North Dakota, socialist haven?
salon.com
salon.com
Many free market countries do perfectly fine with a mixture of independent and state owned companies, even within the same sector (banking, public transport, medical care). Socialism has fuck all to do with it. It's called pragmatism.
The traditional definition:
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
There's neither free market today in any country, nor there has been one ever.
It's utopian to expect either ideology to be implemented in `pure` form.
(Shoveling money to small private organizatons is the "non-socialist" economic function of government. This is paid for by debt (which is paid for by "some future sucker", since taxes are socialist.)
Secondly the author seems to push for socialism based on bank-bailouts. There is nothing wrong with private banks, but there IS something wrong with bailing them out using government money. Private enterprise must be able to fail, regardless of how "big" it is, in order to represent a properly capitalistic economy.
In shorter words, real capitalism = no government bailouts. Government bailouts = crony capitalism.
He lost me here. Something that works at a small/sample scale, doesn't necessarily (and almost certainly) work at a large scale. There is a finite number of jobs in a certain economy (depending on its capacity and size). Providing more or less money doesn't help create jobs.
[1] http://freedominthe50states.org
[2] http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/libertarians_name_north_dako...
How can this possibly make sense to anybody? What if I offered a loan bellow market rates if and only if the debtor cures a case of cancer for every penny borrowed? 10 grand under the same condition would cure a million people of cancer... not.
The cancer example does not have these qualities.
An intent to give a loan under certain conditions does not mean these conditions will ever be satisfied even less so that these conditions will be satisfied for any amount of the loan.
As another commentator pointed out, the role of banking and the state has fuck-all to do with socialism. This is click-bait intellectual junk food. It's the third article in as many days on the front page of HN where the author has no idea what he's talking about. (There were probably more. I only clicked on a couple each day.)
Yes, I understand if you squint your eyes the right way "socialism" can be damned near anything. But I fail to see why yet another argument on the definition of socialism interest me as a hacker. Or a discussion about state-run banks that's framed in idiotic terms.
If there was something redeemable here, I'd let it go. Hell I'm extremely liberal about topics on HN. I think we can take on just about anything as long as we're civil. But I feel that this kind of stuff, where the subject and title are spun in such a way purposely drive out criticism about things we will never agree on? It just tears communities apart. It does not help build them.
Yet at any rate, socialist policies are virtually non-existent in the U.S (well, except the oldies like 8-hour workday or paid vacations). The fear of it is so strong that people prefer to slave themselves out to the Wall Street overlords rather than allow a hint of social in the sacred capitalism.
I would also include countries who are striving to attain Full Communism in the definition of communism.
Even if the representatives resulting from the selection process (which, in pure socialism, is usually a non-democratic process conducted by political elites) were to truly represent the entire population, there may be conflict and a variety of opinions on how to proceed on any given issue. Those who win these conflicts might be called leaders, and they are not engaging in direct democracy.
Direct democracy is one exception to this.
As I said, "socialism" is well defined. If some people like to attribute this "adjective" to their policies/country/whatever that's up to them, not to real socialism meaning.
And in the US, whatever extra pay you get by virtue of having a degree gets eaten up by the loan debts...
The difference between Europe and USA comes from WW2. Europe was devastated by the war, impoverished. To avoid revolutions (like Russia), (US-imposed... we can argue about this too) governments on West Europe had to find a mixture between private property and state-owned economy (with the help of US money through the Marshall Plan). This was called Welfare State. The USA did not have war on its home land, so it needed no welfare state, and anyway, McCarthy was there to deter any left-wing thinking/movement into the country, which continues until today.