America’s brain-rotting socialism debate

The rising influence of democratic socialists like AOC and Zohran Mamdani, and the fervent defense of free markets by Republicans in response, have reopened an old question: what is the best way to organize a modern economy, capitalism or socialism? But that is the wrong question. The right question is: what hybrid of capitalism and socialism — and nonprofit philanthropy and family self-help — can best serve a modern economy? Only socialist radicals and their sibling rivals, libertarians, mistakenly believe that we have to choose between pure socialism and pure capitalism. In technological societies, what has been called the “mixed economy” is clearly superior, combining technological dynamism and private initiative with social solidarity, industrial policy, and infrastructure and human de