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I'm not sure I've ever seen someone so readily admit they don't know what the world "socialism" means.

• durandal1 10y ago
  Quite the opposite, and for the record, I'm a native Swede so I do have quite the first hand experience. Socialism means that production and distribution are controlled by the workers, something which isn't true for any state in Scandinavia. In fact the economies were built through quite liberal market policies.
  • devishard 10y ago
    > Socialism means that production and distribution are controlled by the workers That's not what socialism means. That sounds more like communism. In capitalism, both basic and non-basic industries are privately owned. In communism both basic and non-basic industries are publicly owned. In socialism, basic industries are publicly owned and non-basic industries are privately owned. Of course there is some argument about what industries are basic, which makes this more of a spectrum than three distinct categories. So when you say "mostly liberal states with extensive welfare programs", the "extensive welfare programs" ostensibly cover most basic industries, while the "liberal market policies" you mention cover the non-basic industries. I'm not arguing your knowledge of Scandinavia, I'm saying that's not what socialism means. Corporations have tried to politicize the terms in order to vilify socialism and capitalism, and represent them as oppressive ideologies, but they're just economic systems, and don't inherently have to be tied to totalitarianism as they were in the USSR for example.
• dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927038 and marked it off-topic.