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ShardPhoenix comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong Discussion
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I feel like using Scandanavia as an example of "socialism" is not really accurate - they're capitalist welfare states with slightly higher taxes than other capitalist welfare states.
How would you handle this?
Socialism - workers own the means of production. (Although according to Wikipedia, "There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.")
Communism - No markets/the state determines what is produced.
That definition of "socialism" conflicts with the platforms of parties caling themselves "socialist", which is probably what most people using that label have in mind.
There are other confusing things in the survey draft, for example, UK Labour party, which is used as example of liberalism (in the American sense), is affiliated with the Party of European Socialists, the exact same group the Swedish Social Democratic Party (which, I suppose, is used as an example of socialism) also belongs to. Which group do other PES-affiliated parties belong to? Am I correct that by making categories "liberalism" and "socialism", Scott tried to capture the distinction between "mainstream centre-left" and "those that are further to the left than mainstream centre-left" (e.g. GUE/NGL group)? Although I might be unfamiliar with whether left wing people themselves perceive this as an important distinction. I would be very surprised if ~30 percent of LWers self identified as socialists in "workers own the means of production" sense rather than "voting for a PES-affiliated (or equivalent) party" sense.
Just because two parties affiliate doesn't mean they are pursuing identical policies.
If this is intended as a question about existing political clusters, then I think you should merge the "Liberal" and "Socialist" options; I don't think people see them as separate positions (at least in my country) in the same way as Conservative/Libertarian.
If this is really just a question about the left-right economic axis, then let's make it one, viz:
"Which of the following most closely describes your position on economic freedom vs. wealth redistribution?"
Here in France, "liberal" is a slur used by left-wingers against anybody suspected of liking the free market (there used to be right-wing politicians claiming that label, I haven't seen any in the recent elections)
Agree. Here is the Heritage foundation ranking of countries by economic freedom. The Heritage foundation's libertarian perspective views Scandanavia reasonably favorably. And they include tax rates in their analysis:
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Even though the tax rates in America and Scandinavia are similar, the way they're spent is very different: IIUC in the US more money is spent on means-tested transfer payments and in Scandinavia more money is spent on public services like healthcare and education.
Scandanavia is pretty much what people using the word socialiam in the modern world refer to. Although it have have a different historical definition it would probably cause confusion to use it.