[rtpg]

extremely debatable. In the US, almost no national infrastructure was built through private means (though often privatised later). Private healthcare has been a disaster at maintaining a healthy public. An insistence on having government work happen through public contractors has generated massive conflicts of interests and made us end up with the most expensive infrastructure building process in the world.

Just because the Soviet Union fell over doesn't mean that capitalism has somehow been proven to be "the best solution".

[gozur88]

I don't know a good label for the US healthcare system, but it's so heavily regulated it's impossible to call it "private".

>Just because the Soviet Union fell over doesn't mean that capitalism has somehow been proven to be "the best solution".

Name one country implemented socialism (and by that I mean the government owns the means of production) and didn't end up worse off than when it started. Even the Northern European welfare states are capitalist.

[pharrington]

China.

[gozur88]

Not even close. 40 million people starved to death under the communists.

[pharrington]

You asked to name a country that ended up worse. Since we are not at the end of history, the only consistent way to interpret "ended up" is "in its state as of the time of this statement."

edit: My above interpretation isn't quite right. It should be "its state as of the latest known point in time the predicate was true."

[gozur88]

But China abandoned socialism in the '70s. It's only been since then the country started to turn it around.