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How Americans view capitalism, socialism and free enterprise
- pizzaiolo 3mo agoThe caveat for anyone outside of the United States is that what they call "socialism" is really just capitalism with a welfare state.
- TheOtherHobbes 3mo agoWhich the US has anyway, albeit in a patchier form than other countries, and with welfare handed out more to corporations and "sponsors" than individuals.
- DamonHD 3mo agoI don't see how a shared currency (between poor and rich states, with the subsidy flows that implies), a national air-traffic control system and the interstates, amongst many other features, are not "socialism".
- lotsofpulp 3mo agoThe majority of federal government spending is a wealth transfer to old and poor people: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... That’s also an easy sign of socialism. Just not all of society benefits. Not to mention the state and local level stuff via Medicaid and property tax subsidies for old people, too. And then there’s the implicit monetary policy of putting asset owners ahead of income earners by debasing the currency.
- myrmidon 3mo ago> The majority of federal government spending is a wealth transfer to old and poor people Sorry, but that's a ridiculous take. Thats just like saying that public schools are a wealth transfer from the working class to students, or that health insurance is a wealth transfer to old and sick people. It's neither useful nor precise. Things are never an actual "wealth transfer" when both sides consider it worthwhile-- that's just an ordinary trade.
- lotsofpulp 3mo ago>Thats just like saying that public schools are a wealth transfer from the working class to students >or that health insurance is a wealth transfer to old and sick people Both of these are also true statements. >Things are never an actual "wealth transfer" when both sides consider it worthwhile-- that's just an ordinary trade. It's not an ordinary trade, it's a forced payment via the government's monopoly on violence, which is why it falls into a wealth transfer. I would consider it (mostly) worthwhile when it's students because they turn into future workers. However, I would prefer to opt out of social security and old age healthcare tax (Medicare) because I will be getting less into the system than I pay into the system. That is an inevitable future due to demographics. Note that I am not saying wealth transfers are categorically bad, just wanted to point out the hilarity of a country that can spend $1T+ per year on wealth transfers and still be afraid of "socialism". And it's far more than $1T, because the health insurance mandate to not price health insurance based on health risks is another massive wealth transfer probably worth at least another trillion.
- soco 3mo agoFunny how subsidies to megacorps and tax exemptions are never "wealth transfer" just daily business.
- lotsofpulp 3mo agoThose are also wealth transfers. I don't have that statistic to easily pull up, but the federal government has a nice website to easily show an example, one that happens to dwarf all the others in dollar amount.
- preg_match 2mo agoTo be fair, if any of those were proposed today, Republicans would absolutely lose their minds and it would never pass. Basically everything somewhat "good" about the US comes from vaguely-socialist policy making in the 20th century. Nobody will say it out loud, but we all know it's true. Living in America if the New Deal never happened would be absolutely miserable.
- vjvjvjvjghv 3mo agoThe US has the same attributes that most European countries have. Just to a different degree. Socialized healthcare (for some), welfare, free markets (with restrictions), the state heavily involved in steering the economy . It’s all the same just with emphasis on different aspects. The US would be way better off if they accepted that fact and didn’t tell themselves that they are so different from these socialist/communist countries. A lot of the inefficiencies in areas like health care comes from the fact that the US does things that they don’t really want to accept that they are doing them.
- bee_rider 3mo agoThat’s what some politicians here mean when they say it. The poll seems to indicate pretty negative results for “socialism,” which seems less likely if people were just interpreting it as capitalism+safetynet, right?
- therealdrag0 3mo agoWho is they? Did the poll define it like that or are you projecting into the minds of the populace?
- mytailorisrich 3mo agoThe capitalism vs socialism debate was settled in the 1980s, and so was the value of free enterprise. It is odd that the debate should keep being brought up... However, the terms should also be clearly defined in such poll because indeed the average person may have their own understanding, not least in the US. Judging by the comments even people on HN have no understanding of "socialism" and are trying to shoehorn an idealist view of "a better society" into the term, or they cannot accept that "socialism" does not work.
- Avicebron 3mo agoPeople really need to give up the cold war, the failures of "end of history" thinking are directly related to all of the economic problems we have today. We could do - have done - much worse than implementing some good sense social safety net measures. Especially as people advocate for AI and using it to replace/disempower employees.
