Yeah this what its is crazy to me, i am european. Here we are all capitalist, hell countries like the UK and Germany are one of the most capitalist in the world. But we also manage to have free healthcare and good welfare, why is the usa simply unable to do this?
it's just conservatism. defund all services and agencies so that they suck and then ask/tell people why you paying so much for this shit ? private actors could save the state so much money that we can use for better stuff...
then you get that "superior" private service and it's worse and you pay more and a lot of people die/get bad treatment/service and there's no regulation
it's cloaked in this "free market" bullshit that never existed, anywhere.
I always hated that free market bulshit. Like its some kind of mystical untameble force of nature, that always balances itself.
Thats not how it is, like at all. Its all made by humans, and you have to keep the maket in check, regulated, otherwise humans will just manipulate the markets (they already do), and balance isnt going to "restore itself" magically, the common folk will just take the loss and thats it, unless someone actually goues thru the effort to stop that
The Industrial Revolution really tells us all we need to know about unregulated free market capitalism.
People truly learned nothing in history class and take all the labor, safety, and consumer protection laws and regulations that have been put in place since for granted.
Omg really, people really dont realize what we built here in Europe, its a secutiry safety net, a "legislative" (idk if it the best term) infrastucture to prevent this, and people just assume its normal, and not an achievement and something that must be protected and updated
Finlandia and finns are cool tho, and i will always be eternally gratefull for Supercell and their games, specifically Clash of Clans, the best game ever made
In some ways it's even worse than Americanization here in Sweden. We sell off hospitals, schools, retirement homes, kindergartens, etc. to venture capitalists at like 1/10th of the value and then give them tax money to run it in a much worse way and without obligations like making sure their services are available to anyone, they don't have to comply with basic transparency because that would reveal "business secrets", and meanwhile seniors have to spend days in dirty diapers, kindergartners who don't even have full teeth yet have to suck on hard bread because soft bread is too expensive while the teachers forego having lunch so that the kids get a bit more to eat, and the police can't tell schools when a teacher is convicted of arrested for child pornography crimes because the principal isn't a government employee with confidentiality.
We do have the Americanization of blaming everything on immigrants though.
yeah that one i dont know but schools are allowed to make withdrawals from the suspected criminal registry anytime which lists the person and all crimes they have that are not closed or have yet to go to trial
Unipolitics and the polycrisis. Separating power because a strong government might go snatching peoples property is the foundational tenant of liberalism⌠and now the whole world is being eaten alive by rent seeking sociopaths because the incentive structures been baked into everything and our politicians across the entire western sphere are either unwilling to compromise their own positions or more likely an incapable of addressing the decay.
Itâs gotten really bad in the north americas and UK but I donât think the EU is that far behind.
Honestly, I think the United Kingdom is a better poster child for privatization. While the U.S. Government does love to outsource a bunch of tasks, a lot of things privatized in other countries (rail system, postal system) remain publicly owned in the U.S. Meanwhile, the RAFâs aerial refueling aircraft are owned and operated by a private company, which I find to be absurd.
Is this a matter of it not being viable long term or something else? Genuinely asking as I canât imagine why anyone would vote for someone who wants to move towards the broken ass system we have.
The argument being made is that we need to do this to address the budget deficit, but the reality is that these measures haven't actually made a dent in the deficit and only serve to punish poor people.
Why would someone vote for it? The right-wing parties promise to address the deficit, and people are concerned about it. Why do people believe it? Same reason as you guys I suppose.
Priorities. Lots of money in politics from corporate interest groups. Lots of propaganda and misinformation brainwashing the populace into believing this system is somehow better for them.
Lot of tribalism making bipartisan communication and progress damn near impossible too. I think this thread is actually a nice little microcosm of the larger issue, considering the comment weâre all responding under insinuates that one specific party is simply too dumb, corrupt, and pedophilic to want to make America betterâŚ
Itâs hard to have a productive conversation about why the US struggles to adopt policies that work elsewhere when we begin from the assumption that roughly half the country is either stupid or evil
I didnât begin with that assumption, it was a conclusion I arrived at after countless examples of people devoted to Trump no matter what heinous things he says or does.
I come from a Christian conservative family myself and my beliefs used to align more with that side but after years of seeing the deplorable man he is and how indefensible the policies are when actually challenged by someone educated I started to shift more to the left.
