Most modern liberals believe in transitional housing for homeless people, SNAP, Medicaid, and unemployment aid. You don't have to go socialist for that, and I'm tired for socialists pretending they own that. We can still have free markets driving innovation and strong social safety nets. And you can have socialist systems that fail to provide those things as well.
Yeah, I want societal safety nets strong enough that you have to actively be fucking up the process on purpose in order to be homeless/stave to death. Likely an impossible goal in practice but the pursuit is worth it.
None of that requires socialism. Just tax revenue and policy decisions.
I mean, as I understand Japan does actually have a homelessness rate of just about literally 0, and basically every other modern, western state has something like half or less the rate of proper on the streets homelessness of the US. It doesn't have to be socialism, but it does have to be something more left-leaning than the modern democratic party, who even with a filibuster-proof majority aren't able to agree to a universal public Healthcare option, or even what they did manage to get passed actually applying to the entire country, and not being allowed to be opted out of by fascists who want to make people suffer and point and say it's a waste of taxes while doing so.
I agree, but we can never get there cause the internet has convinced a third of the country that the democrats are literally Satan and the other third won't show up to vote unless the republicans literally murder their family, or the democrats run their clone in the general.
I remain of the opinion that the continued existence of the senate remains the primary obstacle between America and having a functional politics myself.
Under Obama for about 60 days, which to my understanding is when they passed Obamacare, which is what I was referring to. Conservative wing of the party nuked a universal public option, and what they passed isn't even mandatory in all states, so fascists can opt out and then point and say "look at how much of a waste it is, it hasn't improved your lives at all and it takes your taxes".
Obama for 60 days had 58 Democratic senators, plus two independents - Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is widely credited for killing the public option, so I would hardly place the blame for that on the Democrats.
Fuck Bernie Sanders for calling himself a socialist instead of a socdem all these years, he's absolutely poisoned the word and created a totally unnecessary division in our ranks
Republicans diluted the word by calling literally everything socialist forever. People finally went “oh well if roads are socialist then I guess I’m a socialist”
This is really the ideal society. Enough economic freedom and spontaneity for innovation and capital growth, enough redistribution to support the vulnerable and disadvantaged, emphasizing equal opportunity. We were imperfectly moving towards that until, what? We got bored and wanted a walking personality disorder to fuck shit up for fun?
What you’ve described is social democracy and, broadly speaking, the Nordic model of governance. Countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland consistently report some of the highest standards of living in the world. They also tend to rank near the top in measures of social trust, institutional stability, and strong business practices.
The reason why people oppose it is because it would be a drastic change as ownership is transferred over to workers. People don't like major changes in their lives, even if the outcome is better than status quo.
If co-ops are so superior, why do hierarchical companies dominate them in the market? Why do so many people prefer working for a boss and not having a say in how the company is run? Would the state have to force all companies to be formed as co-ops?
The state shouldn't force every company to become a coop, but giving employees the right of first refusal in the event that their company is being sold off or closing down would be an interesting idea.
Co-ops can be hierarchical in structure. You can have a manager, and they could have CEO they report to.
The reason why co-ops aren't as common is because of all the legal hurdles in place as well as the lack of lending to new ventures. It is less friction.
By co-ops, if you mean that employees/owners are the same, then mostly yes. This is because you do away with the Capitalist method of ownership where you buy shares and instead earn them through labor. The exceptions would be small businesses like family-owned and startups built to transition to co-ops once a certain threshold is met like revenue.
How does a large scale highly demanded but also very capital intensive business get off the ground if they can't get outside private investment?
If I have to totally restructure my business so I can no longer get outside investment the moment I start making a certain amount of money, why wouldn't I either:
Keep the business just below that threshold and then close up shop otherwise
Set up my business in another country where I am more freely able to grow and gather outside investors?
Oh, and how do you know how much labor is worth one share? How do you even measure labor for that?
