to continue focused in this imaginary organization. Anyone probably knows how corrupted a “powerful organization” can become.

At the other hand, what about the recipients, the so free software programmer? In the negative perspective I can think of some questions:
Is it there room for fraud? Is it there opportunity for mediocrity? After all, “they are going to get pay” any ways. Is it possible that noble starting projects could go down in corruption?
No, that will never happen ( sarcasm included ).

Before I say anything, I should state that I'm a reformist socialist myself, specifically speaking, I'm a social democrat.

Thank you for the honest disclaimer, not that you way of writing would have not denounced you.

Never cared enough to know what label I should wear based in my convictions. Belief in the free agency of the individual and in her/his inherited ability to choose.

[davijordan]

We already subsidize our politicians and that is already too big a hunk out of our budgets. We subsidize our schools. another big chunk of money. Now we are asked tp subsidize someone else? All our jobs are going overseas. Maybe we should start collecting money from all the countries that are taking advantage of us. I think all attorneys should work for free. In fact, I also think that like free software, We should all be able to practice law and not have to pay rich law firms. I bet the court system would be a lot leaner.
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He made a comment about software like compiz not being a good thing. I completely disagree. Where i used to work (a college paid for with property taxes), I saw desks with three and four monitors (or flat screen lcds) set up for each employee in the administration area. That is $1000 per desk and that's not even including the price of the computer. Where I come from you can at most look at two screens at a time. With compiz you could easily use multiple desktops instead of multiple monitors, and therefore saving the taxpayers mucho bucks.
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I think his project for a movie is a wonderful idea. But before undertaking such a task, I might have tried to contact someone like google and see about taking advantage of unused space and computer time. I bet there are lots of companies in this situation. Maybe he would not have had to sink so much of his own money into it. We would not have to subsidize him with donated drives,
According to my uncle who lives in California, say they think you can fix anything with taxes. It just is not so.
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I do agree that teaching people how to think is better than teaching them to be copycats. Ironically for the eight years I worked as an adjunct college instructor, people from overseas were the biggest copycat types. They had everything memorized, but they could not solve a problem if it depended on them. Not all were like that, but it was the case more than the exception.
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I will bend over backwards to teach a man or woman to fish. I know enough people have made it without handouts, that subsidies are not essential except in most rare cases.

[Tsuroerusu]

What people? All the people? Most of the people? Or perhaps a selected group of people as this kind of ideas always end up favoring.

Let's say the majority of the public, in other words, average people like you and me, not Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sony, Warner, AOL, BEA, EMC, NetApp etc.

Looking beyond that. Let's write a little bit about the most likely consequences of imposing a “software feed” to subsidize free open source “programmers/projects”.

Well, first of all, the system I hypothesized would not have to treat everything the same, and I think that software is a special case, as it's the production of programs you use to do a job with. Music and movies serve a different purpose in society, so they should be treated according to their purpose.

So for example, schools need various systems for students to get information and exchange information. The schools of Denmark are moving toward a hosted system called Lectio. I think they ought to use something built on free software, if such a thing does not exist, I think having a team of people working for the state to create and maintain that would be a good idea. There's people out there who would kill to write free software for a living, so there's certainly gonna be people to pick for the job.
So software developers would be very useful to society for their own purpose.

Unavoidable would be the creation of a organization ( it could be several as many times is the case ) that will collect the feeds ( makes sure that every one is paying ) Do I dare to name it RIAA?

Well, it would be financed by tax-money for which we have a generic authority for, so no, you don't need some specific all-powerful organization for this. The state has a yearly budget, a certain amount of cash gets allocated towards health care, a certain amount towards education, and a certain amount towards cultural development (For example, Danmarks Radio, a TV broadcaster is state sponsored).

With time this organization will be very powerful, since it will handle the who and how this money is distributed, after the proper deductions “allowed” for internal functions, of course. No doubt that scandal will suffer from time to time concerning “improper” handle of funds ( I am being highly speculative based in my best guess ).

Well, when you put the wrong people in charge of making important decisions, you're always gonna have wrong decisions made. If you put Mike Huckabee in the position of President of the United States of America, well, hell would break loose, because that guy is a freaking maniac! He wants to change the constitution so that it's more "inline with God" or whatever he said.

