Salon: “Vote blue no matter who,” unless it’s Mamdani?

[Checkerboard Strangler]

You think democratic socialists support capitalism?

No, I think Democratic Socialists talk a lot and do almost nothing except complain.
Social Democrats on the other hand, do support capitalism but as you said, WITH REGULATIONS.
A word about that, if I may.

FIRE is an important thing.
It can cook our food, mold steel, be used in weapons, it is a useful tool.
But absent safety regs it can also burn down entire villages.

Libertarians are fond of the taste of roasted villagers and fond of saying "oh well, sux to be you" as they munch away on the free lunch they got
by setting the village on fire. The one lessson libertarians never seem to learn is that there's always the libertarian with more guns, more fire and more wealth
and they too don't mind roasting SMALLER LIBERTARIANS and eating them too.

I support regulations on the capitalist market the same way I support fire regulations.
Powerful forces can't just be left totally uncontrolled no matter how heady the rush of watching them burn everything.

 

[pragmatic]

Mamdani is literally a yuppy liberal capitalist who (admittedly ignorantly) thinks the Nordic model can be seamlessly applied to an American city, state, or even the country.

He isn't a socialist, communist, or radical. In many ways, he's still an uninspired, ineffective shitlib that remains trapped in a highly ideological cold war dialectic that stopped being relevant 40 years ago, much like yourself.

Other opinions disagree. <raises hand>

By most standards, the proposals Mamdani has made are radical to today's norms. And he certainly leans to the socialist side of the equation. (No. He isn't a communist.)

If Mamdani gets elected (which i do not think will happen) it would be a bad thing for the Democrat's national brand. The Republicans in Washington have gone off the rails with Trump's madcap adventures and are slowly self immolating. The Democrats can benefit themselves by showing a more moderate, "Center Left" face. Mamdani is not the symbol they need in the headlines.

..

 

[aociswundumho]

Social Democrats on the other hand, do support capitalism but as you said, WITH REGULATIONS.

Regulations, by definition, are not written by the elected legislature, yet they carry the force of law. In practice, executive agencies write rules that affect everything from how much water your toilet uses to what you can say in an ad. We end up with a country run by unelected bureaucrats and unelected lobbyists (who control regulation to a high degree).

How is this consistent with democracy?

 

[ElChupacabra]

I'd be interested in reading your thoughts after reading this longish quote from the DSA website. For me of little familiarity it focuses on "the promise of something."

The far more uncomfortable truth is that democracy in the United States – to the extent it has ever existed – has had the seeds of its destruction sown from the outset. The problem is deeper than any particular person or institution; in fact, our very concept of “government” is deeply flawed. Since our original Independence Day, there has been a constant, irreconcilable tension between our dream of political democracy and our reality of economic totalitarianism, with slavery as the most egregious example. The fact remains that capitalism begets irrational concentrations of wealth and power that are ultimately incompatible with democracy of any kind. Resolving this contradiction is going to take more than reforming this or that law or voting someone out of office. It’s going to require a thoroughgoing transformation of the basic institutions of our society, and a spirited rethinking of our core ideas around the meaning of government and freedom.

[. . .]

It’s hard to say exactly what a democratic socialist experiment in the 21st century will look like, but we’re not starting from scratch. One thing is certain, the experiments of 20th century socialists with fully planned economies were largely failures, and do not bear repeating. Economic planning was only ever a means to an end, and the end itself – a democratized economy that systematically encourages human flourishing rather than suffering – is much more important than any individual mechanism that gets us there. The Nordic model of social democracy is promising, but not without severe limitations of its own.

Some industries – healthcare, energy, much of the transportation sector – will have to be nationalized, and Marxist sociologist Vivek Chibber has estimated that as much as half the economy could be brought under effective state ownership. For the other half of the economy we’ll have to experiment with other methods of democratic control, such as worker-owned cooperatives, small-scale private firms with labor representation in management, social wealth funds and universal capital ownership, public investment banks and so on. This spirit of experimentation isn’t something we should be afraid of today. The United States was founded on a radical experiment in government the world had never seen. There’s no reason we can’t be equally bold in building a new kind of democratic economy as well. That same spirit of experimentation should guide us now. -- We Need Economic Democracy to Save the American Experiment, Taylor Clark, Democratic Left (dsausa.org), 7/4/2025

It's a tension this idea of a capitalism that is able to function without the massive wealth inequalities that tend to come with it. I'm not sure nationalizing a wide some industries is the solution, but privatization has had its own negative consequences. I suspect we'll see more of this kind of rhetoric as the wealth divide continues to grow and more of it impacts the middle class and below.

 

[Along Came Jones]

It's a tension this idea of a capitalism that is able to function without the massive wealth inequalities that tend to come with it. I'm not sure nationalizing a wide some industries is the solution, but privatization has had its own negative consequences. I suspect we'll see more of this kind of rhetoric as the wealth divide continues to grow and more of it impacts the middle class and below.

Thank you. During the mid 70s I participated in a graduate seminar for theories of economic growth. One of the issues under discussion was the emerging appeal of socialism in South American economies and governance. Forty-five years plus I find myself asking the same questions about us.

It seems I'm late in recognizing the emerging appeal. This 2019 article from the highly credible Governing Magazine would not have attracted more than passing attention had I read it: Socialism Goes Local: DSA Candidates Are Winning in Big Cities Democratic socialist candidates have won seats this year in Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia. More are likely to join them.

Though this was said about elections in Chicago, I think this is the foundation for the national appeal: “The DSA candidates are able to ride under the reform label, and the reform label is clearly popular at the moment,” says Dick Simpson, a former alderman who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Seems to me it is the flipside of what brought Trump into prominence and the presidency. Increasingly, perhaps, people see both major parties as defunct and unresponsive.

 

[ElChupacabra]

Thank you. During the mid 70s I participated in a graduate seminar for theories of economic growth. One of the issues under discussion was the emerging appeal of socialism in South American economies and governance. Forty-five years plus I find myself asking the same questions about us.

It seems I'm late in recognizing the emerging appeal. This 2019 article from the highly credible Governing Magazine would not have attracted more than passing attention had I read it: Socialism Goes Local: DSA Candidates Are Winning in Big Cities Democratic socialist candidates have won seats this year in Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia. More are likely to join them.

Though this was said about elections in Chicago, I think this is the foundation for the national appeal: “The DSA candidates are able to ride under the reform label, and the reform label is clearly popular at the moment,” says Dick Simpson, a former alderman who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Seems to me it is the flipside of what brought Trump into prominence and the presidency. Increasingly, perhaps, people see both major parties as defunct and unresponsive.

The common threads we see in the rise of socialist parties both here and in South America is high wealth inequality. Often socialist leaders will lean on solutions like redistribution of wealth as a solution, though it can be equally problematic if the solutions make it too risky for capitalism to work effectively.

 

[Luce]

Other opinions disagree. <raises hand>

By most standards, the proposals Mamdani has made are radical to today's norms.

The 40 hour week and the weekend are radical by today's norms. **** today's norms.