Redistribution that enhances production rather than stifling it. Which provides justice rather than creating injustice. A great idea to bury under dust for centuries.

Georgism and social credit (canadian, not chinese) are two ideas that the elites better start considering unless they want france 1789 vibes again.

As I say to my left-leaning friends: hey, you know what we should socialize? The money supply. (My right-leaning friends aren't ready for that conversation yet.)

well... georgism is sort of orthogonal to capitalism and socialism. You could have a georgist tax regime in both capitalist and socialist utopia.

But... yes... it would be great if enough people knew about Henry George and Georgism that the Gallup people thought it was worthwhile to put it on a survey.

And allow me to bemoan the current state of affairs where the definitions of capitalism and socialism used by most Americans are defined by tribal communities whose (sub)social order depends on the in-crowd toeing a particular party line with respect to whom is allowed to extract rent, set prices, rent and tax rates. Which is to say, if you're comfortably making seven figures on your constellation of payday loan offices, you probably a fan of the status quo.

For my right-wing nut-job friends, remember, there are "socialist" countries like Sweden, Denmark and (arguably) Canada which are perfectly pleasant. Venezuela and Cuba's problems aren't due to their "socialist" nature, but to wide-spread corruption and oligarchy. Keynes (and even Marx) had interesting things to say, though doctrinaire adoption of political and economic philosophy from previous centuries is not likely a good idea.

For my left-wing pinko friends, remember, not all "capitalism" is regressive. Even places like Sweden, Denmark and Canada have a form of capitalism despite being mildly constrained by collective action. Hayak had interesting things to say, though doctrinaire adoption of political and economic philosophy from previous centuries is not likely a good idea.

Stop me before I mention Modern Monetary Theory.

Don't cry---run for office and do as great a job as Mamdani is doing, or find a Georgist who can and support them. Its pretty clear that people are open to giving alternatives a chance to show they can do better.

It's Russia 1917 or Cuba 1959 all over again.

But it'll be different this time! Right?!

In the US, we hate socialism for everyone else, but love it for ourselves. I've talked to many pro-Trump, MAGA folks who ranted about 'welfare queens', yet they're collecting SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance - aka, money from the government). "That's different!"

I don't want to eat the rich. Every rich person I've seen looks like they taste awful. Like how long would you have to cook Musk just to get the stink out of the meat?

One of the great things about America is we have choice. For example, we get to choose our own definition of the word "socialism".

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/243362/meani...

Note, this article is from 2018 and the situation hasn't exactly improved...

Socialism in the US is currently a slur that you use to discredit your opponents, it’s not interrogated to mean anything useful. You are expected to be violently opposed to socialism while being completely dependent upon social programs. The point is to make the contradiction seem normal.

Socialism means different things depending on where you are, even within Europe. For some socialism is the same as communism, for others socialism simply means social-democracy.

Socialism means that the government owns the means of production.

Sweden is not socialist, it's capitalist. A large portion of the budget goes to welfare programs, just like the USA.

American socialism is less socialist than European capitalism.

The word “socialist” was strongly associated with the USSR in the Cold War era United States. Anyone advocating for socialism was dismissed as a red pinko commie spy.

See Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, Hollywood blacklists, J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO and other domestic surveillance programs for a small slice of anti-communist efforts in the Cold War US.

I'm sure we will. And, like with mutations, the default assumption for a random change isn't very good. In this case, the historical record points to worse-than-random outcomes.

> socialism defined by worker ownership of the means of production

Thats not socialism. It's vaguely a redistribution layer on top of capitalism. The article contrasts S. with C. which is also wrong.

Eg. inheritance tax does not restrict free enterprise, but the devil is in the details.

> it's not that socialism with a lowercase s as defined by worker ownership of the means of production has gotten way more popular,

That's not the definition of socialism in any case.

A decade or so ago CNBC did a survey asking people if they oppose or support ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act.

The result is what you would expect. Here's the article from the AEI, which I'm surprised waded into the mess as they're partially responsible for the confusion. Maybe they're gloating?

https://www.aei.org/commentary/obamacare-vs-affordable-care-...

[citation needed]

> USA is approximately the only developed country in which people consistently vote against their interest.

Nobody does that. If it seems to you like they are, then that tells you that those people see their interests differently than you do. And it should be a sign that perhaps you don't understand their interests as well as you think you do, because odds are that people understand what's in their best interest better than outsiders.

Beats the current state of owning nothing and not being happy.

You're describing capitalism. You can make a lot more money not yielding ownership.

sigh

The "left" in the US is center-right anywhere else in the world.

Dems' are a center-right party.

As an European I always found your left very conservative.

In the most recent years I feel the same about our lefts.

But imho left/right don't make any sense any more and have very little connection to their historical roots.

Look at how the conservative party went into ballooning the debt and spending, something they have been historically very against. Or how European rights are more financially supportive of the poorest parts of the society than the lefts.

Policies and trends are changing.

Yet we're stuck in this nonsense bipolarism when every other adult has many thoughts on many topics that don't really overlap with either of the two poles.

The Dems have never called themselves leftist. They are quite eager to point out that they are the Neoliberal party: “We’re capitalist, and that’s just the way it is,” - Nancy Pelosi.

Unfortunately, when you've got 2 choices, one being "Let's round up the pinkos" and the other being "Nothing will fundamentally change", the actual Leftists have to choose the lesser of two evils.

> Always good to see minorities making progress to increase their population numbers.

No need to be racist because young people have observed that capitalism has failed (fertility rates for all races in the US are converging at historic lows because childbearing decisions are memetically influenced. they are shaped by the decisions peers make and the examples they see around them in everyday life [per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230576 post contents], but let us save that for another thread, cut a new one if you'd like and we can cover that ground there).

A bit of cognitive dissonance imho that wealthy people and capitalism supporters thought the capital aggregation machine could run forever based on decomposing the existing system state when a majority of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their incomes and the only thing that would fix that would be their income going up. Support for unions is also at record highs, for obvious reasons.

Olds will keep aging out (~2M/year 55+ cohort), young people will keep supporting socialism as long as capitalism in its current form keeps squeezing them for profits with nothing left to show for it (~$5T/year in profits from the US, concentrated to the ~10% of American households who hold ~93% of equities). Lots of wealth comes from systemic economic exploitation, and progress is being made to reduce that economic exploitation. If it destroys wealth, that's fine, wealth is not the target, quality of life is. Wealth is undemocratic power and control beyond a threshold.

> Most notably, positive ratings of capitalism and free enterprise are higher among older than younger age groups, while positive views of socialism are lower. Adults aged 18 to 34 view socialism more positively than capitalism (57% vs. 43%, respectively), while those aged 55 and older view capitalism more positively than socialism by an even larger margin (65% vs. 34%). Adults aged 35 to 54 rate the two systems about the same.

Older folks got lucky with asset appreciation and good cashflow opportunities (needed to acquire assets that appreciated) over the last 50 years, and so they're happy with the dysfunction because it worked out for them. They will support capitalism through their rigid mental model and their votes (and therefore, political influence) until they age out and are replaced through electorate turnover with younger people who were not so lucky and so have different socioeconomic views based on the current macro and the forward trajectory versus history.

Citations:

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/xyWs8/gallupchart.png

In 2025, 49 percent of adults under age 30 lived with a parent [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810905 - September 2026

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700907

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357337

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027462

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529387

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45851620

(think in systems, almost the same system as religious folks rapidly aging out in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 ; capitalism is just another religion and belief system aging out)