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A good example of socialism in practice would have been to give the defaulted housing stock to people to stay-in surely? As opposed to underwriting the debt loa

A good example of socialism in practice would have been to give the defaulted housing stock to people to stay-in surely? As opposed to underwriting the debt loaned by purely capitalist companies? I'm not an expert in socialism but governments underwriting a capitalist housing market does not appear close or aligned with socialism at all. I will say I've never associated the US government with socialism, at any level, so perhaps this bias is part of why I find a difficult argument to envisage.

pessimizer 2y ago
It's the old classic Eustace Mullins theory that the Fed are secret judeo-bolsheviks working to bring about world communism, using the blacks as their pawns. They just disguise themselves as rich guys and focus all of their policies on making the rich richer as an extremely deep cover.
jfengel 2y ago
Actual socialism requires collective ownership of the means of production, especially factories and farms. It's believed that private ownership of those things will inevitably result in abuses so ugly that the entire capitalist system will collapse. "Socialism" in common parlance means "the government does stuff. Any stuff. With the possible exception of things that benefit them, which are of course right and necessary. What a lot of people want is "democratic socialism", which is actually capitalism with strong government regulation and safety nets. It often includes strong mandates about the necessities of life: food, housing, health care. There are few genuine socialists any more, though many democratic "socialists" take note of the failures of capitalism and try to mitigate them.
- NomDePlum 2y ago
  This lines up with my understanding, which is why underwriting monetary loss of banks does not appear anywhere close to being socialist. The worlds governments intervention in 2008 and since seem closer aligned to propping up capitalism, whilst ironically also invalidating a lot of the basis that capitalism actually is a coherent system.
  - jfengel 2y ago
    There's a bitter joke about privatizing profits and socializing losses. It's not exactly true, but it's depressingly close. It's not entirely incoherent to be prepared to backstop losses when they would become systemic. But that mandates limits on risk, or it just tells people that the joke is actually reality. Balancing that requires constant vigilance... which corporations deter by calling it "socialism".

pessimizer 2y ago

It's the old classic Eustace Mullins theory that the Fed are secret judeo-bolsheviks working to bring about world communism, using the blacks as their pawns. They just disguise themselves as rich guys and focus all of their policies on making the rich richer as an extremely deep cover.

jfengel 2y ago

Actual socialism requires collective ownership of the means of production, especially factories and farms. It's believed that private ownership of those things will inevitably result in abuses so ugly that the entire capitalist system will collapse. "Socialism" in common parlance means "the government does stuff. Any stuff. With the possible exception of things that benefit them, which are of course right and necessary. What a lot of people want is "democratic socialism", which is actually capitalism with strong government regulation and safety nets. It often includes strong mandates about the necessities of life: food, housing, health care. There are few genuine socialists any more, though many democratic "socialists" take note of the failures of capitalism and try to mitigate them.

NomDePlum 2y ago
This lines up with my understanding, which is why underwriting monetary loss of banks does not appear anywhere close to being socialist. The worlds governments intervention in 2008 and since seem closer aligned to propping up capitalism, whilst ironically also invalidating a lot of the basis that capitalism actually is a coherent system.
- jfengel 2y ago
  There's a bitter joke about privatizing profits and socializing losses. It's not exactly true, but it's depressingly close. It's not entirely incoherent to be prepared to backstop losses when they would become systemic. But that mandates limits on risk, or it just tells people that the joke is actually reality. Balancing that requires constant vigilance... which corporations deter by calling it "socialism".