That also includes self-described supporters of socialism, who almost always mean something closer to social democracy. They tend to point to places like Scandinavia, who are absolutely capitalist. They just have better social safety nets.

They're misusing the term, but at least they're reasonably consistent about it. The opponents of "socialism" tend to point to places like the Soviet Union as proof that "socialism" cannot work. And when supporters point to the success of Scandinavian-type policies, opponents insist it cannot work because it's socialism.

We could have had some kind of honest discussion about which social safety net policies are worth having. Instead we're stuck in arguments about dictionaries.

Not entirely sure what that has to do with what I was saying? Unless you're trying to provide an example of a lack of critical thinking? China is an excellent example, while they have moved to a state managed capitalist market style economy now (one in which you get the best of both worlds, the average person is ground under the wheels of capitalism at the direction of the state), their flavour of socialism was incredibly effective at modernisation. Whether you consider that conceptually good or bad is personal (healthcare, literacy, poverty uplift, etc vs the many negative externalities of industrialisation), but you can't say it wasn't effective.

The public already gets its share via taxes, I'd argue, the problem that I see right now is really that the wins for the employees are (usually) limited to their salary, whereas owners get everything that's left over. And the more you already have, the more you are able to gain..

I would bet for most people, employee stock programs or company stock will provide far lower and more volatile return than an SP500 index fund. The US public has long been able to benefit from profit sharing, all they have to do is by a low cost broad market index fund.

The root of the problem is that the labor that most people in the US sell is not in sufficiently high demand to afford them the compensation to be able to afford the lifestyle they expect, since they are competing with the rest of the world willing to do it for less.

I always thought that those that can deny something control it. The workers, by withdrawing their labour, have effective control. However it’s rarely exercised and I think that’s partly because of lack of belief that it’s true.

These days of course, workers’ days are numbered as automation will eventually make them extinct.

As I said, it's always uncertain how much power is in the hands of those who nominally are supposed to have it.

But it's also not an either-or. I view states as more socialist the less power is concentrated with a few.

And in non-militarized states, that's a lot about how concentrated wealth is.

Not sure we can really define China as a communist state, particularly nowadays. Their economy is essentially just state managed capitalism now, which is probably economically closer to facism than it is communism.

I think part of it is that it can be argued that benefitting from such corruption within the system is itself a capitalistic action and therefore justifiable from within.

Pursuing regulatory capture is just one action of many for maximizing shareholder value, to the point that not doing so is arguably a failure of leadership. At least to some. (To be clear, I disagree with this in principle)

I wonder if people would have a more favorable view of it if it wasn't a way to whitewash the wealthy crushing the poor as if they were a commodity like stones, and then direct blame onto the poor for not working hard enough, and present the crushing as virtuous.

As a parlour game for the wealthy to use markets to find the best price for a slab of marble or a Faberge egg, it's fine. As a system for finding the best price for a loaf of bread which doesn't take into account how close to starving someone's family is, it's terrible.

As a system where an insurance company puts a number on a spreadsheet for the risk of a warehouse full of wood burning down and the owner uses that to decide whether to install a fire alarm and sprinkler system, it's fine. As a system where the owner uses that to decide whether to install a fire alarm and sprinkler system in an office based on how expensive it is to replace the dead employees, it's terrible. When the employer can't put a sprinkler system in because any competitor which doesn't can undercut prices, it's terrible. [Regulation which says offices must have fire alarms does not fix the general class of this race-to-the-bottom / exploit inhumanely as hard as possible problem].

When people can use contracts to come together to build a rocket engine, it's fine. When the idea is that you would use your perfect knowledge of everything down to whether a workplace has a fire alarm before deciding whether to accept a contract, it's ridiculous. You don't have enough lifetime or cynicism to find all the nooks and crannies people will be trying to cut corners with your life and safety. When the idea is that humans are rational and cannot be manipulated, it's ridiculous. When the practical result of that is that the wealthy can tell the employees that unions are bad, it's terrible. Note that this isn't classical corruption because the wealthy might believe that's true (unions harm the wealthy!), it's a problem of wealthy having lawyers and marketers to spread their message and nannys to free up time for them to learn things, vs others having no spare time or effort or assistance to counter it.

