No, Sweden's response to the C***D P******c was not a model response to the C***D P******c.

Maybe I'm not interpreting your humor correctly.

From Business Insider:

"A year and a half after Sweden decided not to lock down, its C****-** death rate is up to 10 times higher than its neighbors"

"Plus, Sweden's economy still shrank 8.6% from April to June of last year — its largest quarterly fall in at least 40 years. By comparison, Denmark's economy shrank 7.4% during that time, Norway's 5.1%, and Finland's just 3.2%."

"Eventually, after Sweden's daily C****-** cases, hospitalizations, and death skyrocketed from October to December, the country closed non-essential public spaces, such as gyms, pools and libraries, and recommend masks during rush hour on public t***sport."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-c***d-no-lockdown-strategy-failed-higher-death-rate-2021-8?op=1]

"The country has one of the highest infection rates in western Europe" [ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00885-0/fulltext ]

"The fact that the number of people who lost their lives due to the v***s in Sweden was three times higher than the total of Finland, Norway, and Denmark, which took drastic measures and closed for a long time, drew a lot of criticism." [ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/sweden-lifts-all-c****-**-restrictions/2378287 ]

It may not be totally bad. But it was no model response, if "model" means "good".

Capitalism is not the only thing that raises spirits to joy, builds p***e, or brings a joy in living. Capitalism might have a high tendency to build self-reliance, though. So would a brutal non-civilization.

You used a word which I find important: "property".

I would distinguish at least two different kinds of property. I shall make a couple of extreme examples, in an attempt to illustrate that there is some significant difference between them.

Example A: I travel from my homeland, and go into some other people's homeland, k**l them all, and take what was their homeland as my own property.

Example B: I stay in one place all my life, and do nothing but piece-work: I make "widgets" (or, say, anything useful, such as chairs, tables, farm implements like plows, or pots and pans, or knives). So I have all this inventory of things I made. Then I might decide what to do with it: maybe keep it, use it, or give it away, or sell it, or trade it for other things.

In both A and B, I have something which is commonly called "property" (land or widgets). But to me they seem much different from each other. What do you think: is there some significant difference between them?

(I don't want to complete the thoughts about property yet; I want to leave it there, in hopes you or others will think about it and maybe say things about it.)

As for me, personally, owning a home (6,000 square feet of land plus a house on it) (at least paying a mortgage on it, which some call "owning a home") does give me a feeling of satisfaction, but it pales in significance to my relationships with my family (one of the most important reasons for owning a home is that it is part of my role as a family member). One of the themes in my life has been to try to be "a good person" and that t***slates partly into relationships with close associates like family, and partly into being a good element in society. I've often thought of myself as "a worker", and that much of my value lies in being a productive worker. I've felt some anguish about that, because sometimes I've been less productive than at other times. And I didn't feel bad because of loss of money. I felt bad because of conscience and personal values not being satisfied. And the times when I felt the most joy were _not_ the times I got an increase in pay; they were almost opposite to that. One example is when I was in college playing in the orchestra. When I played well, I felt joy, and when I played poorly, I felt misery. I didn't get paid for any of it. Doing my part in the orchestra was work; it was not paid work; to me it was meaningful work.

Even before becoming a landowner, I used to count up how much money I had, in the bank or in an investment, and chart its increase on graph paper, with a happy sentiment that might have been shared by Silas Marner the fictional miser as he counted his hoard of money. But money and land have not been my only sources of joy or satisfaction. I wanted meaning and satisfaction and recognition in my work, and in my community. Sometimes I got it, and sometimes I didn't.

A lot of people really care about meanings and values, and I don't mean monetary values. For these people, myself included, it's more important to do good work than to get paid well. But, we need both. So my aspiration has long been to have enough money so that I didn't need to think about money, so that I could dev**e myself to more meaningful things such as relationships and fixing societal problems. Now I am retired, and still worn out as usual, but am still wanting the same things.

All this is to say (or point in the direction of) that socialism (regarding some things, such as, probably, "land" or maybe "work") does not detract from joy any more than it adds to it. I think that if there were people who _rely_ on _capitalism_ for _most_ of their joy in life, they would be selfish people and not very aware of the rest of the world. That would seem unsatisfactory, and would probably be harmful overall.

That's what I think too. Dictatorial and oligarchical leaderships are a problem. Socialism is not a problem. A lot of people in the USA, having been taught in USA schools, think that socialism and dictatorship are the same thing. They're not. They may often occur together, but that doesn't mean they have to always be just that particular big ball of wax.