Who will have the right to subsidize money? Any one proclaiming to be a programmer doing some open software? Of course not. Selective criteria needs to be draft. Which undoubtedly will lead to bias.

Well, here you could have a panel of different people. For example, if a new song is submitted for publication (You know as a musician, you'd need to notify this system that you're doing something), then you could have a panel of various people such as some young people, older people, people with various backgrounds etc. etc. to collectively discuss and judge whether something fits. Because you could imagine some dumbfuck 14 year old thinking he or she is cool and filming themselves in underwear lip-syncing a Shakira song and putting it on YouTube. That is not useful at all, pff, to hell with stuff like that!
I published an article I wrote at school under a Creative Commons, you can see it here: http://www.troelsjust.dk/?page_id=149
It's about free software, free music, free knowledge etc. focusing a lot on the ideals behind the free software movement, the free culture movement and generally a lot of the principles behind Wikipedia and such like that.
I would make the educated guess and say that, that is more likely to be considered useful than some random guy's (Dann) ranting on some blog.
In general, what you'd need is like a dedicated team of people, that you would rotate out on a regular basis, with different backgrounds and ages, that way you'd keep a large amount of bias away. Many young people I know love hip-hop music, older people tend to prefer classical music, so you'd have to discuss what is good or bad between these two viewpoints. The best example of something in the area of this would be Magnatune.com, they have to go through stuff that musicians submit and say "No this is not serious" etc. etc. so if a small company like them can do it, who's to say that could not be done by a panel working for the state fulltime?

Needless to continue focused in this imaginary organization. Anyone probably knows how corrupted a “powerful organization” can become.

At the other hand, what about the recipients, the so free software programmer? In the negative perspective I can think of some questions:
Is it there room for fraud? Is it there opportunity for mediocrity? After all, “they are going to get pay” any ways. Is it possible that noble starting projects could go down in corruption?
No, that will never happen ( sarcasm included ).

Well, let me give you an example of Denmark's student support program. This is called SU, which is a shortening of Statens Uddannelsesstøtte, which means something along the lines of The State's Education Support. It's not a student loan, because you don't have to pay it back (Unless you commit fraud and get more than you are entitled to), but you have to qualify, so you have to have a certain amount of lessons per week, the minimum is 23 lessons per week, and you have to get verified by whatever education institution you're at. So I'm at a school called TH Langs at the moment, it's basically very standard math, social science, German, religion and such like that. So people who're just taking lessons about religion (Say they wanted to learn more about Islam in their free time to understand a new friend of theirs' better (I have a very good friend who's a Muslim, which is one of the reasons I picked to have religion so I would learn about Islam) ) once a week would not qualify, as that's not "an education" so to speak, but just something you do for your own curiosity. Also the amount of money a student might get is calculated from his or her personal income, if a student lives with his or her parents, it's calculated from the parents' income.
I'm absolutely certain you could take all of these ideas and transfer them to this system of public culture (I just invented a new term there!), in a somewhat similar fashion. So in regard to "Is it there room for fraud?", yes, just like there's an opportunity for people to commit fraud with the student support program, would it be somewhat easy to root out this problem? Yes because all you need is for the public to not listen to the music of a certain artist because it's crap, and then bam there you go, now we know whom not to subsidize, very simple!
"Is it there opportunity for mediocrity?", well the question whether a person would be publicly subsidized for a certain work, and the question of how much money that person would get, would all depend on the quality of that work. If a panel decides that it is eligible for public subsidizing, then you could look at how popular this is, you could do that through public polls, or just by going to The Pirate Bay and see how many downloads there's been of a certain work, and there we go, now we can calculate how much money someone would get, or not get if the public collectively says "This thing is crap!".

"Is it possible that noble starting projects could go down in corruption?", sure but then you just pull their paycheck, so to speak. If I started skipping out on school, by monthly SU check would get revoked really quickly, because you have to be educationally active to qualify for it. In a similar way, a musician might have to do a certain amount of work every month to get a paycheck, and inform a certain ministry as to what he or she is doing, and if they stop doing anything, then bam take away their paycheck (Which would not prevent them from getting food on the table each day, as there would be unemployment services that would make sure they did never starve).