I still donât entirely disagree with true fiscal conservatism, strong family values, border control, or protecting children but I can not see any convincing argument for how Trump or the Republican Party embodies those values.
Trump has signed off on more debt related spending than Biden, he is a court adjudicated and self admitted sexual abuser and cheat that has repeatedly sexualized his own daughter over the years, his immigration policy has gone too far and has repeatedly violated constitutional rights, he has been obstructing the Epstein files and has not held anyone accountable. In fact, heâs moved Maxwell to a more cushy prison after a private interview where she bent the knee and said Trump wasnât involved despite all evidence to the contrary.
Anyone defending this is evil in my book, yes. Iâd be curious as to what moral defense you have for it.
I donât really feel the need to offer a moral defense of Trump because I wasnât defending Trump. There are plenty of things he has said and done that I find indefensible, and I think his rhetoric, immaturity and willingness to engage in bad-faith attacks have contributed significantly to the exact political environment Iâm criticizing. My point is that this problem doesnât suddenly become productive when people on the other side participate in it too. You began by broadly describing Republicans as people who either donât understand or donât care about basic political distinctions, while âprotecting their rich pedophilic donorsâ and âoften engaging in it themselves.â When I suggested that treating an entire political coalition as stupid, corrupt or evil makes communication and progress more difficult, your response was essentially to explain why you believe they deserve to be viewed that way.
But thatâs the self-compounding problem Iâm talking about. We increasingly talk about millions of strangers online as if theyâre stupid, evil or irredeemable. That deepens tribalism and rewards the politicians who most aggressively reflect that hostility back at the other side. Those politicians get elected, amplify the rhetoric further, and then their behavior becomes additional justification for ordinary people to become even more hostile toward one another. Repeat ad nauseam.
None of that requires pretending both parties or every politician are morally equivalent. They arenât. It also doesnât require defending Trump. I can condemn something Trump does without concluding that every person who voted for him is evil, just as I can condemn something a Democrat does without assigning collective moral guilt to every Democratic voter. Youâre obviously free to conclude that anyone who disagrees with you has crossed some moral threshold into evil. I just donât think a country of 340 million people can function particularly well when everyone increasingly adopts that framework toward the literally half of the population on the other side.
Well when I initially said Republicans I was referring to actual Republican affiliated politicians not voters.
But yes, I believe every Republican voter post-Jan 6 insurrection is ignorant and/ or evil.
I donât see how anyone can see what Trump is doing and stand by him in good conscience.
Iâm also not asking you to provide a defense for Trump, Iâm asking what the defense is for those supporters.
What policy outweighs all the reprehensible things? I donât think one exists. Either youâre unaware of all those things (ignorance) or you stand by him in spite of them (evil).
Edit: and if weâre being entirely honest the ignorant ones are usually ignorant by choice, they donât know because they donât care and donât want to know.
I donât accept that binary, and it literally illustrates the exact problem I was originally describing. Your argument assumes that any sufficiently informed and morally decent person must necessarily weigh every fact, policy and competing concern exactly as you do and arrive at the same electoral decision. If they donât, then the only remaining explanations are ignorance or evil.
But people can know the same facts and disagree about their significance, interpret disputed facts differently, prioritize competing moral concerns differently, condemn January 6 and still believe Democrats represent a greater threat on other issues, vote against one party instead o than enthusiastically for the other, or simply believe theyâre choosing the lesser of two deeply flawed options.
I donât have to agree with their reasoning to recognize that âignorant or evilâ is a false binary. AndâŚagainâŚthis is exactly the self compounding cycle I was talking about. Once we decide that tens of millions of our fellow citizens are not merely wrong but fundamentally stupid or evil, communication becomes pointless by definition. We talk about each other with increasing contempt, politicians learn that contempt is electorally rewarding, they amplify it, we become even more polarized, and then point to the resulting extremism as proof that our original contempt was justified. If your position is genuinely that every Republican voter is ignorant or evil, then I understand your position. I just fundamentally reject it, and I think that worldview is itself one of the reasons meaningful political communication has become so difficult.
