My daughter @jwinblood asked my wife to ask me to define these things in my words. When I heard these words I audibly groaned. These are very contentious labels. Depending upon who you speak to you will get some very different descriptions of these things. I know this and I knew that writing a post about it would be controversial and some people will absolutely NOT like my interpretations. This is to be expected. I'm often not too pleased with their interpretations either.

These are some very touchy subjects. People will trot out definitions from various websites and even when you do that the definitions vary a bit. It really seems to depend upon the bias of the person writing the things. I myself have studied quite a bit of history and my ideal ideology would be in the future for Anarcho-Capitalism to work for people. I do not have any delusions that this would work today. I don't believe any particular ideologies actually will work today as our global education system is in shambles, and critical thinking is almost unheard of as a subject that is realistically taught in early schools, and even in college. Often such classes that might include that in their title do a very poor job of covering it. The end result is a large population that cannot recognize common logical fallacies when they are being used and thus these fallacies are used extensively to manipulate them. Due to this fact most of the population reacts purely to emotional manipulation and what FEELS good and makes them FEEL GOOD ABOUT themselves when they hear it. They don't typically think "How are we going to actually do this?" "How is it going to be paid for?" "Where do those funds come from?" "If not funds are required who is the omniscient super being that knows everything and can keep track and react to all changes?" That last one may seem funny, but for people that don't believe in money and believe central planning and quotas can work that is a very valid question.

So I am going to answer my daughter's question in MY words. I will also likely go into some of the controversy she is likely to encounter with each.

Capitalism

Opponents of this ISM will focus on private property, and private ownership of the means to production. They will point out the existence of monopolies, child labor, and other not so nice employer vs employee relationships as the reasons they see capitalism as evil.

For me Capitalism simply means free market. This means we use currency (aka money, crypto currency, etc) as a universal form of exchange. People enter into voluntary contracts and agreements for what they are willing to exchange for what. A person is considered the owner of themselves. Their time can be a commodity. An employer may contract with a person for use of their time and labor. This is voluntary.

Free Market means the government does not pass laws or manipulate the free voluntary exchange. Those that despise capitalism will bring up monopolies. There really are only three types of monopolies, as far as I am able to tell.

A Monopoly where a person provides a product or service and no one has any complaints and is satisfied. Thus, no competitors arise to try to compete. Competition usually arises when there is something that someone feels they can do better than another person/business. Most people don't think of this type of monopoly when they speak of them as people are rather satisfied with them so they don't see them as evil incarnate.

The most common evil incarnate monopoly is one where a business or person has unfair advantage that prohibits competitors from being able to compete. This can be due to government exclusivity contracts, laws that block or inhibit competitors, expensive fees to compete, etc. Ultimately, such monopolies would not exist long in a free market. These are the monopolies that people talk about with dread and hate. Yet, in reality they are only able to exist for long periods of time due to government collusion. This is not a free market.

The third type is one that is new. A new idea, service, product comes out. It is a monopoly UNTIL someone finds a way to compete. This is natural. If they have things someone can do better then unless government interferes then competition should naturally arise.

The opponents will usually bring out evil corporations. Corporations are actually not a product of the free market so much. They actually only have the massive power they have today due to government collusion. In the U.S. this came in the form of the Citizens United case in the Supreme Court that gave corporations the rights of people, while not giving them the same punishments, and it actually has been very corrupting. This is not actually capitalism. It is corporatism. Those people that mention Fascism at times should actually be referring to this. Yet, this is not actually capitalism or a free market.

Now let's go to child labor and sweat shops. If it is a voluntary contract between the workers and the employer then the real question should be WHY do these people feel that this contract is acceptable? They voluntary chose to do it. So is it the employer who is evil or is there something seriously wrong with their nation, government, and economy? What laws have been enacted that are so limiting the opportunity for the people? It actually has nothing to do with capitalism directly either other than for some reason their environment is making them willing to work for very little. As far as child labor. Those children and their families chose to do that. The questions why? What was their need? This is where the EMOTIONAL and FEEL GOOD shouting and propaganda will feed. It will aim at capitalism when it is likely something else... for you see Capitalism has also been in place during the most prosperous times for people as well and these sweatshop like labor and starvation, etc. That is not unique to capitalism. It has happened historically with attempts at communism, socialism, and just about any other ISM. This would seem to me to indicate that the wrong CULPRIT is being aimed at. I believe the true culprit is government cronyism and education disparity.

