Why Socialism? Albert Einstein (1949)

Socialist planned economies usually provided food, housing, employment, education, and medical care for free or at a subsidy. Socialist elites did live better lives, but they tended to be more modest compared to the ultra-rich excesses under Western capitalism.

Chavez's terms over Venezuela proved to be very popular with the poor people of the barrios because he used state resources to raise their standards of living. He also managed to convert them into a real political force that would support him and Maduro against the richer people in the same country who want to see Chavez's and Maduro's policies reverted. Chavez certainly did mismanage the economy in the long-term by his over-reliance on oil and currency trading oil for resources, so the oil price drops devastated the economy and ground it to hyperinflation.

It is also important to note the distinction between Socialist Planned Economy under Marxist-Leninist Communists and the "21st century socialism" of Venezeula that is a mixed market economy where it's effectively half state-managed nationalized socialism and half free market.

>I have no doubt he was saying this in reaction to planned economies of the time.

True, Nazi Germany was a planned economy and that's certainly not socialist in the sense of workers having control of the means of production. It can also be argued that New Deal or war economy WWII USA was a planned economy too.

They both used the state to control the economy and to use public resources to contract out to private enterprises.

The West still has relics of economic planning after Keynesianism through monetarism and central banking control.

Indeed Stalin's first five-year plan, collectivization of farms, subsequent mass starvation, and forced-labor camps all happened in the 1920s and 1930s.

My generous interpretation is that was seen as an aberration, rather than a general rule planned economies later proved by USSR, China, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea.

> a regulated free market economy with a Basic Income.

While I wholeheartedly agree that that's a good idea, I think the government should probably be a smidge more involved in some areas.

I feel like letting people make up the rules as they please is just asking for mini-dictatorships popping up like you see these days with HOAs. Freedom of setting your own rules, but I think it's more important to limit the cases where your only freedom is to get out.

Natural monopolies are another instance where the government should probably step in to avoid a small group of people curtailing the freedoms of large groups. A good current example is the way ISPs currently face no competition. Of course even in these instances a light touch is preferred, In the case of ISPs you might imagine the government owning the fiber, but the ISPs providing the service. This should prevent one ISP in a regio dominating and keeping the competition out. Another example of this is public transit: Railways ought to be shared infrastructure, instead of being owned by a single company.

I'm all for maximising freedom, but what often gets lost in the discussion is how and when to limit freedoms to prevent the freedom of one person encroaching on that of another.

> a regulated free market economy with a Basic Income

As an adamant libertarian, I'll admit that this is the right way to do socialism.

(Though I'll co-opt Linus's opinion on CVS: "There is no way to do socialism right.")

> a regulated free market economy with a Basic Income

any supporter of Basic Income can be either

1) shown to also be a crypto-communist (in the ideological sense, not in the anti-ideological sense where one ideology is used merely as an excuse to trample all other desirable ideologies), or

2) made to retract his/her desire for Basic Income

Those who grabbed the power over the world collapse socialism everywhere you see - China, Russia, merging of Korea, relationship with Cuba... because capitalism has proven to provide them better slaves. Watch for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583B33gySIM&list=PLrsYCDA5sk.... We can't think of capitalism as 'market' economy anymore - with few (no more than four) corporations dictating there conditions and prices, there's no more 'market' relationship. But socialism is no better. "Don’t believe that your life can be better or worse depending on this or that arrangement. For our life to be good, there’s only one remedy: for people themselves to be better, and stop supporting the oppressing governing powers. Regardless of the type of government, the calamities it causes: - ever-increasing budgets & taxes; - animosity towards neighbors, military preps & armies; - enslaving of subject races; - undermining morality." (Leo Tolstoy, On the Importance of the Upcoming Moral Revolution http://www.earthlyfireflies.org/works-by-leo-tolstoy/)

It certainly is both. China's rationale is that their current capitalistic phase is a glorified long-term NEP (Lenin's capitalistic phase for the USSR). They claim to be doing this to build up their economy to first world levels before progressing to the next phase of socialism in accordance with Marxian progression of economic structures. The problem communist countries have faced is not being able to live up to first world levels and both superpowers, the USSR and China, decided that reverting to capitalism is the answer.

Of course, this isn't left 100% to the free market so the state has overall planned control of the economy and will intervene to preserve their interpretation of socialism ("socialism with Chinese characteristics").

China has proved that (i) it has access to vast rich western consumer markets, and (ii) that a dirty dubious economy with no transparency produces cheaper goods than a well-regulated one.

China's "Great Leap Forward" starved 30 million people to death. So yeah a planned economy "can serve people better", if it doesn't kill them first...