A friend said his uncle believed in -- and I'm probably slightly misphrasing this -- "Socialism in the essentials, capitalism elsewhere." Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But in the course of answering it, I dredged up an interesting example.

If we took the actual definition of socialism, where "the state controls the means of production", this would mean that the state should be completely in charge of producing food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and possibly education. If implemented literally, that would make the US the most socialist country on earth, nearly indistinguishable from the old Soviet Union. (And who knows what else we could argue is "essential"?)

Less literally, it probably means he believes there should be a government-provided safety net in these areas: If a person is poor enough, the government should provide all of the above. We're roughly there, right now.

But the key, unasked question is whether these things are better provided by government or private groups -- even in the case of last resort. We have become so socialist in the US that it no longer even occurs to us that it could even be a legitimate question to ask! But the answer is often suprising.

For example, in the UK, which provides a socialized medical system, an antibiotic-resistant "superbug" (MSRA) runs rampant in state-run hospitals, but not in private ones.  "One in ten patients becomes infected when they are admitted to an NHS hospital, resulting in at least 5,000 deaths a year."[1]

Another group recently discovered that medical malpractice in state-sponsored hospitals is the fourth-highest cause of death in the UK. "One in ten patients admitted to NHS hospitals will fall victim to medical errors, which have now become Britain's fourth-biggest killer. Medical accidents and errors contribute to the deaths of 72,000 people a year, and they are directly blamed for 40,000. They also cost the NHS £2 billion in increased hospital stays alone."[2]

Worse, studies also show the number of errors reported (the numbers I just cited), are just the tip of the iceberg, since state-run hospitals are shown to cover up many more than they report, and some studies estimate the total number may be four more or even higher. (Poor accountability is a classic problem in governments-run endeavors.)

The research confirms our experience of an alarming rate of errors occurring in our NHS. The figures do not even include errors occurring in primary care, such as in GPs’ surgeries, and are likely to be significantly less than the actual rate as they are only based on reported errors....

The figures do not include any hospital-acquired infections or complications of childbirth, and almost 10 per cent of the trusts surveyed claimed an unlikely error rate of zero.

The article cites an example where only 1 in 3.2 errors were estimated to be reported. If so, the UK's state-run medical system kills 72k x 3.2 + 5k people. That means, looking at only two factors, the UK's socialized medical system kills roughly 236,000 people each year!

To put that into perspective: we currently estimate the Boxing Day tsunami killed 220,000 people.[3] That means that socialized medicine, in one country, in one year kills more people in a single year than the tsunami did all over the world!

Would a non-socialized "safety net", based on competition for treatment and possibly private funding do better? How could it not?

Also remember that socialized solutions in these areas don't come "for free". Studies seem to show that when countries practice socialism, giving to private charities drops off precipitously. In other words, large, expensive, inefficient government solutions "eat" private charity, leaving no alternatives.

Food for thought.