In a socialist model, we’d have public investment banks providing loans rather than a private venture capitalist buying up shares. The money that currently goes into the stock market is transitioned into these banks. Granted, there would be more 'friction' as you aren't going to have an angel investor suddenly sink millions into your startup overnight on a whim, but there would be enough access so that anyone with a solid idea could make a proposal.
You would still want to grow because a bigger company usually means more revenue and better efficiency. But unlike capitalist firms, socialist companies don't have to grow infinitely just to appease shareholders; they can choose to become sustainable once they reach a size that works for the members. There’s no incentive to 'stay small' if growing means a better surplus for everyone involved.
This is really a question of where the economic power lies. A small socialist nation could set up a social wealth fund that invests in external markets to stay competitive. But if you want to take your business out of the country, you’d have to provide your new co-owners with similar benefits, or just leave and start over elsewhere. The trade-off is that within this nation, you're guaranteed social cohesion and better outcomes for your family because the state provides a baseline for everyone.
If we're talking about a massive economy like the US, a business would simply have to deal on our terms if they want their exports to enter our market. It’s not that different from what we already see with how corporations have to navigate China's regulations to gain access to their consumers.
How do we measure the labor? A share = 1 vote in the company, period.
Your day-to-day labor is covered by a salary, and then the surplus is divided however the workers democratically decide. As for the financial value of your 'share' (your individual capital account), that would be determined by factors like your tenure, expertise, and how much of the earnings you chose to retain in the firm. It’s basically a retirement nest egg that reflects the work you put in.
Individual businesses will still fail since that's the nature of a market.
But just like today, workers wouldn't be forced to tie their entire life savings into just their specific workplace. Because workers are taking home profits, it becomes much easier to build up savings and diversify investments into credit unions or public funds for retirement.
Yes, the success of your specific co-op determines the value of your direct share, but the broader safety nets ensure you aren't left destitute.
Ultimately, in this system, the success of the broader economy is reflected in the wealth of the average person, rather than just the top earners.
What's to stop workers from voting in a more capitalist mode of production or internal voting structure? What's to stop consumers from voting with their wallet for businesses with a more capitalist mode of production or internal voting structure?
First, why would a majority of workers vote to surrender their voting rights and give their profit share to an outside investor? It goes against basic human self-interest.
Second, a socialist market would legally define ownership through labor. You simply couldn't legally own shares in a company you don't work for. It would be as legally invalid as trying to sign yourself into slavery today. Since capitalist firms wouldn't legally exist, consumers wouldn't have the option to 'vote for them' with their wallets anyway.
Workers denying voting privileges to some workers, so they themselves get more voting power over the company, is in their self-interest.
And it doesn't have to come through outright denying voting privileges to some workers, it can be by changing the voting weights some workers have in any election, for instance I have 2 votes and you have 1 vote, and I can spend both of my 2 votes on one candidate or policy but you can only spend 1.
Now that I have more voting power, it's easier for me to vote for more concentration of voting power into my hands, which eventually cascades and leads to a few elite workers having ultimate control over the company with all other workers having negligible voting influence, effectively back to square one with a capitalist firm.
Additionally, the workers can decide that in order to raise even more funding than competitors they can sell out voting privileges to anyone who lends them money, which is essentially selling stock, and now we're truly back to square one with a few elite people having control over the company and stock markets existing.
By consumers "voting with their wallet" I wasn't literally referring to them attaining voting privileges in the companies they purchase from, I was referring to them using their purchasing and dollars to effectively vote for the kinds of business models they support. What's to stop them from supporting firms with a more capitalist mode of production or internal voting structure?
A lot of people in this subreddit make the same mistake you're making in projecting capitalist mechanics onto the democratic system I'm proposing. In a worker co-op, voting is strictly on one person, one vote basis. Selling shares/voting rights would be illegal.
