Capitalism

Capitalism is great. We've all bought a lot of cool stuff thanks to capitalism. Only naïve, ahistorical ideologues want to get rid of capitalism completely.

But due to perverse incentives and short-sighted economic benchmarks like GDP, capitalism does not always march in the direction of more happiness and well-being for society.

The ideal economic system combines a free market economy for industry and commerce with socialist institutions where the free market incentives break down.

In order to bridge the gap between the academic definition of Capitalism and the common understanding and usage of the term, we can consider any system that offers private property ownership and the ability for individuals to buy and sell shares in public companies is Capitalism. Only when 100% of all capital is controlled by workers or the state should we say that we no longer have Capitalism, only Socialism.

Since any actual economic system has some worker ownership, some state ownership, and some private ownership, we should really consider all of them to be hybrids of Capitalism and Socialism and all debate should be over how much control over capital the state and workers should have relative to the capitalists, and which mechanisms will allow for equitable sharing of capital and profits while minimizing negative consequences (i.e. major social upheaval).

Acknowledging the fact that a mixed economy is still Capitalism even if we were to implement every economic policy advocated by mainstream Democratic Socialists will go a long way towards easing the fears of the millions of people that have have a Pavlovian negative reaction to anything Socialist.