The people at the bottom of the capitalist pyramid are still better off than the people at the second-tier of the communist pyramid.

For how long?

Longer than the viable lifetime of a communist country.

It'd be nice to see an example of a socialist county that hadn't been constantly attacked and sabotaged by capitalist countries and allowed to go its own way. Then at least we'd be able to do a fairer comparison.

France, Denmark, Finland and Sweden all qualify for most American definitions of the term "Socialist".

Good point. Update: "social democracy" is probably a better term here.

Those are all market economies. You're are factually incorrect and trying to cover it using "American definitions". None of those places are socialist and will actively tell you so if asked.

None of those places are capitalist either, and they will actively tell you so if asked.

This is nonsense. In fact last election the pm or Norway actively had to say that they were not socialist because Bernie kept repeating it.

Bernie never said that, only people like you. Norway follows a system of democratic socialism, which is colloquially referred to as "socialism" by some. They're definitely not capitalistic. You're just presenting the exact same strawman in a different way!

It's clear you're arguing in bad faith, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

No, they do not. All of those countries have market economies.

Even Lenin, of all people, argued in favor of a (regulated) market economy.

It's a weird of inverse no-true-scotsman argument. I haven't met many socialists who argue in favor of a fully centralized economy. The big discussion, I suppose, is how much should be regulated, and which parts of our society should be 'markets'.

Don't bother, the rose emoji socialists in this country don't know the difference between socialism and social democracy.

Not the real definition, but the definition in most americans' heads. Many probably also conflate those with communism.

'Damn those dastardly Capitalists, underhandedly delivering superior living standards!'

You mean like what the U.S. did to Central American countries during the 80s? OR Vietnam, where we overthrew a democratically elected socialist government and installed a puppet, then dropped napalm on them when the didn't like that?

Where this falls down is that there were other capitalist countries that didn't do the bad things you describe. I challenge you to name a single experiment in communism that didn't lead to worse outcomes.

Communism isn't the only alternative to capitalism, you know that right?

If you don't like capitalism go to a socialist country.

Personally, I’m voting to make the USA a socialist country, like nearly every other first-world country on Earth is. I hope a lot of other folks will join me.

SO maybe there's no agreement on what that word means. Because 'true Socialist' countries collapsed years ago. And look at Venezuela today. Not something to be emulated.

Great idea. Unfortunately every time people elect a socialist government the US backs a right-wing coup. So we gotta do it here, I guess.

Nice meme, but doesn't exactly jive with the facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states

Socialism, noun, "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

In how many of those states is that actually true? Maybe Cuba (which the US has been trying to overthrow for decades), and Kurdistan (oops guess who was completely abandoned by the US even though they were instrumental in defeating ISIS?), which that page doesn't even mention. The rest are some form of state capitalism. Certainly China is. Unless you think the workers democratically decided that being paid starvation wages to work in electronics factories to make cheap stuff for Americans was a good idea.

Cool bro. Please explain how Pinchochet's coup was the inevitable result of 'socialism' as opposed to that of imperialist aggresion.

Look, I used to work on political causes with the national chairman of one of the largest socialist parties in the US.

At some point in my early 20s, I mentally outgrew that childish, ill-considered ideology and I'm glad that I did. I've heard every argument under the sun for why Socialism will work if only you "put me in power" and I don't buy any of them.

Anyone arguing for it fundamentally does not understand human activity (behavior and history).

Please take your nonsense somewhere else.