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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

>> If by "prices were cheap" you mean "were massively subsidized by the government so we were paying through the nose for them anyway"

Correction: higher-band taxpayers might have been paying through the nose. People paying less tax (i.e. the less well-off) were paying less.

>> Even the worst privatization (British Rail) is arguably far better than it was before privatization.

Besides, the privatized UK rail network is shambolic when compared to (officially or de-facto) nationalized companies on the Continent.

>> One of Thatchers biggest achievements was to take on the millitant socialist unions, and she won. Overwhelmingly. She set us free from their grip.

I hate to descend into politics, but you are presenting as "fact" what is actually a very biased and extreme right-wing view, which thankfully is getting less and less popular in the UK now.

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> Correction: higher-band taxpayers might have been paying through the nose. People paying less tax (i.e. the less well-off) were paying less.

Ah yes, because as long as it's those nasty greedy rich people overpaying for inefficient state monopolies, that's fine?!!

If it's considered "extremely right-wing" to believe in the freedom for individuals to own property, free enterprise free market, and smaller government without state monopolies locking out competition, then I guess I'm a right wing extremist.

> "extremely right-wing" to believe in the freedom for individuals to own property

You are conflating removing "the freedom for individuals to own property" with state-run railways and healthcare? Seriously? You just lost all credibility with me.

If you nationalize everything, and run everything as a state owned monopoly, then individuals can no longer own companies.

That was the extreme position of the Labour party.

Obviously some things need to be state owned. I would say that health care, just like the police service would be one of them. Railways are debatable.

So clause 4 goes further than I thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clause_IV

But there are several positions here:

a) The actual behaviour of the UK Labour in most of the second half of the 20th century. i.e. Essential services nationalised, state players in strategic industries, and private enterprise for the rest. Wanting to nationalise the corner shop would be an extreme position.

b) The stated goals of clause 4.

c) State ownwership of all businesses. To see how this is different from b, I refer you to the abovelinked article.

d) removing "the freedom for individuals to own property" (your phrase). I have lots of property that isn't corporations. I'm sure you do too. People own houses, cars, laptops, clothes, teaspoons, etc.

to conflate b with d as you have done is a cartoonish strawman.

Socialism is just a path to Communism.

No it is not, and it is "extremely right-wing" to believe that. It's more moderate to believe that things are what they are, not what some scaremonger tells you they are going to turn into some day.

It may be true that the path to communism first goes to socialism. But ... so does the path to socialism. Democratic countries can and do become more and less socialistic over time, in effect debating how socialistic they want to be at the polling booth. They don't turn into communist dictatorships.

Do you for instance, believe that equality of marriage, allowing gay people to marry each other, will lead inevitably to marriages involving three people and a horse? Would you argue against equality of marriage on that basis? It's the same kind of illogic.

In Europe, it is.

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