Socialism

This like capitalism has many meanings. It is also almost a stepping stone into Communism. Socialism can come in degrees of how far they want to go.

Socialism is essentially having the government create programs to solve all the woes of its citizens. My problem with this is the government historically is absolutely the worst choice you can ask for when curing woes. It is wasteful and it really must use force to achieve it's ends.

I am a voluntaryist. I don't believe people should be forced against their will to do things. I believe they should have a choice. Unless they are harming another person or that persons property I do not see why any number of people should have a right to dictate how that person lives.

Basically I believe the statement "good ideas do not require force". I didn't say anything about how FAST those ideas will happen, I just said I do not believe they require force.

I've often put it this way. If you see a starving person you can choose or not choose to give them say $100 to feed themselves. This is your choice and is voluntary. If you CHOOSE to do so then that can be seen as an act of compassion. The person will have $100 that you handed them.

Socialism would approach this differently. They would see that starving person and they would say "Let's make sure there are no starving people ever again!" and it sounds great, and it makes their emotions feel good.

Yet, they don't really think about how this is done. Where does this money and work come from to accomplish this? Well socialists believe the government should do it. So the government creates a new program, and they need new employees to manage and work this program, and they need a way to pay these people, and to get that food and money to the starving people. Where does it come from? Well the government doesn't actually produce anything but waste, and perhaps war/conflict. So this means it can only come from two places. Debt, or Taxes. If it is debt then they will go to the Federal Reserve (a huge fraud in itself) or some other entity willing to loan them money on interest. They will go into debt to pay for it. Or they will add new taxes, or divert existing taxes.

The thing about both the debt and the taxes is they essentially are force. There was no choice. You cannot refuse to pay your taxes without fines, prison, or death. You cannot realistically move though that's what some people will tell you to do without truly thinking about what they said.

There is a THIRD way it can be funded. If the government is not in debt and actually has money in their coffers they can pay for it from there.

The thing to be concerned about debt is that is actually potentially pushing the responsibility for paying it back onto your children, grand children, etc. It is almost making them indentured servants to pay back what was borrowed to fund your social government programs today.

Yet it gets worse. You now have government bureaucracy and cronyism and a fraction of that $100 worth of taxes actually makes it to the cause the program was created to support.

My argument is that we don't need this and it is a very bad idea. We have the technology now where we could easily crowd source anything like this which makes it voluntary and eliminate the waste. We would be allowing people to dictate what programs they wished to support.

I also like to say that if you didn't have a choice, then in reality there was no compassion involved. Compassion involves making a choice. Take choice away and you also remove compassion as an element. So all that FEELS GOOD, and SOUNDS GOOD that makes people support such programs, it really is about being lazy and wanting something easy that they don't have to think about.

Now let's get into when there are funds to pay for it. Let's take places like Sweden, Venezuela, etc. There will be times in history where supporters of socialism will point out countries like them as the poster child for "see socialism works" while things are going good. As soon as it fails, it changes to "that was not true socialism". My dad called such people "Fair Weather Friends"... they were supporters as long as the weather was good. When things went bad, they were nowhere to be found.

Sweden actually became highly successful but this is not due to Socialism, it is actually due to Free market (aka Laissez Faire). They built up a lot of money and it is only within the last couple of decades that they've started doing more and more socialism. The historical result of this is that that extra money you have eventually runs out. Then it is back to "how do we pay for it?" yet unlike when you first made that choice you now have a society dependent upon the services and some might say mentally addicted to them. They can't imagine life without their free stuff.

