Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

BurningFrog

> there is only one word. Corruption

The word I would use is Socialism. They are of course related.

View on HN

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11307202 and marked it off-topic.

I associate corruption with large-scale human endeavors, generally.

If one prefers to believe that any particular -ism has some kind of a corner on the corruption market, as it were... well, that must be a nice, simple, orderly world they get to live in.

I didn't say - or mean - that socialism is the only or worst cause of corruption.

I can agree with "large-scale human endeavors" being where it thrives the easiest.

As are corruption and capitalism, corruption and monarchy, corruption and communism, corruption and just about every large-scale human endeavor (as well as a lot of the small-scale ones!).

If you only associate corruption with socialism, that seems like an uninformed view of the world.

Doesn't seem like an uninformed worldview, it is an uninformed world view.

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/cYHll0JXGc8zJzpkmvOPzcTTjI...

Top 10, at least 5 are socialist (I make it 8, Singapore and Switzerland aren't).

Of course this is a perception study but I'd argue broadly accurate based on other metrics.

This "socialism bad, laissez fair capitalism good" thing gets old and largely seems to be a misunderstanding that Socialism != Communism.

I would say all 10 are clearly capitalist. All have strong recognition of property rights including private property in the means of production.

It is unfortunate that political terminology is muddy enough to allow for this sort of confusion. If I think these 10 countries are capitalist and you think 8 of them are socialist, what is the likelihood of us having a useful conversation discussing capitalism and socialism?

Socialism doesn't preclude capitalism, it just harnesses for a different goal.

Perhaps your idea of socialism, but not many others' ideas. That's the problem.

A lot of people who cheer for socialism believe capitalism, in the sense of private property in the means of production, is a problem and should be abolished. Others, like yourself, are advocating fundamentally capitalist states with extensive welfare programs like Denmark or Sweden.

Unfortunately, the word socialism is used in both senses quite commonly, and it isn't always easy to tell the intent from the word.

(Also, I think sometimes the advocates of socialism aren't very clear on what they mean themselves. Which is unfortunate, as the difference between the two meanings is enormous.)

To be fair, it isn't just fans of socialism who perpetuate this. It does not help when right wingers insist on calling Obama a socialist.

Since the fraction of internet socialists who would actually like to try Marxist totalitarianism one more time is fairly sizable, I tend to assume the worst when I see people choosing that word for themselves.

I will say, if you care about distancing yourself from the totalitarian socialists, but you still like the sound of "socialism", making sure to describe yourself a "democratic socialist" does get the idea across. It's not my favorite term but at least it does suggest Sweden rather than Maoist China.

You can not change the definition of words to suit your idiological needs. Inform yourself about what words mean before going into a politcal discussion.

Their are some words that have many meanings, when you want to use those, you should provide the appropirate addition to communicat your idea.

Corruption is a much better term. As other philosophical ideas that are not well delimited, socialism is an empty tag that can mean anything as you want. Not much different than words like 'neoliberalism' or so. Elastic terms for filling empty phrases without any real substance.

In Venezuela's case, I mean a government that controls all the means of production. With one central authority in charge of everything, the corruption opportunities are enormous.

Also, even if everyone does as honest work as they can, the coordination problems in a gigantic top-down organization like this would doom it on its own.

The thing that is really screwing the Venezuelan economy is the weird exchange rate system which is not exactly corruption or socialism. The ft had "A foreign exchange rate at 10 and 200 versus a 1,000 black market rate is not effective" which I think means you can change at 10 or 200 pesos to the dollar depending on who you know or bribe and the real rate is 1000. Completely Alice in Wonderland mad. I think it's because president Maduro is a former bus conductor who has roughly zero understanding of economics.

Interestingly I see some Venezuelans are turning to bitcoin against the the wishes of their government.

Control over currency is as solicalist as it gets. Go back to Lenin and he basically advocates taking control of the currency to monopolies all import and export.

So what Venezuela does is straight out of the socialist revolutionary book.

Not all socialisms are the same. Some work ...fairly well. It should be clear that there's been a big Dutch Disease/Resource Curse problem in Venezuela.

Obviously, the politics didn't help.

