magma wrote:jesslem wrote:magma wrote:jesslem wrote:Any government that chooses not to provide healthcare to its citizens is essentially declaring war on them.
Discuss.
No. I mean, it's fucking obvious, but...
Declaring war would imply a change in circumstance - the U.S., for example, have never had nationalised healthcare. Has their government been in a perpetual state of war with the people that elected it (and as such, tacitly agreed to no nationalised healthcare) since the Declaration of Independence? Did Britain only stop its war against itself after WW2? Were we fighting the Germans AND the British until 1945?
What a daft notion.
I don't know if you know this, but the US was not, and still isn't based on electoral democracy. In the beginning, the only individuals with the ability, let alone right, to vote were land owning white males. And considering that most of the 13 colonies had been largely divided up by the british before the revolution, and only realistically split further after the revolution between successful, and powerful, generals (who in many cases were already part of the land owning elite), could you not say that when they made the decisions which lead to the formation of a new state, set in on and around land that people were already living on, which is after all what constitutes an invasion, wouldn't you at least consider that they were, in essence at least, declaring war?
And to your questions, perhaps.
Where do you draw the line and decide something is an act of war?
If not providing healthcare via the state is a declaration of war (despite it not being a
change in the status quo for a country that's never had it) then what else is considered war? Profiting from allowing your citizens to get addicted to substances that are known to kill them (tobacco)? Making people buy their own houses in Alaska? I mean, they'd die in the cold...
Fairly basically, I think in order to "Declare War" you have to change something. If America introduced a policy tomorrow that required every retiree to give up their right to any healthcare,
that might be a declaration of war or if they arbitrarily made healthcare to expensive for most people. At worst, keeping a 'bad' policy is
negligence, but framing it as an act of war only confuses matters and gets everyone so riled up a solution is never reached.
I'm pretty comfortable on my history of American and British democracy... after WW2 Britain went the extra mile and, through a democratically elected government, introduced elements of socialism into its capitalist economy along with great swathes of Europe... that's got nothing to do with war and everything to do with a society setting it's own priorities during a period where it was forced to rebuild itself (Britain was ruined economically after WW2 and building the NHS was one of the biggest things to bring it from its knees). As a people we decided broadly during the 20th Century that the Welfare State was a good idea, the US at the same time decided it wasn't
such a good idea - if you ask the average post-WW2 20th Century American a question about socialism, they will have a
much more sceptical view than the average Brit, Swede or German... they're part of a very different society to us, go through an entirely different education system and have an entirely separate national ideology and that's reflected in their democracy - it's clear to see from debates that current arguments aren't consigned only to Congress and the White House, there are plenty of 'normal' Americans who consider it deeply "unAmerican" to force them into taking out health insurance, even if it's freely provided by the State. That's nothing to do with a declaration of war and everything to do with two societies being...
different.
I personally believe incredibly strongly that all public services should be provided by the State and paid for by the taxpayer, but as Gene will happily tell you, that's not the only way to approach economics - depending on your outlook, forcing socialist tax and spend policies on the People can be seen as an equivalent
declaration of war or, more likely, an attempt at holding a population to ransom... and we shouldn't assume that our democracy was hewn out of any better intentions than theirs.
If our Government scrapped the NHS without it having been on their election manifesto,
that could be framed as a declaration of war. It's a change to the Status Quo that hasn't been mandated by the People... but if your people vote you in on a platform of privatisation, have at it... it's what the country wants.
to the point if Im mucking about ill try and almost layer two songs over each other just because.