Another topic that comes up, when discussing socialism, is capitalism. Someone in this thread recently veered perilously close to defining capitalism. I suppose socialism and capitalism might be "opposites" to each other; but we'd need some sort of working definitions if we were to say so more definitely. A lot of places have mixtures of socialism and capitalism -- a little like having your cake and eating it too. Having recently become a land-owner (about 6,000 square feet) I really enjoy this little bit of capitalism that I have. At the same time, I can see that something like a single-payor national health care system is more important than whether I can have more land than somebody else has. And a single-payor national health care system is what I'd call a "socialist" idea.

The idea of "democratic socialism" seems good to me. Or maybe democracy, socialism, and capitalism all three occurring together in the same society is the best thing. The things I'd want to NOT have are dictatorship and oligarchy (with the possible exception being where _I_ happened to be the most influential person at the top).

As for "democracy", most people in the world today seem to agree that "democracy" is a good idea, despite some signs that it doesn't always work very well. Given that every democratic society has experienced problems executing its democratic functions, one might (erroneously) declare that democracy fails, and throw it out wholesale, and try anything else. But most people in the world haven't done that; they think they see something worthwhile in the idea of democracy, and they keep trying it, and the ones who aren't trying it are mostly pretending to try it so they can look good and credible (although they don't always fool us).

Just now, it occurs to me that "democracy" and "socialism" have something in common; and that is, each of them is "for" the great mass of a population rather than for some small part of it. So maybe there will be trends in the way societies think about socialism which correlate with how societies think about democracy.

:-)

:-)

:-)

That's absolutist thinking. Or to put it another way, you're over-generalizing.

If I had _meant_ "every v***s that has been known to mankind", then I would have _said_ "every v***s that has been known to mankind".

The v***s under discussion here has been found to be a particularly bad threat; and a particularly effective way to collectively fight against that particularly bad threat has been found. I wasn't trying to solve all of humanity's problems at once here.

I wasn't calling what I did military service. All I did was register for the draft (and then I wasn't selected). I guess registering might be a kind of military service, but not what people usually mean when they say "military service".

Aside from your last paragraph (which is something different), your argument appears as "Since it's not a law, it's a personal choice." In that light, my question to you becomes: Does Congress have a right to make it a law that Americans are required to be v******ted (with a few exceptions such as medical exceptions)? My answer is, Yes.

As for me, I consider it a civic duty even absent such a law. My thinking was not absolute about it, but given that it is a reasonable sacrifice, and it is a small, easy sacrifice, and the benefits to both myself and to the population are very substantial, and it looks to me like a civic duty, I just call it a civic duty, and I did it. I don't see any reason to even try to argue against it.

Then there's your last paragraph, which is: "Joining the military to fight a war is vastly different than getting, or not getting, an injection of legal drugs for a v***s." Some of you are _saying_ that, but are not _explaining_ why you think that; you're not even trying, yet. I've explained better than that, in this thread, why I think what I said about it. Of course there are differences, but there are also similarities. A p******c has similarities to military wars. It is the similarities which relate to civic duty and collective action which are significant here. If civic duty and collective action were not appropriate in a p******c, then they wouldn't be appropriate in military wars either. This is not a legal argument, it's an ethical argument.

As there's so much machismo and p***e here in OPP, and apparently plenty of respect for military service, I think there should be a reasonable respect here for civic duty in general, particularly when hundreds of thousands (or millions) of lives are at stake. What's all that bravery and national cohesiveness for, if not to address a threat like this p******c? If the bravery and cohesiveness were only to obey the letter of the law (there's no particular _law_ yet requiring citizens in general to be v******ted, and that seems to be the sole reasoning you're offering, EmilyD), then that bravery and cohesiveness wouldn't amount to as much as I had thought it did.

You're not explaining. You simply repeat, "It doesn't work." Maybe you're not interested in discussing.

Oh, I'm glad you wrote that. I think you're right, and I understand your earlier post better now.

I agree with almost all of that, and am happy to see something approaching a definition of socialism.

I was a bit confused with your last two lines, in which you wrote: "Why was trump buying stocks from failing corporations with your taxpayer money ? That’s pure socialism." I guess that would be a form of giving poor people's money to rich people (and to rich corporations). It is sometimes called "socialism for the rich" (supporting the already-rich, at the expense of everyone else). I would hesitate to call that "pure socialism". I think a true pure socialism would involve supporting a large population in such a way that the lives of the poorest would improve.

I agree with much of that. But I don't understand that last bit about "2 democratic senators want it all".

In your description, democratic socialism looks a lot more attractive than c*******m does. But I don't think I like t***sferring "power to the winner ... when defeated". I never thought of that before and am not sure whether it's true.

If Venezuela's oil were regarded as belonging to Venezuela's citizens, that would mean less money and less power for American executives and American corporations.

I bet that has something to do with socialism.

You wrote: "Chavez was sharing the oil wealth of Venezuela with its citizens." I think it is true, and a right thing to do.