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Comment by DickingAround | Hacker News Reader

Let's never forget what socialism is actually like. Historically speaking, running an entire economy is very hard to do. The more you nationalize, the worse it all gets.

They need to just start charging more for electricity. There will be less waste for sure. If people still use a lot and pay more, it means they need it and the money goes to building power generation. Very, very basic capitalism.

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> Let's never forget what socialism is actually like.

The term socialism has no clear meaning, and trying to group failures together is just as unhelpful as trying to group successes.

The key is to find a balance. Europe has had some success with socialising things that make moral sense (e.g. healthcare) while leaving everything else to the private industry. That's still socialism, it just isn't absolute socialism.

Even China is experimenting with the levels of socialism they want. They've been moving towards a more capitalist-style market and they've found a more workable balance.

Socialism is a dirty word in the US, but is a complex word everywhere else. Hopefully with a self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" running for your highest office we'll see people's understanding of socialism expand.

> while leaving everything else to the private industry.

That's an exaggeration. Serious countries (France, Germany, even the US) employ "socialist" industrial policies in sectors that have nothing to do with morality (aviation, defense, tech research etc). Countries that don't do it at all are extremely rare in this day and age and usually don't end up well.

I agree with your overall point though.

Aviation has been a complete disaster. But I can see the moral argument for defence: National security.

I don't know where tech research is socialised. Government pay for it all over the world, sometimes in-house, sometimes externally, but I've never heard of a country banning tech research unless it is government ran.

Socialism doesn't require that you ban competing non-government institutions. Do (economically healthy) countries with socialized medicine bar private medical practice?

Actually it does. The prime objective of Socialism is to prohibit private property. Social democracy on the other hand seeks to exist within a standard capitalist system. Healthcare systems similarly vary along those lines with some countries prohibiting private practice (in either care or insurance) and some not.

A more correct name for what happened in Western Europe is Social Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

It's also the term Bernie Sanders should be using instead of socialism. Strange that he doesn't.

Bernie Sanders specifically identifies himself as a Democratic Socialist:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/01/26/Bernie-Sand...

In Europe the term 'socialist country' and to a large extend the term 'socialism' has a very clearly defined, negative meaning: only the former Eastern Bloc states called themselves socialist, and saw themselves as one step before communism. All of them ran their economy into the ground in record time. Nobody in their right mind would call (for instance) Sweden or Germany a 'socialist country', even though they have implemented a lot of socialist ideas more thoroughly (and more successfully) than the 'real deal'.

That's why I didn't say "socialist country," I said socialism. The person I replied to also didn't say "socialist country."

This is not about electricity. This is about giving everyone a day of the week off to distract keep the people happy(-ish) in the face of a rapidly decreasing quality of life.

This isn't about socialism. This is about what is a dictatorship in all but name.

Sincere question: is there a way to implement socialism without major centralization of power and a disregard for the rule of law?

Do you consider Sweden to be socialist?

Sweden is at best Social Democratic, and not all of its political parties subscribe to that. It certainly hasn't been through mass nationalisations of industry or utilities.

Socialism is the workers controlling the means of production, not anything deemed vaguely left wing by American standards.

Fair enough. It's hard to remember the actual definition of "socialism" when in the US it's used to slander whatever vaguely progressive policy someone don't like, even when you know they're not using the word correctly.

Free market~ish as of now. But yeah at some point the government has to either abandon all social programs or become totalitarian and increase taxes. I don't see a good future for Sweden. The brainwash goes deep.

That's the idea behind democratic socialism. Socialist programs within democracies work all over the world in Europe and Canada (those countries are albeit more towards capitalist on the spectrum than socialist).

I'd also re-examine the degree to which our representative democracies centralise power.

So we get to elect someone that disregards the law and centralizes power. This will still be inefficient and cost us many freedoms.

In most countries in Europe, for example, it's nearly impossible to start a company without lots of capital. This is because of the crippling amount of taxes and restrictions, which results in an economy comprising of near government and big corporation monopolies. You can see this in most of the nordic countries.

The problem with going the socialism route is that the system will need to take more and more income as new generations completely rely on it. At some point, you don't have enough money to fund it, and it collapses.

With the ability for any company to move to any country, there is also the real possibility that companies will just go elsewhere.

Everyone knows that pure socialism and pure capitalism is both evil. The good ground lies somewhere in the middle.

I would say that's not an universally accepted truth

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Not-Capitalism-Jason-Brennan/dp/04...

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Not-Socialism-G-Cohen/dp/069114361...

No, at least its never been done on a country level. Socialism requires group decision making and that can only be accomplished with a centralization of power. Of course the quote "The goal of socialism is communism" by Vladimir Lenin applies.

I know Switzerland isn't a socialist country but for a very rich country they seem to implement a lot of socialist ideas.

Along with the usual social programs they use a very decentralized goverment and are or were thinking of a guaranteed basic income.

Look at the Paris Commune/Revolutionary Spain, the Ukraine Free Territory, the Zapatistas in Mexico, etc. There's lots of examples of socialism working on large enough scales to be relevant but so-called "socialist" Leninists have crushed successful, ground-up socialist movements time after time.

Twenty percent time as national policy seems like a way to foster innovation. Limiting commercial energy consumption to four days a week would seem to incentivize economic investment in efficiency in terms of industrial consumption and in terms of technology adoption in white collar workplaces.

It would seem to do so. It might be possible, if the people didn't have to spend hours in line for basic necessities.

Socialism is worker's control of the means of production. I don't see democratic councils of workers making these decisions. This is Leninist style "socialism" from above, ie., state capitalism and democratic centralism intermingled. Not socialism.

Here's Noam Chomsky talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfdnbMd9BiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsC0q3CO6lM

Many socialists are critical of Leninist style socialism because it's not representative of socialism and it tarnishes the name.

You mean like France, Denmark or Sweden, where the government accounts for half or more of the GDP, and owns many corporations? But that's not socialism, right?

Heck, in the US, the government accounts for over 40% of GDP, and a higher figure than Venezuela...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

Yes, some states run socialism worse than others. And some states run capitalism worse than others. Characterizing some states as 'socialist' but not ours (which does contain some socialist elements) isn't useful, because it's not always accurate.

The fact that US and Venezuela both spend about 40% of GDP from a government level is very insightful and new information to me.

I have a hard time calling the US' spending efficient (mostly military) so I think it's more complex than that we're doing socialism 'well'. But the US hasn't fallen apart yet. If both countries are doing it so badly with such a large part of our revenue, why are they failing? Maybe it's less about waste and more about making sure you don't screw up specific critical industries? The situation with California's cheap water even as they're running out is quite a bit like Venezuela's power. Why are we not rocked by such things more often? I'll have to think about this.

My guess is that most of Venezuela's industries are non-existent, as they've focused on oil the last 50+ years. I know they import just about all their consumer goods and food.

Venezuela's economy after the revolution wasn't really a great example of a 'planned' economy. More like:

1) Nationalize oil companies

2) Give free shit to all the people who they promised free shit to

3) Profit?

There's doesn't seem to have been a real direction, no attempt at developing the economy, just Zimbabwe-style redistribution.

At least in the case of the US, the 'waste' generally finds its way into the US economy (through the military industrial complex, the prison system, subsidies to farmers, etc..)

The government nationalizing everything and trying to run the entire economy while the price of their only export craters is not related to socialism.

> Very, very basic capitalism.

This the economics equivalent of a spherical cow [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

The UK wouldn't have had its NHS without socialism.

I'm not naive enough to assert that socialism is a big bad evil straight out of the cold war.

This. So only the ones who can afford it can spend it. Capitalism at it's finest.

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