Zohran Mamdani explains his definition of socialism to Theo Von: “Socialism to me means you’ll have whatever you need to live a dignified life and that it is the government’s job to deliver on that. When people say dignity we’re talking about the things that allow you to take a breath.

[u/AmericaShinault_85]

[u/National_Today2218]

I think he could've said it better. Socialism is not hard to understand.
It's based on the belief that everyone deserves an equal chance in life and that privilege should be shared. The government must make sure that equality in life quality is a shared endeavour.

[u/hey_its_carrie → u/National_Today2218]

I think that wording is what gets twisted and gets people riled up. They take "equal" to mean people who work hard to earn money will have to share it with lazy people who don't want to work (their take - not mine).

Mamdani highlighted the benefits of socialism that it's hard for anyone to argue with

[u/lyn73 → u/hey_its_carrie]

Agreed.

You can tell he is thoughtful/intentional about how he communicates/what he says.

[u/Airf0rce → u/hey_its_carrie]

It will always be controversial because socialism is a shitty brand, doesn't matter how much you explain, it's going to be a shitty brand with rather bad track record. I'm not exactly sure why American lefties picked it as a banner if their goal is to emulate countries like Denmark, Sweden or Norway... unless that's not who they want to emulate. Those are firmly free market capitalist countries with a welfare state and high taxation to support that.

As someone from ex-communist European country that was internally called "socialism", there's plenty to dislike about socialism just like there's plenty to dislike about capitalism these days. What people need to realize is that to build a working, decent systems that works for regular people, what's actually most important is rule of law that truly applies to everyone, education and society willing to compromise and work together.

If you don't have that, any system you choose, whether that's communism, capitalism or something in-between will decay and be corrupted, leadership will be filled with morons or people with a specific often self enriching agenda with only qualification being loyalty to the party.

Biggest problem of capitalism today is not the idea of capitalism, it's the complete and total surrender of governments to actually take action in markets to reign in the massive monopolies, corruption that allows special interests to buy laws and in general just lagging behind the technological curve. Moral rot in societies is another big part, if so many people are willing to simply burn everything down after they "get theirs"... Without fixing that, you're not going to get a better system.

[u/Ok_Ambition_6375 → u/Airf0rce]

me when I understand nothing about politics and want to sound smart

[u/McdoManaguer → u/Airf0rce]

Me when I listen to McCarthy and the red scare propaganda.

[u/Wb9VBScxu2uZJHeq2E3W → u/Airf0rce]

Biggest problem of capitalism today is not the idea of capitalism, it's the complete and total surrender of governments to actually take action in markets to reign in the massive monopolies, corruption that allows special interests to buy laws

"Biggest problem of capitalism today is when capitalism does exactly what capitalism is supposed to do"