[fireside]

Oh, it is not.

You know nothing of socialism, you're only repeating the reactionary pablum you've been fed lately.

Of course the US is a capitalist country. So are all the others you (or those who put these 'thoughts' into your head) want
to pretend are socialist...

I was merely using the most common definition of socialism. In Websters it's:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

I gave pension plans as an example so you may argue with that, but I consider it a form of goods. It would be hard to argue with government ownership of car companies since they are goods. Banking is a service, but I think it's still fair to include it since it's commonly done by free enterprise.

A socialist country would have real democracy wherein the society is actually run by the people. Not this mess we have now wherein the governing is done by an plutocratic oligarchy. Who do you think is 'taking stake' in banks and car companies? Me and you? Well you're wrong; it's the small group of people who have been running things all along... and they ain't and never have been socialists, my friend.

Democracies are representative government, so we've always had a small minority of people making the decisions. Democracies can have socialist parties and most do, they can also implement socialist practices even if they don't belong to a socialist party. That would be using the above definition of socialism. The socialist countries I know about have a small minority of people making the decisions and appear to be more tightly controlling than countries that use more capitalist forms of distribution. Everyone tells me about these socialist perfect societies but can't seem to point one out.

Innovation and betterment does not spring from greed, it springs from natural curiosity and the satisfaction of achievement; progress does not spring from the promulgation of a dog-eat-dog mentality, it spring from fraternity, a broad social fraternity.

Well, people and companies that invent things apply for patents and then seem very interested in making money from them, so I fail to see how your argument holds water in the real world.

And, lastly, erudition does not spring from hate-radio and Fox-news viewer mailing lists.

I don't listen to hate radio or any radio for that matter, and seldom read Fox news, so I fail to see how that applies.

[MikeLXXXVIII]

Were you thinking of having a discussion around these?
Well there exist today not much of a pure Socialist Society. As you said countries incorporate different elements of these into society. Where one country lean more towards one than another.

For the record. Scandinavia has an impressive fair level (the best on polls) of gender equality, income distribution, services available for the people. So if you want an example of a country that seems more "Socialistic" than the US where things work pretty well look at the Nordic Welfare system. The capitalistic excuse of trying to make it out as people have freedom in a "totally" free market economy, are just fooling themselves. There is no big daddy state who controls everything you do just because a lot of socialist ideals are corporated. Then again there is nothing that says that communism is supposed to be authoritarian. Then again Scandinavia isn't really that much of a socialist country as its leaning more towards New Public Management and Neo Liberal ways of running a country.

[fireside]

Were you thinking of having a discussion around these?

It was just a reply from a discussion in Underground forum where the moderator felt it had gone off track a bit and locked it and said it should be in chit chat. Basically, the statement was that we have too many movie codecs because of capitalism. Since I'm not a fan of socialism, I refuted it.

For the record. Scandinavia has an impressive fair level (the best on polls) of gender equality, income distribution, services available for the people.

Well, taking one country, Sweden, which is usually used as a model for socialism, although, as stated, it's not purely a socialist country or it would be a complete failure, it's easy to misinterpret some of those points. There may be more disparity in incomes from rich to poor in America, however the national average is considerably higher. In 2002, the equivalent in American dollars for the average Swede was $26,400, for America, $39,400. That's gross income, before the Swedish government takes considerably more taxes from the paychecks. Of course, Americans have to pay their own health care, etc, also.

As far as freedom goes, I have no idea how it is over there aside from reading the news. I only know socialism from what is done in America. Over here, if you take part in any government welfare system it is very controlling and demeaning. They make you stand in lines and fill out forms endlessly and treat you like a 3rd rate citizen. Social Security, or government pension, has been raided by politicians and used to cover the national debt rather than investing. In financial terms, that's called a ponzi scheme. There's no true investment of the surplus so you end up something like Madoff's clients if you are familiar with the case, so I personally can't stand it and don't know why people keep building it up. It's all right for the very poor as far as food shelves or whatever, but other than that, it's a muck up of funds that ends up in politicians pockets.