I’m going to try and make this somewhat succinct so it can be shared as a primer if needed since the establishment is trying to confuse everyone by forcing a binary view between Capitalism and Socialism. In reality they are the two sides of the same spectrum and except in the extreme cases are always blended to some degree, so by trying to pick one or the other, the Overton Window is being pushed to the two endpoints and ignoring the entire spectrum between.

The reason this is being done is because we aren’t choosing between the two end points, in fact very very few even consider wanting either pure socialism or pure capitalism and what people are really choosing from are those very points in between that they are trying to push outside the window. They are trying to leave two false choices while trying to hide all the real ones so they can push us ever closer to the capitalist extremes by making anything else the socialist extreme.

Socialism

Extreme socialism has no private sector at all where everything is owned by the ‘collective’ and though this can have a lot of success on the smaller scale like on a Kibbutz, it seems as the scale gets larger and larger, it gets harder and harder for individuals to have any sense of association with all other members. So when everyone can personally know everyone it works very well and when everyone can at least have a real sense of association with everyone it works okay, but once the collective is so large in naturally splinters into subgroups, there is a tendency for stagnation as individuals feel no reason strive for someone else’s benefit.

Thats just pure socialism though and other forms of socialism we experience everyday and as a rule most people like these things. Roads, traffic lights and highways are socialism as are the police and fire departments, public schools and parks are socialism as is the free clinic and even the CDC. Our military is actually socialism and the truth is government itself is socialism. Anything we pay for as a collective, but use as needed is socialism by definition, so we already have lots of socialism in our lives while living in a very capitalistic society.

Capitalism

Now the idea of extreme Capitalism isn’t what people think it is, because you can’t have capitalism without government, see business is a game and government makes the rules and acts as referee. Tort law and the courts that handle it are government as are corporate charters that allow them to even exist and most importantly currency the medium that allows capitalism to even exist is government, so you cant have capitalism without government no matter how much they tell you otherwise.

The closest we can get to a pure capitalistic state would be fascism where financial interests control the government and if you are paying attention you will have notice we are moving in this direction over the last half century, but even in fascism some aspects of socialism will still exist making the concept of actual ‘pure capitalism’ a myth. Having socialistic systems in no way makes capitalism not capitalism, you have to get to the very extreme of socialism before capitalism is removed from the system. As long as there is a private sector capitalism exists and its just a matter of which aspects of society we wish to socialize.

Democratic Socialism

There is no extreme of this because its basically all the points between pure Socialism and Fascism, the whole spectrum they are trying to hide behind the binary choice between the two extremes. We live in a Democratic Socialist nation right now, where the economy is capitalism, but we have chosen to have certain social systems socialized.

The problem we face right now is we have drifted so far to the capitalism side of the spectrum that business is now choosing what we socialize, instead of the people doing it. That is why banks were bailed out but homeowners weren’t and capital gains taxes are lower than employment income, money is now getting to make all the choices on what systems we socialize.

So what the media is calling ‘socialism’ is really just the people wanting to be the ones who get to decide what is socialized and what isnt for the interests of the people, instead of the moneyed interested who only look out for the interests of money. So this isn’t about some ‘socialist revolution’, but about reevaluating where our money goes, so instead of banks getting saved from bankruptcy due to bad bets, people are getting saved from bankruptcy due to bad health.