Political Memes

I think you're confusing socialism with communism.

Most western nations use some hybrid of capitalism and socialism. Pure capitalism doesn't work. Pure socialism doesn't work. But together they check and balance each other.

The only debate is around "how capitalist" or "how socialist".

For example, the industry that provides internet access is an example of where capitalism has failed. We gave them an unfettered free market and they wrote their government contracts to give themselves fiefdoms and consolidated to the point that there is no competition. This is the endpoint of pure capitalism - feudalism.

The "pure capitalist" approach would be to throw up your hands and give up. The free market has spoken.

Hybrid approach #1 could be to use government regulations to break up the fiefdoms and somehow force competition. This is still a hybrid approach, but closer to the capitalist side of the spectrum.

Hybrid approach #2 would be to acknowledge that a competitive landscape may never develop over such a required piece of infrastructure and instead turn the industry into a public utility. This is much closer to the "socialism" side of the fence as they may still allow private companies to run the utility, but the government controls many parts of their business practices.

The pure socialist approach would be to have the government take over internet infrastructure and provide it as a public good paid by tax dollars. Which has its own pros and cons I suppose. The government running internet infrastructure is a bit of a black box - we don't really know how it'd go - but its hard to imagine the pace of innovation and support being worse than it is today.

Regardless, this only applies to an industry that currently lacks innovation. There are plenty of industries where a free market does work in the public's favor. But not all of them. And that's something the hybrid model acknowledges.