Zamuel wrote:Sweden is a practical and evolved socialist state. Businesses are controlled by regulation but may remain privately owned or become partners with the government. Markets are also regulated and in some cases subsidized. Taxes are extremely high (though there is no property tax) and it's fair to say that EVERYONE is on welfare. The state maintains a high standard of living for all it's citizens. It's an excellent text book on socialism. Studying it and experiencing it will educate the student in all the facets of socialism and the various modifications that have both succeeded and failed.
Zam
Sweden was briefly a socialist state lite, then realised it didn't work, let capitalism happen turned up the taxes, turboed keynes and called it a win.
Controlling business and people though regs is standard keynesian nationalism. Subsidies are the very opposite of socialism because that is a transfer of wealth
to the private sector not
from it, that is not exactly expropriating the expropriators is it? DOH!
It's not socialism, it is keynesianism, heavy keynesianism but keynesianism all the same. It has more in common with fascism actually than socialism, fascism with a smiley face.
Libertarians and others of the Adam Smith/Hayek/Mises persuasion are apt to slander Sweden as "socialist" but they mean that as an insult the way I might call you an arsehole, if I did that I wouldn't be asserting that you were literally an arsehole only that I wanted to associate you with something ugly and smelly.
There is an ancient debate, a to and fro, back and forth on how much governance is good governance. On one end of the see-saw you have Mercantalism, Bismark, Keynes and Hitler and on the other Adam Smith, Hayek and Mises. The former say a big state is best and the latter say a light state is best. Socialism has basically nothing to do with this debate because socialism is about abolishing humans of their status as human beings and reducing them to ants or cattle. Even the Keynesisans don't go that far at least not for their own people (hitler obviously made exceptions for jews, for the jews he did give them actual socialism).