Well, I was trying to be polite about it, but frankly yeah he doesn't have a clue what he's on about.
It is funny that as long as you call it something else you might pass it by due to their ignorance. They should just call it capitalism plus and they would probably go for it.
Well, you can imagine that the terms are so nebulous as to be meaningless, or that real-life doesn't conform highly with economic models, but every economics textbook in the world will disagree.
No, the reality is you want to confine it to such a small meaning and then demonize that meaning because you do not want intellectual discussion. You are full of logical fallacies and bad argumentation.
which is to say that "OMG Socialism!" is political propaganda bullshit buzzwords - the antecedent to "politically correct" and "identity politics" and "social justice warrior" and various other vacuous terms used to manipulate gullible and ignorant people who do not even understand the alleged threat they are told to be angry about and afraid of.
Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus would both disagree in pretty strong terms. They're required reading in pretty much any economics course of note, including MIT which made Samuel Institute Professor (the highest honour they have available to them) and the National Science Foundation who gave him the National Medal for Science, or even The Economist who labelled him "the most influential economist of the later 20th century" Funnily enough so would the 1970 and 2018 Nobel Prize committees that nominated them, making them the first and latest laureates for economics respectively. Andrew Glyn would also have a thing or two to say on the matter, in his seminal book "Capitalism Unleashed" (also required reading on most economics courses) he made a very strong case for a Golden Age of capitalism pre deregulation and the value of Marxist thinking within the free market. It secured his position at Oxford University where he wrote a great deal of their syllabus guidelines still being used today. Tawney, Crossland and Shonfield to name but a few are also rarely omitted off academic syllabuses around the economic world either, all being strong proponents of the necessity of the mixed or hybrid economy. So, essentially, if you have an economics textbook that insists on a dichotomy between economic planning and a market economy then you've got a shit textbook.
I see your problem, you are discussing things academically, and they are trying to pull shit out of their ass.
Guys, this is the definition of socialism socialism noun so·cial·ism | \ ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm \ Definition of socialism 1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state ____________
And yet, that is not the definition that the left-wing of the Democratic party has in mind when they push "socialist" policies, nor the criteria that US conservatives attack.
And US conservatives have never declared war on women nor do they want to throw grandma over a cliff. Both sides engage in hyperbole when describing the other side. My post was more in response to the pages of bullshit from a couple posters here on socialism.
Or the one used by the Oxford dictionary or several of histories leading economists. So, not really the definition at all, regardless of Merriam Webster, not to mention the thrust of the argument is about the universality of hybrids, not socialism per se.
That definition isn't the only one in valid usage, or even one which is accepted by actual economists, as we've already seen. Nor do either even remotely encapsulate any of this or have any bearing on the question of hybrid systems.
and AGAIN: assuming this as the authentic definition - then Trump and the entire GOP is full of shit and conservatives have been full of shit since 1932 since what he describes doesn't resemble even what Bernie Sanders advocates, let alone the Democrats.
I have a funny feeling people don't really care what a political position is about, or what its' actual history looks like, provided they have a convenient bogeyman, an "other" to justify their fears. That's not necessarily a dig at any one individual, we on the left probably do the same to an extent after all but I can't help bringing to mind the irony of @Captain Conspiracy, when asked how he would have responded to the collapse of banks during the financial crisis, unintentionally coming up with a solution which was essentially a state controlled economy.
Conservatards can't argue against the policies on their actual merits, so the strategy is: a. drown the discussion in semantics b. drown the discussion in straw men (Venezuela et al) Unfortunately, it's been working well for decades, but people are starting to catch on.
Did you know socialism's killed more people than heart disease? It's totally checkable, go do it right now.
You prefer Oxford? Okay then.. If you want to argue hybrids that's fine . But dont try and say that the fundamental tenant of socialism isn't controlling the means of production because you're wrong no matter which dictionary you use.
Which is the one I gave earlier, the one with a crucial difference in wording which Merriam Webster lacks. Look for it. That difference led to a couple of pages of arguing semantics because people have come to rely on an overly limited latter day version of the concept whose predominance is quite frankly emphasised to suit a political climate. It should come as no surprise that an American dictionary contains a subtle rewording of one it took originally from a European counterpart, a rewording which falsely implies totalitarianism as a precondition. Regulation=/=control and the idea that socialism is limited to systems with state control of the economy is a modern misconception most of the people who developed the idea down the decades (not to mention the nobel prize winning economists who have worked with those principles in ways that are incompatible with your definition) would find quite surprising. In fact the idea of having any single restrictive definition at all for socialism is pretty unrealistic given the plethora of philosophies which have contributed to and stemmed from various flavours of socialism down the years. The word has throughout history represented a very broad church of philosophical positions, many of which would remain compatible with some form of capitalism even in their most idealised form. Does this strike you as being inherently about state control or the overthrow of capitalism? Does this guy sound like someone who wasn't interested in private enterprise? He was a successful businessman (until he was the victim of fraud) whose socialist ideas became very much the template for trade unions, which contrary to popular myth are very much interested in the success of the industries they operate in. In fact his form of socialism was not only compatible with a market economy but relied on it, he viewed private companies rather than nations as being the building blocks for collectivist societies. Sound familiar? It should given that cooperative companies based on his thinking are very much alive and kicking within the modern economy (Google is one such company very much shaped by his thinking - check its' mission statement), we also have him to thank for the idea of public libraries, schools and museums. Terrible. He couldn't make an idealised form of his ideas work in practise, which is a familiar story for pretty much any and every social thinker in history, regardless of orientation but much of the very best in our modern societies are the product of his brand of socialism. So yes, my argument was that hybrid systems are not the exception but the norm and I made that explicitly clear several pages ago, but to limit a broad and varied set of movements which have spanned centuries of human history around the globe to a single cherry picked definition, one which isn't accepted globally, published within a society singularly opposed to those movements, as retrospectively defining their parameters is disingenuous at best, outright ignorant at worst.
I am pretty sure their next definition of socialism will be rule by cancer causing windmills. It seems a little smarter than their present tactics, but dumb enough to work on them.
Semantics argument is a semantic argument and a distraction from what is being argued because @T.R is pretty much intellectually dishonest and trying to define other people's ideas and lie about what they are saying because he cannot participate in this discussion. It is good to see him and the boy are on the same intellectual level. This definition does seem to include your point but that is inconvenient for him. Perhaps he would be better discussing his newest idea that windmills cause cancer since that is what trump has spoonfed him.
