Comment on I wonder why the world is on fire? A mystery
yucandu@lemmy.world 1 day agoBut then even most self-described socialists use the catch phrase “socialism isn’t when the government does stuff” these days. Even though it is, if the government was democratically elected.
And OP said the World, not America. There’s plenty of mixed economies around the world that are doing just fine, arguably better than any other form of economy.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I wouldn’t say they’re doing fine. They’re kind of doing fine in the way that the US was doing fine in the 1970s, which is to say, it may look okay, but the elements that would cause the later dissolution and collapse of the US economy were already in place, and unchecked. The first big symptom was Reagan getting elected in 1980 by a landslide.
Europe is suffering from the consequences of decades of neoliberalist policy thanks to the influence of international corporate interests, and we’re already seeing the decay of socialized services and the rise of far-right movements. It doesn’t help that the tippy-top (millionth of a percent) wealthiest have far more money relative to the rest of the population, enough to buy elections outright (or buy huge quantities of land and capital).
So the socialist features of the industrialized world are likely to suffer the same fate of numerous other socialist state that impeded large corporate interests, whether it is through legal shenanigans and political maneuvering (what caused Brexit and is kiling the NHS) or gunboat diplomacy.