4 ms·

Sounds like no true scotsman. Remember kids: socialism is judged by how it failed in real life, capitalism is judged by how perfect it is in theory

qeternity 3mo ago
Empirically this isn't true. However you feel about "true" capitalism vs socialism, countries underpinned by capitalism have prospered, even the socialist flavors (China, Scandinavia)...while the countries that have attempted pure socialism have all failed.
- thewebguyd 3mo ago
  The problem with that logic is you're treating economic systems as if they all exist in a vacuum, and you're setting up a circular argument of if its successful its actually because capitalism, if it fails it must have been socialism. It completely ignores the decades of external hostility toward any nation that attempted to build a socialist economy. Almost every attempt has been met with near immediate intervention from captialist super powers, particularly the USA. Nixon activeley worked to cause the military coup in Chile, Cuba has faced the longest trade embargo in modern history (and yet still managed to outperform its peers in the region in healthcare and literacy). Its unscientific to attribute these struggles purely to internal failure when they are subject to deliberate economic warfare. Secondly, your definitions are being stretched to fit your thesis. Scandinavia is not "socialist flavored" it IS a social democracy, with free markets. Claiming China's success is from captialism is ignoring that its economy relies entirely on state owned land, state owned and controlled banks, and state owned companies, and mandatory five year plans coming from the state. If we classify any successful state-led initiative as "capitalist" and any blockaded, intervened upon state as "purely socialist" then the argument is an unfalsifiable truism.
  - exhumet 3mo ago
    agreed. its almost like... we need a healthy mix of economic systems to prosper
    - scottyah 3mo ago
      I see socialism benefitting from capitalism, but how have capitalistic nations benefitted from socialist ones (other than a place to put military bases)?
      - 8note 3mo ago
        smartphone glass: corning, gorilla, etc is an east german invention the soviet union also pushed humans into space cuba produces a ton of doctors who then go on to heal people too poor to train local doctors in terms of, how does socialism benefit jeff bezos and elon musk and the actual capitalism of epsteins and the like using money as power mad exption from the law, i guess musk built space x on soviet rocket designs, but otherwise not a ton. does it need to benefit the ultra wealthy capitalists to be good though?
        inigyou 3mo ago
        Bezos and Elon receive socialism from the American government, no need to talk about other countries there. They are backstopped, they have all their needs met by the government and the government gives them tax money from all of us and then grants them exclusive control over an economic monopoly so they can extract more directly from us
wredcoll 3mo ago
The term "capitalism" was literally only created for the purpose of writing criticisms of the (then) current system of markets/trading/taxing/investing. Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. Stuff like people buying and selling items using a currency for a price the individual chooses has been common to basically every human society we have written records for. The formalization of the process of buying shares in a company and receiving dividends/profits as a result is a bit newer, but the general concept of "I give you money, you use it to make something and sell it then give me money back" has been around for roughly the same amount of time as currency itself. Anyways, my point is that there is a lot of things to criticize about our current world/economy, using the term "capitalism" while doing so is too vague to be useful in any way. (Communism/socialism does have more of an actual definition, but very few people are aware of or use it, so it doesn't help all that much).
- sebastiennight 3mo ago
  > Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. .. feudalism? Which, AFAIK, lasted much longer, and is just not the same thing?
  - wredcoll 3mo ago
    History.com says: > Feudalism is a term often used to describe the social, economic and political conditions that existed in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. At its core, it was a system in which a landowner, or lord, granted a piece of land called a fief to a subordinate known as a vassal. In return, the vassal pledged loyalty to the lord, providing labor, military service, payments—or a mix of these. And then the next paragraph goes on to say that historians think this is way too simple to describe what real people were actually doing. Either way, unless every single piece of property in the kingdom (including, like, plows and mill stones and spinning wheels) was granted by the king (or someone he had granted to) it seems like there's still a lot of room for buying/selling/investing. I mean, it's an interesting answer but my basic point is that the "real world" is far too complex for a term like capitalism to be at all useful. Even stuff like "free market", can a market be "free" if a government exists? What about monopolies? Etc etc. I just want people to be more specific when they criticize systems!

