What are /r/SocialDemocracy's favorite Products & Services?

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John Kenneth Galbraith on wikipedia:

> John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OC (15 October 1908 – 29 April 2006) was a Canadian and later, U.S., economist, public official and diplomat, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism.

>His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual. In macro-economical terms he was a Keynesian and an institutionalist.

> Galbraith's main ideas focused around the influence of the market power of large corporations. He believed that this market power weakened the widely accepted principle of consumer sovereignty, allowing corporations to be price makers, rather than price takers, allowing corporations with the strongest market power to increase the production of their goods beyond an efficient amount.

>In <em>The Affluent Society</em> Galbraith asserts that classical economic theory was true for the eras before the present, which were times of "poverty"; now, however, we have moved from an age of poverty to an age of "affluence", and for such an age, a completely new economic theory is needed. Galbraith's main argument is that as society becomes relatively more affluent, so private business must "create" consumer demand through advertising, and while this generates artificial affluence through the production of commercial goods and services, the public sector becomes neglected.

pimps are not managers. In Germany, where prostitution is legal, pimping is still illegal.

This is the law in regards to pimping.

>Pursuant to Section 181a (1) No. 1, anyone who exploits another person engaged in prostitution is liable to prosecution for pimping.
>
>Exploitation is defined as any action aimed at forcing another person to perform sexual acts through the use of an appropriate means of pressure. For example, intimidation, the use or threat of violence, blackmail or deprivation of liberty may be considered as means of pressure.
>
>Pursuant to Section 181a, Paragraph 1, No. 2 of the Criminal Code, a further variant of the offense is punishment of anyone who, for his own pecuniary gain, either
>
>supervises another person in the practice of prostitution,
>
>determines the place, time, extent or other circumstances of the practice of prostitution, or
>
>takes measures to prevent another from giving up prostitution.
>
>With regard to the previously mentioned acts, the perpetrator must then additionally maintain a relationship with the person that goes beyond the mere individual case. A certain continuity is therefore required. Consequently, anyone who commits the acts described above merely once is not liable to prosecution for pimping.
>
>Section 181a (2) of the Criminal Code stipulates that a person is liable to prosecution for pimping if he or she interferes with the personal or economic independence of another person by facilitating the prostitution of another person on a commercial basis by arranging sexual contacts. Thus, anyone who maintains a trade aimed at this fulfills the offense variant according to paragraph 2.
>
>Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

So in essence a pimp is someone who exploits prostitutes.

Appropriation is pretty much a core tennet of anarcho-capitalism, so that makes sense.

> "[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.... What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent."

• Ayn Rand. Source: &quot;Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974&quot;

I read Chang's book over the summer. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants an easy-to-read alternative in the discussion of contemporary economics.

Here are Chang's 23 things. I personally thought #4 was the most profound.

1. There is no such thing as a free market
2. Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners
3. Most people in rich countries are paid more than they should be
4. The washing machine has changed the world more than the Internet has
5. Assume the worst about people and you get the worst
6. Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable
7. Free market policies rarely make poor countries rich
8. Capital has a nationality
9. We do not live in a post industrial age
10. The US does not have the highest living standard in the world
11. Africa is not destined for underdevelopment
12. Governments can pick winners
13. Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer
14. US managers are overpriced
15. People in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries
16. We are not smart enough to leave things to the market
17. More education in itself is not going to make a country richer
18. What is good for General Motors is not necessarily good for the United States
19. Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies
20. Equality of opportunity may not be fair
21. Big government makes people more open to change
22. Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient
23. Good economic policy does not require good economists

EDIT: WorldCat link

Mazzucato's &quot;The Entrepreneurial State&quot; is also very good

That is true, but I still remember the impact of Perot on the world of the early 90's. It did show him as a factor in the election, so much so that it got Clinton elected by pulling lots of conservatives his way. Heck, in my home state of Alaska, Clinton came in third in the election!

But you are correct in the fearmongering, I think a good way to counter it would be to use as many psych/cog sci tricks as possible. Ever read the book, "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely? Brilliant look at ways to get someone thinking in a particular direction in order to make your preferred choice. Perhaps we can put the geniuses to work?

No. This is a self-fulfilling frame of mind. There is no way to really replace unions because good unions represent concentrated working class power. Strong unions are one of very few ways to truly tilt the power equation in favor of average people.

https://www.amazon.com/No-Shortcuts-Organizing-Power-Gilded/dp/019062471X

I'm curious where you get this info, where you're from, etc (in terms of what the socialist leanings of present soc parties are).

I've researched this quite a bit when I was working on my PhD coursework, and I have a book I'll recommend you: The Nordic Model of Social Democracy by Brandal, Bratberg, and Thorsen (2013) which breaks down who soc dems are, and what they stand for, and what their goals are--all of which are at odds with what you shared. I recommend you read at least some of the book, then share your sources for your beliefs with me. I will caution--they talk about this issue with much more subtlety than you'll find on a subreddit, but even then, you should come away seeing the issue with your claims above.

The book is expensive, though I do think you can find a PDF online.

