(01-28-2020, 06:26 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-28-2020, 02:11 PM)David Horn Wrote: Pick any Scandinavian country. Given the lousy weather and limited resources (Norway has oil, but that's about it these days), they all do very well. Are there discontents? Of course -- they're everywhere. The big difference: most of the country is OK with high taxes for great benefits. I don't see the Norwegians running the social democrats away so they can go hard capitalist. The same applies in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.
I don't see the social Democrats in those countries allowing their people to have the freedom do that either.
This is about like some mullah in Iran saying that because the establishment of a regime similar to that in Iran is impossible in America that America lacks political freedom. The Commies used to say much the same about America not being free because Commies had no meaningful chance of winning a free election that would establish a Communist President or Congress.
We may have gone as far as we can with the ultra-individualist manner of government that holds that so long as the Right People get whatever they want, that all is well. It is more likely that America goes to something closer to social democracy than anything that we have ever had. If all that mattered was maximal profits, then we would not have so much and so widespread economic distress as we have. We have an epidemic of meth and opiate addiction. Life expectancy among middle-aged white men is falling in much of America.
The suicide rate has risen in America over twenty years, indicating that something is terribly wrong.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/numbers
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.