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> Because most American's don't even know the meaning of that word. I'll have to agree with you on this one. To me it always sounds for a split second that who

• zo1 12y ago
  Well, I'm an anarcho-capitalist. And I advocate no government intervention, in everything. When I use the term "socalism" or "socialist" while discussing a political topic, it doesn't mean I'm comparing it to, or saying it is Socialism. To me, like I would assume most other anarcho-capitalists and libertarians, socialism isn't a binary. It's a grey-scale towards socialism. So, while most would not say that public schooling or a social safety-net are "socialist" or meaning we have "Socialism", the anarcho-capitalists and libertarians would just be implying that this is one of the many things on the way to socialism. Perhaps we're wrong, and these extras and government-projects, etc won't lead to a full socialist form of government. But every single time one of those things is enacted, it's a step in the direction of a less free society. A step in less voluntary and peaceful ways of solving problems. We say peaceful and voluntary because by our definition, government is neither of those (but that's a whole long discussion just by itself). *edit: missing word.
  • dragontamer 12y ago
    And the problem is that Socialists use the word "Socialist" because they believe the Free Market leads to centralized power and monopolists enforcing their viewpoint of the world upon everyone else. I've talked to _real_ socialists, and I do believe myself to be ultimately a free market capitalist kind of guy... at least by default. But unfortunately, the world isn't a simple place, and there are simple mathematical proofs in Game Theory that prove pure liassez-faire capitalism to be wrong. The free market fails in cases as simple as "The Stag Hunt", so it is ultimately the point of a capitalist government to intervene in any of the documented cases where the Free Market fails to work. No anarcho-capitalist has ever given me a clear answer on how Cell Phones would work today if it weren't for government regulation enforcing the 2.4GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi, and also enforcing the licensing of spectrum. I like the fact that it is illegal to disturb other people's cell phones. The Licensing of Spectrum is neither socialist, nor pure anarcho-capitalist. It is a mechanism Americans invented to avoid a market-failure cornercase. Without licensing of spectrum, competitors would create cell phones that disturbed cell phones from other companies. Without government intervention, it is impossible to create property-rights and "ownership of spectrum" that leads to today's cell phones. And all anarcho-capitalists I know of also understand that a consistent viewpoint of "property rights" need to exist for any form of captialism to work. If you're like other anarcho-capitalists I've talked to, you'll go on about Dispute resolution organization and how they're different from judges. The main problem is that if two Dispute resolution organization have different viewpoints on property rights (ie: one likes the concept of licensed spectrum and another one doesn't), then property rights ultimately fail to exist at all, and then capitalism breaks down entirely. The socialist approach to solving the problem is to have the Government own all cell phone companies. This is _very_ distinct from the American solution, where the Federal Government created the concept of "spectrum" that different companies can then buy and sell to each other. So seeing the world as "Socialist vs Anarcho-capitalist" is extremely naiive, and absolutely frustrating to those who like to discuss policy matters. The world is not binary, there are many different solutions to a single problem. Calling everything you disagree with as "socialism" simplifies arguments into a "them vs us" situation and stigmatizes debate. Honest, learn to call _real_ socialist things as socialist. Not every single government intervention is a socialist plot.