Hacker News Reader

Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

Is this where we pretend a bunch of rich market-capitalist European countries are “socialist” or are you talking about China and Vietnam?

View on HN

You can’t have it both ways though. The policies enacted in Northern Europe would definitely be agreed on as communist/socialist by the majority of mainstream American politicians, Democrats included.

> definitely be agreed on as communist/socialist by the majority of mainstream American politicians

The US has generous social assistance, just less of it than some European countries. It has unions more powerful than many European countries. Meanwhile the most popular Dem-aligned politician in the US has recently introduced a bill to partly nationalise AI companies.

> You can’t have it both ways

You’re responding to my first comment in this thread

Small amounts of socialism on top of a solid base of market economy. I'm from Sweden, this is well known but yea, many are super confused about this.

For some people, even the government interventions by those specific rich market-capitalist European countries are "too socialist" and get the exact same "didn't you realise Stalin killed millions?" kinds of responses.

It's just a motte-and-bailey argument. You say you're okay with social democratic policies when you're opposing anything stronger, but oppose social democratic policies when anyone is trying to actually implement them.

That's the point I was making, yes.

PRC is way more capitalist than Norway or some other European countries. Approximately, one is capitalist dictatorship and the other socialist democracy.

Yes PRC government was originally propped by USSR but that's it. If you look at labor protection laws, social security, etc it's nowhere near.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com