Yes, many Americans and other Westerners believe that the so-called "socialist" economies, like those of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe were non-capitalist.
This is only an illusion created by the fact that the communists were careful to rename all important things, to fool the weaker minds that the renamed things are something else than what they really are.
In reality, the "socialist" economies were more capitalist than the capitalist economies of USA and Western Europe. They behaved exactly like the final stage of capitalism, where monopolies control every market and there is no longer any competition.
Unfortunately, after a huge sequence of mergers and acquisitions started in the late nineties of the last century, the economies of USA and of the EU states resemble more and more every year the former socialist economies, instead of resembling the US and W. European economies of a few decades ago.
Everyone wants to tag the evil with their opposition's name. The evil is concentration of power. But no one wants to call it that because then they can't pretend that it's something different when they're doing it themselves.
Witness the people who keep proposing to solve market consolidation with higher taxes. Higher taxes go to the government, and therefore the interests that have captured the government. Are we going to solve it by taking money from Warren Buffet and giving it to Larry Ellison? Do we benefit from increased funding for Palantir? No, you have to break up the consolidated markets through some combination of antitrust enforcement and peeling back the regulatory capture that prevents new competitors from entering the market.
Let's have a quick look at the federal budget. The big ticket items are social security, medicare, net interest and military/VA. Together those are more than half the budget.
Social security is the biggest of them. Older people have more wealth than younger people on net and social security is structured to make higher payments to people who made more money when they were younger, which is significantly correlated with having more wealth right now. So it's a massive transfer payment system that transfers money from the poor to the rich. Meanwhile it uses its own special tax which is significantly more regressive than the ordinary income tax and doesn't tax corporate income at all. Notice in particular that we could instead be solving "grandma doesn't starve" with a UBI that makes uniform payments to everyone and not disproportionate payments to the rich, and comes from a tax which is also paid by corporations.
Net interest is a naked transfer to people with enough capital to invest in government bonds.
Most of the military and VA budgets go to government contractors who work hard to sustain an uncompetitive bidding process with thick margins.
Medicare uses the same bad tax as social security and those dollars go to the healthcare industry which has thoroughly captured the government. The AMA lobbies to limit the number of medical residency slots and sustain a doctor shortage and healthcare corporations have established a thicket of laws to limit competition, impair price transparency and promote over-consumption.
That's where the majority of the government budget goes, and the remaining minority of the money is also going in significant part to government contractors and regulatory capture industries. The government takes tax money from the middle class and gives it to the rich and huge corporations.
We don't need any more "redistribution" like that. If you think you can get the government to stop doing that and instead give the money the poor and middle class then first prove you can do it with the existing money before even thinking about collecting more. You have a nutrient deficiency because you're infested with tapeworms, not because you don't have enough food.
And change in laws regarding the legalized corruption (Citizens United, ...). And fight for real freedom of speech.
This is very complex problem that needs to be tackled from all sides simultaneously, the entrenched interests are already well setup to defend themselves.
Citizens United was a pretty pro-speech decision and is unfairly maligned, and "money is speech" predates it by quite a few years. The real problem is when huge corporations control the flow of information.
Which is a bigger problem, that corporations can pay for political ads, or that one corporation has 90% search market share? That there are political ads on Facebook or Twitter, or that those corporations control what's in the feed of hundreds of millions of people because use of their algorithm is tied to the network effect instead of having a federated system like RSS or email?
Sorry, no. Both are problem. And it is not pro-speech at all, it is pro-$$$. It is a standard practice to drown the unwanted speech in the noise of the paid-for 'speech'. Nothing about pro-speech for ordinary people there.
Furthermore, Citizen's United makes it harder to make any necessary legislative changes. Including the anti-trust. Focusing only on one issue while leaving the other heads of the hydra intact just plays into its strengths.
Suppose you don't own a major media outlet or social media company and you have something to say that the major media outlets and social media companies don't like. What are your options for getting more than six people to hear what you have to say if you're not allowed to spend money?
> It is a standard practice to drown the unwanted speech in the noise of the paid-for 'speech'.
This is literally the opposite of what happens. The companies that own distribution channels can make speech they don't like disappear, or even just speech that doesn't drive sufficient "engagement", by putting it at the end of the feed behind six trillion lolcats and enough rage bait to keep everyone glued to the screen. Then the only way to be seen when your message isn't a dopamine hit is to pay money.
> Furthermore, Citizen's United makes it harder to make any necessary legislative changes. Including the anti-trust.
Citizens United has very little to say about anti-trust. What argument are you making that it would prevent e.g. laws requiring adversarial interoperability or break ups of large companies? For that matter, much of the interoperability problem comes from companies using laws like the CFAA and DMCA 1201, and then you don't even need laws to be passed, you need them to be repealed.
Cirizens United has everything to say about anti-trust. Big companies that would be subject to anti-trust use their $$$ to buy politicians to squash any anti-trust legislation.
Plus a systematic way of keeping the Gini coefficient of wealth small in a sustainable way. I'm a fan of establishing sovereign wealth funds whose dividends are paid out equally per capita for this purpose.
A sovereign wealth fund has the government deciding what to invest in, which is both a magnet for corruption and a good way to get below-market returns through mismanagement. It also requires an extremely oppressive build-up period where the government is collecting money in taxes to seed the fund instead of providing services to the population, which is why the countries that have one are basically all countries that net export huge amounts of oil, and China which exports everything else.
Meanwhile you don't need the government to use tax dollars to buy stocks in specific companies. If you want a UBI then use VAT. Then it comes from every company instead of having government bureaucrats choose which ones, and gets paid out immediately instead of needing a generation of build-up.
The things amassing power to prevent antitrust are corporations, not individuals. It does nothing to make Bill Gates sell shares in Microsoft to pay taxes when the corporation stays the same size. If anything it makes it worse because then more corporations are controlled by Wall St rather than founders and they're significantly more inclined to turn the screws to juice short-term profits.
thought about this too - but not as expressively as you put it.
e.g in China - for early stage ventures - there's cut throat competition - then as Thiel would put it with heavy competition profits trend towards 0 - by then the tech is perfected or close to perfect - then the state uses its funds to back a monopoly. that's how you get a BYD.
And to complete the reversal what is now referred to as the "golden age of capitalism" i.e the post WW2 USA was actually very socialist. Strong social movement and unions and social spending that created a wealth working/middle class with a bunch of spending power.
Inequality society producea inequal economy (and vice versa) which is the economy of any developing country. Few rich,. miniscule middle class and lots of poor people in slums snd poverty.
This is only an illusion created by the fact that the communists were careful to rename all important things, to fool the weaker minds that the renamed things are something else than what they really are.
In reality, the "socialist" economies were more capitalist than the capitalist economies of USA and Western Europe. They behaved exactly like the final stage of capitalism, where monopolies control every market and there is no longer any competition.
Unfortunately, after a huge sequence of mergers and acquisitions started in the late nineties of the last century, the economies of USA and of the EU states resemble more and more every year the former socialist economies, instead of resembling the US and W. European economies of a few decades ago.