[robomartin]

The only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion. In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point.

Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you’ll find someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don’t laugh these people out of office.

As the saying goes: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

All US voters really know about these ideas are the promises and a distorted theory and history that conveniently leaves out the horror, the reality, of these ideas. They have been implemented time and time again in various forms across continents and time. And they have laid to waste everything they touch.

You’d think people would have learned better by now. Sadly, that required an educational system rooted in fair historical exposure rather than one that pushes a single ideology at every level. This ignorance of history leads to repeating mistakes.

Here is the other fact that absolutely floors me: Nobody can name a single nation —not one— which, after adopting these policies, has elevated itself to a level even remotely resembling the success and accomplishments that can be attributed to free market capitalism.

Sure, capitalism isn’t perfect, nothing ever will be, yet it has elevated more people out of poverty, cured more disease and improved the lives of more people than anything else in recorded history.

The allure of these twisted ideas comes at the intersection of a badly educated public and the promise of solving all problems by taking from those who have more. Easy proposition.

Reality is that it never solves anything and often creates more problems. The $15/hr minimum wage “solution” is one of the best modern examples of this effects.

The other element naive supporters miss is that the politicians proposing these ideas never live the reality they want you to live. They never live it before or after they are elected. See if you can name even a single politician who has, anywhere in the world and across modern history. That should tell you something.

[pcwalton]

Antitrust law isn't a socialist idea; it's a capitalist one. The idea behind it is the standard neoclassical principle that markets achieve maximum efficiency, and therefore consumer welfare is maximized, when they are competitive. No less a capitalist than Adam Smith articulated these ideas when he wrote "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

[robomartin]

Friend, the extremists who have taken over the narrative and soul of the Democratic party are not talking about antitrust. They are talking about remaking the US in the image of a demented ideology NONE OF THEM have ever lived under or have any experience managing in any imaginable way. They are in love with an ideology that has laid waste to entire nations across nearly every continent on this planet.

As a Classical Liberal/Libertarian myself I find these people to be absolutely repugnant. They are selling the masses on ideas that will cause incredible damage. I mean, Bernie himself is on video during a debate talking about creating, if I remember correctly, 40 million government jobs. We know EXACTLY how something like that would end, because it has been done in many nations at different scales. The short answer is: Not well at all.

This discussion isn't a matter of opinion, this is a matter of historical fact across nations and time. Nobody who pushes these ideologies can name a single nation on any continent in the last hundred years that has experienced good outcomes from their adoption. And by this I mean, to include raising people out of poverty and generating economic growth at a minimum.

These conversations are like the people who promote coffee enemas to cure cancer, or the flat-earth-ers. Lot's of passion and even followers, but not one of them can back up what they are saying with any semblance of a reality that approaches confirmation of their promises in any way that would not caused them to be laughed out of the room.

The fact that a society like that of the US doesn't laugh these people right out of the political sphere is of great concern. It means, at a minimum, that our educational system is severely damaged. No educated society would elevate these ideas.

Most developing nations in the world aspire to be like the United States of America, and here we have a bunch of politicians and their followers wanting the US to be like most failed nations of the world. This is a bad episode of The Twilight Zone, to say the least.

[dmode]

I have no idea what you just said. I personally, have lived in Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany - quite socialist, and big government places, with public healthcare, education, childcare, strong safety nets, unions, worker protections, so on and so forth. And life was freaking great. In fact, in Netherlands, you only needed to work for 36 hours. Those were the happiest times of my life.

[nec4b]

Except that none of those places are socialist, instead they are one of the most capitalist countries on earth.

[robomartin]

Those are not socialist nations, not even close. This is a common response that has no basis in reality.

For example: Have any of those nations taken over and nationalized large businesses? Have any of those nations grown government so large that a massive percentage of the population depends on it to survive?

Those countries are as capitalist as you can get in practice. They just happen to have one or more well developed social programs that compare favorably to the US. This is commendable, BTW, and there is no reason for which the US should not actually do better than all of these nations put together on these fronts. The reason we do not is because our politicians, well, suck.

When people point at just a handful of European nations and claim them to be examples of socialism doing well, the usually point at Nordic countries and even places like Germany and the Netherlands, as you did.

This false assertion is always based on a single data point: Healthcare. Or, by extension, high taxes and healthcare and maybe education. Nothing else.

Well folks, universal healthcare does not make a country socialist. Show me where Karl Marx explained this was the goal of socialism and you might have a point.