- mytailorisrich 3mo ago> People really need to give up the cold war, the failures of "end of history" thinking are directly related to all of the economic problems we have today. That's irrelevant to the point. The 1980s did settle the capitalism vs. socialism debate. The USSR and, perhaps more consequentially, China effectively abandonned socialism because it failed and acknowledged that capitalism, free enterprise, and the free market was what worked. The "end of history" is the belief (proved wrong if not naively wrong from the start) that this would lead to everyone being "friends" under a Western-style liberal democracy. > We could do - have done - much worse than implementing some good sense social safety net measures. I don't understand what you are getting at unless you consider that socialism = "social safety net measures", which it isn't but, as mentioned, it seems that many in the US think it is... Reading the comments it does seem that many don't understand the meaning of "socialism" (or seem to think that the passing of time somehow changes things) even on HN so polls to the general public are completely meaningless. But ask people if the prefer to live in North America or Western Europe vs Eastern Europe/China pre-80s and you'll get a much clearer picture of what the real sentiment is... East Germany had to build a wall to keep people IN, after all.
- mikeaskew4 3mo ago[flagged]
- bean469 3mo agoSocialism is when the government does stuff
- Telaneo 3mo agoAnd if does a whole lot of stuff, then it's communism.
- krapp 3mo agoIf it does stuff for poor people it's communism. If it does stuff for rich people it's capitalism.
- inigyou 3mo agoPremier example: enforcement of abstract property rights. This is Big Government™ but since most holders of abstract property rights are rich people, it's capitalism.
- sph 3mo agoIf it does stuff for the party officials, it’s communism. No one has done anything for poor people since Jesus of Nazareth, probably.
- rebolek 3mo agoCommunism is when it does whole lot of shitty stuff.
- FromHoiPolloi 3mo agoNot quite. Communism is when the gov controls the means of production. The end result is indeed shitty stuff due to lack of competition. But you can achieve similar enshittification by failing to break monopolies etc.
- scarecrowbob 3mo agoAh, that explains why all the Q-pilled folks I know (in?)correctly believe the US government to be communist...
- thelastgallon 3mo agoSocialism is only for the super-duper rich, the 0.001%. Too big to fail, trickle down economics and all that. Capitalism for the poor, you gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps. If you ain't successful, you aren't working hard enough.
- vintermann 3mo agoI agree with the sentiment, but that's really about welfare, not socialism. You can still have welfare in a state where control of the means of production is in a few, private hands. As I recall some big ideologues of capitalism wanted that, or at least took it for granted that we would have to have it for the system to be stable.
- nostrademons 3mo agoMakes me wonder how many of the complaints about capitalism are really about corruption, and if people would have a more favorable view of it if we didn't have this system of interlocking directorships, revolving public/private appointments, regulatory capture, and backroom handshakes between government and corporations that seems to shut many Americans out of the capitalist wealth-creation engine.
- inigyou 3mo agoCould it be that capitalism implies or causes corruption?
- RickJWagner 3mo agoI’d like to understand how they defined capitalism vs free enterprise for the poll participants. I’m encouraged by parts of the poll, especially independents responses. I think a good many Americans perceive benefits to some degree of socialism ( ie healthcare ), but without going overboard.
- rebolek 3mo agoAs I understand it, free enterprise is regulated environment to prevent monopolies, capitalism is unregulated which results in monopolies and kills free enterprise.
- therealdrag0 2mo agoCapitalism is an economic system; free enterprise is just a principle or philosophy, which is often used in capitalism. Capitalism is about who owns productive assets (vs socialism); free enterprise is about who directs production and prices (vs command economy)
- brianbest101 3mo agoCapitalism has a generational problem. Gen Z and Gen Alpha growing up in an age of austerity while wealth inequality grows out of control will have, and arguably is having, profound effects on just about everything
- vintermann 3mo agoBranding with historical bad words and other propaganda can't put a lid on how power to influence our future in a meaningful way is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- vintermann 3mo agoIt's not always clear who controls the means of production. It certainly isn't always the people who formally is supposed to - whether we're talking about a "capitalist" or "socialist" government.
- soco 3mo agoReality check: the workers never control the means of production. Not even in communist states, not even in China. On paper? Sure, paper is forgiving. But the oligarchy, either by party or by money, does what they want. The only enclaves where the workers own it is in small cooperatives (mostly insignificant).
- vintermann 3mo agoAs I said, it's always uncertain how much power is in the hands of those who nominally are supposed to have it. But it's also not an either-or. I view states as more socialist the less power is concentrated with a few. And in non-militarized states, that's a lot about how concentrated wealth is.
- ozlikethewizard 3mo agoNot sure we can really define China as a communist state, particularly nowadays. Their economy is essentially just state managed capitalism now, which is probably economically closer to facism than it is communism.
- phs318u 3mo agoI always thought that those that can deny something control it. The workers, by withdrawing their labour, have effective control. However it’s rarely exercised and I think that’s partly because of lack of belief that it’s true. These days of course, workers’ days are numbered as automation will eventually make them extinct.
