Anyone who thinks there's a material difference between Democratic Socialism and the failed systems in communist and socialist countries is the one that lacks an understanding.
It always comes back to the definition game on this topic.
Of course it does. When your policies have led to misery and oppression without fail everywhere they've been tried and you're seeking to undercut the most successful mechanisms ever devised for bringing actual equality and improvement in people's lives you have to change your name and your definitions to keep them from realizing what exactly it is you are advocating.
What exactly is meant by "socialism" or "communism"?
The same things they meant before and the same thing that is meant by the advocates of social democracy today. Specifically that no matter who produces a gain its the property of all, and needs to be allocated by the government (for express political gains of the elites in that government and not the "selfish" people who generated it).
We know very well they can mean anything one wants them to.
No, we know that people seeking to justify them will claim they can mean anything one wants them too. I recommend you look at the actions and the policies advocated by the people involved, not at the words they use and twist.
A man holding a gun to your head and telling you he's "protecting you" from the evil capitalists is a "communist" if you want to use the word that way, but really he's a terrorist.
There's no sense in this statement at all. Do you really think it represents some general principle? In any event I sort of agree, the fact that Social Democrats tell you one thing (ie that they are acting for your benefit to fight injustice) while actually hurting you makes them communists, or terrorists or whatever you want to call them.
But when we (here at least) discuss issues like social democracy or socialism we are talking about a way of distributing resources that retains a market system while also putting the brakes on rampant inequality and abuse.
Again, if you have to twist words then you're probably not advocating what you think you are. There is no retention of a market system, there's pretending that having a government market is a market system. Market systems are fundamentally about exchanges based on self interest, and you literally below deny that it's acceptable to amass wealth, ergo you don't believe in a market system.
This fundamentally important. Contrary to your claim (which is in fact a common propaganda claim) that wealth is amassed only by "strategy" or "guile" or some other wrong doing or abuse, the reality in a market system is that wealth is amassed by the generation of things that make people's lives better. What guile did J.K. Rowlings employ to become a billionaire other than enriching the lives of millions of children and people. Do we have Tesla's and a big jump on electric powered self driving cars without Elon Musk, for all his faults there's no question that his personality has driven it more than even his technical skills - would we even have companies without the ability to gain on capital invested and hard work? It's even ironic that you're responding on a computer or a phone, the production of which made countless others wealthy not by wrong doing but by enriching your life to the point where we "couldn't live without them," complaining about the evils of making products for a profit?
None of that is "strategy" or "guile." In fact, the places where we see "strategy" and "guile" most commonly connected to wealth are outside the market in governmental rent seeking, and in flat out crimes like fraud. Corruption is endemic in government allocations of wealth, and not generally in private ones. Its endemic in rent seekers specifically because governmental officials are spending your money (not theirs) and can easily be swayed by changes in their own personal circumstances. How often have you heard complaints about "abusive" tax practices or tax shelters? 100% Governmentl rent seeking implemented. How often are government contracts given out fairly? I've never heard of a long term government project to build housing where the developers weren't accused of some kind of manipulation of connections or permissions.
Which is more responsive to you, the local Walmart or Grocery store - run for profit without any real "guile" - or your bureau of development where you need to get a permit?
Everything the government touches becomes more and more corrupt and tainted, unless we are constantly vigilant about it - aid shipments are
routinely stolen or misappropriated. Healthcare used to have family doctors that would make house calls. Now it has massive insurance conglomerates that deny claims without cause and build massive bureaucracies to deny appeals - that's squarely at the feet of the governmental mandates in health care and decades of regulation (including by legal action).
Yes, it will involve different distribution, and I use that term instead of redistribution because I fundamentally object to the idea that people have an innate right to amass incredible amounts of resources for their own personal use.
Yet you want to retain a "market system" and Social Democrats are different from communists and socialists. I guess you can be successful, just not more successful than anyone else.
The market is literally a system of distribution that is designed to distribute things to their most efficient uses. A "different" distribution, will quite literally be a bad thing economically, and often times morally as well. This is distinct from regulations designed to encourage efficiency (like for example prohibiting fraud) and those designed to require the person receiving the benefit also bear the costs (like most of our work place safety and environmental regulations).
There is no rational or moral reason why any person should be able to do this; mechanically of course we know how people can do this, either through strategy or guile.
