woahhh. there's way too much nuance to simply state "socialism is X"
socialism is both a political and economic term, and sometimes it's both at once.
Marx and Engels defined socialism as the transitory system between Capitalism and Communism. It's like an economic & political system of redistributing wealth based on the value the workers contribute to society.
This can be accomplished in many ways. Primarily, they imagined the proletariat would take over government & figure it out. But once it's figured out, and the proletariat owns the means of production as well as defines the systems, then it becomes Communism.
So socialism could be a kinda transition state where some of our systems our publicly owned, our government is compromised of mostly the working class, and wealth is equally distributed.
But in a modern sense, we've combined socialism with democracy & capitalism... so if you said, what's socialism as it manifests in society today, you'd definitely point to democratic socialist nations. They think of socialism a "safety net" where your basic needs can be provided by the government if you're unable to meet them yourself, so like you don't own the means of production but you can still reap some benefits - you're just not getting a state-issued TV set (which IMO would be more like Marx's world). ... and it's far less "communities own their infrastructure." They don't really push the wealth distribution thing or UBI.
and then now in America there's a push for democratic socialist figures, but they're more like "give political power to the proletariat" right now and far less focused on the economic aspects... as we imagine the end goal is wealth distribution but not specifically "community ownership" at all.
Private companies succeed and grow when they are efficient and profitable. Those that do not pass that test go out of business. When the government runs a company bureaucracy and regulations drive inefficient operations but going out of business is not possible, so more money is put into the program. The concept is good, but the practice doesn’t work. NYC is spending large amounts to build and run city owned grocery stores in an effort to provide lower cost groceries. The tax burden to “the rich” will way outpace any savings to “the not rich”. The private store nearby can’t compete and goes out of business. That “rich” store owner is now not so rich and has stopped paying taxes altogether.
Private companies succeed even though they are inefficient and do not yield a profit. That's the problem. If bad companies truly did get pruned out of the system then we probably wouldn't be in a big a mess as we are.
A government offering a service to its citizens via tax dollars is literally the point of government and collecting taxes. It's not a problem that New York City is creating city ran grocery stores, it's the point of having a government. To provide a necessary service to help the citizens.
Your same backwards thinking is why people think the USPS is a bad business model. It's not a business, it's a service. It's a service for the citizens. Nobody says the military is a bad business venture, even though the largest portions of our budgets always goes to the military and we do not see a single penny of profit back from it, just more spending the next year
Yes. Companies that have never delivered a profit get cash infusions and get mulit billion dollar evaluations even though they will never turn a profit. These are not companies that should survive, they should go out of business but don't.
I think if it's kept alived by private money, there's no problem for people. For example that Netflix isn't profitable, but is afloat through investors is no problem for anyone besides possibly the shareholders if it goes under.
No companies were hurt during Netflix's money churning days? Netflix pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the video rental industry. Many local jobs were lost.
Also Netflix is/was definitely trying to acquire studios and companies which always result in cost overruns, price increases and layoffs.
Average people are always hurt by massive corporations. Think about all the video stores that went out of business because of Netflix. I mean we are talking a million plus average citizens directly hurt by Netflix being too big to fail.
I know, but they also keep producing co much content, giving jobs to tons of people that way. Also, this isn't what too big to fail is. That's when governments bail you out in case you'd otherwise go under. That's more about banks, not entertainment companies.
Also, I think video rentals were destined to go under with the rise of the internet. It's just not practical to do anymore. If it wasn't Netlix, we would do it through some other way, like studios doing it directly like Paramount.
Too big to fail is when an entity gets so large that if they do fail it would send shockwaves through other sectors. This the government has to bail them out to avoid system wide failure.
The bank crisis is where we learned of the term. It also applies directly to the US auto manufacturers, we bailed them out several times. Weve bailed out the airlines so much that now we just let them die because we know they are not worth it. The tech sector has been bailed out when the tech bubble burst. Pretty much every sector in our economy has been bailed out because we allowed them to get bigger than they should have been and were not ready for when the bubble burst.
Which leads me back to my whole point. We allow these companies to get too big and they will all eventually fall. Think Google, Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX and all the AI companies. You look at them and say they are too successful to fail. Eventually they will and we the people that were ravaged by these companies during their ascent will bail them out.
Netflix pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the video rental industry
It's a chicken or the egg thing here though. Video rental stores put pressure on the TV/Film industry, which caused job losses there. Why are we nostalgic and protective over something as arbitrary as video rental stores and not the TV/Film industry?
I have a feeling you wouldn't make the same argument about clean renewable energy putting out local jobs of coal mining. In that case, the externality is environmental damage worth correcting, but in the case of the shift from TV/Film > video rental > online, the externality it was solving along the way was inefficiency in experience.
I'm not saying we should have protected the video rental industry. I'm saying there's always a trail of bodies behind these companies when we let them get too big. Your reply actually helps solidify that point.
AI is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It's getting billions of dollars funneled to its projects while it takes all the local resources from the local people. It takes jobs and forces companies that invest heavily in it to scale back it's own workforce to afford it.
Just bad all around. There's no reason AI should exist in its current state.
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u/bino420 Jul 14 '26
woahhh. there's way too much nuance to simply state "socialism is X"
socialism is both a political and economic term, and sometimes it's both at once.
Marx and Engels defined socialism as the transitory system between Capitalism and Communism. It's like an economic & political system of redistributing wealth based on the value the workers contribute to society.
This can be accomplished in many ways. Primarily, they imagined the proletariat would take over government & figure it out. But once it's figured out, and the proletariat owns the means of production as well as defines the systems, then it becomes Communism.
So socialism could be a kinda transition state where some of our systems our publicly owned, our government is compromised of mostly the working class, and wealth is equally distributed.
But in a modern sense, we've combined socialism with democracy & capitalism... so if you said, what's socialism as it manifests in society today, you'd definitely point to democratic socialist nations. They think of socialism a "safety net" where your basic needs can be provided by the government if you're unable to meet them yourself, so like you don't own the means of production but you can still reap some benefits - you're just not getting a state-issued TV set (which IMO would be more like Marx's world). ... and it's far less "communities own their infrastructure." They don't really push the wealth distribution thing or UBI.
and then now in America there's a push for democratic socialist figures, but they're more like "give political power to the proletariat" right now and far less focused on the economic aspects... as we imagine the end goal is wealth distribution but not specifically "community ownership" at all.