Yes, people should have that, but it’s not that simple. Some liberals, particularly classical liberals, think a free market would bring those things to everyone. I don’t necessarily disagree, though I think free markets can only ever be free under communism/socialism, not capitalism. The issue with centrally planned, universal healthcare is that a hostile government could refuse to provide you care, much like insurance companies that don’t approve coverage for many things. Additionally, there needs to be strong medical privacy protections.
Market-based healthcare favors perpetual treatment over permanent cures or preventative medicine, like dialysis over kidney transplants, insulin instead of diet and exercise. If you have a rare disease than you are just fucked, because pharmaceutical companies just want to sell dick pills. A market’s purpose is to maximize revenue, not patient well-being.
I mean that’s the potential problem with any service: that the faction running it could decide they don’t like you. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason not to build things that help society though. A government could decide not to let you on a train, i still think there should be trains
Markets are fundamentally profit driven, and services like healthcare or housing need to be provided regardless of the profit motive. These are a natural fit for the state owned industries. Where markets can have a role is providing nice to have things that improve general quality of life, but aren’t living essentials.
the smugness is always the worst part.
“Um, have you considered (facile bullshit we all heard ten thousand times before even becoming leftists)?”
I’ve never encountered this type of liberal. Neolib, sure.
Liberalism is an ideology with two main parts. First is political liberalism which focuses on individual freedoms, democracy, and human rights. Second is economic liberalism which centers around free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects form a contradiction. Political liberalism purports to support everyone’s freedom, while economic liberalism enshrines private property rights as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing them from political debate.
Liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property rights even when they come into direct conflict with providing necessities such as food, shelter, and healthcare. The idea that private property is a key part of individual freedom provides the foundational justification for the rich to keep their wealth while ignoring the needs of everyone else. Thus, all the talk of promoting freedom and democracy is nothing more than a fig leaf to provide cover for justifying capitalist relations.
This is an excellent primer on the subject https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
I very much understand all of this. Do you truly prefer maga? You would rather have ICE raids than student loan forgiveness? You would rather have Medicaid cuts than the CHIPS act. I am not a liberal but I have to admit I am extremely embarrassed by the short sightedness and lack of care from modern leftists. Letting Trump won is causing so much harm to people who don’t deserve it. Is the DNC the answer, fuck no. But letting republicans win everything is clearly pushing America to the far right.
Exhibit number 6,631 of liberals refusing to process the existence of people to their left and just pretending everyone who disagrees with their preferred form of polite fascism must secretly just be a different type of fascist.
Also lol if you think the dems are ever going to do student loan forgiveness. They’ll be dangling that scrap over your head to get you to vote for the next bipartisan genocide until the day you die.
How on earth did you come to the conclusion the comment you were responding to was supporting MAGA? Honestly baffling
Not only are you creating a false dichotomy here, but you’re ignoring the fact that Trump coming to power is itself is a direct product of decades of liberal policies.
Neolibs are just a subcategory of liberal, though.
I’m not actually sure that’s true.
Why wouldn’t it be? Liberalism is the ideological superstructure of capitalism, Neoliberals are a particular type.
You said liberalism is the ideological superstructure of capitalism, as if it was the only one. But there is also fascism, right? Were you imprecise, or am I missing something?
I’d say imprecise, for the sake of short convo. Liberalism in my view is the “normal” ideological superstructure of capitalism, and fascism is the ideological superstructure of capitalism in crisis, when capital needs to violently assert itself to maintain the existing way of things. It’s what happens when the rulers can’t rule in the old way, and/or the people can’t live in the old way, but when the proletariat is without a vanguard, or a weak one.
There’s a little bit more nuance than that isn’t there? You can provide these things, but we still need to produce things right? Because we haven’t yet reached full automation. So the question is if we provide those things and a significant part of the population decide that they are happy with the minimum and thus they don’t want to work, and we start having massive labor shortages such that the goods needed to sustain the economy cannot be produced, what do we do? Well the only solution at that point is to make labor mandatory, and forced if the individual is noncompliant. Which is why the labor market as it exists is seen as the lesser evil. This is a bit of an oversimplification because I’m not looking to write an essay here but that covers the gist of why a liberal may oppose full on socialism.
For me, the imperative is achieving that automation. Only then is full socialism viable.
We don’t need to reach full automation. We throw away half the food we produce right now, there is more empty housing having been bought up for speculation than there are people in the US or Canada. The problem is with the economic system that fails to distribute according to need. The solution is to ensure that workers are the primary beneficiaries of their own labour as opposed to the oligarchs who own capital.