It's even worse when you truly look a the economies in these countries and understand how it is they are able to do as they do. For example, having an oil-based economy that supports great social programs --which is like winning the lottery at a national level and using the money intelligently.

The reason the US does not have an equivalent healthcare system is because politicians, on both sides of the ideological divide, have been focusing on the wrong variable in this complex multivariate equation: Insurance.

The US does not have a health insurance problem, it has a health costs problem. Until that side of the equation is balanced the situation will not improve, whether you go to Medicare for all or do something else. This is a business, and you have to balance costs if you want to improve outcomes.

What are the cost drivers?

The first layer might be a heavy regulatory framework that makes everything more expensive. Regulation is important and necessary. Over-regulation, to the point where the cost of doing business is negatively affected, is bad for everyone. Just try to develop a medical device or drug in the US and see what happens.

I have been wanting to develop a specialized hearing aid for what is known as "Single Side Deafness" for quite some time. It's impossible without a massive amount of money and likely not a large enough market to make it worth investor's funding such an effort. The impediment isn't in technology, it's in the onerous and extremely expensive (in time and money) regulatory framework. We end-up with investors and intelligent folks devoting their money and smarts to figuring out how to get more people to click on links than devoting their time and money to solving important problems.

Why is it that Europe and others pay so much less for the same drugs and devices that are so expensive in the US. Because we develop them here and the US bares 100% of the cost of the US regulatory burden. In other words, we, in the US, pay for what it cost to do business here. The rest of the world pays for the basic COGS on these products plus some profit. The difference is massive. If the various European nations had to pay for the actual cost of developing anything sourced from US companies their medical systems would crack and crumble. The UK's NHS is and has been in trouble for some times precisely due to the cost side of the equation, something that is unsustainable [0]. In 2017 the NHS's budget represented over 30% of public spending. Something like that is not sustainable. The net result is that care goes to hell, people have to wait months for care and others who are able to end-up paying for private care (negating the entire concept of these systems being the solution to healthcare).

That's just ONE of the cost drivers in the US. Next you have to look at tort reform. For those not familiar with the term, it means lawsuits, doctors, clinics, hospitals, medical device and drug manufacturers exposure to being sued.

This is a problem in the US that permeates almost every aspect of life to varying degrees. For example, if you run a website today you can be sued any time if you don't implement ADA accessibility guidelines. I am NOT saying the ADA guidelines are a bad thing, what I am saying is that in the US we use a sledge-hammer in the form of lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits rather than a more rational and less socially costly process.

In the medical field, the cost of lawsuits is massive. Which also means insurance costs are large. Doctors, depending on specialization, have to pay for very expensive protection (insurance) against predatory attorneys looking to make a buck from any mistake they might make when treating a patient. The cost for hospitals and medical device and drug manufacturers is equally massive.

There are repercussions to this structure. A simple example is that doctors will order and perform a battery of sometimes unnecessary tests on patients simply because of the threat. Nobody wants to go to court and have to face severe career-ending penalties, so they order tons of tests to cover their behinds. Medicine ceases to be about the patient when doctors are worried about lawyers.

Yet another cost driver is the high cost of university education in the US, and, in particular, medical education. When a doctor graduates with US $300K in debt they cannot earn below a certain threshold. Their lives will soon include added costs for a house, car and eventually a growing family with their own cost structures. They will also need insurance for their home, cars, healthcare and practice. Without charging enough for their services they become enslaved to the cost of their education. As it is, most will require decades to pay off these loans.

The cost of our education is out of control precisely due to government intervention. When a government guarantees loans as they do universities charge massive amounts of money for their degrees. The result is a chain reaction of costs at every level that affect the competitiveness of our medical industry in more ways than one.

It's easy to point at a few countries in Europe and, just because they have "socialized" medicine and high taxes conclude that's utopia and the US's problems are due to evil capitalism. A more intellectually honest dive into the realities behind these issues reveals a completely different scenario, a truth where most of the failings in the US are easily attributable to failures in policy and politics and government becoming far more involved than they should.

And then there's the "life is great" assertion and yet we don't see hundreds of millions of people wanting to move into any of these nations. In fact, if they don't control immigration tightly they would crumble in short order. Interestingly enough, if the US made immigration free and open we would probably easily double our population in a very short period of time. Everyone wants to come here, including people from the countries you mentioned. I also presume from your comment you no longer live in any of those countries. If life was so great, why not? The most common answer to that question is, lack of opportunity. Everything comes at a cost.

