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I get it. You don't really know what social democracy is. So let me give you the briefest definition: social democracy tries to balance the best parts of social
by mcv 1y ago
I get it. You don't really know what social democracy is. So let me give you the briefest definition: social democracy tries to balance the best parts of socialism and capitalism, while trying to avoid the worst parts. Those worst parts include that blood-steeped history. Social democracy explicitly tries to avoid that, by regulating corporations and protecting people's rights. The corporations can still make profit, but not by any means; not by hurting people.
That is something that didn't happen during that blood steeped history. The VOC had no meaningful restrictions. They could wage war, kill people, enslave people. They could sentence their own employees to death. These are the kind of excesses you want to prevent.
Social democracy is something that was invented about a century and a half ago, although in the early days, the difference with socialism and anarchism wasn't very well-defined yet; those three terms were used fairly interchangeably much of the time. But at least it was explicit about democracy, and it grew to become the dominant form of socialism in capitalist democratic countries. And there it grew to be what it became over the course of the 20th century: a balance to capitalism, instead of an outright rejection of it.
It hasn't always been perfect; there have been slip ups and poor decisions, but it doesn't have the kind of blood-steeped history that capitalism and totalitarian communism have. It's been fairly effective at what it tries to do. More so than any other ideology, except maybe liberalism. But they go fairly well together.
- roenxi 1y agoAnd would you accept then that capitalism as an ideology is no longer implemented anywhere? Because there aren't many modern nations more capitalist than the Dutch. And those that arguably are are only marginally more capitalistic. Like, if you do a search for "capitalistic countries" you can find [0] people who consider them to be in the top 10. Must admit I'm having trouble getting over the idea that the Dutch of all people are being held up as different than the capitalists. Good bad or otherwise this conversation is going to be a high point of the week. What's next? Socialist Switzerland? [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/capitalist-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/capitalis...
- mcv 1y agoNo country has a pure implementation of any ideology. Ideologies are directions you want to take society, and economic systems are always a balance. But the US is quite a bit more blatantly capitalist, with its lack of holidays, lack of worker rights, and everything geared towards an even more extreme division of wealth. Netherland, and northern Europe in general (I never meant to single out Netherland specifically; Scandinavia is probably ahead of us), is absolutely capitalist, but not nearly to the extreme that the US is, and has more labour protection, better social welfare, better regulations. Not to the extent that it should have; it's still falling way short, and Netherland in particular has been falling further short since the neoliberalist wave of the 1990s and the string of right-wing governments of the past 25 years. But it's not the worst of the world in this regard, and it still has a fairly effective balance that consistently puts it near the top of most freedom and happiness indexes with the rest of northern Europe. It's by no means perfect, and there's a lot that needs to be improved, but compared to most other countries, this is clearly a pretty effective system.
- roenxi 1y agoDid you know the Netherlands, back in 2019, scored [0] the highest wealth inequality globally according to Wiki? Just saying. It does look like a bit of a fluke but I found that hilarious. Although the wiki article actually specifically cites them for having good statistics so there must be some confidence. So earlier, when we're talking about blood-soaked capitalists, we're not talking about the Dutch with their history of blood soaked capitalism and their ongoing largely uninterrupted capitalist tradition. But we are talking about the people who don't take very many holidays and lack "workers rights" - where I note that the US has had their ability to negotiate with their corporate overlords eroded so far that they get a median income of maybe 10% higher than the Netherlands [1]? Most workers should really work on chipping away at their rights, it appears to improve their bargaining position! Maybe PPP can give the Dutch an edge, but we're talking about a pretty marginal difference to start talking about one obviously being the more blood-steeped. I mean, look. We don't really have anything to talk about here but I am going to say I'm not sure you know a capitalist country when you see it. If we're talking about the blood-soaked ones, the Netherlands are capitalist heartland. Not quite as bad as the UK. But bad enough that I suppose I can see why they'd rather rebrand as something other than straight capitalists. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...