Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by CyMonk 266 days ago
I often wish I lived in a world where people understood that social democracy, socialism, Marxism, and communism are not synonyms.
2 comments

Redo the whole justification and analysis based on network effects and utility to payor instead of from each according to his ability to each according to his need and this statement would become a lot more practically believable
Insurance!

-is based on network effects

-has utility to both payor and payee

-long modelled as "from each according to his ability to each according to his need"

-is already practically believable

-only synonymous with "gambling"

Incorrect. Insurance is modelled on expected value with premiums that provide a profit on average across a pooled group. Try again.
So is gambling but we also know that is a joke.

The point is that leveraging some subtle disparities in EV* would what'd be necessary for something like the above "ideologies" to "work" over time (although so far the politicians on the whole don't think like this)

*usually supported by better data and models, which is what governments that don't piss the people off with taxes are good at

Perhaps true regarding requiring the change to payor expected value to work, however, if you made that change you would no longer have social democracy, socialism, Marxism, or communism because payor expected value is the opposite of the basis of all those ideologies. All of those ideologies have taking as much as possible from the payor under the false assumption that transferring to other individuals directly or spending indirectly through growing government is a net positive, when it is not strictly (or even likely) to be so.
1986 but supports your general point (Swiss federals do not have a deficit AIUI, public spending is stable). Such governmental competence is indeed rare but exists-- and the public infrastructure is far better than their "socialist" brothers up north.

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/welfa...

Especially among the people who advocate for them.