this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
197 points (85.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43947 readers
517 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So it sounds like you're in the category that holds a definition of socialism that overlaps with capitalism. Words have the definitions we give them, so that's not wrong, but I'm guessing this question was asked about the more traditional "classlessness" or "worker control of the means of production" definitions, in opposition to capitalism.
I agree that the definition of Socialism tends to be a catch-all for leftist policies, especially in the context of US domestic policy. Here is a (nonextensive) list of the "Socialist" policies that the Dutch have that are attractive to me.
Strong Unions and high Union membership (twice that of the US)
Government Mandated PTO (20 day minimum)
Universal healthcare (Private and Public options. US healthcare is just not comparable)
Realistic minimum wage (scales with age)
US Politicians who support these policies domestically get labeled as a Socialist/Communist/fringe left/extreme left. I am not going to pretend that The Netherlands (or any Nordic country) is perfect or it isn't capitalist (Amsterdam is home to the oldest stock exchange in the world), but they are a working example of how a democracy with "Socialist" policies can create a country with a high quality of life.