As a system where the person with the best use for a piece of land can buy it and use it, it's fine. As a system where employees have a 2 hour commute because all the homes closer have been bought up by the wealthy who don't even live in their spare homes, and this effect keeps one class of people as 'employees' because they have neither time nor effort nor opportunity to do anything about it, it sucks.

If we all had a magical base quality of life and could "play at capitalism" as a parlour game where the points don't matter the consequences are abstract - you know, like the rich do - then a lot more people would like it.

Consider the situation where 'Capitalism rewards risk' but the only sensible advice for what to do with your money is to invest it in a diversified index fund because anything else is risky. If you do that and stay relatively poor, you aren't taking enough risk to get rich, you idiot, get good. If you take risk and lose, you're an idiot who should have known better and invested in something else "like I did". If you take a risk and win, then you can play off your "lottery win" as you being a more meritorious capitalist. This leads to a situation where the more desperately someone needs money, the less risk they can afford to take to get money, trapping people at the bottom. The less they can afford lawyers to review contracts, the less they can afford to wait and consider their options, the less they can afford to travel for more options, the fewer options they have in terms of borrowing or terms of renting.

As a haves-get-richer, have-nots-get-screwed system, it's bad - at least, unfair, inhumane, eploitative, cruel.

Could it be that capitalism implies or causes corruption?

The US is not really capitalist, it’s an oligarchy - a small number of people like Larry Ellison essentially control everything.

It’s always been like that, even going back to the 19th century and the robber barons of the gilded age

The US has the same attributes that most European countries have. Just to a different degree. Socialized healthcare (for some), welfare, free markets (with restrictions), the state heavily involved in steering the economy . It’s all the same just with emphasis on different aspects. The US would be way better off if they accepted that fact and didn’t tell themselves that they are so different from these socialist/communist countries.

A lot of the inefficiencies in areas like health care comes from the fact that the US does things that they don’t really want to accept that they are doing them.

I don't see how a shared currency (between poor and rich states, with the subsidy flows that implies), a national air-traffic control system and the interstates, amongst many other features, are not "socialism".

> People really need to give up the cold war, the failures of "end of history" thinking are directly related to all of the economic problems we have today.

That's irrelevant to the point.

The 1980s did settle the capitalism vs. socialism debate. The USSR and, perhaps more consequentially, China effectively abandonned socialism because it failed and acknowledged that capitalism, free enterprise, and the free market was what worked.

The "end of history" is the belief (proved wrong if not naively wrong from the start) that this would lead to everyone being "friends" under a Western-style liberal democracy.

> We could do - have done - much worse than implementing some good sense social safety net measures.

I don't understand what you are getting at unless you consider that socialism = "social safety net measures", which it isn't but, as mentioned, it seems that many in the US think it is...

Reading the comments it does seem that many don't understand the meaning of "socialism" (or seem to think that the passing of time somehow changes things) even on HN so polls to the general public are completely meaningless. But ask people if the prefer to live in North America or Western Europe vs Eastern Europe/China pre-80s and you'll get a much clearer picture of what the real sentiment is... East Germany had to build a wall to keep people IN, after all.

I'm not talking about democracy - but a 'permission' system.

In the west - you've to be 'blessed' to become an economic player - there's the myth of competition (but someone has to bless that competition) - whereas in the Chinese economy there's no favored party - BYD isn't favored more by the gvt because it's large anymore than the small upstart that's making electric cars.

> isn't Xi and the other party members capable of doing exactly this? - hence I said the CPC can tip the scales once in a while but in terms of free market competition the Chinese economy is more 'free'

I don't think the OP or anyone else here or in the study tried the argument that China was a real democracy. We're strictly checking the economy and its system here, and yes the party is definitely tipping it. But then, everywhere the state can tip it, and more often than not it even does tip it - with laws and regulations and subventions and wars and state contracts and and. So I think the argument is, as interventionism goes they're quite the same even when they claim big ass difference. At least until we look into personal freedoms.

Communism is when it does whole lot of shitty stuff.

If it does stuff for poor people it's communism. If it does stuff for rich people it's capitalism.