[0] "10 charts that show why the NHS is in trouble" https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572110

[dmode]

Those are overwhelmingly described as socialist nations in conservative media and is the north star of 99% of democratic policies

Edit: rest of your response. Where do I even start. Hundreds of millions of people are not looking to move to Europe ? Do you even read the news ? Have you heard about the refugee crisis in Europe ? Have you read about the divide between immigrant community in Europe ? Have you read about boats crossing the Mediterranean every day ?

[robomartin]

What media says, conservative or otherwise, has no relevance here. These are not socialist nations, period. This isn't even debatable. And, frankly, it is amazing anyone would believe this in a day and age when it is easy to google stuff and learn.

For example: Is Denmark socialist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzEPKrHalaY

Get this, Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage! How socialist is that?

You are truly confused about a ton of stuff here. Of course I know about what's going on in Europe. I've only been going there for nearly thirty years with great regularity. I have watched as these uncontrolled migrations have devastated entire areas and the culture in some locations. Terrible stuff.

I digress. You are comparing things that have nothing to do with each other. For example, these migrants are escaping war and, in some cases, genocide. They could not care less where they go so long as it isn't where their feet happen to be during the war.

As a descendant of genocide survivors and one who had extensive conversations with my grandparents, I can tell you that they didn't get out their World Almanac and Political Science books along with world economic reports to figure out where to go; they got on the first ship, train, cart or horse that got them the hell out of there.

Please, stop and do a little reading. I'm sure you are an excellent person and one of great intelligence, you are simply operating with the wrong information and, as a result, have reached very flawed conclusions. The good news is this can be fixed if you are willing to consider things might not be as you have grown to believe.

[dlp211]

Now name the Democrats trying to replace capitalism...I'll wait.

[rayiner]

57% of them: https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socia...

All of the major candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, which espouses a massive economic program where the "public receives" "ownership stakes." It also calls for a WWII-level economic mobilization premised on wide-scale central planning.

[dlp211]

From that article:

"Socialism as a concept is open to many interpretations. Gallup was describing socialism in questions asked in the 1940s in terms of government ownership of businesses -- something that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and most other left-leaning Democratic candidates have not advocated. Instead, socialism today seems to embody sets of programs by which the government helps regulate and in some instances run and pay for social programs focused on basic population needs in health, education, housing and employment."

So not destroying capitalism but rather trying to blunt some of the sharp edges of capitalism. Nobody is trying to replace Google, GM, or JP Morgan with a government run company.

[rayiner]

As a purely technical matter socialism--especially when juxtaposed with capitalism, as in the Pew Gallup poll--means government ownership of businesses and central planning of economic activity. The DSA, which Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are affiliated with, do advocate for public ownership of businesses: https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism...

> Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives.

See also: https://reason.com/2019/03/14/bernie-sanders-wanted-public-o...

> "I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries," Sanders told the Burlington Free Press in October 1976, at age 35

Given that socialism has been utterly discredited in Europe over the last couple of decades, groups like DSA try to obscure their views by equating socialism with the capitalist welfare states of Europe. But: https://mises.org/power-market/swedish-ex-prime-minister-reb...

> Prime Minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994, Carl Bildt, took to Twitter to warn Sanders that socialism is not the key to creating a great society as he and Ocasio-Cortez seem to think.

This is not just a matter of terminology and semantics. Over the last 20 years, Europeans have aggressively embraced market policies. They're all aggressively cutting corporate taxes and capital gains taxes. They've privatized state-owned businesses and deregulated industries. Sweden has had school vouchers for decades, and the subway in Stockholm is privately operated. The tax system in Sweden is remarkably flat, and the tax burden is borne primarily by the middle class. (I.e. the middle class pays for its own robust welfare system.)

Those are not the policies espoused by Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders. Whereas Sweden has school vouchers, they're proposing curbing charter schools. Neither are proposing to privatize operation of New York's or DC's failing subway systems, to match Stockholm's model. Whereas Sweden's taxes are already less progressive than the U.S.'s (Sweden's top tax rate starts at $70,000), Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are proposing to shift even more of the tax burden to the rich, while Sweden is cutting taxes for the rich. While even Republicans, much less Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, are unwilling to touch Social Security, Sweden has moved to a partially privatized defined-contribution system. Whereas Sweden has a carbon tax, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are trying to address climate change through central planning. (The Green New Deal, for example, would involve taxing tens of trillions of dollars out of the private economy, and reallocating it to centrally-planned, government-directed economic activity.)

