this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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It's just human nature in my eyes. Power attracts many people and the less positions of power to fill, the fiercer the competition and the more ruthless the ultimate victor. Communism focusses too much power in too few positions, so ultimately, corrupt people are almost guaranteed to win. Democracy is spreading out that power more. It is still not perfect, corrupt people are still regularly found at the top, but they wield less power individually and they have to do it more in the open.
Any socialist society needs to be democratic first, socialist second. Many more democracies have gotten closer to socialism than socialist societies have gotten close to democracy.
Which societies are those? Because all the world's most democratic countries tend to be the most capitalist.
Idk in my world Denmark and Slovenia aren't as capitalist as the US while being significantly more democratic.
They are MORE capitalist than US.
Nobody cares about your delusional world. In reality the correlation is as strong as it gets. Denmark is both more capitalistic and more democratic than the US, Slovenia is not.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/256965/worldwide-index-of-economic-freedom/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
This might be true in some sense of talking about this topic but putting economic freedom as the marker for capitalist/socialist tendencyes of a country is a strange choice. No normal person will go yeah these two social democracies are actually more capitalist, than the 5 companies that make up the US government.
Economic freedom is literally what defines socialism and capitalism. Pure socialism is when you have a fully planned economy and pure capitalism is when you have a fully private economy. Obviously neither extreme works, but when you actually look at the data, you'll notice that there's a pretty strong correlation between freedom, prosperity, and happiness and economic freedom. The more economically free countries are the best performing ones.
Also the US is not the most capitalist country nor is it the standard of capitalism. There are plenty of other countries with that are just as, if not more capitalist. Even then, the US is still a very free, prosperous, and happy country. It is objectively very well developed and well performing, even if it isn't the best preforming capitalist country or liberal democracy. This idea that the US is the definition of capitalism or that the US is a "soon to be collapsed^TM^" third world country literally stems from Soviet propaganda (which was inherited by modern Russia and China).
I don't even really know where to start. First is probably that you don't get to define words on a whim and that your definition of both capitalism and socialism lacks understanding. Just read the Wikipedia entry for both and you'll find them better defined within the first sentence of their respective entry.
And honestly I'm too tired to properly explain all the traps you fell into after that so good luck with your Libertarian socialist dream or something idk
I find it funny how someone lacks understanding of capitalism and socialism is trying to lecture others what they mean, especially when they're sources are fucking Wikipedia... And even those articles showcase your ignorance lmao. You have nothing, so go keep coping elsewhere
Not accepting Wikipedia as some reasonable baseline for truthful or commonly accepted definitions is the sort of hill I wouldn't want to die on but sure. Especially for content that is so politically contentious Wikipedia usually settles on a reasonably holistic description where other outlets will leave out downplay or politically color certain parts of definitions, obviously this happens there too, but it's more likely to be corrected especially on divisive Issues. I mean you can go ahead and read the discussion page related to a topic and find out why and how sections came to be.
I'm not trying to lecture you I simply think that having any discussion is impossible if there is no shared understanding. Which is why I deferred to Wikipedia simply the most common database of knowledge in the world. The articles there might show me to be ignorant, but unlike you I've at least read parts of them with the intent to understand the information provided. Which I do to some extent not to completely accept what is said there but just to effectively communicate with other people, because Wikipedia gets close to a common definition for anything you might be talking about.
It's not about a completely factual definition because the topic is way to complex and nuanced to have one that isn't at least several long books, everyone lacks understanding of the topic because it's impossible in many ways to have a complete understanding of it. That's why it's a philosophical topic and not a natural science, the topic is currently completely impenetrable for the scientific method alone.
It is interesting and important to discuss precisely because it's so hard to grasp, so multifaceted and so central to all of our lives at the same time. And as I said before if we can't agree on baseline definitions all that potentially interesting discussion is lost on us.