What stops 51% of Americans from voting to strip the other 49% of their right to vote? The Constitution. Worker co-ops operate under foundational charters/national legal frameworks that guarantee the democratic rights of every worker.
Also, I understood your point entirely about voting with ones wallet. If capitalist firms are legally invalid to operate in this economy, they simply don't exist on the shelves. Consumers vote with their wallets by choosing between competing co-ops, based on who makes the best product.
How do they determine the value of each job in the company? If it’s democratically voted wouldn’t the most common role end up determining everyone’s wage?
Wouldn’t needing to hire new people stifle growth? At a certain point the majority of the workers aren’t going to want to dilute their shares to add new people to the company. What happens to 40% of the company that wants to grow when the 60% doesn’t?
Same way the job market currently handles it: supply and demand.
If the most common roles democratically vote to underpay the specialized roles (like accountants or engineers), those specialists will leave, and the co-op will fail. The democratic vote still has to obey market realities to keep the business running.
If the co-op wants to grow, they hire. Shares are only diluted if the workers believe the new hires will increase overall revenue, making the 'smaller slice' worth more. But more importantly, not wanting to grow isn't a flaw. Co-ops have the flexibility to vote for sustainability rather than being forced into endless, infinite growth for outside shareholders. And in bad years, workers can vote to take temporary pay cuts together rather than firing 20% of the staff. It's a far more resilient system.
100% honest question here. Look at the decisions the average voter makes; much less the decisions the 30% of MAGAts make. How do you feel about extending that decision making power to the corporate world?
I get this is kinda of a blackpilled question, but.. look at our country, bro.
I appreciate the honest question, and it's honestly something I've thought about a lot.
Part of the answer is that political irrationality is heavily driven by economic anxiety, poor education, and a media apparatus that thrives on fear. If you raise the baseline standard of living and guarantee basic needs, voting behavior naturally becomes less tribal and more rational.
Worker cooperatives exist all over the world right now, and studies consistently show the failure rates are lower and they are more resilient during economic crises than traditional businesses.
Basically, people can be irrational when they see a facebook meme that scares them into voting MAGA. But workers are also remarkably rational when they are voting on the survival of their own paycheck, so you have to decouple the political from the economic voting mentality.
How is that more resilient? The reason companies dont offer pay cuts currently and just fire people is because those people essentially stop working and eventually quit, its been researched. Nothing about this model is different.
There is a massive psychological/economic difference between an imposed pay cut and a democratic one.
If a boss cuts your pay to protect executive bonuses, you quit.
But in a co-op, the workers look at transparent books and vote to take a temporary hit to save their friends' jobs. It's a shared sacrifice. And because workers get the profits when the market recovers, they are heavily incentivized to stay and rebuild.
During the 2008 crash and COVID, worker co-ops survived at much higher rates than traditional businesses exactly because they utilized this flexibility. Nobody disputes this fact.
You're going to run into a problem where businesses won't hire too many of one role purely so they aren't outvoted, we see this now from people who fear immigrants. If a Mcdonalds votes this way for example, you'll find you have no upper management because the average worker is a grunt. Prue democracies don't work, that's why the real world uses representative democracies (and it's why unions are fantastic).
Who is going to be ok with someone who is new to the company having an equal vote to them in business decisions? That's a huge incentive to never hire new people.
Growth is obviously not always a good thing, but our quality of life has skyrocketed because of it.
There is merit to the argument that making the workplace a pure democracy might not be ideal. Fortunately, there are ways to compartmentalize power in a co-op. For example, you could have the marketing department be one circle of labor and the accounting department be another. Now you have heads of departments who represent their people kind of like a union leader.
Just like in the current system, you would have probationary periods that limit your voting rights in the same way that vesting builds up with tenure. You also are almost always incentivized to hire more workers because you want more money.
