There are certainly socialistic democracies in the world.

Capitalism is pretty closely entwined with political democracy. They’re both based on the concept of the right to choose. Capitalism gives you (ostensibly, not always in practice) the choice of goods and services. Democracy gives you the choice of lawmakers and enforcers.

Both concepts are basically special cases of natural selection processes. When they work, the drive the evolution of commerce and politics to better adapt to their environment, in this case the environment being the will of the voters/consumers.

That said, I’m not sure Greek polises were capitalistic, especially in wartime.

Socialism. In fact, socialism has more affinity to democracy, because it essentially means democratic control of the people over the economy.

I’m so redundant, but that depends on your definition of Capitalism. Capitalism to me does not mean free markets, it means that Capital rules the markets. Essentially, it means that corporations are given the same rights as people, and that those corporations are the ones making most of the decisions, which they make based on what they perceive to give the most profit to shareholders. To me getting rid of Capitalism doesn’t mean getting rid of free markets, it means placing strict limits on corporations and no longer giving them the same rights as human people.

But whatever your definition of Capitalism, I think it’s important to realize that Capitalism was an evolution from Feudalism. No one thought about exactly what it should be, set it in stone, and said “From now on, we’re Capitalists!” I think we should allow the global economy to evolve to something that might be better than Capitalism, and it might in many ways look like socialism, but it is likely to be something no one thought of or described as a whole. Laws and rules changed to allow Capitalism to evolve from Feudalism, and it only worked because those who argued that the current system was the best and should be held sacrosanct were ignored. Today those who argue that the current system is sacrosanct are not just listened to, they are practically deified.

Democracy is dead without Capitalism? Don’t think so.
Usury or the charging of interest used to met with the death penalty, yet Capitalism is built on usury.

Sweden. Socialist democracy AND one of the countries with the best life expectancy and HDI in the world. I rest my case.

Socialism is the nearest political ideal to democracy, by far. First and foremost: it actually takes seriously the concept of “society”. In its truest form, “societas” (latin) means “alliance”, a society is supposed to be an alliance of people, yet under a purely capitalistic regime (See: the US), well… It simply isn’t.

Many times i heard the argument that “i don’t want to pay for someone else’s medical tretement, or their personal needs!” Yeah, that would bee WAY too human of you to actually give a rat’s ass abut people who need help.

But, yeah, all sarcasm and jokes aside, the simple idea behind socialism is that at the moment we start living in a society we start to have a duty towards it, which is to make everybody else’s life a little bit easier, since this will be everybody’s duty, life should, ideally, be fine for everybody. OBVIOUSLY it isn’t that easy, but the core principle is that assholeish, greedy, selfish, narrow-minded behaviour isn’t in the best interest of anyone but the perpetrators and, instead, giving something back to the society that, in return, provides almost everything you need to live, makes life better for everyone. “From everyone according to their means, to everyone according to their needs.” Yeah, i know, cliché, but that’s precisely the idea, it’s been so since prehistoric times: hunter gatherers don’t leave someone to die only because he can’t momentarily help the tribe, they share with their fellow members whatever they can (and not a ridiculously inadequate welfare check to put their consciences at ease).

@janbb @ragingloli @Thammuz Would you want to live under socialism? Obama is always being accused of being a socialist with socialist agenda, if he did would you support it?

@Hypocrisy_Central, socialism isn’t either/or. It’s a spectrum.

I would love to live in a country further towards the socialism side of the spectrum than America.

Cooperatives.

@Hypocrisy_Central
As a citizen of the great nation of Germany, I already live in a nation that the right wing loons in the US would call a ‘socialist’ nation. And it is great and if I had to choose between the German and the US system there is no way in Hell I would choose the latter.

Canada is a democracy but economically is a mix of socialised delivery of a number of services important to the lives of individuals and it still has a vibrant, Capital based resource and industrial sector. It is an odd but mainly effective mixture of socialism and capitalism. And Democracy thrives here more clearly than in some Capitalist only ‘Democracies.’

