I am always open to critical thinking. If you have suggestions i am open to seeing where you get your info. I am going off the seat of my pants here so feel free to tear me apart, i dont care.

I am trying to flesh out the difference between something like democratic socialism and social democracy. My understanding of capitalism itself is the idea of being able to invest in goods within a laissez faire market. My understanding of socialism is the opposite… the people are not persuaded to invest nor compete because they dont need to. In a social democracy you accept capitalism and all its facets with the difference that non excludable/rivalrous goods gets widened to include more rivalrous options. In a democratic socialist state, exludable goods move to non excludable so commodities like personal wealth gets shifted to governed wealth. So in a democratic socialist notion, they would not want to be rivalrous and give less power to the free market but that just means they are capable of not requiring capitalism.

Now we get to Cuba and their issues with money. It seems that they need capitalism in this sense that they can trade. I am ignorant here but i dont think the wealth of these trades is not trickling down to the people. They still have a caste system. They still have more profitable job positions. It makes me think that the term socialism is a term that doesnt even work here either. Again, assume I dont know anything.

Mind you, i know that China calls itself a social democracy rather than socialist or democratic socialist. Wonder on your opinion on that.

Edit: rereading the chain i am seeing this is diverging a bit. It may be that Laos or Vietnam may have war time problems that have lingered for generations but I dont see how Cuba is still effected. The only problem they had was a trade embargo to my understanding.