You mention software developers specifically. Like I mentioned earlier, I think they would be better suited for other positions than through a system like this. So people who're actively contributing to a piece of software that the state uses could be hired. I know one of KDE's American-born developers, Zack Rusin, lives in Norway now, he works for Trolltech, which got bought by Nokia, he works on Qt, X.Org and KDE. So you could even "import" people if that was necessary. But hiring people to contribute to free software is not that difficult to do I think, especially since free software is an easy thing to get into if you have the time. A friend of mine is a translator for KDE, he translates it to Danish, and he does some really solid work on it! He expects to have all of the UI translated when 4.0.3 rolls around, this guy deserves to do this fulltime if he wanted to, and I'm quite sure he would like to do this. He and I are not programmers, but there's other ways to contribute to free software than just programming. Hiring people to write documentation does not sound like a bad idea!!!

Before I say anything, I should state that I'm a reformist socialist myself, specifically speaking, I'm a social democrat.

Thank you for the honest disclaimer, not that you way of writing would have not denounced you.

Never cared enough to know what label I should wear based in my convictions. Belief in the free agency of the individual and in her/his inherited ability to choose.

Hehe, no problem. I like having a really good conversation (A line I have from the movie The Last Samurai), which is a conversation that's clear, informative and without any misunderstandings, so I try to do what I can do make sure that that is the case as often as possible.

[Aia]

Hehe, no problem. I like having a really good conversation (A line I have from the movie The Last Samurai), which is a conversation that's clear, informative and without any misunderstandings, so I try to do what I can do make sure that that is the case as often as possible.

Good, now let me make it clear then. I am against socialism.

When I made my initial post, I hesitated for a second in the use of the word “socialism” because I knew
it had the potential of stirring up some political passions.

Again, let me make it clear, I used the word because it defines exactly what a fee as such would be. However my intention is not to debate political positions, nor try to fix what's wrong with society through any form of government.

I wanted to focused on the “wrongness” of such an idea from a point of view of an individual that wanted to have the choice of decide “who” and “how” I wanted to support with my money. And not to be compelled to pay just because the cause is “worthy of supporting”. Nor do I like the idea of letting “others” make that decision for me. The re-distribution of wealth by any entity that doesn't own that money is in immoral grounds in my view. And allow me to make it clear here, as well, if you are forced to pay, your money is taken for granted and your ability to choose is stripped from you.

Ask any one in Canada if they approve to pay “fee/taxes” for every blank media that they purchase, just because some interested party decided that it was fair to compensate artists, since blank media can be used to copy their “intellectual property”.

By the way, somehow I have the notion that Christian Einfeldt wanted to use that as the “other example”.

[Tsuroerusu]

Hehe, no problem. I like having a really good conversation (A line I have from the movie The Last Samurai), which is a conversation that's clear, informative and without any misunderstandings, so I try to do what I can do make sure that that is the case as often as possible.

Good, now let me make it clear then. I am against socialism.

I'm against the traditional, Marxist form of socialism, I think that system is utterly broken, and does not work at all. The Soviet Union's (Stalinism) actions flew in the face of Karl Marx. The same is the case with China (Maoism), North Korea (Juche) etc. etc.
I think the problems all of these examples share is the danger of centralizing power. Because when you do that, it's simply a matter of time before some greedy dictator userps power, and does what he feels like.

The reason I'm a reformist socialist is first of all because I can see it work, I have seen it be proven to work extremely well in my country (Our Flexicurity model of welfare state, was built by our Social Democratic party). It's not perfect by any means, because nothing ever is. But I do strongly believe that the Danish society is a good society. That's not to say that the United States is not a good society, I'm sure it is in it's own way (I have only been to the US once in 1996 on vacation, I have never lived there for a longer time, so I am in no position to conclusively judge anything), however the issues I hear from the election campaigns, and the likes, are issues that were solved MANY years ago in Denmark, and in the case of universal health care, most of Europe solved that years ago.
Unlike some people I know (I know people who see pictures of dying children in Africa and in a rush wants to "solve" it like that, without stepping back and rationally asking whether their ideas can actually work), I have not picked ideology out of a blindfolded attempt to make the world a better place in my own way, I have selected what is, for me, proven to work, and work well.

I wanted to focused on the “wrongness” of such an idea from a point of view of an individual that wanted to have the choice of decide “who” and “how” I wanted to support with my money. And not to be compelled to pay just because the cause is “worthy of supporting”. Nor do I like the idea of letting “others” make that decision for me. The re-distribution of wealth by any entity that doesn't own that money is in immoral grounds in my view. And allow me to make it clear here, as well, if you are forced to pay, your money is taken for granted and your ability to choose is stripped from you.

