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Breaking down Biden's comments on Trump, Middle East
President Biden broke his silence Friday on former President Donald Trump's conviction in his New York criminal case. His comments preceded remarks about a new Israeli cease-fire proposal. Margaret Brennan and Major Garrett have...
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The socialist umbrella contains within it diverse viewpoints about what socialism is, what its core elements are, and how to achieve it. Some emphasize firm-level worker ownership (i.e. cooperatives), others industry-level worker ownership (i.e. syndicalists), and still others society-wide ownership (i.e. social wealth fund advocates). Some think wages and salaries are problematic (e.g. mutualists), others think product prices are problematic (i.e decommodifiers), and still others think both are problematic and that society should be organized into small units that consume what they produce directly (e.g. in a Fourier commune).
The one thing almost all strands have in common is the idea that collective ownership of capital within a relevant economic unit is a key socialist principle. So to the extent that a country is a relevant economic unit and Norwegians own 76% of their non-home wealth collectively through a democratically-elected state, it would be fair, I think, to describe it as the most socialist country in the developed world.
But regardless of what label you apply to it, Norway at minimum proves that it is possible to mix high levels of state ownership with a high degree of prosperity. And no, this is not just about its oil: high levels of state ownership prevailed even before the oil fund began in 1996.
As noted last week, I think Singapore also proves this point. In Singapore, the state owns 90 percent of the land and over 80 percent of the homes while posting high levels of income and growth. In Norway, the state owns 76 percent of the non-home wealth while also remaining very productive. Now imagine if you combined them.
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The one thing almost all strands have in common is the idea that collective ownership of capital within a relevant economic unit is a key socialist principle. So to the extent that a country is a relevant economic unit and Norwegians own 76% of their non-home wealth collectively through a democratically-elected state, it would be fair, I think, to describe it as the most socialist country in the developed world.
But regardless of what label you apply to it, Norway at minimum proves that it is possible to mix high levels of state ownership with a high degree of prosperity. And no, this is not just about its oil: high levels of state ownership prevailed even before the oil fund began in 1996.
As noted last week, I think Singapore also proves this point. In Singapore, the state owns 90 percent of the land and over 80 percent of the homes while posting high levels of income and growth. In Norway, the state owns 76 percent of the non-home wealth while also remaining very productive. Now imagine if you combined them. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-owns-76-of-norways-non-home-wealth/
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The one thing almost all strands have in common is the idea that collective ownership of capital within a relevant economic unit is a key socialist principle. So to the extent that a country is a relevant economic unit and Norwegians own 76% of their non-home wealth collectively through a democratically-elected state, it would be fair, I think, to describe it as the most socialist country in the developed world.
But regardless of what label you apply to it, Norway at minimum proves that it is possible to mix high levels of state ownership with a high degree of prosperity. And no, this is not just about its oil: high levels of state ownership prevailed even before the oil fund began in 1996.
As noted last week, I think Singapore also proves this point. In Singapore, the state owns 90 percent of the land and over 80 percent of the homes while posting high levels of income and growth. In Norway, the state owns 76 percent of the non-home wealth while also remaining very productive. Now imagine if you combined them. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-owns-76-of-norways-non-home-wealth/
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In many ways, Northern European countries are more capitalist than the US or the UK, as they have far fewer regulations, and their federal government is much weaker, with a lot of power held by municipalities.
Nordic nations are so prosperous because the capitalist economy funds the social spending. Cuba or Venezuela are so miserable because their socialist economies cannot afford the social spending. It is as simple as that. There is nothing wrong with pointing out that socialist economies always fail, with no exception, because that is what the facts say. What is wrong is what socialist proponents like to do, first getting all excited about a new socialist country, and then, a couple decades later, when its economy collapses, suddenly stopping calling it socialist.
On the capitalist side, there is no such consistent hypocrisy. I do not think many capitalists say that capitalist economies always succeed; it is not so. Capitalist rules is a necessary condition for the economical success of the nation, but it is hardly the sufficient condition. Capitalist rules do not mean much when nobody follows them. In Russia in 90-s, or in Iraq in 2000s, formally the economies were capitalist; practically, however, mafia and military groups respectively ruled everything and enforced their own unofficial rules, that were far from capitalist.
Finally, regarding Singapore, harsh land distribution laws are the only anti-capitalist aberration they have there, and it is dictated by the necessity of having to harbor a lot of people on a very small territory. They do not have the luxury of millions square kilometers of wilderness ready to be settled that we here in the US do, hence they have to make certain concessions.
It is not a good model to follow, and it is the main reason Singapore has some of the most overpriced real estate in the world. If their entire economy worked in this mode, Singapore would feature the same quality of life as Bangladesh or Laos.
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Moreover socialism is defined as a system where the means of production are owned by the community as a whole and people are rewarded based on the labour they contribute. Though there are taxes, government agencies and co-operatives in Norway, Finland, Sweden etc there are also stock markets, privately owned companies and investors who get paid based on the amount of capital they invest in a business rather than the labour they contribute.
This is typically viewed as a type of mixed-market economy, specifically social democracy rather than democratic socialism which despite having similar words involved is fundamentally different.