If you read through the Green New Deal, it doesn't resemble the market-oriented approaches of modern Scandinavia. It's all about government-directed economic activity, guaranteed jobs, etc. That's old-school socialism.

[pcwalton]

You moved from describing the Democrats to describing the Democratic Socialists of America. Those are two very different groups. As a Democrat, I find the DSA rather obnoxious, because they perpetually run NIMBY candidates here in San Francisco who favor the interests of rich homeowners over renters. (Even in SF, the DSA finds itself unable to win anything more than supervisor seats; the mayor and state representatives are mainstream social democrats.)

And I think you're reading way too much into those polls. If you were to ask me whether I like capitalism and whether I like socialism, as a social democrat I would probably say yes to both, I guess†? But I wouldn't favor wide-ranging nationalization of industries. I don't see how you can say "I like capitalism"--as a majority of Democrats do, according to Pew--and favor that. I mean, heck, more Democrats say they view conservatives positively (more than the reverse on the Republican side) than view socialism positively and capitalism negatively. The two Democratic front-runners are Biden, who represents a continuation of Obama's moderate economic policies, and Warren, who famously said she's a "capitalist to her bones".

† I also have to wonder how much tribalism there is in the socialism answer. Republicans have spent a lot of time applying the label to things that are obviously not socialist, like the ACA. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Democrats are saying yes to the question about "socialism" really to express their support for Democratic policies that have been smeared as "socialist", rather than anything having to do with central planning. You see this tribalism frequently on the Republican side, with significant numbers of Republicans saying, for example, that they believe that Trump had larger inauguration crowd sizes than Obama did--which of course they don't really believe, but they say yes to such questions to express their support for Trump.

[robomartin]

The Democratic party you think you belong to isn't the Democratic party that is today. Far from it. And that's the problem.

As a classical liberal I identified myself with the Democratic party far more so than the GOP on many layers. What is out there today has nothing to do with what this party was about 30 years ago. Today, they are dangerous. The ideas they are pushing are destructive. If they gain overwhelming power they will destroy this nation.

I've seen this playbook before in Latin America --many times-- it doesn't end well. It's about to be played yet again in Argentina with the new government that was just elected. There are people already trying to figure out how to get the hell out before the mutation into Venezuela sets in.

You say you are a Democrat. You are on HN. I somehow doubt the total lack of mathematical honesty in a ridiculous 52 trillion dollar disaster of a healthcare plan would not cause you projectile vomiting. These people are dangerous. They actually believe this stuff. And if they gain power we are all going to suffer for it.

The proper context is external to the US: China. They are laughing their asses off right now and just hoping people like Warren or Bernie ascend to power. If they get another eight years of unimpeded growth they will ascend to the first economy of the world and be unstoppable. There are very few industries left in the US and Europe that they can't absorb. They would love for the US to go full-tilt left and, as a result, cause severe damage to it's economy. It would clear the path to supremacy. And then we get the reality of a world led by China, with hooks into absolutely everyone.

Check this out:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7037663/china-colonising-small...

and this:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/elizabeth-warren-plan...

[littlestymaar]

> wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Democrats are saying yes to the question about "socialism" really to express their support for Democratic policies that have been smeared as "socialist", rather than anything having to do with central planning.

While most democrats aren't actually supporting socialism, interestingly enough, socialism doesn't necessarily have something to do with social planning either: socialism is about getting rid of capitalism, an economic system where a few people owns the means of production and “steal” the work of the working class (note that this has nothing to do with free market). You can achieve socialism by different mean. The Marxist-Leninist way, with all-powerful state and central planning is one, but the anarchist way with workers self-managing is another. The first kind dominated the 20th century (and they slayed thousands of anarchists in the process) but nowadays most socialists (in the western world at least) belong to the second category. Noam Chomsky is a good example of these people.

[rayiner]

OP asked me to name "the Democrats trying to replace capitalism." I think it's fair to say that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and other DSA-affiliated Democrats are trying to do that. That is not an assertion that Democrats as a whole want to do that.

