I 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 di

I 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.