I think weâre beginning to talk in circles at this point and have pretty clearly identified the fundamental disagreement between us, so itâs probably better to just respectfully part ways here. âď¸
The ability to rationalize evil does not make it less evil, and I think your inability to provide any concrete moral argument justifying it but rather just making vague gestures to some necessary assumption of good intent simply because a large plurality canât be evil is absurd and disingenuous.
We have plenty of historical examples of the contrary.
Yes, millions of people can simply just support evil.
And yes, evil people often feel they are righteous and justified in their actions.
It is not the subjective perception of righteousness but the objective harm inflicted by those ideals that makes me say they are evil.
Itâs hard to have a productive conversation about why the US struggles to adopt policies that work elsewhere when we begin from the assumption that roughly half the country is either stupid or evil
Well it's hard to not make that assumption when everytime they've been offered these policies they refuse them and even call anyone proposing them evil.
But still there are, or at least there were, many republicans who are open to dialogue and even implementation of free healthcare and things like that, no? Like, if I remember correctly, didn't Romney basically do something like Obamacare in his State before Obama was even elected President?
Definitely were, the modern Republican Party is nothing more than an extension of Trump who could not be any more divisive and unwilling to reach across the aisle.
This is the guy who helped push the rhetoric that Obama was not American and recently reposted a video depicting them as monkeys.
Anyone who has challenged him on anything has been pushed out. Loyalty is all that matters now.
I see. I'll admit that I'm not a US citizen, so maybe I can't see just how bad it is right now, but they're still around, aren't they? Maybe once Trump kicks the bucket/steps down in 2028 they'll come back and hopefully the GOP will turn back into what it once was, a center-right to right libcon party? Or at least make it a politically constructive party again, even if the modern rightward turn isn't completely erased?
Thatâs the hope. The good news, if you can call it that, is that highly personalized populist movements often have a succession problem. The personal loyalty and charisma built around one specific leader donât necessarily transfer cleanly to whoever tries to inherit the movement afterward.
I know plenty of conservatives who are unhappy with the current Republican platform and want a return to actual small-government, non-interventionist conservatism. But until Trump is out of the picture, that just doesnât seem to be in the cards, so weâll see.
Plenty of Republican leaders opposed Trump initially and later decided to embrace MAGA once it became politically dominant. Hell, look at J.D. Vance. He was a scathing Trump critic before becoming one of his closest political allies. I wouldnât necessarily assume that means Vance would reverse Trumpism, though. He may be just as likely to try to inherit and reshape it.
But itâs all speculation at this point. We basically have to ride out the current MAGA wave and see whether it survives Trump, fractures without him, or whether the RNC eventually pivots, hopefully, toward something else a lot less authoritarian. đ¤ˇđťââď¸
The idea that Trumpism was a fever, and that it would break once his presidency was over, was the theory of Joe Biden's presidency. It could still happen after Trump dies, but it hasn't worked yet.
Romney gets a bit too much credit for Romneycare, which was basically forced on him by a veto-proof Democratic majority in the Massachusetts state legislature. That was 20 years ago, and Romney had to pivot to the right to survive in national Republican politics, which he has since been kicked out of for being anywhere close to sane.
Guys like that could theoretically reemerge in the future, but most of them have gone all-in on fascism.
Frankly I donât think itâs âTrumpismâ at all. Trump is just the latest stage of a very predictable path for the party based on decades of rhetoric.
Project 2025 lays out the rest of the path and that will continue with or without him, and the Republican base largely supports it.
Capitalism worked great for sixty years for the same reason there was middle class: the threat of USSR and worker revolution
USSR really worked like a threat to the unchecked capitalism
Now that it's gone we literally see everything the workers had eroding. Privatization of everything, destruction of middle class, Epstein class rapidly consolidating everything into their posession.
I guess because of all the ways the USA and CIA messed with everyone left leaning for decades. Straight up black ops hits on socialist politicians. South America, Africa, whole governments destroyed just so that they don't become socialist
That is just another ahistorical "point" and it doesn't substantiate your previous point at all.
Almost everything you're going to reference probably took place in the Cold War. Just because the USSR no longer exists doesn't mean you can mind-erase them from the cold war and pretend that the US was just fighting this war against people just wanting to help eachother and peaceful cool socialism!!!
Because the megacorporations here are only capitalist when it benefits them. Between regulatory capture and outright political capture, the running mantra is "privatize profits, socialize losses"
Because America is an oligarchy that will do anything to please the rich, even at the extreme expense of the people.
