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To: ought-six

Both gambling and insurance are balancing acts of risks and rewards. For “win” please interpret “receives payout”. Are you prepared to argue that insurance is socialism, notwithstanding my comments above to the contrary? What is/are the flaw(s) in my argument that insurance isn’t socialism?


74 posted on 11/26/2012 6:46:59 PM PST by coloradan (The US has become a banana republic, except without the bananas - or the republic.)
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To: coloradan

Insurance is socialism? Please.

Socialism is an economic theory that establishes social ownership of the means of production. Even a mutual insurance company (wherein the members or policyholders are the owners) does not rise to a socialist enterprise, though it is arguably closer to one than a stock company where the ownership rests with the stickholders. But that does not make a mutual company a socialist enterprise (though socialists much prefer a mutual company over a stock company, mainly because they think they can better control it). Now, if government wholly controlled and operated insurance, then you can certainly make the argument that insurance as practiced by government is socialism. But insurance, as originally created and intended, is spread of risk; socialism is not spread of risk, but rather is shared misery. Insurance protects what you have and own; socialism ensures that you personally own nothing, and what you may have is nothing but what the state deems to share with you.


75 posted on 11/27/2012 6:09:00 PM PST by ought-six ( Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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To: coloradan

Insurance is socialism? Please.

Socialism is an economic theory that establishes social ownership of the means of production. Even a mutual insurance company (wherein the members or policyholders are the owners) does not rise to a socialist enterprise, though it is arguably closer to one than a stock company where the ownership rests with the stockholders. But that does not make a mutual company a socialist enterprise (though socialists much prefer a mutual company over a stock company, mainly because they think they can better control it). Now, if government wholly controlled and operated insurance, then you can certainly make the argument that insurance as practiced by government is socialism. But insurance, as originally created and intended, is spread of risk; socialism is not spread of risk, but rather is shared misery. Insurance protects what you have and own; socialism ensures that you personally own nothing, and what you may have is nothing but what the state deems to share with you.


76 posted on 11/27/2012 6:09:57 PM PST by ought-six ( Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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