Social 30-1 question and I’d like to know your opinions.

I can see that we would get a better price if medicines were bought in bulk by a single strong payer.

To what extend does an operation that costs thousands of dollars get cheaper if the equipment can be bought in bulk?

Do hospitals get built cheaper if built by government or by private companies? I would say mostly the bulk buyimng of medecines is the biggest slam dunk of a cost benefit. The others I am not so sure of.

Social 30-1 question and I’d like to know your opinions.

I can see that we would get a better price if medicines were bought in bulk by a single strong payer.

To what extend does an operation that costs thousands of dollars get cheaper if the equipment can be bought in bulk?

Do hospitals get built cheaper if built by government or by private companies? I would say mostly the bulk buyimng of medecines is the biggest slam dunk of a cost benefit. The others I am not so sure of.

Wolves win in the end.

yes

I’ve been researching collectivism and individualism. Give me your thoughts. Thanks.

No. Not in a democracy it doesn’t. The collective rights of a corporation does not lead to communism.
Nor would a system of class , race , state etc. But communism is a varied degree of collectivism.

With European style Socialism that the current regime has been forcing on us as of late, how has America gotten weaker from it and what can we do about it?

We lost our freedom and the rights of the people to work these issues out, now 0bama thinks he knows better in all things.

Taking away the majority vote.

Why is collectivism and dictatorship–the frozen status society– offered to us in the name of progress, while capitalism, the only dynamic creative society ever devised is portrayed as backwards and regressive?

Liberals don’t believe in Capitalism….

Individualists and individualist cultures are seen as being individuals making individual decisions focused on their own individual lives.
Collectivists and collectivist cultures are seen as people basing their decisions on the established social norms(even when society is wrong and is hurting itself).
What if we had a society where everybody thought first and foremost as individuals(while being receptive of (yet highly analytical of) others opinions) BUT their primary goal was to improve the lives of everybody in the society as much as possible? Wouldn’t that be the best? Avoiding both greed and groupthink.

Collectivism has nothing to do with social norms:
"Collectivism is defined as the theory and practice that makes some sort of group rather than the individual the fundamental unit of political, social, and economic concern. In theory, collectivists insist that the claims of groups, associations, or the state must normally supersede the claims of individuals." — Stephen Grabill and Gregory M. A. Gronbacher http://freedomkeys.com/collectivism.htm

But in order to back up this "insistence" one must use force. If you don’t use force, the "collective" goes off and becomes individuals who may, or may not, find a reason to stay together, but it will not be because the group "supercedes" the individual. For this reason–force–collectivism is immoral. The U.S. Constitution and the Ninth Amendment uphold individualism:
"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day……." http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

"Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members."

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individualism.html

As a theory it seems alright until it leads to MANY logical errors. People can easily associate extremists in a group and say they represent an entire group with collective thinking and that is wrong.

Collectivism is the opposite of individualism. Individualism was born partly from the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther said every man and woman needed to think for him/herself about "faith" and about his/her relationship with God. His 95 Theses "which while ostensibly aimed at the abuse of indulgences, were a covert attack on the whole penitential system of the Church and struck at the very root of ecclesiastical authority."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09438b.htm

And then, John Locke wrote about natural law, and about how the state must be made of the will of the people who purposefully give some of their authority to the bureaucracy, and the state has no more power than what the will of the people give it. America’s Founders took from this the idea that if a man could give to the state some of his powers, then he already had them "naturally" AND as an individual. This meant he was an "individual sovereign".

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day…" http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

The 20th century anti-collectivist, Ayn Rand, wrote in the same language: "Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being."

She also said, "Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.

"Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members."

http://aynrandlexicon.com/

MY thoughts are these: I was born an individual sovereign, and therefore I can only become part of a collective by two means: by choice, which I would never do, or by being forced such as through communistic or fascistic actions of the state. I do not choose the first means, which is altruistic; and I do not accept that the state has the right to use force except to protect the individual sovereignty of its people, or to protect the right of the nation to exist without being threatened.

At the root of the problem, most touchy matters, like Politics, Parenting, Religion, Economics, Psychology, and culture/race seem to be rooted in collective and individualism.

With religion, some people are very individual, and feel that everyone has the right to worship or not as they please. Others are very collective, in thinking that everyone should worship their way.

Parenting too, considering you are dealing with another human life.

Some feel that Economics is a collective matter, and others find it to be an individual matter

I daresay it’s a matter of how we are brought up. There is a kind of "group mentality" which dates back to prehistoric times when survival depended on being part of the clan, or tribe, or nation. Anyone who thought or acted outside of the accept norm was suspected, and if too wayward they would be cast out, ostracized, or worse. It has ever been thus. Well, so much for collectivism.

There are strongminded people who feel they must be in charge of their life and everyone else’s too. Parenting is basically a responsibility to guide young minds in the right direction. Some will listen, some do not.

In religion every person has the right to decide what they believe is their truth. That’s what they are here for, to explore, discover, and live by the values they feel are right for them.

What else can I say? As Joseph Campbell said: "Follow your bliss." It is your journey in life.

I bet I’ll get trolled by lots of socialists and wannabes! LOL! They’re so predictable and ideological. They’ll probably throw out accusations of "right-winger" (a European parliamentary term) that have no application to American constitutional principals.

It doesn’t work to get more productivity, because those who work harder are not rewarded for it. Due to that, no one works harder, and the system collapses.