[thomassmith65]

That's a narrow definition of liberalism.

The common denominator between liberals isn't economics; it's an acceptance of differences.

There are political movements that are liberal and still bad, but there is no political movement I can think of that would be made worse by sticking Liberal- in front of it.

[tovej]

Democracy is one imo. And at the very least it's something I think we can agree is debatable.

Liberal democracy thinks the economy, even natural monopolies, should be organized around a free market of LLCs that all get to act self-interestedly.

Social democracy thinks the economy should be organized around state monopolies and a regulated market, along with public institutions for social and labor issues such as collective bargaining, unions, social safety nets and universal healthcare.

[thomassmith65]

The terms are not mutually exclusive.

Sweden, for example, is both a social democracy, and a liberal democracy.

If the SD got its way, Sweden might be an illiberal social democracy. That's not my idea of a good time.

[tovej]

Sweden has aspects of both. But the thing that makes Sweden good is the social democracy.

SD = Sverigedemokraterna, the right-wing populists? They are attempting to make it illiberal, but also remove social policies.

[thomassmith65]

There is not 'one thing' alone that makes a system of government good.

Sverigedemokraterna are noteworthy because of their illiberalism, and not much else. What they complain about is not the Swedish safety net, but that there are people in Sweden (eg: Sami, arabs, etc) who don't look and think as they do.

[tovej]

Whenever xenophobes get into government, they start cutting social safety nets, because it disproportionately hurts minorities.

This eventually hurts everyone else as well, but at least the brown people got the worst of it.

[fragmede]

What? that "one thing" is that everybody gets a say. Democracy gets made fun of, because three wolves a a sheep voting on dinner has an obvious problem, but under a dictatorship, the ruling party of three wolves over one sheep still has that probablm, so we shouldn't throw democracy out just yet.

[thomassmith65]

The Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) is just the name of the political party. A more truthful name would be the Sweden Xenophobes.

At this point, the thread could get complicated because Democracy is yet another term that is 'orthogonal' to Liberalism. I must have mangled my comment horribly if it sounded like I was advocating for dictatorship!

To the contrary, my preferred form of government is Liberal Democracy, preferably with a strong social safety net (so if it's also a Social Democracy, that suits me well)