Hacker News Reader

Comment by leovonl | Hacker News Reader

Social welfare is not socialism.

It’s not?

I find it strange how people view socialism in black and white, but not capitalism.

I find it strange how countries with working social policies are real socialism and countries that collapse are not real socialism, despite how socialist or capitalist those working countries are. It makes no sense at all that Venezuela or the USSR is not real socialism but Scandinavian countries with private ownership of the means of production but a big enough tax budget to implement stable welfare are real socialism.

You missed the point

Give me an example of “real” capitalism.

I’d say the Scandinavian model is a pretty happy middle ground.

capitalism is a mode of economy. Any country that employs private ownership of the means of production coupled with market-driven trade of goods and services is capitalist. There is no purity spiral of capitalism unless you want to argue the libertarian angle but then you need to accept the belief that tax is illegitimate, which is not inherent to capitalism.

I can not think of a country that does not have a mix of private and public ownership of production/distribution. What should we refer to those countries as?

government does not equal socialism. Socialism is against private ownership of the means of production - an economy that permits private ownership of the means of production is capitalist. The few industries that are nationalised are not held in common by the people and managed democratically - they're owned by the government who try to manage it the way they think the people would want it. That's what's commonly referred to as state capitalism.

And capitalism is against public ownership of the means of production. Any country that does both, has an economy that is neither purely socialist nor capitalist. I personally would not want to live in a purely capitalist, nor a purely socialist state.

(Sidenote: State capitalism and market socialism are essentially the same thing)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com