[claudiawerner]

>Describing an entire country as Socialist seems super opinionated to me.

Not to mention the fact he's wrong; contrary to popular belief, "socialism" has been described as many things but the simple fact of offering healthcare, market regulations and some amount of free Internet access(?) - Socialism is a mode of production in which means of production are operated and managed (and some would say "owned") collectively by the workers, i.e. the majority of the adult population. This is also a form of society in which abstract labour is not valorized. A modern nation with money, capital, rent, predominant wage labour, and capital accumulation is in no way "socialist" - never mind by Marx's term with which he considered "socialism" and "communism" to be one and the same thing.

[csande17]

I, uh, was kidding about Canada being a socialist state...

For what it's worth, I had a 128 kilobit connection in Canada because American T-Mobile plans give you one for free when you're outside the country.

[claudiawerner]

Unfortunately it's not always clear who's joking and who's not; many (most?) people who feel the need to comment on socialism and capitalism have done very little reading in political philosophy.

[LilBytes]

... are you being serious? I ask this question pragmatically. Perhaps my nuance for sarcasm after spending my entire life in the UK & Australia is more finely tuned than most.

The author went as far as to describe Canada as "a socialist state in North America" and later followed on with:

"(T-Mobile told me I could buy an “all-access high-speed day pass” for $5 on the black market, but I didn’t want to get arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Secret Police.)"

I don't think it's possible to be more overtly tongue in cheek without having to retort to using Reddit's HTML sarcasm tags.

All in all, it seemed quite clear to me that is was in playful jest.

Also, dear author, thank you for the laugh.