In 2016, the word socialism has no value anymore.

Venal is more related to corruption as there are independent of any economic and politic systems, even the troll ones.

Yes. Socialism/communism are inherently unfair and unjust, hence breeding a truly staggering amount corruption (almost by necessity).

Socialism != communism.

The Nordic countries are pretty damn socialist.

Depends on what you mean.

Sweden and Denmark are probably more free market than the US.

They do have high taxes and extensive welfare systems.

It does not depend on what he means, it depends on if he knows what the words he uses mean.

Their are two well known economic freedom rankings.

- http://www.freetheworld.com/ (stupid URL, everybody knows) - http://www.heritage.org/index/

Check out the interactive map: http://www.heritage.org/index/heatmap

The US and Denmark are not for of from each other. The just get subtracted points for different things. Denmark actually had lots of 'neoliberal' reforms, but because it was done by a left government instead of a right one its not commonly mentioned. Sweden has been going in that direction since the 90s as well.

and to emphasize, socialism is in fact quite well defined -- especially national socialism (e.g. the Nazi Party of Germany). Here's a good overview of what socialism is, broadly speaking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

The Nazi Party, even though it has "socialism" and "workers" in its title, is not considered to be a form of Socialism (nor, for that matter, to be pro workers). Not that it matters much, but the only mention of Nazism in the Wikipedia article you linked doesn't refer to it as a form of socialism.

The Nazi Party, even though it has "socialism" and "workers" in its title, is not considered to be a form of Socialism (nor, for that matter, to be pro workers)

I hate getting down in the weeds on this, but its "not considered socialism" by those on the left who are embarrassed that the Nazis were pretty much a command economy and have socialism in its name.

I don't think Nazism is considered a form of Socialism by pretty much any reputable source; only some in the anti-Left fringe do. A planned economy alone is not enough to classify a system as socialist, and anyway Nazism had enough elements of private property and corporatism. The Nazis, like in many other aspects, were equivocating by calling themselves socialists -- not that they particularly liked the term themselves very much.

I wouldn't pay much attention to the name of the Nazi Party, either. After all, North Korea is a "democratic" republic, it says so right in their name!

So if a command economy isn't enough, perhaps it has to actually represent a form of community control, do you believe the USSR was any more socialist? What makes something actually socialist?

The understanding I've developed of socialism is of worker ownership of the means of production. The state at best can only claim to somehow speak for the workers in a top down manner, and I think that inevitably fails. (Which is not to say I'm advocating it here in a decentralized form but I'm much more sympathetic)

I figure it's akin to North Korea being "Democratic" - it's in the name right? ;)

That communist countries often call themselves democratic is not really that strange. Democracy comes from the Greek words demos, which means people, and kratos, while means power or rule:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

As you probably know, communism usually starts out as a mass-movement of ordinary people.

Frederick Hayek makes this argument in his famous book, The Road To Serfdom. Fascism isn't the capitalist response to socialism, it's the right-wing version of socialism. In Germany, it only came about because socialism had wiped out [classical] liberalism.

I don't think Trump is a murderous totalitarian (though I guess he could be), but fascism is actually an accurate label for his political ideas. He doesn't have a problem with state authority, he just thinks he could do it better, and would encourage nationalist social upheaval instead of SJW social upheaval. This is why the conservative movement hates him.

I would not call them socialist exactly but the philospical background for both ideas is quite simular.

This is history that is mostly ignored or simply pased out of memory. Their was a version of socialism that was called 'Prussian Socialism' and the thinkers from this area had quite a bit of influence on the later devlopment of facism.

Many facists like mussolini were socialist that were pissed of by the socialist party. Hitler took a party with socialist elements and retracked it so that the socalist parts were neglected.

If you look at the original 23 points of the Nazi party, they look fairly simlular to many moderet socialist parties of the time.

The first chapter of Hayek 'The Road to Freedom' is an exploration of the history of thought. It was originally be intended to be part of a book on the subject (The Use and Abuse of Reason Part 1) but he had to no time and so he released it as a more populist book. Sadly this chapter did not get the attention needed and was removed in the version that became a best seller in the US (Readers Digest Version).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com