Comment by jack_tripper
3 days ago
>>In socialism it's much more random: black markets, lists, lotteries
>Evidence: the vast majority of European countries who have socialized medicine and seem to be doing fine.
That evidence of socialism working well, only works as long as there are enough resources to cover the needs of most people, basically some of the wealthier European countries.
But when those resources become scarce due to poor economic conditions and/or mismanagement, then you'll see the endless queues, black margets and nepotism running the system.
Evidence: former European communist countries who experienced both systems and where in some, nepotism to bypass lists still work to this day.
I think the 2024 Economics Nobel disproves this. It showed that nations with strong institutions create wealth - and it was a causative link they proved, not simply correlation.
How does that disprove what I said about abundance or lack thereof in socialized systems? Feels like an orthogonal issue.
Socialized systems don't work without abundance. How you generate that abundance is orthogonal to socialism since even countries that are wealthy on paper suffer from shortages and long waiting times in public healthcare leading to a gray-market of using connections to get ahead or more private use.
They are arguing that nepotism caused the lack of abundance, instead of the lack of abundance causing the nepotism as you are arguing.
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Hmm. In the framing you are using, I would say that wealth is first generated from strong institutions - socialism or not.