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Isn't the Daily Kos founder also supposedly a veteran?
Military people are socialist when it comes to their benefits. When they were cut earlier this year, a frightened Congress hurriedly voted to restore them.
Active Duty ping
Isn’t this the same U.S. military that the libtards are always telling us costs too much money? Do they not realize that a lot of these costs come from personnel/healthcare? Oh wait, socialized healthcare is paid for by unicorns, pixie dust, and rainbows.
The military is a microcosmic culture within a republic. Always has been.
It has much in common with socialism. The medical system is socialized medicine. it thrives on a relatively healthy population of cooperative, appreciative patient base, which also describes the retiree base. They are quite content to wait six hours in a waiting room in an ER.
The author is correct in the sense that Americans are ignorant not to have looked into this prior to now. The differences between military medicine and Obamacare are as above, oh... and that the military actually has doctors. obamacare will not have providers in due course.
The military is a socialist system in many respects. It’s main succeeding tenet, however, is that thrives in its main purpose, that is to provide and protect the republic. It’s members look back and forward to freedom.
Military members give up their democratic rights. Many times I have heard, “hey, no independent thinking” and “this is NOT a democracy”.
One can only get laughs out of such bold truths when one knows he is out in seven or ten or five or even twenty years.
Siegel forgets the signal difference: the income to support this vast bureaucracy comes from outside.
Socialism works up to a point, but is far from optimal economically. The military is an example of how expensive socialism is: far too little is accomplished with far too much cost.
It is also coercive, which is the hallmark of any military. Is that the model for a entire society?
Most don’t think so, including people in the military. They accept the privation as a necessary sacrifice, typically temporary.
The meritocratic aspects are true up to a point. But like any organized group, individuals advance in many ways, many times unfairly.
Siegel isn’t the first to note these points. It’s well known.
But at least others have been willing to make the counter points.
Siegel isn’t, and omits one militarized socialist society which you’d think someone of his ethnicity would not: National Socialism in Germany, circa 1933 - 1945.
A lot of things are socialistic in nature, but then again, people volunteer for them.
If the government is socialist, you have no choice, but to embrace the suck.
I would like to see military that funds itself
Until the social experimenting began, the strength of the military was the allegiance sworn to was flag and country, not to any current occupant of the White House. Where did my military of old go?
The author is a moron. Even if the military seems like a successful socialist enterprise, the military is very, very expensive. It doesn’t produce anything, it has no market, and it could not possibly exist as an independent entity. It only survives on $ billions taken from working Americans. That’s not to say it doesn’t provide an essential service. It does, and it’s one of the few federal agencies that is constitutionally enumerated.
Like most socialist states, it’s completely dependent on people outside of it.
The premise of a working socialist model is ignorant. The military is funded elsewhere.
The military has always been a closed society.
All of what is done is ultimately war-based combat multiplying.
I’ll make it simple so even these folks can understood: If Johnny goes off to war, Johnny doesn’t need his mind on his family back on the home front. It needs to be on the war at hand.
And participation is voluntary and it is supported by a capitalist economy.
Amazing how many service-avoiders pretending to be conservatives show up when there are articles about military service.
Nothing conservative at all about folks who let other people take all the risks to preserve their safety and freedom - then complain about it from afar.
Somebody hasn’t seen the differences between E-3 and O-6 housing, pay, graduated costs... And when active duty are medically unfit, this “socialized medicine” system kicks them out because they lost their jobs...
A more accurate depiction of socialism in America is Native American health and housing programs. And what is endemic to the reservations? Drinking, unemployment, loss of meaning in life because barely surviving on the government system is addictive and deadly.
I still contend that this country was never intended to have a large standing military — and this article has a lot of good reasons why this was the case.
Once society abandons free pricing of production goods rational production becomes impossible. Every step that leads away from private ownership of the means of production and the use of money is a step away from rational economic activity. ...
Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word. In small and insignificant things rational action might still persist. But, for the most part, it would no longer be possible to speak of rational production. In the absence of criteria of rationality, production could not be consciously economical.
from:
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
by Ludwig von Mises (1st published in 1951)
PART II THE ECONOMICS OF A SOCIALIST COMMUNITY, Chapter 5, The Nature of Economic Activity
Page 105 in the pdf:
http://mises.org/books/socialism.pdf
There is no pricing mechanism whatsoever in the military. We only have to recall the episode of $10,000 toilet seats to know this is true. Even human lives are not costed out like they would be in the free economy. Socialism does not work “up to a point”, because at every point it must employ coercion and the credible threat of violence to achieve compliance.
The military doesn’t create any of the wealth they consume. It’s not socialism... The reason for the ‘care’ is our military protects the rest of us - and we take away as many of their everyday worries as possible in exchange. Again, that’s NOT socialism.
The author of that tripe is an idiot, and misses the salient point in the argument. Military members willing enter into an agreement to live that way, and may willingly leave when their contract is done. On the other hand, the general population is being forced in to socialism at the barrel of a gun, with no way to opt out.
If military health care, paycheck, and retirement pension is "socialism" then so is Medicare and Social Security. The latter will say "I EARNED that! I PAID into it!"
Agree. Fair enough. But by the very definition, it is "socialism" if the military paycheck is considered "socialism." If a doctor is earning his six figure income from 95% of his patients being insured through Medicare, then he is a beneficiary of "socialism" as well. And on and on.