Ruth Bader Ginsburg passess

[Rajvik]

anther issue for another thread Rob, but let me leave it with this, they have not gone full socialist, they are more capitalist with a lot of social programs, not true socialists

[hazard]

You realize that those you decry as socialists in US politics are not nearly as social policy oriented as Sweden, Denmark and Norway are? Here in the Netherlands they'd barely make it to the right most edges of the CDA, the centrist christian party.

[Black Aeronaut]

To me, Socialism would be the state taking full charge of the services that effect public welfare the most.  Things like electric and water utilities, ISPs, telephone, etc.

And then turning that control back over to the people by having municipalities decide on how things are run in their neighborhoods.  Basically, this would be like merging a PUC and the utility companies together and having the Federal, State, and local governments all pay a share of their tax revenues into it.

In a twisted sense, this is really no different from how we do things now.  PUCs pretty much are Word of God in the municipalities that have them, and woe betide the utilities companies that try to go against them.  And on the other side, utilities companies are always getting some kind of funding from the State and Federal governments for whatever reason.

Turning all that into a socialist system would simply streamline the whole affair, and make it so there's no longer a for-profit utility company that's trying to make off with every red cent they can pinch.

What's nice about this is that while your tax dollar would certainly be going into this setup, that's only to pay for the upkeep - pay the utilities workers, fund their pensions, pay for equipment and materials, perform the maintenance, plan and implement the upgrades, etc.

You would still pay a bill, but it'd be a lot smaller.  This will cover the primary source of your local providers - the actual energy companies and water rights holders.

Internet and phone would be a bit trickier in that it would be a total role reversal.  The local governments would control the infrastructure, yes.  But datacenters are still owned and operated by Big Data companies like Amazon and Google.  This is important because it's these datacenters that make the Internet what it is now.  Without them, we'd be back to the old days of university servers and government mainframes.

So, while our tax dollar would pay for the maintenance, upkeep, and upgrades of the infrastructure, it would be Big Data that would have to negotiate how much they'll pay for access rights and bandwidth allocation.

And meanwhile, private enterprise would still be in vogue.  Apple and Samsung will still be around to sling their latest and greatest phones at exorbitant prices.  Nokia will still make 5G antennas for cell towers.  Amazon Web Services will still be around to charge an arm and a leg for their... admittedly worthwhile services.  BP and Exxon will still be drilling for oil and gas, and then selling the refined products to market.

That's pretty much my idea of Socialism.  It doesn't really sound socialist at all to me, to be honest, but Reds are gonna Red because they like their status quo.  That being, "Rake them over the coals for everything we can squeeze out of them."

With a line like that, I almost feel like Baron Vladimir Harkonen should be literally floating around, lording it over the rest of us peons.