First the spectrum, as I see it. At one extreme is communism, where the means of production and all control of it are by "the workers". The reality of this is that it is impossible. If the group is too large, decisionmaking becomes dangerously unweildy and in too many cases (the presidential election of 2016 is illustrative) easily subverted by shortsighted manipulations. Attempts to implement this have invariably led to brutal dictatorships. At the other end is laissez faire capitalism. This too is impossible. If cheating is tolerated, cheaters will win, which rarely works out for the rest of us. All attempts at being too capitalist have also ended in dictatorship (e.g. mid-70s Chile).
The right answer, therefor, lies somewhere in the middle. Enough free enterprise to foster innovation, but enough regulation to inhibit market failures, such as monopoly or inadequate service, and to take over industries when market failure has occurred.
There are plainly some industries which cannot be left to the free market. National defense is an example. Private armies are either too powerful to be allowed to serve their own selfish purposes, or too weak to be useful in a real crisis. A good case can be made that Rome fell and ended western civilization for a millennium because it had private armies. Fire safety has a similar problem. Many people go through life without ever needing the services of the fire department. But when they do, they need them in a hurry and they need a lot of expensive service. Lots of people, if allowed to make the choice, would choose to not pay for a private fire department and most of them would get away with it. But because fires tend to spread, we cannot allow this. At the same time, there are lots of industries that do perfectly well in a competitive free market, including ones that provide services and equipment to the nationalized industries. Think of companies that build fire trucks and military transports.
This middle ground does not really have a good name. The best is "Democratic Socialist", or sometimes "Social Democrat", but that's both too long and misses the target. True Socialism would have public ownership of too much of business. Democracy too is impossible for groups larger than a few hundred: we need to have a representative democracy, also known as a Republic.
I don't have a good suggestion for a better name: for now Democratic Socialist will have to do. It's important to recognize that as a Democratic Socialist I'm advocating the least amount of national ownership of the means of production as possible while preventing market failure. Capitalism, within limits, is a very good thing. But only through active, competent regulation can market failures be minimized, and only through active, competent management can those failures be corrected.
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The list of industries which have had market failures is extremely long. Here are a few:
The military, Police and Fire departments. Thomas Jefferson and others thought these functions could be served by a militia. It didn't work. The civil war was the crisis that ended the illusion.
Highways. Without government highways, we'd have very few of them. They help the economy enormously, but few would pay for them.
Transit. There are no urban transit systems which pay for themselves, but a large fraction of people are dependent upon them.
Railroads are so amazingly efficient that they can almost make it on their own, even competing with government funded highways. US railroads have had numerous market failures over the years which have required government intervention.
Telecommunications is most efficient as a monopoly, but this leads to gouging and other problems. Regulation worked brilliantly in the middle part of the 20th century, but we're back to monopolies again.
Medical insurance. Attempting to leave it to private insurance has doubled the cost and left about around 1/3rd of the population under or un insured. Nearly all insurance is in market failure, but medical is the worst.
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