I think the problem here is what is meant by the term socialism. Your right that there is a clear difference between socialism and social democracy but two points:
a) The main one is that socialism is a much abused term and often right wingers use it to reference to many aspects of social democracy. For instance during the attempts to get affordable health care in the US by Obama the Republicans were repeatedly raising the 'threat' of socialism and "we don't want state organised medicine here", citing the NHS in Britain as well as health care in Scandinavia and other parts of western Europe as such which by your definition is inaccurate. That's why people get nervous when someone makes a blanket reference to socialism without defining what they mean. Its too often been used by right wingers to seek to discrete anything other than their particular brand of right wing version of capitalism.
b) Actual in social democratic states the key point is that it is a regulated market. I.e. there are limits on what companies can do in terms of abusing concentrations of power, environmental mismanagement, working conditions etc. As maarvarq pointed out unrestrained capitalism has regularly been very good, for the few wealthy people and terrible for the vast bulk of the people as well as society as a whole. Don't get me wrong. You can have bad, or even very bad government [whether left or right] but a total lack of government is also a disaster.
60
@LogicMeister
I think the problem here is what is meant by the term socialism. Your right that there is a clear difference between socialism and social democracy but two points:
a) The main one is that socialism is a much abused term and often right wingers use it to reference to many aspects of social democracy. For instance during the attempts to get affordable health care in the US by Obama the Republicans were repeatedly raising the 'threat' of socialism and "we don't want state organised medicine here", citing the NHS in Britain as well as health care in Scandinavia and other parts of western Europe as such which by your definition is inaccurate. That's why people get nervous when someone makes a blanket reference to socialism without defining what they mean. Its too often been used by right wingers to seek to discrete anything other than their particular brand of right wing version of capitalism.
b) Actual in social democratic states the key point is that it is a regulated market. I.e. there are limits on what companies can do in terms of abusing concentrations of power, environmental mismanagement, working conditions etc. As maarvarq pointed out unrestrained capitalism has regularly been very good, for the few wealthy people and terrible for the vast bulk of the people as well as society as a whole. Don't get me wrong. You can have bad, or even very bad government [whether left or right] but a total lack of government is also a disaster.