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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

When I say socialism and communism, I mean that the government regulates the economy or large pieces of it. Successful "socialist" western democracies are free-market economies that have higher taxes to provide a social safety net. I wish we could call that "empathetic capitalism".

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> I wish we could call that "empathetic capitalism".

OK, but the universally accepted term is democratic socialism, which is quite accurate. "Capitalism" implies a lot more than just free markets.

Wrong- the generally accepted term is "welfare state".

I think you will have a hard time generating conclusive evidence for this argument. Doing so will force you to argue that well-known people who describe themselves as philosophically socialist are wrong about that.

Such as whom? Bernie Sanders is a politician clearly lying about the definition of socialism, while those he claims to want to imitate deny they are socialist.[1]

[1] http://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-n...

No. Welfare state is the apparatus prividing social security and benefits for a population. It's not an ideology or a political system. Sweden has a large welfare state in the sense that we have free single payer health care, free education etc.

We are a social democracy in the sense that the current political climate and consensus is shaped by a few decades of social democratic rule. High progressive taxes etc are seen as norm and are of course necessary to finance a large welfare state.

However: How the money for a large welfare state like the Nordic ones is raised is orthogonal to whether it's being spent on a large welfare state or not. Had we had 10% military spending we'd have a much smaller welfare state than today, with the same taxes.

It's entirely possible for a country to have a very large welfare state without being the least bit socialist - especially if they have natural resources. If the swedish national mining Company (yes, a state owned Company!) suddenly found resources allowing taxes to be halved - we would.

The prior comment said that the correct term for a large social safety net was "democratic socialism", that was what I was responding to. This is a lie propagated by Bernie Sanders.[1] I agree that a welfare state is not necessarily socialist- that was my point! So, you think you are disagreeing with me, but you are perhaps missing is the point that, in the USA, Sanders continual lying about what Socialism means so that he can fit into the Democratic Party has confused the issue in many young people's minds.

The Swedish mining company LKAB is a socialist (state-owned) enterprise, however the entire economy is not composed of socialist enterprises, therefore it is clearly a mixed economy.

Relatively high taxes on their own are not "social" or "socialist".

[1]http://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-n...

Does it? What else does it imply that isn't a straightforward consequence of free markets?

You can be irritated that the word "socialism" is ambiguous, but your irritation doesn't change the fact that it is. We should be careful trying to use the word "socialism" to mean things that it doesn't always mean. That's all I'm saying.

There are already specific, well-known terms that capture the real problem with states like Venezuela or the Soviet Union. For instance, "command economy".

> Successful "socialist" western democracies are free-market economies

Only in the sense that "free-market", in this context, involves substantial government regulation of market participants and activities in the manner that "free-market" is usually, in other contexts, used to signal the absence of.

> I mean that the government regulates the economy or large pieces of it

The Federal Reserve, bank bailouts, the government spending and government-backed monopolies that created the Internet we're typing on etc. The US "government regulates the economy or large pieces of it".

No one had a monopoly on "creating the internet". The government pays for basic, fundamental research, and as a consequence of those investments a new technology we call The Internet was created. A good use of public money, but trying to use the invention of the internet to argue that the US government is controlling the economy is a total misunderstanding of basic facts.

Government backed monopolies like Bell created the transistor, and government purchases from Fairchild kickstarted transistors.

Also you attribute statements to me that I did not make, then say these statements you made up and attribute to me are wrong.

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