It's likely that most of the people spewing pro-Kremlin propaganda, bot left wing and rigth wing don't exist in the first place. Many of the most popular political subreddits are likely to be terminally infested by Russian bots, which only goal is to make pro-Kremlin narrative more mainstream.

In Finland existence of St. Petersburg trollfactory has been well known fact after the book of Jessikka Aro. These trolls are not very effective in Finland due to language barrier, which makes spotting these quite easy. Unfortunately this isn't the case in the English speaking world.

> I maintain that the government is incredibly expensive and incredibly inefficient.

I've started businesses, and I've helped run businesses, and I've worked in businesses, and I can assure you that businesses are incredibly inefficient. I wrote a fairly popular book about one particular disaster, and the reason the book is popular is because so many people who've worked at tech startups recognize that this story is emblematic of the many problems one runs into with small businesses. Please consider How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps:

https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/

It was 800 bases in 2016:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143109936/

We lost a few in Afghanistan and Iraq. We've opened only one new one that I'm aware of. If you think there are more than 800 then I'd like to see your source of data.

Far too complex a topic to get into on Reddit, but the speed of iteration is increased when work is brought in-house. A great book on the subject of the agility of industrial supply chains:

https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics/dp/1567202640/

His description of whaling ships in the 1800s is amazing and eye opening -- that chapter by itself is worth getting the book.

I've only read excerpts of these two books, but they are exactly what you're looking for.

https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Center-American-Liberalism-1968-1992/dp/0813142296?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_dls

https://www.amazon.com/Revival-Labor-Liberalism-Andrew-Battista/dp/0252032322

It's worth asking, what is the alternative? Because the era of neoliberalism has been brutal to the global south. The people who suffer the most from austerity are in the global south. By contrast, the hight tide of social democracy in the West, the era before 1970, was also a golden age of rising real living standards in the global south. For a detailed few of how neoliberalism has effected Senegal, see "Bottleneck: Moving, Building, and Belonging in an African City"
by Caroline Melly

https://www.amazon.com/Bottleneck-Moving-Building-Belonging-African/dp/022648890X/

There is a Continental tradition that tends to draw a distinction between capital and the market. I associate this especially with Fernand Braudel, though the idea was widespread before his career started:

https://www.amazon.com/Structures-Everyday-Life-Civilization-Capitalism/dp/0060148454/

But he certainly expressed the idea well. In his model, "capitalism" only refers to monopoly powers, or near monopoly powers, the kinds of large organizations that are likely to have close ties with the government.

The marketplace is completely different. The market includes the town cobbler, the tailor, the various bakeries, the store that sold Braudel a newspaper each morning (an example he gives). The kind of formal institutions and organizations that apply to large firms would not automatically apply to businesses that are authentically part of the marketplace. These smaller firms could, rather easily, get rid of all non-family workers and become purely family run businesses -- which is why efforts to unionize these firms are likely to run into the Law Of Diminishing Returns.

It doesn't really matter if Braudel is right or wrong. Until we've unionized 100% of large monopoly organizations, we should postpone any conversation about unionizing what might be a slightly over-sized family business.

An interesting book with a whole chapter devoted to Singapore:

https://www.amazon.com/China-Model-Political-Meritocracy-Democracy/dp/0691173044/

> That said, would this apply to citizens voting out dictators (which was more what I had in mind) or just immoral and corrupt leaders

I'm currently reading this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107441099/

I can probably give a more intelligent answer once I'm done reading the book. I'll review it on my weblog at some point in February.

For now, I'll simply note, most of the big anti-corruption campaigns of the last 60 years have been lead by elites. Most notably, what we saw in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. I think the case with Hong Kong is the most famous. Between 1970 and 1990 the general perception of it, among the international business community, is that it went from being one of the most corrupt entrepôts in Asia to one of the least. And this was very much a top-down reform.

Likewise, between 1990 and 2010 many nations in Europe tried to clean up their act, so as to gain membership in the EU. While that project had the support of the public, it was also very much an elite driven effort.

I'm struggling to think of such a clean-cut case of a successful anti-corruption movement that arose entirely from an election.

On my weblog, I'm currently doing a multi-part review of this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240/

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, 2016

by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels

Their subtitle is "Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government" and they provide overwhelming evidence regarding why our current systems of voting do not produce responsive governments.

Those of us who are on the Left can respond to such research in 1 of 2 ways:

1. We can live in a cave, ignore the evidence, reject reality, and tell ourselves comfortable myths
2. We can invent new systems of voting that solve the problems that have been identified and thus give us responsive government.

If you don't want fix the obvious problems in our systems of voting, then you hate democracy, not me.

> Got a link to a credible report?

