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Comment by surfmike | Hacker News Reader

The point is blaming “capitalism” is throwing out the baby with the bath water. Look at Scandinavia for capitalist societies with a high level of social support and environmental protections. And on the other hand look at true socialist societies like Cuba and Venezuela where hunger and pollution still exists.

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Let's maybe also consider the role of e.g. US interference and sanctions in your two examples, before we decide capitalism good, socialism bad.

The problem is there are too few socialist societies left because they’ve all failed. My parents lived through one (Poland) which had all the same shortages and pollutions. It’s the same story anywhere socialism has been tried in practice.

"Let's maybe also consider the role of e.g. US interference and sanctions in your two examples"

Or let's maybe not.

Cuba could, and did, trade with essentially every other nation on the planet, so blaming "U.S. sanctions" is not a realistic excuse for their failure.

The problem is that free-market fundamentalists look at even the Scandinavian countries and see nothing but COMMUNISM because in their minds, much like Thatcher, There Is No Alternative to neoliberalism.

I'm a 'free-market' type that believes in prioritizing liberty, and I do not see Scandinavian countries as communist. I just see them as small to medium sized states (wrt a given state within the USA), where implementing such policies is more viable. Only Sweden has double-digit millions, while the USA has ~310M. Scale is an important consideration, and the variety of view points/ lifestyles is greater among such a large population.

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