[stefantalpalaru]

> Crony capitalism still is not capitalism.

This reminds me of some people who pointed out that communism was never implemented and all the totalitarian regimes were still in the socialism phase. A phase which was obviously never going to be replaced with the communist utopia.

This is just a delay tactic. We all know what we talk about when we say "communism" and it's the same for "capitalism" - we mean the real-world, flawed implementation.

[dovereconomics]

Not really.

Anyone with a background on classical economics realizes the U.S is much closer to socialism than capitalism. The existence of 'prices' and greed doesn't imply it's capitalism.

[dragonwriter]

> Anyone with a background on classical economics realizes the U.S is much closer to socialism than capitalism.

Anyone should recognize that the dominant system of the modern developed world is a hybrid retaining largely the capitalist structures and property regime, but adopting many strategies with origins in socialism (including advocated in the communism of Marx and Engels) for mitigating some of the effects for which 19th Century socialists criticized the dominant system of the developed world at that time, for which they coined the term "capitalism".

Its probably not particularly productive to argue about whether this synthesis is "closer" to socialism or capitalism.

[pdeuchler]

Exactly. The US (and to a greater extent, the West) never really grew out of mercantilism... the "capitalism" only shines through when it's convenient propaganda (spreading democracy and capitalism, one bomb at a time!) or when there's vast amounts of money to be made in ethically dubious circumstances (like doing business with Nazis) and some sort of justification is needed.

[drabiega]

I have such a background and I can't think of any metric in which the US is closer to socialism than capitalism.

[webXL]

Is Sweden a socialist country, according to your metrics? Government spending makes up just over half of their economy. We're somewhere between 35-38%, federal, state & local. I'll leave it at that.

[Apocryphon]

So neoliberalism is socialism?

[fwn]

If you are implying the US is somehow close to what neoliberal thinkers would propose, that couldn't be more wrong.

Neoliberalism doesn't mean watered down free-market liberalism. The term describes a certain movement in (classical) liberal thought which wanted to seperate itself from former thinkers primarily based on the time they where living in.

While those thinkers have little in common, they genuinely disliked a productive state (as in the production of goods or the delivery of a service), cartels, interventions in the price mechanism etc.

All of that is far away from what the US or European countries are currently doing.

At least in Europe it's also used as a meaningless buzzword to scare people who think that the prefix "neo" means evil.