You can take your pick from Reuters, NY times, to local papers. It's notable multiple bias checkers rate Reuters as very high in factual reporting, and they note that it is partially due to climate change and inaction. Not alarmist or collapsenik blog news at all

Is it not like getting any attention by outside eyes? Ik even Newfoundland's similar event yesterday got attention locally, but I live on the border, so we kinda pay attention to our neighbors when they report they're pre-emptively determining evacuation plans. Quebec and Ontario saved my city several times, and if anything happens to our neighbors up north we're all happy to return the favor

You probably know about Gabriel Kolko's take on this? The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916? Over the last few decades I think his book became a kind of canonical text on the question, especially among those of us on the Left. You have some new take on this question?

https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

Do you know about Harry Hopkins? He was FDR's right-hand man during the 1930s, and he worked to push FDR to the left. If you're looking for what something like Social Democracy in the USA could look like, this is the best book I know of:

https://www.amazon.com/ROOSEVELTS-HOPKINS-VOLUMES-Robert-Sherwood/dp/B001ULKIDM/ref=sr_1_3?crid=RG3T5CT0BI3Q&amp;keywords=Roosevelt+and+Hopkins&amp;qid=1640633986&amp;sprefix=roosevelt+and+hopkins%2Caps%2C71&amp;sr=8-3

It's out of print now, but you can still find used copies on Amazon. It includes a large amount of writing by Hopkins, which is I think is as close as you will find to a "manifesto" for American Social Democracy.

The headline of the thread starter speaks of "most voters," not of most members of political parties. https://www.npr.org/2016/02/28/467961962/sick-of-political-parties-unaffiliated-voters-are-changing-politics

Both members of the Republican Party and and members of the Democratic Party have been splitting along ideological lines, including former Democrats who began leaving the Party decades ago, with a fresh batch Demexiting after the primary.

A number of Bernie Sanders' supporters voted for Trump, some simply to try to stop election of another New Democrat and some because they believed his Right Wing populist campaign promises

Finally, I don't trust Vox.

Let me know if this is the kind of thing you were looking for. It wasn't clear from your post if you were trying to find something like a simplified explainer like <em>Marx for Beginners</em> or something that elaborates and fleshes out stuff Marx talked about but didn't get into serious detail on.

I don't know if you're willing to spend money on this, but there's a book titled "The Politics Book" that is published by DK. Its a great place to start understanding the more complex parts of different political ideologies. It doesn't discuss ideologies in the format of, say, socialism then liberalism than marxism. Instead it explores certain political ideas as espoused by various historical figures. So, there are sections on Martin Luther King, Jr., Confucius, Thomas Aquinas, Simon Bolivar, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard Bernstein, Rosa Luxembourg, etc. Each figure and their ideas have anywhere between one to six/eight pages dedicated to them.

The Politics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained: DK: 9781465402141: Amazon.com: Books

I've only read a chapter or so, included in this. I've not bought it myself, as it seemed a bit dated to me.

I'm gonna piggyback off of this and recommend Nathan Robinson's book Why you Should be a Socialist. The whole book is written directly addressing those skeptical of socialism.

His point is related to OPs. There is a tradition of socialism, including in the United States, and the US socialists have a pretty good track record. Calling oneself a socialist doesn't bind one to a strict set of policy proposals, more to a shared belief that a better world is possible. He directly addresses social democrats in the book, pointing out that we want a lot of the same things, and that as our situation evolves (and hopefully improves) we will have to work together to determine the way forward.

It was very carefully argued, and in a more approachable way than I am able to do when I explain my beliefs. He's also funny. Without embracing every view that Robinson advocates for, I came to understand and respect those views.

> Cynically, because it costs us the votes of the industrial workers who lose their jobs back in our developed countries, all for the sake of increased profit margins that our governments won't see a cent of in taxes thanks to "fiscal optimisation".

I highly recommend the book The New Geography of Jobs

Having manufacturing jobs over seas actually helps our poorer workers in Americans because they are the ones that typically buy consumer electronics and other manufactured goods in other countries. Globalism isn't the problem. The problem is economic forces lead to some cities booming while some cities busting (white collar workers flock to certain cities and run away from certain cities). The other problem is that our welfare system is set up to disincentivize people to move to where there is tons of demand for them.

To add on top of this, if globalism never happened, these low skill manufacturing jobs in America would still be going away. The very nature of white collar workers having a higher output and becoming richer increases the demand for American labor which means our low skilled manufacturing workers would eventually still need to switch to a service type of job since it pays so much better.

This book opened my eyes and it is kind of sad to see how wrong everyone is when it comes to how jobs work. The solution to so many of America's economic problems is just subsidizing education more and more. This helps every American. The returns in economic growth is insane for us.

I consider Eduard Bernstein the father of social democracy (or at leas of the more socialist wing of it which I belong to).

His works may be hard to swallow at first, so I would recommend a great introduction to him called The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx by Peter Gay. Unfortunately, I can't find it online, but it might be available in your local library.

I have both editions of the book and there's nothing in there (sadly) that is outdated. The Kindle or electronic edition of OR will be roughly the same price of Outsider in the House also.

Sanders is writing a new book, Our Revolution, so check that out. His Outsider in the [White] House is also good.

In general I like Owen Jones' critical approach to Labour/Corbyn but in my view he doesn't go nearly far enough. Jacobin's coverage of non-U.S. countries and struggles in my opinion is generally terrible but their U.S.-focused material is generally acceptable.