Toni,

"Umm, no, Mussolini called himself a Fascist."

Mussolini was a high ranking member of the Italian Socialist Party but broke away from them and formed the fascist party during WW1 because he felt they were insufficiently nationalist. Fascists were nationalists AND socialist.

Yes, Hitler rounded up other socialists, again those that were insufficiently nationalist.

Lenin rounded up socialists and other non-Bolshevik communists. Does that mean he wasn't a communist?

"You're a bit of prick, aren't you mhaze?"

Oh dear. Someone who gets a little deranged when their shibboleths are attacked.
I appreciate that for many the notion that the government can solve all problems is a comfort. But I'm with Reagan who said "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

The notion that the options are either an NHS or medical poverty is just so much propaganda. Exhibit A - Australia.

Just a few examples to go on with...

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/04/poor-nhs-care-contributed-deaths-13-learning-disabilities

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/22/nhs-investigative-body-to-examine-suspicious-deaths

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nhs-cuts-excess-deaths-30000-study-research-royal-society-medicine-london-school-hygiene-martin-a7585001.html

The problem with an NHS-type system is that it inevitably ends up becoming concerned about things other than the welfare of the patient.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/02/pope-shows-solidarity-with-charlie-gards-parents

Charlie Gard is an example of what happens. In the end the NHS and the government determined that they and they alone had the right to determine how he was to die. His life was their's to decide. His parents had no rights. The individual became the property of the state.

Paul1405,

"The above is what I support, what about you?"

I support a system which is as 'laissez faire' capitalist as possible but which, recognising that some will not fare well in that system, offers welfare to them. I oppose all forms of government invention in the market-place, and especially all forms of subsidy except where it might be necessary to offset other governmental failures.

I favour welfare based on true need but only to the point where it doesn't create incentives to take the welfare as a replacement for productive involvement in the economy.

That is what I currently think is the best system to achieve economic success for both the nation and the vast majority of citizens. But we should be cognisant that the changes coming down the road due to automation and the like, may create a vast unemployable class which will require a very different capitalist and redistribution system

A bit of the good old high school classroom stuff! 'Laissez faire' economics, as championed by the French theoretical economists around the middle of the eighteenth century, and later becoming the doctrine of the devotees of the classical Scottish economic and political philosopher Adam Smith, as published in his book of doctrine 'The Wealth of Nations', seems such people are still around. The belief that the free market would be self regulating to the point where all would somehow benefit through unencumbered interaction between labour and capital. The Industrial Revolution proved that in a complex free market, capital will prevail over labour, and capital will always assume a position of economic and political dominance.

1. "I (mhaze) support a system which is as 'laissez faire' capitalist as possible but which, recognising that some will not fare well in that system, offers welfare to them."

2. "I (mhaze) oppose all forms of government invention in the market-place"

I can only assume by "welfare" in one, you mean privately funded charity. As government welfare relies on taxation, a major component of government interference in the economy, that is incongruous with your second statement. Unless you plan to only tax the already miserably poor labour component of the economy. Which will be self defeating as it will help to make them even poorer. Since capital will be the dominant political power in society they will be unwilling to be taxed to provide benefit to the mass of the miserable unemployed non productive labour. Since labour is politically powerless they will have no means to instigate their desire for government funded (taxation) welfare.
Sounds like the good old days of nineteenth century industrial Britain.

//"You're a bit of prick, aren't you mhaze?"

Oh dear. Someone who gets a little deranged//

Seriously? You think calling somebody a prick is indicative of derangement?

You've never actually met anybody suffering psychosis, have you?

Me calling you a prick is healthy disagreement; me standing on street corners shouting at pricks is derangement.

//But I'm with Reagan//

Yeah, why am I not surprised by that?

//I support a system which is as 'laissez faire' capitalist as possible//

laissez-faire: Every man for himself, and devil take the hindmost.

Which works out well for some chaps, I'm sure, but for most leads to a life that is nasty, brutish and short.

And I've always been a fan of utilitarianism because, well, Jeremy Bentham (Oh, Jeremy Bentham!). Greatest good for the greatest number of people and all that. And not so much of the keeping the fatcats fat by feeding them the children of the poor.

Thanks Toni.

There's hope for this forum yet.

Dear Toni,

Utilitarianism can justify oppression. The greatest good for the greatest number can justify keeping some people in slavery if most people benefit by the few in slavery. When the old Soviet Union was not allowing Jews to emigrate I heard a man defending the action of the USSR. He said that he believed in the greatest good for the greatest number, and the Jews continued presence in the Soviet was necessary for the greatest good of the Soviet people. If we want a world with a minimum standard of well-being for everyone that vision is not compatible with utilitarianism.