some of these media outlets manipulate public opinion.

majority of the public can't differentiate between commerce & capitalism. nor socialism vs 'free markets'.

the non-gullible people know it's not just about this vs that - but ultimately who controls what. ideally you want a system where no individual player or a few players can tip the system.

the Chinese system is probably the closest to that - but then the CCP exists :( . a large player that can tip the scales. but for the rest of the businesses - it's dog eat dog - the better ones that survive are suited to serve the population while aligned to the goals of the population for a good part.

The caveat for anyone outside of the United States is that what they call "socialism" is really just capitalism with a welfare state.

Which the US has anyway, albeit in a patchier form than other countries, and with welfare handed out more to corporations and "sponsors" than individuals.

I don't see how a shared currency (between poor and rich states, with the subsidy flows that implies), a national air-traffic control system and the interstates, amongst many other features, are not "socialism".

The majority of federal government spending is a wealth transfer to old and poor people:

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

It's not always clear who controls the means of production. It certainly isn't always the people who formally is supposed to - whether we're talking about a "capitalist" or "socialist" government.

Socialism is only for the super-duper rich, the 0.001%. Too big to fail, trickle down economics and all that.

Capitalism for the poor, you gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps. If you ain't successful, you aren't working hard enough.

Makes me wonder how many of the complaints about capitalism are really about corruption, and if people would have a more favorable view of it if we didn't have this system of interlocking directorships, revolving public/private appointments, regulatory capture, and backroom handshakes between government and corporations that seems to shut many Americans out of the capitalist wealth-creation engine.

I’m thinking any human made system implies corruption

I agree with the sentiment, but that's really about welfare, not socialism. You can still have welfare in a state where control of the means of production is in a few, private hands. As I recall some big ideologues of capitalism wanted that, or at least took it for granted that we would have to have it for the system to be stable.

The capitalism vs socialism debate was settled in the 1980s, and so was the value of free enterprise. It is odd that the debate should keep being brought up...

However, the terms should also be clearly defined in such poll because indeed the average person may have their own understanding, not least in the US.

People really need to give up the cold war, the failures of "end of history" thinking are directly related to all of the economic problems we have today.

We could do - have done - much worse than implementing some good sense social safety net measures. Especially as people advocate for AI and using it to replace/disempower employees.

> People really need to give up the cold war, the failures of "end of history" thinking are directly related to all of the economic problems we have today.

That's irrelevant to the point.

The 1980s did settle the capitalism vs. socialism debate. The USSR and, perhaps more consequentially, China effectively abandonned socialism because it failed and acknowledged that capitalism, free enterprise, and the free market was what worked.

The "end of history" is the belief (proved wrong if not naively wrong from the start) that this would lead to everyone being "friends" under a Western-style liberal democracy.

> We could do - have done - much worse than implementing some good sense social safety net measures.

I don't understand what you are getting at unless you consider that socialism = "social safety net measures", which it isn't but, as mentioned, it seems that many in the US think it is...

The USSR had nothing to do with socialism (it was a feudal dictatorship) and it's debatable whether China is now capitalist.

If that’s really the case, then white males have a lot to answer for, and some soul-searching to do. There is nothing intrinsically non-white about socialism. Plenty of whites in Europe find it perfectly acceptable.

Is this a self-report or what’s your point?

Socialism is when the government does stuff

If it does stuff for poor people it's communism. If it does stuff for rich people it's capitalism.

Premier example: enforcement of abstract property rights. This is Big Government™ but since most holders of abstract property rights are rich people, it's capitalism.