I’m with @Qingu – I would love it if the USA had more socialistic tendencies.

@ragingloli @Dr_Lawrence Under your government how are elected officials done? Do all candidates draw from the same pool equally or those who have deep pockets can fund their own campaign?

Each constituency elects one person to Parliament. People active in any of the parties local constituency associations can put their name forward. The party candidate is funded by the constituency (riding) association and there are strict spending limits imposed by law on how much any party can spend in support of any candidate. All individual donations are channeled through the local riding association. The party leader is chosen at a national convention.
The Party with the majority of seats in Parliament forms the government. Their leader is then the Prime Minister. They choose their cabinet from among elected members of Parliament.

Influential people can pack the local riding association with their friends who can influence the choice of the local candidate. It’s nor perfect but no system is.

Candidates are fielded by the Parties, financing is also done by the parties, which finance themselves through fundraising and donations, candidates themelves do not have to finance their campaigns on their own. After the elections, parties are reimbursed by the state with 70 cents for each vote they received, given that they got more than 0.5 percent (in federal elections, 1% in state elections) of the votes.

The Supreme court today separated Capitalism from democracy. It now permits corporations to purchase all the candidates overpowering any influence of human citizens in favour of only the Corporate ‘individuals’.

Goodbye democracy in American.

@Dr_Lawrence @ragingloli Does that stop politicians from “buying” the election? That is a sad point of capitalism here but so long as many can have their SUV in the drive and a Carnival cruise once a year they don’t bother to bother.

The Greek city-states practiced democracy before there was capitalism; but then slave-holding imperialism would probably not be a step forward.

@Hypocrisy_Central There are people who go on Carnival cruises once a year?

@Zuma No, sometimes they go to Disney Land, Carbo, Epcot Center are Hawaii. Why? who knows? They can’t afford it, go into massive debt they will bitch about having but can’t stand to stay home.

@Hypocrisy_Central most of europe is in a somewhat “socialist” regime. In the sense that taxation is higher and more services are provided for free by the state. That said: no that doesn’t stop election buying BUT it does limit it considerably, at least where I live. (I’m from Italy and here things tend to be a little more america-like. Much more than i like, to be honest).

As far as the system goes it has the considerable advantage that unless you do something REALLY stupid you’re likely to get help if things suddenly go bad, expecially if you’re hired by someone rahter than working on your own. The problem however is that, here, with the mafia and all, it’s more of an illusion of democracy than an actual democracy, much like with lobbies in the US, only that here it’s supposed to be illegal.

Parties can and do recieve donations from private enterprises or businessmen and whatnot, but we still have to develop a conflict of interests law because, sadly, we’ve had one of the most influent businessmen in the country as the prime minister for the last 10 years (with a brief 2 years gap where those you’d call “the communists” which we call “moderate left wing” had a chance at not doing shit for two years and getting their assess kicked out of parliament thus proving that by now we’re out of alternatives to the main right wing party) and a prime minister/businessman doesn’t want to pass a law that would get him out of office sooner than he could say “wait, what?”. Expecially one that tried to get himself a law that practically made him untouchable as long as he remained in charge (thank god Mussolini already tried that shit once, we might be stupid, but not THAT stupid).

To sum it up, yeah things here suck, but at least if i suddenly get sick i don’t have to worry about the bill. Plus public schools here don’t suck, private schools do, because all in all they’re mostly diploma mills. Plus we have the catholic church on our ass 24/7 even though they wanted to be a separate state when italy was reunited. The problem is that most of our problems don’t really stem from us being a socialist-ish nation but rather from being a nation of lazy fucks, morons, racists, sexists, wannabe celebrities with shit for brains, greedy assholes and flat-out crminals.

“The problem is that most of our problems don’t really stem from us being a socialist-ish nation but rather from being a nation of lazy fucks, morons, racists, sexists, wannabe celebrities with shit for brains, greedy assholes and flat-out crminals”

Welcome to Earth.

@The_Idler I’m not enjoying my stay so far.