[RobertoG]

It's not just in socialist countries that the critics get silenced or killed, or that they are incompetent or get corrupted, but, normally, there are a more "laissez faire" attitude to those countries from the press and the political class, as Chomsky have pointed repetitively.

If you care about the welfare of people is fair to ask why a minority live like kings when the vast majority live in misery in a resource rich country. And, I think, is fair to ask for changes and try to support those changes even if you know that probably you will get disappointed finally or you will get mixed results.

The true is that, unsurprisingly, and independently of how you call those policies, spending resources in the poor improve the life of the poor.

[galacticpony2]

Socialism has failed 100% of the time. You can't get worse than that. Even if capitalist systems failed to improve the lives of the poor 95% of the time, it would still have a better track record. In reality, the most successful countries are all capitalist and free markets have lifted more people out of poverty than anything else.

The fact that some autocratic countries also employ capitalism doesn't change that. Capitalism doesn't magically cure corruption, it's merely a superior economic system. Poverty isn't a function of wealth inequality, it's function of economic development. In a socialist system, the poor may be less poor in relative terms, but they're more poor in absolute terms, because socialist economics eventually fail.

[RobertoG]

It seems to me that you define socialism as whatever it fails and capitalism as whatever it works.

Pure capitalism has never existed neither, so we have a spectrum of possibilities. I would argue that the better system is the one that improve the lives or the people and, that should be the measure.

Even if capitalism was the definitive answer, that doesn't mean that we should stop criticizing it.

If you have a system where, in the middle of the most advanced age of humanity, most of the people have not even the most basic needs covered, like was (and it's) the case of Venezuela, some criticism is needed.

I'm not going to argue that socialism is a good system, I agree with you that we have not good examples, but that doesn't automatically, leave us with a system where all resources have to be allocated by the market. In fact, if something has been proved for now, is that is a very bad idea.

So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.

[galacticpony2]

> It seems to me that you define socialism as whatever it fails and capitalism as whatever it works.

No socialist state that called itself a socialist state has been a success. None. Zero. There are democratic countries that may at some point have "social democrats" or even "socialists" in power. These countries may have passed some laws that are "socialist" in spirit, but virtually all of those countries employ a capitalist free enterprise market. Then you have countries like China that call itself communist and still employ capitalism.

Yet, socialist thinkers are pre-occupied with the perceived evils of capitalism (and finding means to abolish it), even though it has outperformed any socialist economic model thus far conceived. Capitalism is blamed for practically every ill, including the failure of socialism itself.

> So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.

Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do.

[RobertoG]

So, if they are successful and call themselves communist they are not really communist. There are not private banks in China, for just pointing a random fact. I'm not defending the Chinese model, but the diminishing of poor people in the world that you pointed before is mostly due to China.

>>"Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do."

I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".

In your opinion, what is this mix composed of?

Anyway, I think we are discussing about semantics.

[galacticpony2]

> So, if they are successful and call themselves communist they are not really communist.

China is still very much communist in every way but economically. I don't mind calling them communist, it's just that if we're talking about an economic system and I'm looking for success story of socialism, you can't bring up China. Ever since China abandoned planned economy and employed capitalism, its economy has grown by leaps and bounds.

> I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".

Whatever you want to call it, does "more socialism" or "more capitalism" correlate strongly with wealth? What about individual freedom?