> By your own definitions the USA isn't a capitalist economy due to regulations and their social welfare policies. If that's where you stand then any further discussion is going to be pointless.

Those are not my definitions.

> It's a straightforward logical inference. Your definition of capitalism excludes every capitalist economy that has ever existed

No. A social market economy is capitalism with rules and safety nets, like strong labor protections, healthcare, and pensions, to make sure people are protected from big hardships. The U.S. mostly has free-market capitalism, with fewer regulations and weaker social support. So the main difference is that a social market economy tries to control capitalism to protect people, while the U.S. mostly lets the market run on its own.

> A social market economy is capitalism with rules and safety nets, like strong labor protections, healthcare, and pensions, to make sure people are protected from big hardships

so it is not socialism, the whole point of this discussion.

> so it is not socialism, the whole point of this discussion.

No, the whole point of this discussion is that someone claimed Germany was capitalist. Which it isn't. It's in between systems.

You are way too into polar opposites here. Try thinking difference beyond/before that.

@j-krieger Arguing that the existence of regulations makes an economy non-capitalist is something I've only ever seen extreme left and extreme right-wing people make. Everyone else recognizes "capitalism is a system based on private ownership, wage labor, and private capital accumulation" as a fundamental truth, including, like, all experts in this field. Ultimately, you're making a No True Scotsman argument.

Germany's market is an example of welfare capitalism, which is a type of capitalism.

What you're writing reminds me very much of "the USA isn't a democracy, it's a republic!" (as if a republic isn't a type of democracy called "representative democracy")

exactly, it is like the "this is not capitalism it is corporatism!" argument the libertarians like to make about the US.

> @j-krieger Arguing that the existence of regulations makes an economy non-capitalist is something I've only ever seen extreme left and extreme right-wing people make.

Good thing I haven't argued that at all. I was arguing that Germany, which calls its economic system "Social Economics" in fact employs this very economic strategy, which is defined as not being straight forward capitalist but as a mixture of capitalism and socialism.

> Germany's market is an example of welfare capitalism, which is a type of capitalism.

Germany's market is per definition not welfare capitalism, but "social economics". This term exists, it is well defined, you can look it up.