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Comment by brc | Hacker News Reader

You're free to leave Norway whenever you like. You can own private property in Norway, and grow your business and keep at least half the profits. Socialist countries have state ownership, no private property, restrictions on freedoms.

Norway is a social democracy. At any point the government could be voted out and replaced with one that changes all the laws. It's not a socialist country.

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Who exactly gets to define that only authoritarian regimes with freedom restrictions practice anything that can be properly described as socialism?

I didn't. I said that a socialist country would have freedom restrictions in place. I didn't try and describe socialism as a construct, I described a country with a socialist government which referred to itself as such. I repeat, Norway is not a socialist country.

I'm happy to be given an example of a socialist country in which you're free to leave and own private property.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_countries

The joke here is that China and Vietnam are anything but socialist nowadays. China even has a property bubble, which must be turning old Mao around in his grave. But look down the list and you'll see a real who's who of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. And not many startup hotbeds.

You are still saying the same thing. "A socialist country would have freedom restrictions in place". Who says that? Norway, and many other countries, have had socialdemocratic governments for a long time, who also define themselves as socialist (for instance, they belong to the socialist international). Why is an authoritarian regime describing itself as socialist actually socialist but a socialdemocratic government doing the same isn't? Honest question here, just trying to figure out how do you end up there.

I'll make my point very simple for third party readers.

Socialism != Social Democracy != Socialist Country

It's a matter of semantics but so many things are. I do not conflate socialism and social democracy. One is an 'ism' - the other a description of a type of government. Any government can have elements of socialism, but socialist governments, to me (and others) are ones that are self described as socialist countries. Norway has a currently elected parliament that has a majority of members who identify with socialism, but that does not make it a socialist country. It's not about post-Reaganism or whatever. USSR stood for United Soviet Socialist Republics. That was a socialist country. If a pile of Norwegians want to define their country as Socialist, let them do so.

I think you're mixing up Communism and Socialism, or simply just using the post-Reagan-redefinitions.

Communism = everyone everythings (owns, decides, does). Socialism = everyone decides and does, but does not own.

No, everyone else is mixing up self-described socialist countries with social democracies, whose ruling parliamentary members identify with socialism as a guiding principle. There is a difference.

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