Venezuela was doing pretty good less than a decade ago. They were often lauded as an example of how socialism works. Those of us that studied history, and economics would just shake our head and say "for now". The problem is there is no FREE. Yet that is what socialism thrives upon. Offering free things. People love the promise of free things. There is no free, someone pays for it. You either drain any savings, rob all citizens including yourself, or you take on debt that future generations will be responsible for. It was NOT free. Thus, why I was not a Bernie Sanders fan.

By the way Venezuela is doing extremely bad right now... just google it. It is suddenly "not true socialism".

Here is a great essay talking about free market and the history of how it saved Sweden and made it rich.
How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich

Here is a blog post I wrote about there being no such thing as free stuff and services:
It's free I tell you... what about the taxes I pay?

Communism/Marxism

I put these together as Communism is supposed to be one of those things where they are implementing the ideas of Karl Marx and people who came after him and continued his ideology.

Communism believes all property should be public, and the means of production should be public. This means there are no owners of businesses, and you technically only get what you are using at the moment. If something is sitting somewhere and not currently being used then people are free to take it. This can sound amazing. It can seem almost zen like, and fits nicely with the love thy neighbor, and peace and love idea. The problem is we are individuals. We think very differently, and this will not work for a lot of people. It falls apart largely due to human nature. Let's say I invent a new product. People love it. In communism I should out of the goodness of my heart convince the population to build a factory and together we will produce more of it.

There are different degrees of communism. Some of them do not believe currency is even required. They believe in a resource driven economy. What is needed will be provided. Workers will fill quotas to meet the needs.

There are supposedly no leaders, and everyone is equal and has equal access to everything. Yet historically this is not the case except in ONE instance I know of. Way back before the term Communism was a thing Pythagoras the scientist, mathematician, philosopher had a small town/community that was essentially communist. It actually worked. Until he died. Then it fell apart.

Communism actually can work in small groups of people, but it does generally require some people that know all the ins and outs of that community and thus can act as the wise central planner. The problem is this does not scale well. As you add more and more people it becomes increasingly complex. As you add more types of products with all the production chain and components and types of specialty knowledge needed for that it quickly balloons into something very complex. In fact, it is so complex that people cannot expect a central planner to have a clue how to keep up with it. Historically this has been true and has resulted in millions of deaths.

Now this may be something that someone will say we now have computers and technology and we can plan this. The computers still need to be programmed to know all the variables and be able to adapt to sudden changes due to disasters, new products, people getting sick, etc. It has to be programmed by people, and I contend it is far too complex for people to plan.

Fortunately, we found a tool and solution that handles this great. We came up with this idea that we could have these chits or little exchange tokens that people could exchange anywhere for any service, or product. Since we had this then different quantities of these tokens could be diverted instantly as needed to adapt to changing circumstances. It didn't even need a central planner. It was so simple that pretty much anyone could use this. We called this tool currency, or money.

Now Communism like Socialism is rife with the "that was not true communism" statements when we try to go to history to point out it's disasters. It is also plagued with the "read this book syndrome" when you challenge it. I've actually read some of these when they were pointed out to me in PDF form and they were hard to stomach due to the rampant appeal to authority fallacies, appeal to popularity, appeal to emotion, ad hominem attacks, generalizations, and even the occasional red herring.

(All of those are explained in my post from a couple of days ago Argument, Debate, Discussion, and some things that don't work... )

Seeing the sheer number of logical fallacies and the technique that was being used to try to ram the concept down on the person by making them feel guilty and then proposing this SOLUTION to assuage their guilt just didn't work on me. Those books actually gave me mental ammunition to think that my conclusions so far seem to be accurate.

This is true by the way of Karl Marx himself and his writings. They play heavily upon emotions, and choose to name enemies, and get people inflamed, and enraged.

Which brings up some other problems. Communists tend to be aware that a lot of resistance to this idea will happen. They therefore mostly are okay with the idea that a violent uprising to overthrow the bourgeois must happen. We actually see this at the heart of the fake liberal movement of today, and the antifa (anti-fascists) and particularly their black bloc that is starting most of the violent exchanges around the country. They've been at it far longer in Europe than here.