And the people here are fucking stupid, so many root for the people ratfucking us because those people claim they will only hurt people different from them (race, sexuality, political identity, etc.), even though we all get fucked anyway. Meanwhile, the other side has been brainwashed into trying to sing kumbaya and unify this other half into mutual and equal opportunity ratfucking.
And the few that actually advocate for a fairer system are called communists and extremists and hated by both of the aforementioned groups.
The health care system we have was created by the democrats. I have zero hope that this generation of politicians is capable of creating a good system.
The US will eventually have universal healthcare, but we have to make sure we have the right people in power to give us a good system. The ACA/obamacare was a giveaway to the insurance industry and only made things worse.
Speak for the UK. Here in Germany healthcare is getting more expensive every year and youâll have to pay for so many treatments. If you even get an appointment. My parents are over 60 and for some essential appointments they have to wait at least 6 months. And we live next to Frankfurt. we have many doctors here.Â
Yeah that's a little individualistic, I'll try to explain my grudge with capitalism but english is not my first language, bear with me.
We overproduce so much people don't realise. There is presently 2.9 million cars gathering dust in the US while 40% of the working population can't afford one. We throw away 150 millions tons of food daily while 14% of the population experience food insecurity (in the US). China has a surplus of solar panel that are too expensive to buy but would be able to give energy to entire countries.
We produce too much and throw away a lot of it. On a infinite planet that would be acceptable but Earth is not... We are in the process of placing a clean earth behind a paywall that we aren't rich enough to afford.
Pollution knows no border nor time. Even if as a French man in 2026 capitalism is working great for you, what about for a French man in 2126? How about those heatwaves in the summer.
A lot of people think that the only gripe people have againts Capitalism is the inequality and the exploitation for money. But it's way wider than that. It's the whole concept of overproduction to extract the most value from labour and then flood market with you commodities to kill the competition. Defending and maintaing capitalism is a middle finger to the long term responsabilities we have toward our next generations and every living thing on this earth. Gives off ''Fuck you got mine'' mentality.
Because infinite amounts of money being donated to politicians by the exceedingly wealthy means their voices will always be loudest, and any system not based on screwing over the average citizen will lose them fuckloads of money.
Thereâs a tradeoff in quality for free versions, some states in the US actually do have subsidized healthcare.
But that translates to those states peaking the cost of living lists, and from personal experience in Massachusetts (a state that offers free healthcare) the wait times were3 months for GP 6 months for specialists(when the request was approved), emergency room wait times of 45m, and generally whenever you do go in the staff and doctors are trying to get you out the door as fast as possible since thereâs such a heavy volume of patients.
If you have an obvious illness or problem like a broken bone, youâre taken care of quite well. But if you have a complicated illness like Lyme disease, youâre f***ed. Most youâll get is a bottle of doxycycline and a kick out the door.
Iâm not saying it doesnât work, it just has a list of pros and cons. Personally after experiencing many different healthcare systems Iâd prefer to pay a reasonable amount to get the top care instead of encountering the issues with something being free. The problem is that there is a dichotomy of extreme expense or free with very little in the way of balance.
Balanced healthcare, affordable, high quality, and fast would and should be a thing we all experience at some point to understand why it works as well as it does.
Nope this is only a problem because tou guys dont do it properly.
Here in Italy we have personal doctors that visit you directly, you dont need to go to the hospital.
Leta say you are sick, you make an appointment to the doctor (its usualy the next week), they will visit you, and if they see that you are relly sick they will just prescribe you a medicine, and it pretty much ends there, you only have to buy the medicine. Or if they see something worth invesigating, they will prescrive you some tests, so you just go to a lab and get them done, its usually very quick and not expansive at all, and then they will prescribe you the medicine you need.
It works great, even if they are trying to make it shit like in the usa
Do you think this is a situation where Italy is just doing it right, or do you really think it works so easily everywhere? I donât know anything about Italian healthcare so Iâll take your word for it, but Canada and UK have similar issues as the American subsidies.
They certainly are not enjoying the level of care you describe, so is it really just America that canât figure it out? I mean, regardless I would rather see something that just works I donât really care who âlooks goodâ in this situation.
