Post #4500432

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social Contaminated food/drugs and universal health care were both late 19th century US progressive issues. At the time the same voters cared about both issues and yet Congress only implemented laws regulating food and drugs, nothing about health care. Food and drugs regulations were passed relatively easily at the time while, of course, we still don't have health care. It's hard to imagine anyone caring so much more about pure food than they do about health care that a putatively vote-responsive Congress would implement one and not the other. But I've never heard an electoralist explanation of the difference. An anarchist explanation is easy to see, of course. The ruling class saw useful capabilities in food/drug laws but none in universal health care and implemented them for their own reasons rather than whatever activists thought made those laws necessary. Universal health care would harm ruling class interests, so no dice.