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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!cas
From: cas@cvl.UUCP (Cliff Shaffer)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame
Subject: Re: Socialism
Message-ID: <605@cvl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Sep-83 12:58:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: cvl.605
Posted: Thu Sep 15 12:58:41 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Sep-83 11:34:07 EDT
References: tty3b.210 <746@bronze.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Md. Computer Vision Lab
Lines: 33

Quote from Bill Pfeifer:

Affordable housing?  Sure, if you are willing to register you newborn for
an apartment, so maybe there is one available by the time s/he marries.
Safe housing?  Don't make me laugh!  Go to ANY socialist country, and just
look at those places!  


   I recently came back from a trip to Sweden where I spent a month
visiting my girlfriend's parents.  They happen to live in Swedish low
cost housing.  They live there because when they moved to Sweden about
2 years ago they (of course) needed to find a place to live.  Being
immigrants, they didn't have the credit rating to buy anything else
(in Sweden there is very little in the way of long term renting - almost
everything is some form of condominium).  
   I can testify from personal experience that Swedish low cost housing
is clean, well maintained and easy to come by.  The impression I got is
that it is safer to live there (this was in the suburbs of Stockholm)
than in any typical suburban or city neighborhood in the US - low cost
or high cost housing.
   Now, I am not a great fan of socialism.  But some aspects of some
socialist goverments' policies clearly work.  Swedish low cost housing
and technology work.  What this has to do with socialism, and why they
work I am willing to discuss at a future time if anyone is interested.
But it is a real shame to see people on the net rant and rave on a
subject they know nothing about.  To lump all socialist countries in a
bucket, to include in this same bucket the USSR and the eastern block
countries, and then make sweeping generalizations about the whole lot
based on their theoretical form of government shows a lack of
understanding.

		Cliff Shaffer
		{seismo,we13,mcnc}!rlgvax!cvl!cas