Does anybody here have an interest in macroeconomics?

[rva_jeremy]

A forced, coerced socialism is anti-free will - just a different form of tyranny for at least a minority of the population of a country..  Of course, I would be delighted to change my mind if you have a better idea. 

Yes, but that's all we've had -- just like we've only had a forced, coerced capitalism. Lenin admitted as much back at the beginning of the USSR -- the whole "socialism in one country" idea was an admission that socialism couldn't work the way it was supposed to, that is, across national boundaries. The entire body of global capital conspired against the USSR, forcing it into autarky. This is where Stalin's nationalist chauvinist militarist version of communism, which anybody who has studied socialism's 100 year history up to that point knows is the exact opposite of what almost all socialists, at least those since the second international, stood for. Internationalism and labor struggle across national borders has ALWAYS been the larger program.

What you had in the USSR was essentially a capitalist system with a single capitalist, based on a very unrevolutionary attempt to simply build a socialist version of the Western economies. The Soviet Union was supposed to be a union of independent soviets or worker councils loyal to their own workers. It was the need to mobilize against the resistance of the world and eventually Germany that created the Stalinist nightmare.

I'm sympathetic to arguments that we've never had a real capitalist system, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a vision of ideal capitalism I find appealing. Since capitalism is based upon inequality and power differentials by definition, I have a hard time understanding the appeal. I'm an ex-hard-right-libertarian, I'm reasonably versed in Friedman, Hayek, Von Mises, Rothbard, etc. and I understand the planning problems that socialism has, but that always seemed to me to be beside the point.

I'm looking forward to a new century where we can toss out outmoded 19th century Marxist old ideas about what's possible and start thinking freshly. Unionizing factory workers is the past. Look at how the coordination of the internet would make certain types of planning and economic cooperation much more likely. I mean, crowdfunding is essentially socialist finance, using the network effect to raise capital instead of promising a return on investment.