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The term entered common usage during the era of Deng Xiaoping and was largely associated with Deng's overall program of adopting elements of market economics as a means to foster growth using foreign investment and to increase productivity (especially in the countryside where 80% of China's population lived) while the Communist Party of China retained both its formal commitment to achieve communism and its monopoly on political power.[3] In the party's official narrative, socialism with Chinese characteristics is Marxism–Leninism adapted to Chinese conditions and a product of scientific socialism. The theory stipulated that China was in the primary stage of socialism due to its relatively low level of material wealth and needed to engage in economic growth before it pursued a more egalitarian form of socialism, which in turn would lead to a communist society described in Marxist orthodoxy.
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The term entered common usage during the era of Deng Xiaoping and was largely associated with Deng's overall program of adopting elements of market economics as a means to foster growth using foreign investment and to increase productivity (especially in the countryside where 80% of China's population lived) while the Communist Party of China retained both its formal commitment to achieve communism and its monopoly on political power.[3] In the party's official narrative, socialism with Chinese characteristics is Marxism–Leninism adapted to Chinese conditions and a product of scientific socialism. The theory stipulated that China was in the primary stage of socialism due to its relatively low level of material wealth and needed to engage in economic growth before it pursued a more egalitarian form of socialism, which in turn would lead to a communist society described in Marxist orthodoxy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_socialism
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How Capitalist Is Singapore Really? It is true of course that Singapore has a market economy. But it’s also true that, in Singapore, the state owns a huge amount of the means of production. In fact, depending on how you count it, the Singaporean government probably owns more capital than any other developed country in the world after Norway.
The Singaporean state owns 90 percent of the country’s land. Remarkably, this level of ownership was not present from the beginning. In 1949, the state owned just 31 percent of the country’s land. It got up to 90 percent land ownership through decades of forced sales, or what people in the US call eminent domain.
The Singaporean state does not merely own the land. They directly develop it, especially for residential purposes. Over 80 percent of Singapore’s population lives in housing constructed by the country’s public housing agency HDB. The Singaporean government claims that around 90 percent of people living in HDB units “own” their home. But the way it really works is that, when a new HDB unit is built, the government sells a transferable 99-year lease for it. The value of that lease slowly declines as it approaches the 99-year mark, after which point the lease expires and possession of the HDB unit reverts back to the state. Thus, Singapore is a land where almost everyone is a long-term public housing tenant.
Then there are the state-owned enterprises, which they euphemistically call Government-linked Companies (GLCs). Through its sovereign wealth fund Temasek, the Singaporean government owns a large share (20% or more) of 20 companies (2012 figure). Together these companies make up 37% of the market capitalization of the Singaporean stock market. The state also owns a large share of 8 real estate investment trust (REIT) companies (2012 figure), which they call GLREITs. The value of the GLREITs make up 54% of the country’s total REIT market.
The sovereign wealth fund Temasek doesn’t just own domestic assets. It also is invested broadly throughout the world, especially in other Asian countries. In March of last year, Temasek had a net portfolio value of S$275 billion, which is equal to around 62% of the country’s annual GDP. To put this figure in more familiar terms, Temasek’s total holdings are equivalent to if the US government built a $12.4 trillion wealth fund.
Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t generally associate state ownership of the means of production with capitalism. One way to see whether libertarians or conservatives actually think Singapore’s system is uber-capitalistic is to imagine how they would respond to someone who ran a campaign in the US aimed at bringing the country up to the Singaporean ideal.
In this campaign, the candidate would say that the state should expropriate nearly all of the land in the country, build virtually all of the housing in the country, move almost everyone into public housing leaseholds, become the largest shareholder of more than a third of the country’s publicly-traded companies (weighted by market capitalization), and build out a sovereign wealth fund that holds tens of trillions of dollars of corporate assets. Would this campaign meet with a warm libertarian embrace or perhaps be derided as a bit socialistic?
The case of Singapore is more than just a funny gotcha to use against right-wingers. It actually raises an interesting question about what it is people care about when it comes to “capitalism” and “socialism.” Is capitalism primarily about markets or private ownership? Relatedly, is socialism primarily about ending markets or promoting collective ownership? Often these things are bundled together, but they are logically and practically separable. Singapore (and Norway, among others) shows that it is quite possible to collectively own the means of production while also using price systems to assist in the allocation of productive factors. This is what market socialists have been saying for a hundred years. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/09/how-capitalist-is-singapore-really/
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Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Denmark are the only Nordic countries.
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You cannot expect a country like this to not have a significant degree of nationalisation; it is the only way it can keep its population in check and avoid losing competition to the private sector.
You can, however, expect a country like this ruled by a very progressive and rational government to have policies that, to a strong degree, separate the public sector from the private sector, leaving the latter be for the most part. As far as the private sector goes, which is to thank for Singapore's unprecedented economical leap, the real estate market is the only one that is tightly regulated, to my knowledge - and it is also the only one which constantly fails to deliver, featuring sky-high costs, tiny apartments and poor liquidity.
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You should think a few steps ahead. North Korea also has elections; it does not mean anything, when the information space is completely controlled by the government (as is the case in Singapore, where the mass media are heavily censored by the state).
His point was actually that Chinese are NOT smart and virtuous, and that is why they must be controlled by force, because they are incapable of controlling themselves.
I think you should research the history and politics of Singapore a bit more.
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Mussolini and Tito ruined their countries long-term. Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore from one of the poorest into one of the richest nations on Earth instead.
I do not like dictators, but at the same time I give them credit where it is due. However, I hardly advocate for the Singaporean model. That model worked for Singapore, but it would hardly work for Western people who are not used to bowing to the authority unconditionally.
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