But also,

Citizen 2: [lists actual socialist policies while avoiding certain key words]

Capitalists: I can get behind that.

Everybody likes a mix of capitalism and socialism. Nobody likes 100% one or the other.

Everybody who has experienced it likes socialized medicine. Public education just makes sense. The idea of having to pay a contract to get private fire service seems absurd.

At the same time, nobody wants to stand in a bread line, or for the law to forbid an artist to profit from creating art. We like certain forms of capitalist activity, like a mom and pop shop, or a restaurant, or a good mechanic, or a lemonade stand.

Every country that believes in capitalism still has a mix of socialist elements. And, every supposedly "communist" country has realized that it doesn't make any sense to forbid artists and craftsmen from owning their own tools and selling the things they made. The real question is where to draw the line.

The problem, as always, is the rich and powerful. Capitalism was supposed to be an improvement on feudalism because it required capitalists to compete, rather than just collect rents. But, that requires anti-trust, anti-monopoly laws, and for those laws to be enforced firmly and fairly. If a company has no competition, it can go right back to collecting rents and not doing any work. Communism also fails when "the state" owns everything, but really "the state" is a single dictator, or is a bunch of oligarchs who see that they get more than the rest.

The most persuasive people I’ve seen don’t use that word often. They directly link peoples concerns to inequality (unfair taxation and employment laws), climate ( fossil fuel companies) and unregulated abusive businesses such as big tech.

This is the way. Lefty movements have rightly been criticized for being too academic. Expressing people's concerns in a more relatable and practical way gets more people on board.

If you’re willing to go “you’re absolutely right! What a good point!” every time the person you’re talking to aligns with you even a little bit like “you’re absolutely right, you work so hard it’s completely unfair you’re taxes are so high… and the taxes of the wealthy are so low in comparison!” they feel smart and validated and might not even notice you tacked on your own commentary and also avoid buzz words it’s actually not that difficult to talk to people in an effective way.

I've found "You work all day and get a small salary. The business owner sits around, and gets a huge payout. Does that seem fair?" is moderately effective.

IMO the challenge isn’t convincing them about socialistic policies, it’s convincing them to vote for less exciting candidates with low chances of winning in the immediate future.

FPTP is the real issue imo, it only allows the most bland and diluted policies through very slowly while market conditions change things rapidly.

They sound like my family. God forbid there be "socialized" healthcare that the "leeches" can benefit from, but also insurance sucks and doesn't pay for anything and whoops now we have medical debt.

They don't want their tax dollars to subsidize the care of anyone they think is less deserving than them, while they begrudgingly accept having to pay hundreds of dollars each month on an insurance plan that won't even cover the care they need.

And they want to see every change introduced by Obamacare undone, so, have fun going back to insurance plans that can deny you coverage just because you have a preexisting condition that they don't want to pay for.

...i always ask providers up-front what is my up-front cost without using any insurance versus my out-of-pocket cost after insurance, and most of the time it's substantially cheaper not to use insurance at all even though it won't count toward my deductible...

...those private-industry middlemen are a huge burden on the healthcare system, and they persist only because their costs are hidden from patients...

Although the US does go around saying we're not communist and we're not socialist even as we give hundreds of billions USD to corporate interests and have huge socialized programs like the US armed forces and the interstate highway system.

In fact, the Republicans disparage the Democrats by accusing them of being communist, when they totally are not, even the SDAs.

The thing about the slow way is that it's too readily reversible, and since the existing order allows the wealthy who would lose under such policies to consolidate power quite easily, those changes can be undone much more easily than they can be made.

policies cannot always benefit everyone. e.g. wealth tax won't benefit the wealthy, consumer protection won't benefit the corporates

And there’s the third method: subsume it from within. Build a capitalistic product that depreciates a category and eliminates demand, thus rendering entire industries and their related activities obsolete.

It’s why renewable energy is being fought tooth and nail.

Edit: and no, this is not my response to “fastest way to socialism”, this is more like “how to speed-run post-scarcity”

Just depreciate the worthless stuff. If the average person doesn’t need petroleum then that’s 1 less need they have to take care of. If electricity is so cheap from overproduction then it’s practically free.

And here’s where it gets controversial and I start getting downvotes on principle: AI is part of that.

Except things arent getting better slowly are they, and the one party that pretends it is moving toward socialism just openly told some very mild,slow reformers at the DSA that the dems arent a socialist party, they are a capitlaist one. Do you need a link?

So there goes your theory on that one.

No seriously, if you pull off enough masks all of societies problems are just money and xenophobia in varying degrees.

I just spent 7 weeks researching organ shortages in the US for a class. Turns out live donations go up dramatically if you reimburse people for the money they lose while doing the procedures and families are more willing to donate the organs of the dead if they are told they're going to a similar demographic as them.

Homelessness? "Those people" don't deserve human rights and they don't have the money for housing. Xenophobia and money.

Opioid crisis? The pharma companies knew there were addictive and factored that into their push to get doctors to prescribe them like candy. This has been proven by internal documentation released in court. Money.

White supremacy? Don't even have to explain it. Xenophobia.

Rise of Facism? Xenophobia exploited for money.

Pay gaps between men and women? Xenophobia because women aren't taken seriously and money because it benefits the company to pay someone less.

Stagnant wages? Xenophobia because rich people don't think poors deserve money and money because they get more if we get less.

Racism in America? Xenophobia and money. Most racists are just raised to hate by previous generations. If you go back far enough for those you find that the hate came from considering the other as property and by turning them into people you hurt the owner's money. The seed was money and the fruit is xenophobia.

Christian nationalism? It looks like xenophobia but Surpise! It's money. Religious capitalism is the idea that God rewards those w who are holy and what better reward than wealth? So if you're poor, it's because god doesn't like you which means you're evil.

It is literally money and hate all the way down.

What many people hate about what is happening now is not even capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by the private ownership of the means of production and the pursuit of profit. 

Of course pure, laissez-faire capitalism has arguably never existed on a national scale. Modern economies are defined by their specific balance of market freedom and government oversight, but that is not what I mean.

Traditional capitalism was historically driven by equity. Owners investing their own capital or retained earnings into production to generate profits through goods and services. In contrast, the modern economy is increasingly driven by debt.

If capitalism implies a system driven by equity investment in production and disciplined by the risk of bankruptcy, the modern leverage-heavy economy deviates significantly. It functions as a hybrid system where financial extraction and state-backed credit have superseded productive investment and market discipline as the primary engines of economic activity.

Said it better than I could.

People are greedy; greedy for any resource they can control. Today it’s money. It could easily be something else.

“But they wouldn’t be allowed to!” They’re not allowed to do what they do now, but they force courts and opinions to work otherwise.

We are seeing people call it different things now, but "late stage capitalism" is moving to a post-capitalism of debit/leverage, where they don't even own the means of production, they are renting it with borrowed money.

I should have read the title and saved myself one paragraph

I think as long as ppl can as individals buy massive superyachts we are fked and wont progress, only regress, the amount of toys, widespread power, and long term health you can buy with wealth only increases over time