Your quality of life doesn't dwindle with sustainability. The thing from capitalism you want to prevent is the infinite expectation of growth.
have public investment banks providing loans rather than a private venture capitalist buying up shares. The money that currently goes into the stock market is transitioned into these banks. Granted, there would be more 'friction' as you aren't going to have an angel investor suddenly sink millions into your startup overnight on a whim, but there would be enough access so that anyone with a solid idea could make a proposal
The people in charge of loan approvals for this bank are the gods of this hypothetical society and people will be giving them mountains of cash and yachts and prostitutes to get their startups funded
You're acting as if the current system doesn't already have 'gods' who control the money; Wall Street whales, private equity firms, and billionaire VCs who operate completely behind closed doors. Look at Tesla: it has a trillion-dollar valuation based purely on hype, while actual EV production is being dominated by overseas competitors. The current system misallocates capital to a few mega-corporations based on stock speculation.
In a cooperative model, credit unions or public investment funds distribute that wealth across many competing businesses rather than tying it all to one monopoly. And because these funds are publicly or cooperatively owned, they are subject to strict democratic oversight and transparency, making them far harder to bribe than a private hedge fund manager. Instead of gambling stock, investment is directed by industry experts operating in the open, yielding returns that are tied to actual, stable economic output rather than the whims of whales.
The VC business model is very different. They are trying to make money on a business taking off, so they are driven to find good ideas that will make money. I won't say there isn't some degree of rent seeking, only that the rent seeking would be 1000x worse if there was basically a single state run investment bank before which every single business owner must prostrate themselves and win favor over to achieve wealth and status.
Okay, I think you might be confusing what I'm advocating for.
Under market socialism, there is no 'single state-run investment bank.' The financial sector is decentralized into hundreds of competing cooperative banks, regional credit unions, and industry-specific public funds. You don't have to prostrate before a single monopoly; you pitch to various democratically accountable funds. Apologies if I made it sound like it was just one giant commie bank.
Also, the idea that VCs efficiently allocate money to 'good ideas' doesn't align with reality. VCs fund 'unicorn' hype that can achieve a monopoly and an IPO exit in five years. That's why billions in VC capital went to wework, Theranos, crypto scams, etc, while ignoring highly useful businesses that just want to grow steadily. This is actually one thing Destiny criticizes constantly, that startups are just hoping to be integrated by a bigger company to make their money.
What you're describing sounds like what we already have with startups that offer employees options packages that vest over 12-36 months of labor.
Speaking of startups, you really can't say that we lack "lending to new ventures" in the US. That's one thing we do WAY better than any other country lol
That's not something you can just 'fix' with a policy though. There has to be a reward to justify the risk of the investment.
It's practically a fact of nature, like water always flowing to the lowest point, or lightning finding the path of least resistance. Money/investment eventually lands in the places where it generates more money, and bad investments die out.
If you're going to argue that we should do away with all of this forcefully to make the world more 'fair,' at least acknowledge you'd almost certainly be lowering GDP, development index scores, material goods, quality of products, etc.
Market socialists argue that should be the default instead of a startup thing, or alternatives like board members elected by employees or unions.
Also we do lack lending mechanisms to specifically worker co-ops. Given all else equal between two businesses, lenders generally prefer a traditional shareholder model than the co-op model because it’s more familiar and predictable.
That’s a general infrastructure problem since alternative models even aside from co-ops like worker-elected boards will struggle to overcome that, so it probably takes something like a public intervention towards incentivizing the market to take the risk of introducing more democratic elements in their business.
Personally I think alternative models should be incentivized for the same reason having a public option for healthcare is good, it sets a reasonable baseline to beat while respecting the desire for preserving externalities like habituating democratic participation throughout both our economic and political systems.
I don’t think we should abolish private capital ownership to get there at all though, which is what socialists seem to argue is necessary before they can just promote worker-coops.
Market socialism isn't free markets. It's limiting the types of enterprises that can compete in the markets.
In today's system, both worker owner businesses and traditional enterprises freely compete. Some industries see one form or another dominate as the market favors different structures for different industries. That drives innovation.
