Debate on Socialism in Latin America and the US

So now, Colombia rejected a socialist, Peru rejected a

socialist, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras,

Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina all rejected Marxist

or socialist leadership. And Venezuela was destroyed by

socialism. Latin Americans are rejecting socialism after

having tried it. So why are Americans accepting socialism, having

never tried it? Well, partially because most Americans

don't know what socialism is. It's not healthcare for all,

or affordable housing. Socialism isn't a synonym for

all the things I want, but I'm not getting in my capitalist

country.

It's not a vibe. It's an economic system

characterized by collective or governmental ownership of the

means of production. Means of production meaning infrastructure

used to

produce goods and services, like factories, farms, and companies.

Capitalism also isn't a vibe. It's not billionaires

and corporations controlling politics.

It's not a synonym for all the things I hate about my country.

It's an economic system characterized by private or corporate

ownership of capital goods, AKA the means of

production. Now, just like Mac versus Windows, there

are different

versions of capitalism and socialism.

Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are less

capitalistic than America, but they are still capitalist.

Although they have a few exceptions to the rule, private companies own the means

of production, not the government in those countries.

Now, you might like certain programs that socialism promises,

like universal healthcare, but those programs aren't tied to a

specific operating system. You can run Photoshop on Mac

or Windows, just like you can have universal

healthcare in

socialism or capitalism. But it seems we as a people

keep getting more confused about what socialism is.

In 1949, 34% of Americans correctly

identified socialism as government ownership of the economy.

By 2018, only 17% did, and I suspect it's

even worse now. American politicians are confused too.

In 2015, Denmark's prime minister had to correct

Bernie Sanders

and say, "Denmark is far from a socialist-planned

economy.

Denmark is a market economy." Zoran Mamdani is a

democratic socialist. Democratic socialism is a version

of socialism. Now, you could argue that socialism just hasn't

been done right yet. And when every socialist

experiment at the national level in the 20th century failed,

and every experiment in the 21st century is failing, maybe

the problem isn't that socialism hasn't worked in practice,

it, that it almost certainly can't work in

principle.

And maybe the assertion that this time will be different isn't

optimism, it's actually just unfalsifiability,

where a theory cannot ever be contradicted by

actual evidence. We have bugs in this version of capitalism

that need to be fixed, principally that there's too much money

in politics, that billions of dollars speak louder than

millions of voices. And you know what?

The socialists might create healthy pressure to fix those

bugs. That's good. But that's different than changing the

whole

operating system. Sometimes the cure is worse than the

disease, because when there's never been a successful

socialist country in

history, and the countries who have actually

experimented with it are

abandoning it, the results start to speak for themselves.

And lately,

they're speaking Spanish.

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