alt Hacker NewsDemocratic socialism. The US has quite a few such experiments like the New Deal. And they've been quite a bit better than the grinding, unbridled industrialism that consumed and spat out young and old alike.
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Read up on "democratic socialism" because it was a term I wasn't familar with. I have to say people should be mindful of words and ideas meaning different things in different places.
"Capatalism" means something different in the USA than it does in say France. In the USA, any attempt to keep check of or reign in capatalism is seen as socialism, and governemnt overreach. In France it's seen as common sense, though they would still say they practice "capatalism". Similarly, taking care of people that can't take care of themselves is obvious in France, but seen as nearing socialism in the USA.
It's important to note, because when people go for things like "democratic socialism", they may not be against what they think they're against.
I think what you want is a welfare state, not socialism.
Socialism is not necessarily cuddly. "To each according to his contribution" is the one sentence description of it after all. I want socialism, because it's "to each according to his contribution" but "to each according to his contribution" isn't obviously this nice cuddly we-take-care-of-everybody type thing.
I'd call the New Deal an attempt to bring discipline to go from capitalism to free markets, to control excesses, prevent monopolies and otherwise preventing people from locking down the economy so that there can be competition, and that's a goal compatible with socialism, because it does bring us closer to "to each according to his contribution" but it isn't an attempt at creating socialism, but of breaking capitalism down to create a market economy with free markets (capitalism is not a market economy, capitalism is the accumulation of capital by some to the exclusion of others, so capitalism and a market economy with free markets are actually things that are extremely incompatible).