Go organize a people’s revolution in your own fucking country and get back to me when you’ve speed-run communism, liberal.

  • DengXixian [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    3 years ago

    "China and Vietnam have had to implement liberal reforms!"

    “Oh, damn, because those completely isolated, self-sustained countries that exist in a vacuum just felt like liberalizing, or?”

    • please_dont [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Funny thing is that there is a very big amount of demsocs/libsocs/whateversocs that does have nuance towards Vietnam , supports it and considers it a socialist project but refuses to do so for China ,flat out rejecting it . They literally have the same system and if anything China was less liberalized, kept more party power over capital and shows better signs/trends of their ability and willingness to transition to a socialist economy

    • Sklorp [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      There is no good reason to privatize healthcare though, and your arguments for it are going to be the exact same libs use in the US

      • emizeko [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Vietnam? I haven't heard about China doing anything but expanding coverage

        • Sklorp [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yes, Vietnam. Although China got rid of a lot of good health initiatives after the end of the cultural revolution like the barefoot doctors. (Although their legacy lives on in the many people trained by the program) and switched to a market based system which they eventually had to reform in the early 2000s because it was a shit show in favor of their pseudo public pseudo private system they now have that I don't understand at all.

      • DengXixian [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        There is when you’re a developing nation and don’t have enough money yet to fully fund the rising cost of healthcare while being crunched economically by the neoliberal markets you have to trade with.

        Paper on Vietnam’s public / private system. Written by the ghouls of the world bank, so you need to pay attention to their bias and how they talk about “market opportunities”.

        Were there other ways to approach this? Yes, sure. Expecting a country exploited by the imperial core to have the same amount of wealth and resources as the imperial core isn’t particularly realistic, however.

        • Sklorp [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Money isn't summoned from the ether when you privatize something. The people are still paying the cost of the healthcare. An investor needs a return on their investment, and will extract this from the consumer, I.e. the sick.

          • DengXixian [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            An investor needs a return on their investment

            Yes, of course, that’s the greed drive they’re using to pull in money. It’s the same trade off made when labor is exploited in underpaid factories and sweatshops.

            With that said, socialized health insurance is the main public financing method for healthcare in Vietnam, with 87 percent of the population currently covered. There are out of pocket costs, but the Vietnamese government picks up the majority of the tab.

            The country also has a publicly owned and funded hospital system, although it allows for private hospitals as well. Those are primarily visited by the wealthy, which takes pressure off of their public hospitals.

            After seeing their own medical systems overloaded and collapsing during covid, I would hope most westerners would better understand the affects that come from limited resources.

            Another article with data outlining Vietnam’s healthcare system. Again, this is written for the investors Vietnam is hoping to attract to build infrastructure and put money into their economy. Look at how much reassurance they make about Vietnam’s system being open to private public partnerships (PPP lol). The capitalists do not view it as a captured market.

            Vietnam is functioning in a world currently dominated by neoliberalism and “socialism in one country” failed. Developing productive forces seems to be the most promising strategy for building socialism at the macro level so far.

            It’s in-line with the strategy Deng took in China. Is it perfect or ideal? No, but it is responding to the conditions they are encountering. Hopefully it continues to improve.