qeternity 3mo ago

Empirically this isn't true. However you feel about "true" capitalism vs socialism, countries underpinned by capitalism have prospered, even the socialist flavors (China, Scandinavia)...while the countries that have attempted pure socialism have all failed.

thewebguyd 3mo ago
The problem with that logic is you're treating economic systems as if they all exist in a vacuum, and you're setting up a circular argument of if its successful its actually because capitalism, if it fails it must have been socialism. It completely ignores the decades of external hostility toward any nation that attempted to build a socialist economy. Almost every attempt has been met with near immediate intervention from captialist super powers, particularly the USA. Nixon activeley worked to cause the military coup in Chile, Cuba has faced the longest trade embargo in modern history (and yet still managed to outperform its peers in the region in healthcare and literacy). Its unscientific to attribute these struggles purely to internal failure when they are subject to deliberate economic warfare. Secondly, your definitions are being stretched to fit your thesis. Scandinavia is not "socialist flavored" it IS a social democracy, with free markets. Claiming China's success is from captialism is ignoring that its economy relies entirely on state owned land, state owned and controlled banks, and state owned companies, and mandatory five year plans coming from the state. If we classify any successful state-led initiative as "capitalist" and any blockaded, intervened upon state as "purely socialist" then the argument is an unfalsifiable truism.
- exhumet 3mo ago
  agreed. its almost like... we need a healthy mix of economic systems to prosper
  - scottyah 3mo ago
    I see socialism benefitting from capitalism, but how have capitalistic nations benefitted from socialist ones (other than a place to put military bases)?
    - 8note 3mo ago
      smartphone glass: corning, gorilla, etc is an east german invention the soviet union also pushed humans into space cuba produces a ton of doctors who then go on to heal people too poor to train local doctors in terms of, how does socialism benefit jeff bezos and elon musk and the actual capitalism of epsteins and the like using money as power mad exption from the law, i guess musk built space x on soviet rocket designs, but otherwise not a ton. does it need to benefit the ultra wealthy capitalists to be good though?
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        Bezos and Elon receive socialism from the American government, no need to talk about other countries there. They are backstopped, they have all their needs met by the government and the government gives them tax money from all of us and then grants them exclusive control over an economic monopoly so they can extract more directly from us

wredcoll 3mo ago

The term "capitalism" was literally only created for the purpose of writing criticisms of the (then) current system of markets/trading/taxing/investing. Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. Stuff like people buying and selling items using a currency for a price the individual chooses has been common to basically every human society we have written records for. The formalization of the process of buying shares in a company and receiving dividends/profits as a result is a bit newer, but the general concept of "I give you money, you use it to make something and sell it then give me money back" has been around for roughly the same amount of time as currency itself. Anyways, my point is that there is a lot of things to criticize about our current world/economy, using the term "capitalism" while doing so is too vague to be useful in any way. (Communism/socialism does have more of an actual definition, but very few people are aware of or use it, so it doesn't help all that much).

sebastiennight 3mo ago
> Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture. .. feudalism? Which, AFAIK, lasted much longer, and is just not the same thing?
- wredcoll 3mo ago
  History.com says: > Feudalism is a term often used to describe the social, economic and political conditions that existed in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. At its core, it was a system in which a landowner, or lord, granted a piece of land called a fief to a subordinate known as a vassal. In return, the vassal pledged loyalty to the lord, providing labor, military service, payments—or a mix of these. And then the next paragraph goes on to say that historians think this is way too simple to describe what real people were actually doing. Either way, unless every single piece of property in the kingdom (including, like, plows and mill stones and spinning wheels) was granted by the king (or someone he had granted to) it seems like there's still a lot of room for buying/selling/investing. I mean, it's an interesting answer but my basic point is that the "real world" is far too complex for a term like capitalism to be at all useful. Even stuff like "free market", can a market be "free" if a government exists? What about monopolies? Etc etc. I just want people to be more specific when they criticize systems!