| > Sure, you might disagree that socialism is possible without big government, but that has nothing to do with the definition. My only point is that it doesn't inherently have anything to do with control. The problem with saying that socialism means big government is it associates it with decades of red-scare propaganda and makes all discussion impossible. I didn't say that at all. You can review my comments. But the point is that socialism doesn't distribute power, it concentrates it because "society" is never in control of anything. They'll elect representatives and they will be in charge. It is something that would work, provided human nature didn't exist. > Not really, if the workers have ownership over the company and the capital, then they "own the means of production". Shareholders have control over capital and have ownership. > Sure, resource allocation is hard, but "lets just let the rich/monarchs/the lizard people decide" is a cop-out. That's not what anyone is saying and that's not what is happening today. There may be some who have a philosophical difference about "many" being in charge versus a "few". But just because I believe that in plurality of power it doesn't mean I believe socialism is the best way to get there. I am not going by Twitter here. I have read a lot on the subject. Most of what I see uses socialism as a shorthand for "common good" and capitalism as shorthand for "greed". It is incorrect. As an analogy, imagine if we're taking about ethics and morality and how to have a better and just world. If this was 100 years ago in the west, "Christianity" would be shorthand for morality and "Atheism" synonymous with evil, greed, and depravity. We've moved beyond that today and realized that neither of those will necessarily lead to a more moral or just world, and that ethics and morality are nuanced topics with a lot of details to be worked out. Simply being Christian doesn't make you one or the other, although hard to prove that to an average American in 1895. Furthermore, of the two, one is more static, dogmatic, and leads to corruption. I view the socialism and capitalism debate in the same vein. |