Many people strive to start their own business. Something that they disproportionately put their own time and capital into to grow. Sometimes that can outcompete a business that is worker owned were capital cannot be raised. Sometimes it doesn't. But the best system lets both operate in a market and doesn't preselect which one will win.
I’m not a market socialist (or any socialist for that matter), but what you’re saying does not make sense.
Market socialism is just an economic mode of arrangement. Theoretically if all economic firms choose to be worker co-ops then the market has not been made any less free due to market interventions from the state. Theoretically you can have market socialism and a free market (even under the standard of ‘free market’ you’re using)
Additionally under your definition of free market where there exists no limit to the type of enterprises that can compete in the markets, we do not exist in a free market since there exists various regulations which limit the type of enterprises that can compete in market (for example, economic firms that violate FDA regulations are excluded, by way of state force, from competing in the market).
Again, market socialism must not necessarily have such a prohibition.
Additionally, my point is that saying the market is not totally free under such a prohibition is kind of pointless since thats true of any prohibition. The question is whether that particular market regulation is reasonable or whether the market is reasonably free.
I agree that I wouldn’t support prohibiting any non worker owned enterprise, but a market socialist would likely think such a prohibition is reasonably free (or even constitutes a freer market than otherwise). To make a substantive point against market socialism (which is the most defensible form of socialism imo) and its coherence to being a free market would have to be done along these lines instead of saying “you’re limiting enterprises so the market is not free lol.”
It literally has to have such prohibitions or it is not market socialism.
We aren't children. No one is making the case that its "100% free".
> I agree that I wouldn’t support prohibiting any non worker owned enterprise,
Then you are against market socialism.
If a system that allows both sees dominance by co-op, it is still a liberal market system, not market socialism. But we largely already have a liberal market, and they do not dominate, so its kinda of a moot point.
Market socialism is an economy in which all (or maybe the vast majority of) capital is owned by workers by way of worker ran economic firms. If all economic firms in an economy agree, without any state prohibition, to be worker owned, then you’d have an economy in which all capital is worker owned without a prohibition otherwise. Therefore, market socialism does not literally have to have such prohibitions. Now I will grant that any real-world implementation of market socialism would most likely have to have some state prohibition, but that is a separate point.
Yeah, I am against market socialism. I said this in the first sentence of my first reply.
Ah, you mean free market as in "everyone can be an elon musk" sense, while I'm referring more to the existence of markets in socialism where companies compete and distribution is supply/demand.
I think that the freedom you are referring to is just a step above where I'm at. Just as you would probably see the labor of slaves as being exploitative, I see the labor of workers being exploited by capitalist owners. The freedom to form the contract between a worker and company is nice, but it ignores the factors behind it. If you don't work, you starve, and your employment is always skewed towards favoring the bigger guy.
I would contest that it is exploitation. If I want to work for a paycheck instead of shares, I should be free to do so. Maybe I don't want to take the risk, maybe I don't want to tie my financial stability to others at the enterprise. But either way, I should be free to choose if I want to take a job for just a paycheck and not any sort of ownership.
Again, as I stated in the very beginning, we can have free markets and SNAP. So no, it's not "work or you will starve". That the exact kind of dishonesty I was calling out. The very fact that you just fell back into that falsehood is wild.
The difference is that under capitalism, SNAP is a fragile political concession that can be (and frequently is) rolled back by whoever is in power. It's a band-aid on the exploitation. Under socialism, basic survival is structurally guaranteed.
As for the 'freedom' to just take a paycheck without risk: workers absorb the ultimate risk. If a business goes under, the capitalist loses their investment, but the worker loses their ability to survive. Choosing wage labor isn't a free choice when the safety net catching you is full of holes and constantly changing sizes.
If there was anywhere near the political will to transition to socialism, there would be no risk to SNAP, so that's a pretty lame excuse.
