Socialism, American-Style

Lyndon Johnson would have "gotten away with" The Great Society had he not also been forced to deal with Vietnam. Regardless of what we in the US say of that, those programs are very much part of our ...portfolio.

At an ethical level, Americans are much more likely to embrace consumer surplus as a core value, hence the emphasis on work rather than on government. Our "conservatism" when it is coherent is really a more-radical Liberalism in the sense of an emphasis on a self-reliant individual.

The too-short upshot is - Canadians actively consider the social welfare function as a thing in itself, while Americans try to bury it under complicated things like mortgage subsidies.

That's what I mean about propaganda. To say this is the doing of socialism is pure propaganda.

Socialism (miniscule s) in the small is charity, forms of which even the most rigid egoist (e.g. Rand) can find ideologically palatable: intentional, contractual communities are communities nonetheless, and generally contain mutual aid clauses. Scale matters, however, and somewhere between 150 and 100 million other persons, the charity co-ordinating entity (i.e. the governing power) becomes a beast unto itself, the contract becomes blurred, and Socialism in the large imposes itself on ideological dissenters with the force of the local violence monopolist.

If nation-states were actually communities caring for their own, the philosophical concerns of consent and compulsion, and the pragmatic concerns of checks and balances, would be much reduced. I await the Maneki Neko experiment that could imbue a society of great magnitude with equally great cohesion.

This is a fair point, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the presence of a significant group of politicians in congress who have made their entire careers out of sabotaging government programs. Remember, Republicans have tried to repeal Obamacare at every turn, even taking it to the Supreme Court - twice.

So to say the system can never work because it hasn't worked is confusing the cause for the effect, it seems.

Who would be more prosperous? The richest 1% would be much richer, yes. The bottom 50% of the population would be a lot worse off: sick and uneducated.

Australia's largest bank, the commonwealth bank, was public, which you can get from the name. It had a trading bank. For development.

- Government programs, the huge military budget, and the once huge space budget (which can be argued was really an extension of the military budget). Can you say for certain that the Internet and would have come about in the U.S. first if it weren't for DARPA? The advancement of computers if it weren't for NASA?

- Non capitalist or profit seeking scientists (Many if not most of whom are funded by the government or philanthropies).

- Luck. The U.S. has an immense natural resources to population ratio, perhaps the highest. It has, at present, virtually limitless land. It doesn't have to worry much about its borders or invasion. Our one border "worry" is actually a benefit to exploitive capitalism: a super cheap black-market labor.

Since you mention "private property", do you realize it is entirely antithetical to free market principles? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9942313.

Since you mention Elon Musk, could he have achieved what he achieved without $4.9 billion in government subsidies? (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...)

I could easily extend this list and make a more powerful argument, but I have work to do. The point I'm really making is to be objective about your analysis of what is behind American innovation and success.

We won't even get into things that we call innovation but have not made the world a better place.

That's combined with pedantry about the term "socialism", which has confused some readers of the comment.

So kristopolous appears to approve of certain things being run by the state, and would prefer that not to be described as socialism, as it might put people off who immediately dismiss anything with that label, and lead to more economically silly privatization or public subsidy of private profit.

The incentive structure of the two systems are different. This changes the outcome.

And in Alaska, the choice isn't only between paying out a dividend and letting the government keep the money. Alaska could simply abolish the severance tax entirely, and just let private mineral-rights owners reap the full profits. But that's not popular at all, even among people who identify as conservative. My suspicion, besides people voting their interests (probably a significant factor) is that unlike in the case where someone creates a product through their own labor, in the case of oil extraction, there is doubt that private land or rights owners really "deserve" the full profits from exploiting a resource they didn't create, but for various historical reasons happen to now own. Rather it seems to be more popular to allow them a profit on their extraction effort, but recapture some of the underlying value of the mineral asset for the people in general. (Texas also has a severance tax based on this kind of rationale, in its case used to fund government in partial lieu of an income tax.)

Utilities, on the other hand, are a natural monopoly inherently tied to a geographic location. They're not producing a "product", but instead a commodity that's the same for all customers. Many utilities are mostly forms of "road" - they just happen to be wire-shaped or pipe-shaped roads.

Note the mostly. Telecoms and electricity have two parts: the central, complex, services; and the big mostly-dumb network.

The Municipality obviously dictates the goals, like 100/100 fiber in the most remote parts of the area (which I just signed up for), and the company gets to execute them in the way it sees fit.

The municipality housing company is operated the same way.

  please do not confuse 'unamerican' for 'bad', and 'american' for 'good'

I don't deny the current system is broken. It has been for a long, long time. But, if you think socialism is the solution, you haven't been paying attention to history. Socialism always results in tyranny. It did in Russia. It did in China. Vietnam. Korea. Even the Nordic countries, who had the best chance of pulling it off, have started to suffer under its weight.