The United States is a mixed economy with aspects of socialism and aspects of capitalism. We are far more capitalist than socialist. You can have a mixed econo

The United States is a mixed economy with aspects of socialism and aspects of capitalism. We are far more capitalist than socialist. You can have a mixed economy with a lot more socialism than the US and still have a great society (see Europe for examples). Now the Soviet Union was pretty horrible, and it’s a shame we’ve decided that it should be the poster child / cautionary tale for any socialist policy in a mixed economy. It’s a shame because I think the Soviet Union was actually a poster child for some things far worse than, and not necessarily intrinsic to, careful application of socialist policies: - Command economy where production was governed by a combination of ideology and information systems (human and technological) that were comically ill-equipped to attempt such a thing. - Horrible autocratic leadership. I’m open to the possibility that an economy, past some hypothetical ratio of socialism, results uniformly in autocracy. But... in the Soviet Union’s case, I think we need to consider the proud, nearly homogeneous, legacy of horrible autocratic rule and horrible living conditions in Russia. But maybe we will soon have the IT capability to efficiently run a command economy. Imagine a world in which Amazon captures an even larger share of global sales... eventually handling the vast majority of all economic transactions: Amazon insurance payments to Amazon networks of doctors. Homogeneously decent quality inexpensive Amazon Basics cookware, clothing, televisions. Amazon News Network. How would that be different than a command economy? Maybe no one corporation would ever capture anything like the full economy. But maybe an oligopoly of corporations could... I actually think we need to figure out some form of (partial) socialism that is compatible with a democratic society, because the capitalist economic end-game starts to looks rife with potential for exploitation. If Amazon and Walmart carve up the world’s economy and resources, I want damn sure I can have equal representation in electing their leadership.