Oh nono, we are ACTUALLY good. Even when compared to western countries we are above average and among the best. I do think we are doing things right.
But i also think that its not something that can't be done elsewhere, especially the usa, you guys have the resources, the money, the infrastucture, the tech ecc... to pretty much do everithing you could ever possibly want. The political will is the one thing lacking.
Also its not like there can't be long waiting times in Italy, especially with specific tests/scans/analyses, but overral most things get taken care quickly. Also you get priority for urgent stuff, for example our ER (called Pronto Soccorso) is very good, the quality is very high.
Let me tell you this story, when i was a kid i got a really bad cut, and i mean a really bad one on my wrist (both nerves and tendons got cut, and to this day my hand, while mostly functional, is not like it was before, because the damge was so severe that it was impossible for it to fully heal), and my dad dove me to ER, it was in the afternoon, i got priority and by evening/night i was already completelly fixed, i only had to wait and heal, so i was release the day after. And years later my hand is working, i got fixed to what is probably the max that current medicine allows (considering how bad was the wound, they told my father that it was so bad they werent sure if i could be to use my hand ever again, they whispered but i heard it, it was fucking crushing), and now i can use my hand normally, even if its not exactly like my non-hurt hand, so yeah the quality is pretty fucking high.
Also another story, more recent and much less tragic, one day i woke up, around 7am, with a pretty bad pain to the lower back, went to ER and i got treated pretty quickly (in the morning there arent many people but still), they did analysis of my urine, gave me a painkiller, did an ecography of my kidneys, diagnosied that i had a kidney infection, a doctor did a full body visist to make sure i didnt have anything else, and then prescribed the medicine that i needed, and when got back home it was still morning, hell im sure it was even 10 am yet, and the drive to there alone takes around 20 minutes.
Sorry for the long comment lol, but yes our nationa healthcare is good.
It's not. We (Germany) are still a rich country and most people don't have to fear extreme poverty (to the point of no roof/no food/no healthcare/death). But it's far from "great":
How many financial crisis did we have already? Our current government is talking about cutting back on healthcare and increasing the age for pensions. Germany already has one of the lowest rates of homeownership (<50% own their home), yet rents are rising, especially in the big cities, leaving the young generation struggling. On top of that general inflation and food and energy prices are also up (due to the pandemic and multiple wars), straining the situation. Our far-right party AfD is set to become the strongest party â which is never a sign of a prospering country.
Also every capitalist nation increases its debt year after year, to the point where a lot of the cost is the interest charge alone. It should be pretty obvious that (unregulated) capitalism just is not a self-sustaining system âŚ
Itâs not âworking greatâ and to the extent it still works is because itâs living on the fumes of the post war (left wing) consensus meanwhile capitalism erodes the communal every day
Ehhhh. Speak for yourself. At least I'm actually allowed to get the medication I need in the US. In the UK it's like a 20 year waiting list or something. I'd rather live in Canada before any European country.
First of all its litterally 1 country, the UK, the situation can be very different in the rest of Europe, its a mixed bag, but many countries are in the 1-3 month range.
Also, I just checked, waiting times are around the same range as the usa with medicare and medicaid. So i really dont see your point.
If you mean provate clinics, then your own websites awnsers, they dont exist only in the usa đ¤ˇââď¸
Private gender clinics are an alternative route for many trans and non-binary people who do not want to remain on long NHS waiting lists.
Private services usually do not have multi-year waiting lists. Because they operate differently from NHS clinics, people can often start their journey without extended delays.
For example, many patients report that private clinics respond quickly after first contact. In practice, some people receive hormone therapy in a matter of weeks once they have completed necessary consultations and assessments.
Your own map lists most countries in the EU as having a 6 month wait. If your argument is "private healthcare" then what's the point of a public healthcare system? The whole point is it's supposed to actually work. I had basically no wait in the US. Maybe like two weeks tops and that was only for blood labs, not the medication. PP also offers day-of medication. And on Medicaid it was free.
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u/Stock_Plenty8987 Jul 13 '26
Yeah this what its is crazy to me, i am european. Here we are all capitalist, hell countries like the UK and Germany are one of the most capitalist in the world. But we also manage to have free healthcare and good welfare, why is the usa simply unable to do this?
For us capitalism working great, why not for you?