RE: In Defense of Social Democracy: Contra Ron Paul & Conservatism
Democratic socialists try to make people think they stand for the same system as rich Scandinavian countries.
They don't.
Scandinavian countries are social democracies.
Their economy is not centrally planned.
Democratic Socialism on the other hand is 'post-capitalist'. They want a planned economy.
The fact that they pretend DS is actually 'just like Finland', shows one of two things:
They either don't know the correct name of their own political philosophy, or they are knowingly conflating the two, because a centrally planned economy, planned by the government, is such a stupid idea, that too many people still reciloil in horror.
Both scenarios are not good.
One word about taxes.
To understand the ethical problem with taxes, it is necessary to understand the difference between coercion and freedom.
Free people act according to their own will,
Unfree people are subject to the will of others.
People can come together and finance as a group whatever they want, nobody stops them.
Taxes are not voluntary.
Instead of my giving my money to the collective projects I agree with, taxes take my money by force, and the state apparatus does with it whatever it wants, with very little accountability.
Furthermore taxes are not only taken by force and therefore constitute theft by any definition,
they are also used to start illegal wars, assassinate people, kidnap people and so on.
Good ideas get funding very easily.
It's the evil things that need coercion to be funded by the people.
Any attempt to make taxes seem ethical or moral is just as doomed as arguing for rape over consensual sex.
'But without rape, how would we reproduce?'
The answer is: peacefully. Free. Without violence. According to our own will instead of the will of a violent extremist group like the 'government'.
Socialism is radical Statism.
Radical Statism is totalitarianism.
And yes, Democratic Socialism is radical Statism, too. They want to give the state even more power over your life until everyone is unarmed, without private property, brainwashed by the party and finally relieved from the nightmare through death by starvation.
What else could be the outcome when the gubbament plans the economy?
Social democracy and democratic socialism were historically one movement. The first social democratic party in Europe was Marxist. "Social democracy" and "democratic socialism" are pretty much used interchangeably in Europe. Nordic model social democracy traces back to Eduard Bernstein's vision of social democracy, which did not entail abolishing private property. On the other hand, Fabian socialists called themselves social democrats, and they did want to abolish private property. Nevertheless, the practical proposals of both factions were almost identical, in spite of the theoretical differences. So there was never a split. The distinction between social democracy and democratic socialism is not really made by the proponents themselves. Personally, I do make that distinction for practical purposes, but the terms are largely used interchangeably by people that adhere to either.
I won't delve into the taxation thing, since many of my posts already address that.