[ExI] socialism

[Henrik Ohrstrom]

I have been trying to find something useful to add to the discussion.
As living in Sweden and well informed about the rest of Scandinavia I must
really say that socialistic is not a good description of Sweden. Liberal
welfare state yes, socialistic, no. Healthcare is paid for by taxes. It is
governed state actors, landsting, which is very autonomous units that from
the beginning fulfilled the same function as the different states in the
US. The landsting even has some kind of governor equivalent.
It is very much not a socialist system, basically all parts of the
healthcare system is up for competitive bidding. It is quite difficult to
get into some parts of it though. Ie good luck trying to take over the
university hospitals.... But there's nothing that stops you from starting
your own apart from economic realities. It is hard to compete with the
landstings owned hospitals for lossy things like university/emergency/etc
stuff. Nevertheless there are plenty of private healthcare that do work for
the landstings but they are paid by the landsting to do specific stuff up
to and including one general hospital including emergency room. (One
general hospital St Göran in Stockholm)
Private healthcare insurance exist but are quite pointless and is rather
uncommon. It's more expensive and don't get you any better than the general
system. Mainly people have it to get VIP treatment. Healthcare in Sweden
otherwise treat everyone equally bad..... Or well, depending on your
expectations.

The strange combination of liberalism and strong welfare is traditional,
and is in my opinion due to the fact that having everyone in the same
insurance keeps all kinds of costs down.  And there are a question of
ethics too.
The way it's done in countries with a strong emphasis on individual
insurance reeks of religion to me, I have forgotten the English name for
it, it's if god loves me I will be healthy rich and happy. If god doesn't,
I won't. And then since God hates me the rest of you don't have to take
care of me since if god bullies me why should you do something else?

And since most of us want to stay above that level in ethics, anyone who is
at least mostly legal is taken care of.

The rest of society is quite market competitive too, private
schoolcompanies selling education to the kommuns (counties) compete
directly with the kommuns own schools for pupils and money.

Other parts can be bidded for too. I am a member of an hunting club that
rents hunting grounds close to the city from the city and the hunting club
made a bid for the handling of traffic wounded animals and pest control in
the city and won the bid so now our club does official animal handling for
the city and get paid for it. In a couple of years the contract is up for
negotiation again and someone else could make a better bid and take over
the hunting for the city. Etc etc buses, schools, garbage collection, etc
most official functions are possible to contract out to a private actor.
Paid by the state/landsting/kommun and most of the time rather aggressively
audited for compliance with the terms of contract.

So socialist country? Nah, not in any way that socialists like it.
/Henrik

Den mån 25 feb. 2019 18:10Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> skrev:

> Scandinavian countries are market societies with extensive welfare states.
> They’re not socialist. The means of production is mostly privately owned.
> See:
>
>
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2018/07/08/sorry-bernie-bros-but-nordic-countries-are-not-socialist/
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>    Sample my Kindle books at:
>
> http://author.to/DanUst
>
> On Feb 25, 2019, at 8:09 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Am I wrong?  I think the Scandanavian countries are democratic socialism
> and Venezuela et alia are autocratic socialisms.  Further, that only in the
> latter does the federal gov. run the economy.
>
> bill w
>
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