A market system is specifically designed to provide both a rational and moral reason for a person to be able to do this. Expressly, in a market system amassing wealth can only occur by providing a benefit to others that they value more than that wealth. You literally become rich by making the world a better place and other people better off. (Though I agree, some of our current markets, like the financial investment market are much less directly tied to this - though they still are).
Ergo, despising success is actually tantamount to a belief that its wrong to make other people's lives better.
So taking a broken scenario and trying to fix it will of course be called 'theft' by the people who were benefitting from the broken system.
Calling the capitalism of the western world a "broken" system, when it's generated more advances at a faster rate in the standard of living and every form of technology than all the other systems combined is a specially noxious conceit.
I'm am going to call it theft, you are the thief, you are calling to steal the benefits that I and every other person in this country are receiving from that economy, that freedom and those advances, primarily for the benefit of a political class that wants to call themselves Robin Hood but live like the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Where you in particular differ from people advocating for social democracy is that you don't in fact think it is broken, and they do.
Do they? Let's ask the poor in this country to give up their phones, give up their tvs, their internet access, their medical care and accept the same benefits that would have existed without capitalism (ie third world country standards). Do they still think our system is broken?
Being able to convince people against their own best interests is not the same as in fact establishing that a system is broken. It's a sign that miseducation and propaganda are effective.
That's a fine area in which to find disagreement, but let's not get bogged down by fake terms like communism.
How about we drop fake terms like "Social Democrat" and just call them communists. Then we won't be bogged down at all.
The USSR was communist in the same way that any terror state is; they use force, fear, and everyday oppression to take control and quell dissent. Beyond that any organizational principles they may have employed are more or less beside the point and inconsequential. Comparing Finland to that is a joke.
How about I compare it to Bernie declaring that he'll seize the assets of those that try to leave the country? Or Warren or Bernie intending to end the concept of wealthy? Or AOC flat out saying that no one made a billion dollars other than stealing it from black and brown people?
Or heck pointing to a poster that thinks having wealth is de facto proof of harm ones done to others and only accomplished by guile or strategy?
All communist states come to the eventual conclusion that they will run out of assets to redistribute if they forbid self interest in the economy. Some cut or ration services, some exploit national resources that can't be renewed, some use terror. The ones that have been most effective though have undone the very principles that you're espousing and specifically reincorporated self interest into their economies.
I think a better example of class warfare would be the idea that certain people can "own" the technological developments accrued by centuries of joint human effort, and become the veritable lords of the land by virtue of having correctly positioned themselves to be able to leverage power into more power.
This is the "Google" invented itself and those who get the benefits just stole it from the rest of us nonsense. While I do agree that patent laws and copywrite laws are being abused, virtually every bit of that abuse is tied to government rent seeking. The length of those laws keeps expanding and expanding solely because of government rent seeking. The idea behind those laws is actually good.
This is the game and certain people are good at winning it. I am totally in favor of rewarding innovation and resourcefulness, but the notion that class warfare is people trying to prevent others collecting everything is backwards to me; class warfare is really the fact that even if no one is doing anything at all against any class the underclass is always under attack by default. So yeah, if not government then who? The industries that lie about nicotine addiction for money?
You are "totally in favor" of rewarding innovation - except you are literally opposed to rewarding it because it's somehow a theft.
How about, you know, the "wonderful" government correct this "wrong" by reversing the very laws the government established that created it. Cut the copywrite period back, end patents sooner, heck establish better principals for what can be patented in the first place.
It's always stunning to me that people ascribe to the market what is LITERALLY a governmental interference in the market. This is why your policies are wrong. While Government is needed to make the markets efficient if its not carefully constrained it creates the very problems that you want to solve because it rewards rent seekers.
I'm diverging a bit but my intent is to say that the typical manners in which Bernie's types of policies are maligned (by Crunch, for example) are simply off the map in terms of being relevant to his propositions. I agree with your desire to show that certain things might not be affordable, but playing the "communism" card isn't an economic forecast, it's invoking the boogeyman, and you might consider that it betrays an inherent dislike of certain types of ideas regardless of how easy or hard they are to implement.
Misunderstanding that Bernie's policies are flat out communism and where they will lead - which is no where you want to be living in 20 years, is 100% relevant.
