Socialism is an economic system when the means of production are owned by both private and public sector.
There is no such thing and there will never be such a thing as a 'pure socialist country'. Socialism isn't just an 'economic system'. It's a 'social ownership' through a democratic process of the means of production. A standing military is a socialist entity. The citizens have a 'social ownership' of the military as in they reap the benefits of a standing military (theoretically defense) and 'own' the means of production of the military through a democratic process such as a representative democracy. Any entity in the public sector is socialism. Almost every modern nation-state has a public and private sector.
Ownership of means of production can broadly entail any private property, outside of the practice of eminent domain I don't think that's feasible without totalitarian governance. The definition probably made more sense at a time when capitalism allowed for bonded labor based on exploitative third party contracts or debtor's prison, and its detractors felt so outmatched that they couldn't imagine compromises like skill-based public education and salaried employment, anti-discrimination and anti-abuse laws, retail investing or small-scale residential property construction and credit. Nowadays socialists are just statists or mixed-economists, who acknowledge that a large, diverse country will have big armies, big bureaucracies, big companies and the people who run them will be more powerful and enriched than one might like.
Actually I may be projecting my own views on that last part. Socialists are not communists, and their platforms can align with modern Western capitalist republics, but they entail things like living wages/guaranteed income, open borders, free tertiary education for all or single payer healthcare that are probably too far out of the American mainstream to ever get passed. Libertarianism is just as fringe in their taxation, education and civil rights policies.
Denmark is often cited as an example of how Socialism can be a good thing as opposed to the awful thing that it's been in so many other places.
Socialism realizes that wealth is a social creation, and the economy should be built upon democratic ownership and focused on the needs of people. The means this is done can vary. It can be a society in which many or most work places are cooperatives in which all the folks working there are worker owners. It certainly does not require that the state own all the means of production as preached by Lenin and the Russians who deviated from traditional socialist theory by seizing power violently and undemocratically in one country. At the minimum it does not allow a private individual or tiny group of individuals to own/control large enterprises and determine solely what is to be done or produced by all the accumulated capital and workers organized in the enterprise, thus leaving the external costs to society as a whole; nor does it allow one individual or tiny group to decide how to divide the profits to the numerous workersor society as a whole. The complete antithesis of socialism is Citizen's United creating an America is that in many ways instead of one person one vote we have $100 one vote , the sort of undemocratic control we see in the corporations in which one family has 100 million votes in Walmart and American society and the several million employees have 500 million votes with most of the votes buried in S and P 500 funds or whatever.
Denmark along with Sweden and Norway success built on a very successful colonial history.socialism comes really secondary in the sense it contributed to political stability and education Often they played the colony card as a business entity in which they either struck Gold in Africa or an investment that generates earning either as logistic channel or selling units like in real estate properties to the next colonist . They even shutdown some some colonies for profit causes .to this day, their wealth management is the key of sustaining their success using strong financial banking sectors ,they got rich and they did preserve it.
Canada Denmark Norway Sweden Germany All countries better than the USA and all are more socialist than the USA.
Yet none of them have comparable responsibilities or illegal immigration problems. You can compile a MUCH larger list of countries that are dumpster fires due to embracing Socialism.
Before you lol,how hard is it to try google ,Denmark colony, click... And u might find something like this "Denmark maintained several tradings stations and four forts on the Gold Coast in west Africa, especially around modern day Ghana. Three trading stations were built:[2] Fort Frederiksborg, Kpompo; Osu Castle by Accra in 1661, that was purchased from Sweden; and Frederiksberg. The forts were Fort Prinsensten built in 1784, Fort Augustaborg from 1787, Fort Friedensborg and Fort Kongensten, several of which are ruins today. Of these, only one is still used today, Fort Christiansborg, which is the Ghanaian president's residence in Ghana. Plantations were established by Frederiksborg, but they failed. Fort Christiansborg became the base for Danish power in west Africa, and the centre for slave trade to the Danish West Indies. In 1807, Denmark's African business partners were suppressed by the Akan people subgroup-Ashanti, which led to the abandonment of all trading stations. Denmark sold its forts to the United Kingdom in 1850."
Yeah, those successful socialist countries are not comparable to the USA, but for some reason, those unsuccessful socialist countries are highly comparable to the USA.
Neither are. The point is that most countries that go the Socialist route end up in serious financial trouble....and the few that do well usually have tiny populations and don't have the responsibilities or problems that the US is faced with. Denmark is struggling with 33k illegal immigrants, to where they have really strengthened their borders. If they had a comparable illegal immigration problem, they'd have like 6 times that many and almost all of them would be unskilled. Socialism is a failed system. That doesn't mean that it's all bad, but the closer you get to Socialism, the closer you get to failure economically. The reason the US has so much problem with debt today is because of steps towards Socialism, and I'm not arguing that all of them were bad, some of them have helped the quality of life in this country. What I am saying is that we already have a debt problem, if we take too many more steps in that direction, we'll be screwed. Right now it's just the wrong direction.
do those responsibilities include providing adequate healthcare outcomes to their citizens, taking on large sums of refugees, donating the requisite 1% in GDP to foreign aid, having more balanced diversity in their political bodies etc.? It's abundantly clear you don't know what socialism is, you're talking about social democratic countries and throwing in Canada and Germany for the lols.
SMH wow. You really think that compares to the responsibilities the US faces? Again remember that those countries don't have the problems faced by this one, if they did, they'd fold. Anyway I can see you are dug in with that naive world perspective so I won't expect you to see the light so we can move on.
How does providing adequate healthcare outcomes for your citizens detract from "the responsibilities" America has? It'd cost even less than that ramshackle of a system. Also, do you really think Canada is a "socialist" country?
I figured you were naive enough to think that a full on Socialized health care system would be cheap. Thank you for proving it.