I respect your position, and I see where you're coming from. In my opinion, it's the responsibility of everybody in society to work together for the benefit of society as a whole. Thing as health care, education, children care, elder care etc. etc. are things that I see as vital for a good society, and believe should be freely (I don't mean "gratis", I mean free as in liberty) available to the people who need it. For that to be possible, everybody needs to chip in, however because of the way humans are constructed (I'm an atheist, and I believe we originated in Kenya as a species of ape, originally), we're selfish in nature, that's just an instinct that the ice ages forced into us, for survival, and it worked, I mean we're still here. However now that those are essentially needed less these days, they cause problems. That's why I don't believe in just letting everybody do as they please. I don't believe everybody should be forced to sacrifice everything they have for the public's supposed good, but I do not think our high taxes (39.6 percent at the minimum, up to 70 percent as the max. if you are really earning a lot of money) are in ANY way immoral (The things that I consider deeply immoral are things concerning human rights, civil liberties and that sort of stuff), in fact this system has proven itself to be very successful in making health care (A very important thing for MANY people. I myself have needed to see a psychiatrist on occasions, which did not cost me a dime directly) freely available (Again I say freely, not necessarily meaning free of charge, but freely as in libŕe or fri in Danish) to every citizen.

Ask any one in Canada if they approve to pay “fee/taxes” for every blank media that they purchase, just because some interested party decided that it was fair to compensate artists, since blank media can be used to copy their “intellectual property”.

In Denmark we have something very very similar, we even pay a tax on USB sticks, which has pissed me off greatly (This has been introduced NOT by socialists of any flavor, but by liberals and conservatives in case you wanted to know, we've had a coalition government of liberals+conservatives since 2001). The reason it pisses me off is because it was done in response to the whining of big companies (There were petitions against it, which were ignored to cater to the RIAA etc.), and does not in any way benefit the public, in other words the average people of society. It's money being wasted. Now if this tax was obligatory and legalized non-commercial exchange of any published work, I would be absolutely fine with it, because then the public would see a really beneficial effect, but that's not what it does, it goes right down the pockets of greedy companies.

[hellonorman]

The reason I'm a reformist socialist is first of all because I can see it work, I have seen it be proven to work extremely well in my country (Our Flexicurity model of welfare state, was built by our Social Democratic party). It's not perfect by any means, because nothing ever is. But I do strongly believe that the Danish society is a good society. That's not to say that the United States is not a good society, I'm sure it is in it's own way (I have only been to the US once in 1996 on vacation, I have never lived there for a longer time, so I am in no position to conclusively judge anything), however the issues I hear from the election campaigns, and the likes, are issues that were solved MANY years ago in Denmark, and in the case of universal health care, most of Europe solved that years ago.

Denmarks population is 6 million which is 3 million less than New York city alone. Those 6 million people also live on a land mass about the size of Texas. While those problems may be "solved" for a relatively small closed environment such as Denmark I don't believe that these solutions necessarily scale upwards.

[Tsuroerusu]

The reason I'm a reformist socialist is first of all because I can see it work, I have seen it be proven to work extremely well in my country (Our Flexicurity model of welfare state, was built by our Social Democratic party). It's not perfect by any means, because nothing ever is. But I do strongly believe that the Danish society is a good society. That's not to say that the United States is not a good society, I'm sure it is in it's own way (I have only been to the US once in 1996 on vacation, I have never lived there for a longer time, so I am in no position to conclusively judge anything), however the issues I hear from the election campaigns, and the likes, are issues that were solved MANY years ago in Denmark, and in the case of universal health care, most of Europe solved that years ago.

Denmarks population is 6 million which is 3 million less than New York city alone. Those 6 million people also live on a land mass about the size of Texas.

If you want to pull out that argument (And I was not only referring to Denmark, but also the EU (Which has a population very close to 500 million, so there!) in general when mentioning universal health care, specifically) please do me the honor and please get your facts correct, Denmark's population is 5.5 million.

