I’m torn between two social systems.
My dissatisfaction
Hospitals, doctors, churches, governments are all evaluated on their performance. Only a small part of that performance is of curing illness. The biggest remaining portion is decided by profit. We know this and realize this, but it doesn’t hit us in the face until you or your family need care. Especially expensive care. I gathered as many of my thoughts as I could trying to understand what I feel is wrong with society. I’ve been troubling over this for some time. Years.
Purpose
“FedEx used to believe that they were in the customer service business, and that speed and reliability were the driving factor behind everything they did. Now, it seems, they are in the profit business. That the purpose of all of those people and all of those trucks and planes is to maximize profit. The rest is merely a means to that end.” Seth Godin, What’s It For?
We are there for our families. We don’t expect our children to make a profit. We raise them for 20 or so years because we love them. Our society is based on greed. And my impossible dream seems even more impossible after I realized the wall I keep running into, which is the two priorities. Nurture vs Profit.
It dawned on me in a moment of complete panic. My differing views are covered by Marxism or Socialism. I also realized that made me the enemy. I am the hated Socialist. But no, I’m a Capitalist. All of these years I’ve been trying to figure out what is wrong with society or what is wrong with the government. Why do they not care for their people? I know now. I have been the naive Marxist.
Social Styles
I found an article online regarding the difference between Marxism and Capitalism. I found it interesting, maybe even a bit grounding, but now I am confused. In theory, Marxism or Socialism is a more giving society except that I’ve seen the end result in many European and Asian countries. These are ruled by strict iron fists and it never turns out well for the people. The citizens are oppressed and it reminds me of gray cloudy days. Sad. The only one close to my ideal is France, although it’s not officially a socialist society. Some do call it that, but it’s still a capitalist country. In the way our current world is structured, I don’t think it’s possible to have the ideal that I would wish for and that leaves me sad. I would love to see a society where the people are the main goal, their welfare and the raising of the family. Maybe it isn’t time yet for this world to maintain that style of living. A girl can dream. I can imagine that we could work at jobs and produce food for our families and not be worried that someone will take our homes from us, but our world’s ideology would have to be upgraded a few notches.
Nurturer in a Profit driven world
Until then, I suppose we have to work with what we have. My main concerns about the Capitalist society is in the healthcare and educational arenas. We are heading in a more caring direction. I hope we continue.
- Immunizations for all and at least the basic of healthcare needs met.
- I would also like to see religion not be as damning and punishing, withholding love from people.
- There’s plenty of room in the fields of charity and training, teaching in the basics of caring for ourselves.
- I would like our society to be a generous society. One that provides for its own and does not withhold goods for survival.
- We should be beyond survival. It seems we are held down to that level of fear needlessly. We are just inches away from attaining what we need and it moves just a bit.
We as humans are clever enough to use both capitalism and socialism to our advantage. Neither are evil in their own rights. It matters only how they are used.
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janetkwest.com 
I share your goals for having wider, more affordable access to care. I’ve seen how that can change people’s lives.
I think the problems with delivery of health care are evident in for-profit and non-profit organizations. In both, overhead costs and capital expenditures are seen as being “value added,” by the hospital administrators who benefit from the expenditures, of course. Mandatory professional licensing cartels and intellectual property laws (both sources for artificial profits) certainly increase health care costs, but those challenges could still largely be overcome by moving toward a decentralized health care deliver model of neighborhood clinics charging a flatf-fee subscription like those operated by John Muney in Seattle and New York in addition to bill-sharing coops for more catastrophic care.
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I like this idea. It will be interesting to see what happens in our next elections 2016. Thanks for commenting.
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