- vintermann 3mo agoIt's not just lack of belief, it's a coordination problem. Just because we admit to ourselves that it probably won't end well if we keep allowing the powerful to use their power to get ever more power, for us personally it can be profitable to go along with it. Or too risky to go against it.
- dzonga 3mo agosome of these media outlets manipulate public opinion. majority of the public can't differentiate between commerce & capitalism. nor socialism vs 'free markets'. the non-gullible people know it's not just about this vs that - but ultimately who controls what. ideally you want a system where no individual player or a few players can tip the system. the Chinese system is probably the closest to that - but then the CCP exists :( . a large player that can tip the scales. but for the rest of the businesses - it's dog eat dog - the better ones that survive are suited to serve the population while aligned to the goals of the population for a good part.
- VulgarExigency 3mo ago> the Chinese system is probably the closest to that - but then the CCP exists :( . a large player that can tip the scales. but for the rest of the businesses - it's dog eat dog - the better ones that survive are suited to serve the population while aligned to the goals of the population for a good part. The reason the Chinese system works the way it does is precisely because the CPC exists.
- simianwords 3mo ago> the non-gullible people know it's not just about this vs that - but ultimately who controls what. ideally you want a system where no individual player or a few players can tip the system. forgive me for asking but even if I accept China is a real democracy, how is that meaningfully different from "no individual player or a few players can tip the system". isn't Xi and the other party members capable of doing exactly this? i can even agree that Xi was voted in by the people but that doesn't change the point.
- soco 3mo agoI don't think the OP or anyone else here or in the study tried the argument that China was a real democracy. We're strictly checking the economy and its system here, and yes the party is definitely tipping it. But then, everywhere the state can tip it, and more often than not it even does tip it - with laws and regulations and subventions and wars and state contracts and and. So I think the argument is, as interventionism goes they're quite the same even when they claim big ass difference. At least until we look into personal freedoms.
- sph 3mo ago“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” — John Steinbeck, still as relevant as ever
- jfengel 3mo agoIn a lot of ways, the same happened in the Soviet Union. The poor farmers were never socialists. Socialism was imposed on them by upper-middle-class intellectuals. The poor farmers wanted to stop being serfs, but only so that they could own their own land. That wouldn't make them quite millionaires, but they imagined that they'd be comfortably-well-off. (Today, a millionaire is not much more than comfortably-well-off, but in Steinbeck's time it put you in Jay Gatsby territory.) So the proper socialist revolution never happened. The workers never got control of the means of production. It just passed from an obscenely-wealthy autocrat to a bunch of oligarchs, who promptly made themselves wealthy. It does seem to be pretty good evidence that the socialist revolution is never coming. Even if it's in everybody's best interest on paper, it's too hard to get them all on the same page. It's a kind of Prisoner's Dilemma: there are just too many reasons for people to conclude that their short-term interest outweighs the global long-term interest.
- klatchex_too 2mo ago>> “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Steinbeck never said or wrote that, as far as I can tell. He did write a passage that maybe was paraphrased that way, but let's be clear here, he was talking about Communism, and revolutionary Communism, not socialism: "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: “After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?” Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picnickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn’t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves." Steinbeck was a communist in the 1930s, he belonged to a communist organization and wrote for a communist publication. He wrote the above passage in the 1960s looking back on that period. To me it seems like he is trying to minimize his participation in revolutionary communism, as one would naturally do in the 1960s. Maybe I'm overly skeptical and he just grew up. He did not write or say what you quoted him as saying. Looks like the definition of "proletarian" is a member of "the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live". I did that for some time, retired now. Don't know what about that category of person means they are expected to support communism. I don't.
- lapcat 3mo ago> 81% viewing free enterprise positively, compared with 54% for capitalism and 39% for socialism > capitalism is much more likely than free enterprise to be associated with unequal distribution of wealth. This is why the terms "capitalism" and "socialism" are largely useless in political debates, and people are mostly talking past each other. When you look specifically at what Americans like about socialism, it's health care, education, welfare, and equality. I don't think many people want central planning of the entire economy, which is why critics of socialism raising the bogeyman of the USSR are missing the point.
- thefz 3mo agoThe US would be the biggest recipient of socialism right now yet they come from 50 years of propaganda against it; it's so ingrained in their minds that even someone in the most exploited working class would dismiss the idea as "communists want to steal your money1!1!1".
- therealdrag0 3mo agoWhat does would be mean?
