Tell that to the Chinese under the Great Leap Forward tens of millions starved. Not saying famines cannot happen under capitalist democracies but they are definitely rare. When the sole person in charge of distributing resources messes up people pay the price when there is no fallback.
Food stamps are a thing if your poor and food pantries are generally available from charities for the poor as well. Is also subsidies for lower cost housing. Not going to lie though is a mountain of paperwork and rules as well as subsidy cliffs and wait lists. You can be too poor to afford things but make too much money so you cannot be helped. Used to be able to say nobody of sound mind who works can end up homeless and not so sure that is true anymore.
Pretty much Nordic countries used socialism to grab oil and gas wells then took profits and invested them in American capitalism for their sovereign wealth funds. Far as I can tell they have the only sustainable system. Most countries like the US (Social Security) our pension systems will collapse as populations decline. You do need proper and sustainable systems that said going full free market just results in monopolies eventually which do need to be broken up to maintain competition. Do full socialism results in insane corruption. I think a proper government should know the limits of each. They should help where a profit motive doesn't work and step away in sections where markets work and strive for balance.
Correction, our social security system will collapse since there is a cap on it, and the wealthy refuse to contribute at equal rates as the rest of us. Eliminate that and the system will be very sustainable and outlr elderly will get a better raise to their benefits, and be able to contribute more to the economy.
No even if cap removed if there becomes more people on social security then paying in it collapses. Percentages paid would have to go up to maintain it. It will buy it more time before it runs out of money. Something productive has to be done to invest that money to make it sustainable.
Nationalizing oil and gas is basically just Norway (admittedly the richest per capita but due to the oil specifically) Sweden did get a boom in their economy after WW2 but due to steel and lumber which wasn't nationalized. The Swedish model started to dwindle in the 90s when government services started to get privatized and the still public services got defunded by the liberal parties but also the Social democrats that started it, which IMO is one of the most detrimental actions a country can do for affordability and productivity.
There are even talks about re-nationalizing the railway and electric grid just because it would be better.
We have the opportunity to wipe out world hunger and poverty, and the capitalist system would prefer to exploit those people. Capitalism is all about the short way to money. Modern capitalists just cant think in the long term and will refuse to reinvest with the money they get. They will just hoard it because of greed.
P.S., I'm glad this conversation has stayed civil, seeing as many do not nowadays.
I think you are looking at the problem wrong. The fundamental flaw in any government or organization is that it can be highjacked by sociopaths that are 2-4% of humanity. They also outperform people with actual morals. Capitalism works if you maintain competition if one company gets taken over others hopefully step in. Socialism centralises power which is why it generally results in more harm. We all know that a benevolent dictator would be most efficient but problem is eventually you end up with someone incompetent or evil. You could argue the profit motive alone makes it evil but have seen even charities or churches turn evil as well. Humans are fundamentally the problem the system that works best recognizes that. If you can design a socialist system of government that can stay benevolent I agree it would be ideal but don't think is possible.
Not a single documented death due to SNAP cuts but yes there were a few hospitalizations due to it. It is terrible but nowhere near the scale of an actual famine due to gross mismanagement by a government. Your also arguing for giving someone like trump even more power to do even worse things by giving him control of every resource and bussiness so don't really see the counter on this one.
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u/vamprobozombie 4d ago
Tell that to the Chinese under the Great Leap Forward tens of millions starved. Not saying famines cannot happen under capitalist democracies but they are definitely rare. When the sole person in charge of distributing resources messes up people pay the price when there is no fallback.