While those problems may be "solved" for a relatively small closed environment such as Denmark

Unless you want me to feel somewhat offended by that "closed environment" suggestion, I'd like to humbly ask for some details, and preferably some good ones, on what you mean. First of all, closed to me, means North Korea, where nobody gets in and nobody gets out, which I can definitely tell you is not the case with Denmark. Denmark is a member of the European Union, which fundamentally opens our borders up for a lot of foreign workers, free flow of capital etc. etc.

I don't believe that these solutions necessarily scale upwards.

You're entitled to your opinion, and I respect that you believe what you believe to be right. If I may,... You mention places in the US, and I would say, that these things we have here, would never ever work in the United States, not because it could not be done in theory, but because pretty much all Americans are fundamentally hostile, and I don't just mean like "I don't think that is such a good idea", but the general impression I get is that "socialism is evil" (Which is very different from simply thinking that XYZ is not a good idea) no matter which flavor of it we're talking about.

Pretty much all Europeans that I talk to (Even some of my friends who are fairly staunch liberals), would listen to my arguments first and then respond to them, but it seems whenever I talk about even a very moderate (In my opinion) form of socialism (Reformism, democratic socialist (social democracy) etc. etc.) to an American (Sorry about stereotyping, I know there's exceptions (You know who you are!), but this is closer to being average than to being rare) I feel like I get bitten off, before I say my next word after "moderate form of socialism".
Yes, I know you guys were in a cold war with the Soviet Union that pointed nuclear warheads at you guys, my history is fairly decent, but may I add, that not everybody who is a left-wing person agrees with the politics of the former Soviet Union? A friend of mine is a fairly hardcore Marxist type of socialist, and boy he has a HUGE-ASS distaste for the Soviet Union, North Korea and China. One of our socialist parties, Socialist People's Party, was created specifically because the founder did NOT want to have anything to do with the Soviet Union, while the communist party (Which is defunct now, by the way) wanted to "talk" to Mr. Stalin.

And you talk about Denmark being a "closed environment", I'm sorry to say it, but your attitude reminds me of the word narrow-minded.



I apologize if I sounded slightly rude, but I get a little upset when people from bigger countries say something in the areas of "Well that's just because you're small" or "If you were as big as us you'd know better" (I am not claiming you said any of these two specifically).

[Aia]

The reason I'm a reformist socialist is first of all because I can see it work, I have seen it be proven to work extremely well in my country (Our Flexicurity model of welfare state, was built by our Social Democratic party). It's not perfect by any means, because nothing ever is. But I do strongly believe that the Danish society is a good society. That's not to say that the United States is not a good society, I'm sure it is in it's own way (I have only been to the US once in 1996 on vacation, I have never lived there for a longer time, so I am in no position to conclusively judge anything), however the issues I hear from the election campaigns, and the likes, are issues that were solved MANY years ago in Denmark, and in the case of universal health care, most of Europe solved that years ago.

Denmarks population is 6 million which is 3 million less than New York city alone. Those 6 million people also live on a land mass about the size of Texas.

If you want to pull out that argument (And I was not only referring to Denmark, but also the EU (Which has a population very close to 500 million, so there!) in general when mentioning universal health care, specifically) please do me the honor and please get your facts correct, Denmark's population is 5.5 million.

You are misrepresenting reality. I was even willing to take your words as face value, since I have never been in Denmark.
However, now I can't trust your "facts". By including the EU as another "great example" of how "socialism" works, you just show me that you live in your own ideology bubble.
I am from Spain. A EU country. And the picture you are showing us is a misrepresentation of the greatness of universal health care.

I don't believe that these solutions necessarily scale upwards.

...If I may,... You mention places in the US, and I would say, that these things we have here, would never ever work in the United States, not because it could not be done in theory, but because pretty much all Americans are fundamentally hostile,...

I not only don't believe that these solutions doesn't scale upwards, but I have experience with it, therefore I know is it a fallacy.
Again I am a Spaniard.

Pretty much all Europeans that I talk to (Even some of my friends who are fairly staunch liberals), would listen to my arguments first and then respond to them, but it seems whenever I talk about even a very moderate (In my opinion) form of socialism (Reformism, democratic socialist (social democracy) etc. etc.) to an American (Sorry about stereotyping, I know there's exceptions (You know who you are!), but this is closer to being average than to being rare) I feel like I get bitten off, before I say my next word after "moderate form of socialism".

You might have developed an internal "American-phobia syndrome of persecution".