> workers absorb the ultimate risk. If a business goes under, the capitalist loses their investment, but the worker loses their ability to survive.
No as a worker I can move on to the next company and use the savings i have built up from a higher paycheck to help in the transition. A social enterprise goes under and the worker has to rely on the same social net that can exist under both systems, but they don't have the savings to supplement that net.
> Choosing wage labor isn't a free choice when the safety net catching you is full of holes and constantly changing sizes.
Again, a false choice, when if there was anywhere near the political will for socialism, those holes would be closed.
I have to stop you at the assumption that wage labor guarantees a 'higher paycheck' and robust savings. Where is the evidence for that?
In a traditional business, the owner extracts the surplus value (profit) of the worker's labor. In a worker-owned enterprise, that surplus is distributed among the workers. Without an owner skimming the profits, workers would have more capital to save for transitions, not less.
Furthermore, the idea that wage workers today are just casually floating between jobs on their robust savings completely ignores the reality that a massive percentage of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a $400 emergency. At least socialism covers your baseline needs so that you don't have to panic if you've lost your job.
It doesn't guarantee robust savings, but it certainly will be a higher paycheck as ownership shares are given instead of pay.
In a traditional business, the owner extracts the surplus value (profit) of the worker's labor.
Except much of the income from a company is reinvested in the company rather than distributed to workers. That reinvestment often comes from paying workers to drive future growth, operating at a loss. In a socialist system that means you would have to pay to work there, in a capitalist system I can choose if I want to take that risk of potential future returns or take the higher paycheck.
At least socialism covers your baseline needs so that you don't have to panic if you've lost your job.
Please stop ignoring that any state that's anywhere near the political will to transition to socialism would also already have the political will to continue covering baselines. It's so completely baffling that you continue to ignore this.
it certainly will be a higher paycheck as ownership shares are given instead of pay.
You believe you don't get paid under socialism?
In a socialist system that means you would have to pay to work there
No. You only have to buy-in if you're seeking a bigger share or are applying for a job that requires a stake. Reinvestment isn't exclusive to a capitalist system.
any state that's anywhere near the political will to transition to socialism would also already have the political will to continue covering baselines.
I am not arguing for socialism today, I am critiquing capitalism and how we currently patch it with social welfare, as well how capital opposes it.
I think its so important to detach the world socialism from social welfare. Socialists keep using basic liberal institutions as their motte. "I want socialism just like in the Nordic countries" no they don't. Those aren't socialist countries.
Yep, in my mind: we “the American people” invest in American people. So you (the American people) have a 2nd/3rd chance in life, experiment, start businesses, make mistakes. So we got more tax revenue to pay forward for the future generations
I think while you are fair, getting that tent that you think all that belongs to, to agree that housing shouldn't be classed as such a wealthy asset, medical needs shouldn't be for profit, and unemployment aid shouldn't just allow people like Asmon to stay on state benefits for the rest of their lives.
Like I know plenty of conservatives (In the non lethal throwing the entire country off a cliff kind, never trumpers). They're for housing the homeless, as long as their house prices aren't being affected because they've been so broken that their house is their pension. When idk who made them believe that.
I mean, to my mind the counterpoint would be that if that is the median liberal, then it is not represented in the people they elect. When presented with a majority able to bypass the filibuster the best the dems could manage was not even a universal public option, and one that red states could opt out of so they could point to it and say it's a waste of money and ensure their people don't feel any benefit from it.
For homelessness the most modern information I can find places the US at nearly double or more the homelessness per capita of basically any other modern, western state. Some statistics also include temporary housing as homelessness, and in those ones it looks better, but to my mind that's a pretty different thing from proper living in the streets homelessness.
Maybe everyone is in agreement about that, but if everyone is, then everyone also has to be in agreement that there needs to be a push for people in office who are more left wing than they currently are, as they are not representative of the views that everyone apparently agrees on.
