A recent article in the British medical journal The Lancet argues that well over 1,000,000 Eastern European working-class men have died as a result of the transition to capitalism. Yup, over 1,000,000 (for a good summary of what this means, check out this article.)
Say what you will about the Soviet Union (and there's plenty to say; it wasn't necessarily that great of a place to be), but this certainly has to put a bit of a fly in the ointment of the "free market cures everything" crowd. Sure, in the Soviet Union people couldn't get McDonalds, but they could get free health care and guaranteed employment. And they didn't die at the clip of 1,000,000+ people a decade.
This is not to defend Soviet-style socialism -- which if we really wanted to get into it, I could argue had long ago stopped being socialism -- but to point out how ludicrous it is that we leave life-and-death matters like health care and food supply to be apportioned out by a make-believe fairy tale we call the market instead of using common sense measures to make sure everyone has enough food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc. to maintain at least a modicum of livable existence.
After all, why is it that a corrupt, bureaucratic totalitarian government could do a better job of feeding and caring for its citizens than, say, the most powerful nation on earth, where over 90 million people are under-insured or have no health insurance at all?
Just because the Soviets screwed up communism when they tried it doesn't make it bad idea...
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