[Wally Balljacker]

It's funny how there are people who are hostile to social democracy, yet, things like universal health care, the right to a decent education, labor rights, and so on, were all originally advocated by the socialists and social democrats, and these policies are mostly supported by conservatives now.

There is really no point in debating the massive success of social democratic policies in the Scandinavian countries and elsewhere in Europe.

[Aia]

It's funny how there are people who are hostile to social democracy, yet, things like universal health care, the right to a decent education, labor rights, and so on, were all originally advocated by the socialists and social democrats, and these policies are mostly supported by conservatives now.

Don't know what "conservatives" support since what's conservative for some it is liberal for others. Don't see the funny part you are writing about. However I can see what's wrong with universal health care as established in the countries I know.
A poor service to the individual. A spiral down to corruption, due to the lack of competition or liability. The inability to motivate physicians to go the extra mile due to the lack of incentive toward them.

There is really no point in debating the massive success of social democratic policies in the Scandinavian countries and elsewhere in Europe.

Yeah, "massive success". That's why when you are really sick you have use your savings to go and pay a "private" doctor for expediency and to make sure you are getting a good medical care.

[hellonorman]

NYC's population isn't quite 9 million either. But the whole point is about scale thus I rounded the numbers so I don't see how you are dishonored by it.


Small as in 3 million less people than NYC alone and a land mass the size of Texas.
Closed as in sovereign where policies only affect 5.5 million people. I wasn't implying oppressive.

You may get upset about it. But that doesn't mean that policies that work for a group of 5.5 million will work for a group of near 300 million.

[Tsuroerusu]

You are misrepresenting reality. I was even willing to take your words as face value, since I have never been in Denmark.
However, now I can't trust your "facts". By including the EU as another "great example" of how "socialism" works, you just show me that you live in your own ideology bubble.

That was not what I meant, I simply mentioned that most of the EU has some form of universal health care, if you re-read my post you'll see that I say "the EU in general when mentioning universal health care, specifically".

I am from Spain. A EU country. And the picture you are showing us is a misrepresentation of the greatness of universal health care.

Of course I can't speak of the systems you have in Spain, it would be idiotic for me to claim that I can, which is why I do not.

Pretty much all Europeans that I talk to (Even some of my friends who are fairly staunch liberals), would listen to my arguments first and then respond to them, but it seems whenever I talk about even a very moderate (In my opinion) form of socialism (Reformism, democratic socialist (social democracy) etc. etc.) to an American (Sorry about stereotyping, I know there's exceptions (You know who you are!), but this is closer to being average than to being rare) I feel like I get bitten off, before I say my next word after "moderate form of socialism".

You might have developed an internal "American-phobia syndrome of persecution".

Oh yeah, I'm sure I do, that's probably why I have a post-count of over 2000 on an American discussion forum, and I'm sure that's why I really appreciate the hard work that Pat, Dann, Linc and Allan do on TLLTS, and why I admire a whole bunch of Americans for things they have done (Martin Luther King, Richard Stallman, Bruce Schneier and more), and I'm definitely sure that that is why I, out of true gratefulness, light a candle every 5th of May in honor of the people (Among them, many Americans!) who died in the fight that led to Denmark's liberation from Nazi Germany's occupation. /A LOT of sarcasm

NYC's population isn't quite 9 million either. But the whole point is about scale thus I rounded the numbers so I don't see how you are dishonored by it.

Fair enough, now I am not.

Small as in 3 million less people than NYC alone and a land mass the size of Texas.
Closed as in sovereign where policies only affect 5.5 million people. I wasn't implying oppressive.

OK, I'll accept that.

You may get upset about it. But that doesn't mean that policies that work for a group of 5.5 million will work for a group of near 300 million.

I don't believe I suggested it would, I said that I don't believe a system like ours would not at all work in the United States for the reasons that I cited earlier, but also because like you mention our system is designed for a much smaller population, you'd have to redesign it for a bigger population. What I do believe is that the person that invents a system that would work is gonna get rich!


Edit: Somebody pointed out to me that my earlier postings made Denmark out to seem like a total paradise and perfect society or <insert whatever dream scenario you want here>. That was not the intent, our society is not a paradose, nor is it by any means perfect, if you turned on Danish TV today or read Danish news sites, you could hear about problems etc. etc. I guess what you could say is that I feel we have a good society here, not a perfect society.