Comment on Luigi Mangione Content Is a Challenge for Social Media Moderators - B…
anachronist@midwest.social 3 days agobut if we look at the countries on this planet that are the most successful in terms of economics, equality, personal freedom, human rights, etc. then we find countries that made it work through regulation and strong government institutions
Yeah that’s socialism. The best societies were all degrees of socialist, this includes western Europe and the USA at its mid-century peak. These societies all had aggressive, borderline confiscatory progressive taxation, large scale government intervention in the economy (in the US especially aggressive anti-trust), a generous social welfare state, and a large and professionalized civil service.
Remove those things and you quickly slide into a dystopian fascist nightmare state as the US and parts of Europe like the UK are discovering.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 3 days ago
You’re forgetting that these countries also have among the highest economic freedom in the world, protect personal property and investments, provide a stable and reliable environment to conduct very capitalist business. The economic system is capitalist, not socialist. There is no planned economy, most industries are in private hands. Strong regulation keeps capitalist excesses in check as you’ve correctly identified, while the high taxation levels the playing field by financing a robust safety net and other government services everyone benefits from.
In Germany, the term for this kind of system is social market economy, with social being a qualifier and market economy the system.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 days ago
So, still not Capitalism tho
DdCno1@beehaw.org 3 days ago
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Nearly every real-world economic system sits somewhere on a spectrum instead of neatly slotting into one category only.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 days ago
Sure, but the difference is that they (European countries) do not profess to be staunch Capitalists, whereas by large America does. That is a big difference, because it informs policy drastically. There’s a reason we’re much much closer to a corporate oligarchy than European nations are, and it’s our idealization of a system that literally is based around Corporatism.