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Comment by raxxorrax | Hacker News Reader

Depends on your definition, which is pretty personal. I do enjoy social democracy, but I do think democratic socialism is something different with other priorities. You can guess that this meticulousness hints at thoughts about socialisms problems with totalitarianism.

"This reasoning is why so many socialists are prefixing it with “democratic.”"

North Korea is democratic too...

I understand the antagonism towards capitalism. I see that as neutral and an expression of our egos. Denying egos will very likely lead you to commit crimes against humanity. However, there is a lot of merit to curb these ambitions, but that is also a personal decision if you really want to promote democracy.

Freedom and equality compete and necessitate each other. Neither pure capitalism nor socialism provides an answer where to draw lines. The focus should be democracy and not socialism. Wealth and solidarity arise from there.

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Freedom without equality is exploitation, equality without freedom is oppression.

And I agree, both of those things arise from democracy. But democracy depends on solidarity, education and participation.

There is no free lunch. When people don’t invest the time and effort to participate and even increase responsibility over time, then democracy is shallow and ineffective.

That means people need time. Time to think, learn, communicate and grow. Who has that kind of time? Which parts of society are providing it? Which are taking it away? Is it all personal responsibility?

> socialisms problems with totalitarianism.

I’d like to hint at capitalism’s problem with kleptocracy and authoritarianism.

All systems of government have the risk of being corrupted into distortions of their ideals. The problem with democratic capitalism is that it leads to suffering when it’s working as-intended, since no part of capitalism says that people should not suffer. At least democratic socialism is good when it’s working well.

Capitalism in of itself is an incredibly small and simple concept. It’s neither sufficient as a tool of observation nor as a economic system. It’s a framework for exchange and ownership in a very primitive, not in a holistic sense.

Sure, yes. Capitalism is private ownership and markets. I get that. But when you extrapolate that core idea out, you realize that private ownership means by definition that people get left behind. Poverty and exploitation are built into the system - “i own this means of production and i can pay you whatever the market will bare”

Socialism, shared ownership, implies a sharing of profits. If we are all owners, why should you suffer while i profit?

We generally all agree that capitalism has no place in specific areas. E.g. we don’t allow markets for human organs. Most countries besides the US extend that out to their entire medical system. I see a lot of places where these ideas could reduce suffering and limit labour exploitation. E.g. housing, food, health care, and education. I’d never stand here and argue for all out socialism, but i’d like to slide down that slope a while until we arrive somewhere where there aren’t homeless encampments filling the margins of our cities and people working full time while living in their cars.

Well said, I think there is a tendency to elevate these economic concepts way beyond their usefulness.

My intuition is that politics has to grow beyond ideology and religion.

Poverty and exploitation were built into socialistic systems as well. And I think USSR and China never shared profits, but on the contrary - exploited their citizens to the maximum.

Democracy and the Rule of Law.

Which can both be in the hands of the people or the dictator.

I personally dislike the "democracy" stamp as even within "democracies" there are forms of minority rule (looking at you UK).

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