Nothing poorly defined about it

maybe I'm fundamentally confused as to what socialism is

Most likely

u gonna give me the gist or just tell me I'm stupid

Its when the workers own the means of production, that's the gist of it

why do I want that

Why dont you

I don't know

What does it entail and how does that benefit society

Because it liberates the masses from the exploitation by the capitalists

capitalism isn't inherently exploitation

free markets allow for the most people to buy/sell at agreed upon prices

at its core it would allow for the most freedom, I can see how voluntary exchange is kinda thrown out the window for those of the lowest social class, but it does allow for social mobility and to deny that is just untrue

I'm not anti-socialist per se, I'd be the first to admit I'm not the most educated but I don't really understand right now how socialism allows for more social mobility and for individuals to reap the benefits of their decision making and incurred risks.

There wouldn’t be a concept or need for social mobility if we were all well off lmao

You can’t have social mobility without social inequality

it is absolutely poorly defined. as is capitalism too. there's a reason you will rarely see either of those terms used in academic econ.

not only that, but you'd struggle to see people in a political sense agree upon what it means too. go ask bernie what socialism is and he'll (rather mistakenly) point to denmark. go ask a MAGAtard and there's a decent chance he'll point to biden.

this passage from this paper illustrates the issue pretty well. you can substitute capitalism for socialism as well as all the buzzwords like private ownership for public ownership.

We should note at this point that we do not believe the term capitalism to be a useful one for the purposes of comparative economic or political a***ysis. By focusing on the ownership and accumulation of capital, this term distracts from the characteristics of societies which are more important in determining their economic development and the extent of inequality. For example, both Uzbekistan and modern Switzerland have private ownership of capital, but these societies have little in common in terms of prosperity and inequality because the nature of their economic and political institutions differs so sharply. In fact, Uzbekistan’s capitalist economy has more in common with avowedly noncapitalist North Korea than Switzerland, as we argued in Acemoglu and Robinson (2012). That said, given the emphasis in both Marx and Piketty on capitalism, we have opted to bear with this terminology.

This says less about them being poorly defined and the poor political education lol. And Bernie knows what socialism is. He was once one

This is why yall need to read. Yes capitalism is inherently exploitative. Thats how profits and wealth are generated

Also lol at academic econ what a pretentious field, among other things

IN

gotta make the most profit and pay workers the least you can to be as efficient as possible

i mean slave capitalism was very much a thing for a reason and you see all the pain that descended from it

that's also why corps moved labor from america to the 3rd world and why we got their resources by force and imperialism

"the free market will regulate itself"

What

they were authoritarian state capitalists, stalin consolidated power, the workers didn't own s***

this is something i may disagree with you on, USSR did have some improvements of life for its people, but it should be seen as a failed state

yeah there are people who become successful, but many more that fail and suffer for it, and people shouldn't have to, there should be a very strong social safety net at least (in current capitalism)

@Mustafa ain't you the same dude who was talking s*** about king von's death in music sxn

How are people still defending Capitalism after the events of the past year

even as predictable as it is, i'm still impressed at the lengths that socialists will actively reject empirical studies because they don't reflect their opinions.

they're to economics what creationists are to biology. you cannot have a rational argument.

i bet you believe in MMT and LTV too