- dist-epoch 3mo ago30 years ago this sounded like lunacy, now its becoming apparent it was prophecy: capitalism and artificial intelligence are the same thing
- FrustratedMonky 3mo agoWe are so far to the 'right' now, that even getting a salary is socialism because it is taking money from those poor billionaires that could use that money to invest and create more jobs.
- cindyllm 3mo ago[dead]
- TrackerFF 3mo agoThe problem in the US, is that historically all flavors of socialism have been painted the same way as communism. So in the end it has been capitalism vs socialism, no room in the middle. And whenever countries with social democratic systems, or in general countries with strong socialist influences are presented to the public, the billionaire-pundits scramble to downplay their living standards. Take this world cup, for example. You have Fox news pundits tripping over themselves to tell the audience that Europeans don't have AC, don't get ice with their drinks, or whatever.
- oblongdefeat 3mo agoThe funny part is that the era commonly referred to as "the golden age of capitalism" (post New Deal, post WWII) in the US is the period of time where it was the most "socialist".
- ocius 3mo agoMost such discussion suffer from an inadequate definition of what is meant by "socialism" vs what is meant by "capitalism". The most important aspect to me is ownership / control of the means of production, and I think there are very interesting compromises to be had in between extremes. What I mean: imagine if it was normal for companies to pay out a large part of their earnings to their employees. This does exist, of course, in some of the best companies, but is not widely spread and even when in place, the share of profit going to the employees is too small. Another share could still go to shareholders that "didn't work" for the profit to incentivize investments. Seems like a small change that could have a huge impact on wealth distribution.
- anthony_d 3mo agoI think I like the suggestion, but it’s firmly on the capitalism end of the spectrum. Profit sharing is one of the incentives I look at when looking for a job. Not too far off from employee stock programs or matching 401k with company stock. If you had suggested the “public” get a share of the profits then you start touching socialism but then I’d also hate the suggestion.
- ocius 3mo agoThe public already gets its share via taxes, I'd argue, the problem that I see right now is really that the wins for the employees are (usually) limited to their salary, whereas owners get everything that's left over. And the more you already have, the more you are able to gain..
- anthony_d 3mo agoI can see the point but degree matters. If taxes are socialism then the world is essentially 100% socialist, and the word is essentially meaningless. ChatGPT says 75-80% of business wealth in US is in publicly traded companies, so I’m skeptical the term owner is super useful either.
- tstrimple 2mo ago> The public already gets its share via taxes, You need to demonstrate this with receipts. Most of what I see are large corporations getting tax breaks regardless of job or wealth creation within an area. The idea that the public is offset by taxes on corporations is quite fucking ridiculous to anyone who pays any attention to what effective rates corporations pay.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ozlikethewizard 3mo agoRegardless of your actual views on the systems, as a non-american it's absolutely insane that so many people are incapable of thinking of one positive of a socialist economic system. I wouldn't describe myself as either a socialist or a capatalist, but with just a cursory ponder I can think of several benefits to both. The complete inability for critical thinking is quite saddening, and quite worrying considering america's influence.
- pickleglitch 3mo agoI'm convinced most Americans have no idea what socialism means, or even what capitalism means.
- jfengel 3mo agoThat also includes self-described supporters of socialism, who almost always mean something closer to social democracy. They tend to point to places like Scandinavia, who are absolutely capitalist. They just have better social safety nets. They're misusing the term, but at least they're reasonably consistent about it. The opponents of "socialism" tend to point to places like the Soviet Union as proof that "socialism" cannot work. And when supporters point to the success of Scandinavian-type policies, opponents insist it cannot work because it's socialism. We could have had some kind of honest discussion about which social safety net policies are worth having. Instead we're stuck in arguments about dictionaries.
- pickleglitch 3mo agoIt doesn't help that we've been drowning in propaganda that says "capitalism = freedom" and "socialism = oppression" since forever.
- ozlikethewizard 2mo agoThe other reply certainly supports this view
- scoofy 2mo ago
- rudolftheone 3mo ago[dead]
- scoofy 2mo agoI live in SF and the biggest issue I see regularly with this debate is that most Americans seem to be conflating "capitalism" with various things that aren't directly related. First, I see Americans regularly conflating "socialism" to "wealth redistribution" and "capitalism" to "no taxes." Second, I see many folks conflating high-trust cooperation to "socialism" and low-trust hostility to "capitalism." Ultimately, capitalism and socialism is about who owns the means of production. While most economies are mixed, the countries we point to as socialism aren't actually socialist. They're just redistributive, high-trust capitalism. Sweden, Denmark, and Germany are predominantly capitalist countries. Bolivia and Venezuela are predominantly socialist countries.