The thing they don't seem to think through is that violence tends to create leaders. Leaders that can direct and plan rise. They may rise because, they are skilled at such planning. Historically when these events have occurred those leaders did not just give up their role after the change and become equal and have the same things as everyone else. Cronyism found a ripe home in those situations as well and now you had a new ruling class, and the rest of the population was more or less peasants and serfs for them. Good ideas don't require force. Ideas that require force don't in the long run seem to end up as people planned.

I spoke about this some more a couple of days ago in my post My problem with Communism.

There are many problems that actually arise from communism with it's quotas and such that tend to be due to human nature and the unrealistic way it tends to pretend people think. It throws out ambition, reward for excellence, etc. They may say those things are there, but if any of them say it exists let them describe it to you. Then think about how people are all different, and how likely that is to be real.

Conclusion

Now you see why I groaned when my daughter asked this. I essentially wrote this post fer her. Jessie you still should think for yourself and I am going to warn you now this is one of those landmine topics. There are people now willing to kill to make communism come to pass. It is actually something they see as inevitable. It has happened before.

You've heard the saying "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it"? Well here is another "Those who ignore or rewrite their history are also doomed to repeat it?" for some people do know it. They just like to pretend it wasn't really "communism", and it wasn't really "socialism".

Capitalism, and Communism are both susceptible to Cronyism. It corrupts them both. The problems with capitalism when people hate it can mostly be laid at the feet of cronyism. The problems with created class systems in communism when there are supposed to be none can also be laid at the feet of cronyism. This is but one example of many for why I ultimately believe we need to strive towards not needing a government. Government is force.

I am likely going to get some pretty lively, and heated comments here. Though in my anti-communism post the other day one of my communist friends here (yes, we get along, we just don't agree on this) only commented with "I disagree" and that was actually a very wise comment. I can respect that. He may give this one the same response and I would not blame him.

These topics are huge. They have destroyed and created nations.

You also asked about Liberalism I believe. I'm going to keep that simple. People like me have begun referring to Liberals and Classical Liberals as most of the people using the label "liberal" today are nothing of the sort. A classical liberal believed essentially that when it came to social affairs the government should stay out of it. It supported anyone marrying whomever they wanted, it was anti-slavery, and essentially was many of the things people used to think of when they spoke of freedom.

That is the classical liberal. The liberals today claim to support those things but then actively attack and oppose them, and many of them are pushing heavy amounts of socialism and/or communism. For example: they hold rallies to stop certain people from speaking. This is anti-free speech. It is totally anti-liberal. Yet they claim to be liberals. They believe in free speech as long as you are saying what they want to hear, and they totally miss the point that it is the opposite of believing in free speech. Antifa has found a strong footing in the liberal/left and they claim to be anti-fascist while they are some of the most fascist acting people in the country, and in other nations.

I believe all this sheltering kids from violence, and coddling them, and creating a fake world of safe spaces is partially to blame. All of that sheltered the kids from reality. They essentially lived in a fantasy land created by their parents and the school. Then they became adults. They had lived in a make believe reality growing up and now it only makes sense that when they imagine something as being a good idea that it must be. They lived in safe spaces so they really don't know how to deal with challenge and people thinking differently than them. The best they can do is shout, and rant, pound drums, yell in megaphones, and chant phrases over and over again so they can remain in their ADULT safe space and not listen to people, and not stop and think. Could they be wrong? No... safe space land says they can only be right, and everyone should get a trophy.

They should vote for Vermin Supreme. He promises to give everyone free ponies.

Now you see why I wasn't too comfortable writing this. I really don't like socialism or communism. I see them as a very bad idea that is doing a lot of damage globally, and pushing a lot more problems onto future generations. I know there are people here that disagree and I am pretty harsh and critical about it in this post. Honesty is my only excuse.