How Americans view capitalism, socialism and free enterprise

Capitalism and socialism are about ownership of the means of production.

While most economies are mixed. Nations typically associated with "socialism" like Sweden and Denmark are mostly capitalist. Nations like Bolivia and Venezuela are the ones that are actually mostly socialist.

It's entirely possible to have a highly redistributive capitalist country, with a strong social safety net. It's also entirely possible to have a socialist country with extreme wealth inequality and a terrible social safety net. It just depends on how things are structured.

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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.

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'