Only 47% of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism, versus 57% having a positive view of socialism. That's shocking for the party of Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. There was a time when socialism was a dirty word in America, and it was for a good reason. When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan, India had similar per-capita GDP to South Korea. Today, thanks to flirtations with socialism, India is still quite poor, while South Korea is as rich as France: https://reason.com/2006/06/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-indian-so....

This is the 1996 Democratic Party platform: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1996-democratic-pa....

> We need a smaller, more effective, more efficient, less bureaucratic government that reflects our time-honored values.

> We support government policies that encourage private sector investment and innovation to create a pro-growth economic climate, like a permanent research and development tax credit.

> Today's Democratic Party knows that the era of big government is over. Big bureaucracies and Washington solutions are not the real answers to today's challenges. We need a smaller government . . . and we must have a larger national spirit. Government's job should be to give people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives. Americans must take the responsibility to use them, to build good lives for themselves and their families. Personal responsibility is the most powerful force we have to meet our challenges and shape the future we want for ourselves, for our children, and for America.

> Welfare reform. Today's Democratic Party knows there is no greater gap between mainstream American values and modern American government than our failed welfare system. When Bill Clinton became President, the welfare system undermined the very values -- work, family, and personal responsibility -- that it should promote. The welfare system should reflect those values: we want to help people who want to help themselves and their children.

> We have worked hard over the last four years to rein in big government, slash burdensome regulations, eliminate wasteful programs, and shift problem-solving out of Washington and back to people and communities who understand their situations best.

> In the last four years, President Clinton, working with the National Performance Review chaired by Vice President Gore, has cut the federal government by almost 240,000 positions, making the smallest federal government in 30 years. We did it the right way, treating workers with respect. The federal government is eliminating 16,000 pages of outdated and unnecessary regulations, has abolished 179 programs and projects, and saved taxpayers billions of dollars.

Watching the debates it's impossible to see any hint of that party.

> The two Democratic front-runners are Biden, who represents a continuation of Obama's moderate economic policies, and Warren, who famously said she's a "capitalist to her bones".

Given how quickly the party has distanced itself from Obama's moderate-conservative economic policies, I'm not sure how great I feel about 76-year-old Joe Biden was the firewall between me and 1960s-style European socialism.

[robomartin]

> Now name the Democrats trying to replace capitalism...I'll wait.

That's the wrong question or perspective. What they are trying to do is cause enough damage that the only option left will be for people to depend on government support, jobs, etc. That grows government large and ultimately fundamentally changes this nation to the core.

You can't say "let's replace capitalism"...because you just can't do it that way. California is a perfect example of the kind of planned manipulation I am talking about. We are paying incredible amounts of money for our fuel. Much more than in other parts of the nation. There's an agenda here to push everything related to climate change and "green", whether it makes sense or not. So our roads are not maintained, our fuel taxes go through the roof and politicians ignore cries for help. Their objective is to force everyone onto some mythical form of public transportation that can never work in CA, but that's not going to stop them. They close entire road lanes to create space for a few bikes and create massive traffic jams in the process. So it isn't about coming right out and saying "we want to replace capitalism", it's about having that as a plan and then plotting a series of measures that will cause so much damage that, over time, that will be the result.

Let's forget the socialist label for a moment.

Here's reality: Not one of the people proposing these extreme ideas has ever lived, and much less managed, anything even remotely close to what they are proposing to do.

Let's assume for a moment that they sincerely believe --not know, but believe-- these ideas are good. People like AOC have been indoctrinated by schooling into pretty much that world view. She and the others have never actually lived in the kind of society they so enthusiastically champion.

It stands to reason that, if one is going to push for certain ideas the sensible thing to do is look at history and try to understand if these ideas, when applied, produced results at least equivalent to and ideally superior to the status quo.

Well, we have history on these ideas. Lots of it. Across multiple continents, cultures, nations and time. And there isn't a single success story anyone can float to the surface. Quite to the contrary, the common denominator is that the result of adopting these ideologies is disastrous. Poverty and misery increase. Economic development collapses. Social inequality increases. Government grows large. Populations grow dependent. And darkness takes hold.

We have people pushing for the equivalent of coffee enemas to cure cancer. It might sound interesting, but there isn't one single bit of evidence that it does as promised and lots of evidence showing it causes harm. To make things even more interesting, those pushing for coffee enemas have never had one themselves and, instead, are the beneficiaries of everything they say is bad in our current system.

As I have said many times: This isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of history. These people are dangerous.