"I always get prickly when people nitpick on my English"
I actually had no intention of nitpicking your english. I really just didn't see a joke. probably was more on me, than you.
" my apologies"
No Problem, now we can speak without stress.
"It's your money we're talking about here, not mine"
To be frank, it's not my money for many reasons. The biggest one is that they just print what they need. The process is by removing reserve requirements from banks, Then banks can give loans to people, who put those loans into other banks, who use that to defend their solvency to make more loans also, with no reserve. Literal money printing.
But the second way is that I made a choice a while ago to not pay income tax. I can't avoid all tax, but shortly after reading those bills I mentioned I spent time to try to understand how much of my money was spent on a) things I felt I was responsible for (i.e. NOT debt) and things that I would participate in financially for the good of everyone. That number came to 2% of expenditures. Thus 98% of what I pay for in income taxes go to things I am not responsible for, I don't think are good methods to achieve goals, or are outright immoral.
I now live in a place where I still pay taxes, but the grerat majority goes locally and not to the federal government. I wish everyrone would do this.
"every single alternative under the sun is just worse"
I agree in those countries that is true, often because the state version has monopolies on everything, so only the extremely rich can have decent services. Privatization in almost ALL cases doesn't mean privately funded and executed. It almost always means government program operated by a corporation. Zero percent of that sentence is a form of capitalsim.
Meanwhile, in america, private institutions that do not take insurance, nor work with social programs, deliver services for a fraction of the price and far higher quality. you can see this from the LASIK market, but also orthopedic markets.
You can actually go in there and know what tyou are going to pay up front.
Biggest problem with socialized or 'privatized' healthcare is that people do not understand the costs. They do not feel price signals so they can not make good choices.
I fully endorse healthcare tourism. Why shouldnt you be able to spend your money at a rate that works for you, and a quality you deserve?
"a dude being airlifted out of a trail he was hiking so that he could receive his kidney transplant in a timely fashion"
This happens in america too. In fact I was airlifted from a motocyle accident. I paid my 500 dollar deductable on the $18000 helicopter fee.
"I'd pay more taxes with a gigantic smile on my face if it meant improving things like this "
As far as I can tell, if you paid less in taxes, the fees for this would go down. Insurance companies would actually compete and catastrophic insurance (the one that would pay for this, which used to cost $100/year in america, but has been removaved due to 'privatization'). You could probably pay for catastrophic insurance for 10 people and still get airlifted as needed.
" irony of us discussing what "Capitalism/Socialism means"
Fair enough. I will use "free Market methodology" anc "centralized metholdolgy" from now on.
" claim that the private sector influencing the polity "isn't Capitalism" or that "taxation" isn't part of Capitalism either. Are you using an Anarcho-definition of Capitalism"
100%, that is the only form of capitalism that is not tainted with something else that drags it towards the purview of Fascism. Anything away from this definition, ESPECIALLY when looking at the ills of policy, means we are not talking about a free market, and thus the ills can not be pinned on the economic voluntary exchange of goods and services, but instead must be attributed to force in some way or another.
"And the guarantor of such ownership is, and could only be, the State "
Then we are talking about coercive force again, and not capitlalism. Thus the rest of the paragraph doesnt make any sense. If you want to blame centralized methodologies for the ills of the world, I am right there with you. But you can not have a world without that without capitalism.
" I'd still take issue if you tried to define any of it as "Socialism" instead."
More centralized, more socialism. I have read of anarcho socialism, even communism. The back drop must be capitalism between voluntary socialist groups, or you have coercion and centralization. Once you have that, you have an ideal path for power hungry psychopaths to gain control, and morons to make policies that affect everyone but them.
