6 ms·

The key difference being that in the case of Uber, those VCs and investors gave their money voluntarily.

• orblivion 10y ago
  One can still run out of voluntarily obtained money.
  • baddox 10y ago
    Obviously that's true, but it's not really relevant to the intended meaning of Thatcher's (obviously oversimplified) quote.
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  Presumably (hopefully) the socialist government for this hypothetical nation would have been voluntarily put in place by the voting public.
  • throwaway991199 10y ago
    LOL. Go look at Europe. The answer to that is a definite hell-no.
    • huac 10y ago
      Socialists have historically been some of the biggest proponents of democracy. You're probably trolling, but it'd be amusing to know which countries you think have socialist governments in place by force.
      • the_watcher 10y ago
        Maybe democratic socialists. But the track record of explicitly socialist nations is pretty much the exact opposite of pro-democratic. There's a decent argument that those governments were coopted by corruption and never actually turned into true socialist governments, but that's also a flaw in the system, as it relies on humans to not act in their own best interest across the board.
        • randomgyatwork 10y ago
          There is also a difference between state-capitalism and socialism, many of the socialist / communist examples we have are actually state-capitalism.
      • pjlegato 10y ago
        Perhaps you have heard of the People's Democratic Republics of East Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Albania? Socialism was imposed by a foreign occupying army. Or take the Soviet Union itself. The democratically elected Provisional Government was overthrown by force. Even the socialists-only Constituent Assembly election was simply voided and ignored by the Bolsheviks when they overwhelmingly lost. Your claim is empirically false. Socialism has historically been imposed involuntarily at gunpoint in almost all cases where it has achieved any measure of real power. Moreover, once established, its show elections are a farce, with only pre-selected Party approved candidates allowed to win. You will no doubt reply that none of this was done by "real" socialists, and that <insert your favorite sub-sub-branch of socialism here> are the only "real" socialists. This is the "No True Scotsman fallacy".
        • AnimalMuppet 10y ago
          History is split. Marxist-style socialism was installed by force in Eastern Europe, Russia, and other places. Democratic socialism was installed by free elections in northern Europe, and continued there in later free elections, with candidates of multiple parties allowed to run.
        • John23832 10y ago
          Ideally, political change can happen without violence or bloodshed. But we don' live in an ideal world. We never have, and we never will. Pretty much ANY political system gains power through bloodshed. The United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, pretty much the entirety of South America, Africa and Asia... With the wide ranges of political systems that span all these places, each and every one of them was put in place by violence. You point out the horrible regimes that adopted the word "Socialist" or "People's" in their name and point out all the atrocities that they have committed. While adopting those monickers != actual socialism, you've headed off that argument, so I'll give you that. However, don't lay violence as a means of gripping power at the feet of Socialism... That's a human trait.
          • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    • John23832 10y ago
      Gotta love politically inflammatory remarks by "throwaway" accounts. I wish people had the balls to stand behind their politics.
      • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        I'm thinking new accounts could be unable to comment until they'd viewed 100 different subjects over at least a week? Make it harder to mint these 'troll' account.
  • Trundle 10y ago
    Some of the voting public.
• tedunangst 10y ago
  Voluntarily, but not without expectation of recompense. At some point the monopoly will start focusing on another source of money...
  • argonaut 10y ago
    The entirety of capitalism is voluntary transactions with expectation of recompense. I'm not sure what your point is.
    • tedunangst 10y ago
      When you run out of other people's money, you start looking for other other people's money.
• refurb 10y ago
  More importantly, it's not my money. I could care less if they lose it all. Now taxes, that's a different story.
• tim333 10y ago
  You could argue the VCs in fact gave other people's money - investors money, possibly including your pension - to Uber.