Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics The Debate: Is America’s future capitalist or socialist?

There's a root word in there somewhere.
Sorry, you cannot adequately deny the fact that social services paid for by taxes is a form of socialism.
No country has ever successfully made 100 percent of all goods and services "social", just as no country has ever made everything 100 percent private sector either.
But on several occasions in history, a good many countries HAVE indeed attempted to make most goods and services privatized or socialized.

Anytime the pendulum swings too far in either direction, the mechanism fails on a multitude of levels.
But the continuum is undeniable, socialized on one end, privatized on the other.
And social services paid for by taxes are a form of socialism, and whether it is mild or total is not the question.
The question is what fits the definition of socialized or privatized.

As I stated earlier, socialism is like music or wine...there is no single type, style or implementation. Every country, every society, tries their hand at some mix of both to some extent.
The extent to which authoritarians attempt to dictate the process determines how democratic it is. Authoritarian state socialism isn't generally very democratic. Authoritarianism is also not always very capitalistic either.
At some point, if nearly all risk and overhead is socialized but all profit is privatized, it is very difficult to classify that as "capitalism" anymore.

And absent our Constitution, there is nothing else that requires our nation to socialize anything. It is entirely possible to privatize nearly everything, the water, roads, schools, fire departments, even law enforcement and the military. The list of things that can be and/or have been privatized is nearly endless.
And again, absent the Constitution, nothing else exists to prevent that from happening.

Erik Prince was floating the notion of privatizing the Afghanistan War recently.

Some cities are dipping their toe in the waters of privatized law enforcement.

Many states have privatized some or all of their corrections systems, and privatized detention centers for unauthorized and illegal aliens, and privatized mental health has existed ever since Reagan defunded federal help and oversight for most state mental health programs.

Robocop was not a story about a mechanical policeman, it was the story of what might happen if a corporation is handed the responsibility of enforcing the law while simultaneously dealing with the conflicting demands of stockholders to make large profits.

So you see, almost anything and everything can be privatized, just as many things can be socialized. And if the latter, then it is socialism.

We are only arguing matters of degree and methodology.