But also,

Citizen 2: [lists actual socialist policies while avoiding certain key words]

Capitalists: I can get behind that.

The most persuasive people I’ve seen don’t use that word often. They directly link peoples concerns to inequality (unfair taxation and employment laws), climate ( fossil fuel companies) and unregulated abusive businesses such as big tech.

This is the way. Lefty movements have rightly been criticized for being too academic. Expressing people's concerns in a more relatable and practical way gets more people on board.

If you’re willing to go “you’re absolutely right! What a good point!” every time the person you’re talking to aligns with you even a little bit like “you’re absolutely right, you work so hard it’s completely unfair you’re taxes are so high… and the taxes of the wealthy are so low in comparison!” they feel smart and validated and might not even notice you tacked on your own commentary and also avoid buzz words it’s actually not that difficult to talk to people in an effective way.

I've found "You work all day and get a small salary. The business owner sits around, and gets a huge payout. Does that seem fair?" is moderately effective.

They sound like my family. God forbid there be "socialized" healthcare that the "leeches" can benefit from, but also insurance sucks and doesn't pay for anything and whoops now we have medical debt.

They don't want their tax dollars to subsidize the care of anyone they think is less deserving than them, while they begrudgingly accept having to pay hundreds of dollars each month on an insurance plan that won't even cover the care they need.

And they want to see every change introduced by Obamacare undone, so, have fun going back to insurance plans that can deny you coverage just because you have a preexisting condition that they don't want to pay for.

...i always ask providers up-front what is my cost without using any insurance versus my out-of-pocket cost after insurance, and most of the time it's substantially cheaper not to use insurance at all even though it won't count toward my deductible...

...those private-industry middlemen are a huge burden on the healthcare system, and they persist only because their costs are hidden from patients...

The thing about the slow way is that it's too readily reversible, and since the existing order allows the wealthy who would lose under such policies to consolidate power quite easily, those changes can be undone much more easily than they can be made.

And there’s the third method: subsume it from within. Build a capitalistic product that depreciates a category and eliminates demand, thus rendering entire industries and their related activities obsolete.

It’s why renewable energy is being fought tooth and nail.

Edit: and no, this is not my response to “fastest way to socialism”, this is more like “how to speed-run post-scarcity”

Just depreciate the worthless stuff. If the average person doesn’t need petroleum then that’s 1 less need they have to take care of. If electricity is so cheap from overproduction then it’s practically free.

And here’s where it gets controversial and I start getting downvotes on principle: AI is part of that.

policies cannot always benefit everyone. e.g. wealth tax won't benefit the wealthy, consumer protection won't benefit the corporates

Said it better than I could.

People are greedy; greedy for any resource they can control. Today it’s money. It could easily be something else.

“But they wouldn’t be allowed to!” They’re not allowed to do what they do now, but they force courts and opinions to work otherwise.

No seriously, if you pull off enough masks all of societies problems are just money and xenophobia in varying degrees.

I just spent 7 weeks researching organ shortages in the US for a class. Turns out live donations go up dramatically if you reimburse people for the money they lose while doing the procedures and families are more willing to donate the organs of the dead if they are told they're going to a similar demographic as them.

Homelessness? "Those people" don't deserve human rights and they don't have the money for housing. Xenophobia and money.

Opioid crisis? The pharma companies knew there were addictive and factored that into their push to get doctors to prescribe them like candy. This has been proven by internal documentation released in court. Money.

White supremacy? Don't even have to explain it. Xenophobia.

Rise of Facism? Xenophobia exploited for money.

Pay gaps between men and women? Xenophobia because women aren't taken seriously and money because it benefits the company to pay someone less.

Stagnant wages? Xenophobia because rich people don't think poors deserve money and money because they get more if we get less.

Racism in America? Xenophobia and money. Most racists are just raised to hate by previous generations. If you go back far enough for those you find that the hate came from considering the other as property and by turning them into people you hurt the owner's money. The seed was money and the fruit is xenophobia.

Christian nationalism? It looks like xenophobia but Surpise! It's money. Religious capitalism is the idea that God rewards those w who are holy and what better reward than wealth? So if you're poor, it's because god doesn't like you which means you're evil.

It is literally money and hate all the way down.