Mao's Chinese Communism

Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party

Stalin's Soviet Bolshevism

Saddam Hussein's Arab Baath Socialist Party (Iraq edition)

Bashir Assad's Arab Baath Socialist Party (Syria edition)

Slobodan Milosovic's Serbian Socialist Party

Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge

Benito Mussolini: Member of Parliament for the Italian Socialist Party at age 24.

The Ayatollah Khomenei's Islamic Socialism (as he called it)

We all kind of understand this platonic ideal where everyone is happy, not overworked, and like or atleast don't resent their jobs. But our societies have gotten too big, complicated and interdependent. Life is far more complicated and necessarily imperfect these days. Not that I don't respect people fighting the good fight in the bowels of megacorps and governmental beauracracies to make things better. We owe a ton to idealists and do-gooders. But corporations and governments are machines, not people. A machine doesn't understand the concept of 'doing the right thing'. Our best hope in the quest for idealism is to accept that they are machines, and make them better or less important through new tech.

For example - in a developed world most people don't want anyone (lest themselves) to starve, be unable to afford an education for their children, be unemployed or be unable to access life saving healthcare.

However we must also encourage innovation and hard work (don't cap upside - just hair cut it for public utility use - aka taxation) - so people should be allowed to earn more - but they are not allowed to fall below the poverty line - ever. This is good for a mass market based economy that requires a large middle class with a decent amount of disposable income (1 rich person = 1 pair of jeans, whereas for an equivalent amount of wealth 1000 middle class people = 1000 jeans from the rich person).

If the pie is growing just like the market fundamentalists say - well then there's no problem with this. Just keep growing - you'll have more in the end - and pay for your disproportionate benefit from the use of public/common goods - aka suck it up and share children.

Indeed - with the automation I see coming within the next 2 decades - a lot of these free market fundamentalists will be, quite frankly, out of a job.

I look forward to mass unemployment.

The upside is that no one is ever homeless, the downside is that no one can really make enough to buy a Caribbean island just for themselves.

I'm in favor. It seems like what we're fumbling towards anyway, we're just doing it poorly right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

It's what holds in most European countries with a welfare state (and, to a lesser degree even in the US). It has been called various things, from "the third way", to "social democracy".

Though, in Europe (and also in the US), the "free market" guys, neo-liberals and financial interest have reigned supreme since the Thatcher/Reagan era, with the dire results we see today. Kind of like the US economy actually worsened after Clinton, despite him being more "socialist" (to the degree accepted by the american public).