Geezer Test

[MaggieL]

So, "how or why"...

one Socialist country twice the size of New Jersey with a population comparable to metro Philadelphia

and

one Communist country with five times the population of the US (in slightly less land area)

...have done what they've done to "protect the public" aren't germane to your version of the discussion, and that one is Socialist and the other Communist is irrelevant too (presumably because there's obviously no connection between Socialism and Communism).

My sense is "the attitude in the country nowdays about protecting the public" is that people should plan and provide their own protection as much a possible, rather than relying on "the government" to protect them. Of course, that's the attitude prevailing amongst the crowd *I* run with; *your* peeps obviously have a different view.

I think centralized planning and provisioning for emergencies sucks rocks; a distributed approach is much more robust. I suppose we'll find out how effective the centralized approach is if one of those systems you cite is ever called upon to perform, since they've "solved it as well as possible".