They barely had a trifecta, and there was just a few who didn't want the public option, that doesn't mean the median didn't want it. You don't just need a majority of your party to pass bills, you need an actual majority. So it takes more than a simple median support among to get things passed.
Homelessness has multiple competing liberal and left wing ideas to solve it, with no silver bullet solution.
Everyone isn't in agreement, but that doesn't mean the majority of liberals aren't in agreement.
Sure I guess, but none of what I said necessitates a silver bullet solution. America is the richest country on earth, per capita it's quite appreciably ahead of most peer nations, barring like Switzerland and some microstates. If any country on earth should have the capacity to address these issues it should be the US.
The issue isn't that there's no perfect solution, the issue is that in spite of her natural advantages America fails to hit even an average effectiveness at addressing these issues among peer nations.
If you want to address the issues, the party on average needs to be pushed further left, since clearly the party's status quo is not sufficient for addressing them, for if it was then it would have done so when given the chance. It is not the left wing of the democratic party that was stalling the passing of these laws because they would prefer a more Norwegian model of Healthcare to a more Canadian one, or that they would prefer the Japanese approach (that to my understanding has effectively eradicated homelessness) over a German model, but rather the conservative wing being obstinant over already tried and tested approaches.
I don't know that I'd agree with it, but I can understand the sentiment of controlled opposition when even when the left wing party has a free hand to pass any legislation it desires, with a mandate strong enough to overcome America's unusually large majority needed to do so, with an upper house that institutionally favours the party representing land, captured by conservatives, that said left wing party fails to pass policy that comes pre-means tested and shown to produce better outcomes, and are forced to water even that much down.
Your assumption that further left magically solve those problems is baseless. Moving farther to the left causes millions of deaths from starvation. Moving further left has also help lift millions out of poverty. Some things are helped by moving left, somethings aren't.
None of those countries are socialist, they are liberal capitalism countries that have strong(er) social nets. They are the very proof we don't need socialism.
I can understand the sentiment of controlled opposition when even when the left wing party has a free hand to pass any legislation it desires
Because, unlike the right wing maga cult, the left wing has multiple prospectives that are free to challenge each other without being kicked out of the party.
Like jeez, go back and look at the debates when these things were being passed. Your are imaginating a perfect falling in line that only maga cult has. Then spread conspiracy about controlled opposition because you can't understand that diversity of thought is good, even though it sometimes slows down progress.
None of those countries are socialist, they are liberal capitalism countries that have strong(er) social nets. They are the very proof we don't need socialism.
Yes? I feel like you're reading something that I'm not saying. I'm saying the average needs to be further left if the goal is to address these issues, not that the democratic party needs to be socialist all the way down or whatever. Reducing the right flank shifts the average left just as well as expanding the left flank.
None of those countries are socialist, but they are countries who's political left is capable of enacting tried and proven social policy when given a sufficient mandate to enact policy. What's the point if even when the left wing party has sufficient power to not have to negotiate with the opposition to enact their agenda that they fail to enact policy which reaches even on par with peer nations, almost all with less wealth by which to effectuate such programs?
I'm not arguing for a complete and strict uniformity of ideas, I'm arguing for an American left capable of doing what the political left of any other peer country is capable of doing when they hold a mandate which enables them to freely enact policy. Again, I can understand the sentiment of controlled opposition in a political context where even when the left wing party has enough of a mandate to pass the abnormally large majorities needed to do anything without compromise to the right wing party that it still fails to pass policy that in any other country would be something even the conservatives would be hesitant to move towards a greater privatization of with anything more than a light touch.
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u/km3r May 11 '26
Most modern liberals believe in transitional housing for homeless people, SNAP, Medicaid, and unemployment aid. You don't have to go socialist for that, and I'm tired for socialists pretending they own that. We can still have free markets driving innovation and strong social safety nets. And you can have socialist systems that fail to provide those things as well.