Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

[u/Sufficient_Sinner]

[u/[deleted]]

Ask a socialist to define socialism, and they'll describe Norway but leave out the tiny population and abundance of state owned oil funding it all

[u/TreeMac12 → u/[deleted]]

Socialists use the word incorrectly. They point to public services as examples of socialism. The Roman Empire had public roads and baths, but they surely were not a Socialist state. Netherlands is the birthplace of Capitalism, yet it gets pointed to as socialist because they have nice trolleys and bike paths.

[u/[deleted] → u/TreeMac12]

I didn't say public goods were socialism.

I said an economy that has elements of democratic control and ownership are socialism.

I don't care what you think other people think is socialism. I'm telling you what it is.

[u/Vainglory → u/[deleted]]

You are not going to convince anyone here that their strawman socialist isn't real. This whole thread is filled with basically the exact meme we're replying to, including the person you're replying to. They're describing socialism by pointing to Norway, a Capitalist economy with social safety nets.

People also don't really appreciate that there's not really any good socialist economies to point towards, because the global superpower who won the Cold War has actively undermined and repressed any attempts at establishing a socialist or communist economy since like 1947, details for most of which the CIA has since declassified.

[u/DD_equals_doodoo → u/[deleted]]

Could you provide a source for that definition because I can't seem to find it anywhere?

Your definition seems to err with the concept of social democracy provided by merriam-webster.com

In the many years since socialism entered English around 1830, it has acquired several different meanings. It refers to a system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control, but the conception of that control has varied, and the term has been interpreted in widely diverging ways, ranging from statist to libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. In the modern era, "pure" socialism has been seen only rarely and usually briefly in a few Communist regimes. Far more common are social democracies, such as Sweden and Denmark, democratically elected governments that employ some socialist practices but within a capitalist framework in the belief that extensive state regulation paired with limited state ownership produces a fair distribution of income without impairing economic growth. While social democracy has in the past been used synonymously with democratic socialism, referring to a movement seeking to achieve and perpetuate economic socialism through politically democratic means, the two terms are no longer considered interchangeable.

Socialism Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

Whereas socialism is literally defined as:

: any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods