this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Not that I think capitalism is good, but how exactly does any other system solve it? And I'm talking about real-world systems, not the idealized ones. Because the made-up unrealistic fable of capitalism has no problem with this either.
Yeah no system is perfect.
Centrally controlled education. We need 500 doctors this year, assign the seats, nobody else can get it. Also, doctors have the same lifestyle as any other professional.
Anyone can study anything for free, sure, great. How long so you let people study to become doctors for? How do you ration enrollment? (We don't have infinite teachers), how do you decide who gets to practice? Lots of filter classes? If the country has 1000 doctor vacancies a year, do you produce 3000 doctors? For the 2000 who don't get to practice, do they maintain their license? Etc... this will increase supply, good thing, which will reduce pay, and reduce student demand. How long do you take to find the equilibrium?
Uh, grades.
You take Doctor 101 and get a C-, well the number of students who graded A-B filled the Doctor 102 class. Study up, and either retake the class or take a test to prove you know the information. You scored high enough on your test? Rad, welcome to the class. This is actually what we do anyway so, you're overthinking things there.
Number of jobs is a weird limitation for gatekeeping professionals. If we only need X amount of doctors, then we're an entirely healthy world with zero illness and no room for new minds to create entirely new methods and further our understanding of medicine? I want anyone driven enough to practice medicine to do so, it's the only way we'll have enough doctors to fix the massive healthcare deficit we're experiencing. Especially through the above grading methods I suggested.
As for the pay decreases, hard to say really without doing it. If an employer believes your education is less valuable because more people can achieve the same, they're a shitty place to work and they'll get what they pay for. There's also the possibility of those doctors being more affordable actually expanding the availability of healthcare overall.
I get why it's worth questioning, but it's broken now so why can't we try to fix it? What if the fix works? Awesome right? What if the fix doesn't work? Good thing the current broken system could act as a fallback, right?
Yeah absolutely. We should always be thinking about how to improve systems. I'm not saying we shouldn't look at it. But we shouldn't say this system is totally broken. Which seems to have been the overall thesis of the original post
Oh, no the system is absolutely broken. I'm just trying to give you a rational explanation to the concerns you raised. I've worked hard my entire life and been screwed over every step of the way. I'm unemployed, living with family, and can't afford to see a doctor. I apply for jobs but never hear back. I learned Python and Linux just because I felt like it, so I'm not unskilled. Ruined my spine unloading trucks in my early 20's, so I can't really do anything manual labor. But like, shit I feel worthless, and I don't think a functional system would put anyone through that. I can't even get assistance because I'm "too young and healthy" so like, fuck me for existing I guess.
“No system is perfect” motherfucker we can see how free/cheap higher education works in several european countries and yeah, they use grades to select students, same way U.S. schools do.
Also, how is the free market any better than your first ~~strawman~~ concept? Only instead of the gubmint telling you you can’t go, it’s exceeding expensive educational facilities and the circumstances of your birth.
No need for personal insults.
The need for doctors is usually a supply/demand situation, but even then it can be predicted ahead of time, so the universities can open for more students in advance.
There's never a perfect balance, so certain jobs can also advertised in other countries, creating a sort of job import and export.
"There are no completely healthy people, only underdiagnosed"
I don't disagree, I just don't follow how this is relevant in this context?
Oops, I think I responded to wrong comment. It means there is never oversupply of doctors. I can't find comment that mentioned perfectly healthy nation.
Ah. No problem. Yes you're right. There's never an oversupply of doctors.
However, in a fully state controlled healthcare system, there's still a limit to what patients can request for free. Like, boob jobs or other cosmetical surgery. Unless it's for a health care reason, it's for the patients to pay for that operation, so the demand for those kind of doctors are limited to demand, while demand for doctors treating actual illnesses are limited by supply.
Also, this isn't true - capitalism has inequality and unrealised potential built into it.
What do you mean by "real, not idealised"? All such things are ideals until put into practice.
I mean that if your argument is communism, let's talk about the real world one, not the ideal one that doesn't exist and will never actually be put into practice. Because comparing a real, existing system against an idea is unfair. So either let's compare real communism with real capitalism, or let's compare the idea of capitalism with the idea of communism.
As I said, capitalism sucks, but I'm tired of people making comparisons between the real, actually used capitalism and some made up version of communism.
Real existing forms of socialism kind of solve the problem by offering free education and programs to support poorer individuals so they can participate in society and enjoy their lives. There isn't a fully democratic socialist country yet but having parts of socialism already kind of solves these issues.
IIRC, in former east Germany you couldn't just study whatever you want (topic of this entire post). If your parents went to uni, you can't. Oversimplified, because of course there were options if you were part of the party, but I'm not sure that strengthens the point.
I don't know how that worked in Russia.
The GDR was way too authoritative and I don't really know about russia either. I was tlaking about modern day germany
Again, all things are only "made up" until put into practice. You can't ask for a better idea, then balk at it, saying "it's just an idea". Is your position really to never try anything new?
Is your position really to put words in my mouth? If you rephrase it, I'll answer.
Do you object to trying ideas simply because they are ideas? Understand that this thinking is anti-progress. We can't reject everything that's "made up", otherwise nothing will ever become real. Planes were "made up" until someone actually made planes that worked. Imagine if someone just said, "you can't make a flying machine. Flying machines don't exist!"
No, I don't, I'm just saying that it's unfair to compare the actual capitalism with (for example) the textbook communism.
I'm comparing textbook capitalism with textboox communism. It is built into the very system of capitalism.