But "socialism" is a scary word

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To me, left means progressive reform, so leftists definitely aren't the anarchists or authoritarians who rant all day and night about the capitalism boogeyman.

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But have you read enough theory? I think you need to read more of the theory.

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So the government who regulates is simultaneously the enemy of and the definition of capitalists?

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What a dumb question. Ya'll really act like that dude is obligated to give you a free economics lesson with such a vague pointless question.

On a broad scale any economy is simply how money is created and used.

When the federal state has complete control over the money supply and dictates how it is allocated to firms in various markets, as is the case in both "socialist" dictatorships and social democracies: the channel through which your labor is bought is purely through the government via offices and contract bids with industry suits attempting to maximize profits for themselves.

When the federal state takes a more unregulated hands off approach: the channel through which your labor is bought is purely through industry suits attempting to maximize profits for themselves.

Anarchist Society theoretically works very different, but they tend to only exist for about 5 minutes before devolving into the former case.

When the federal state takes a highly regulated and invested approach ("The Market System"): your labor is bought via your association to one or more of a series of small firms competing to fill demands to maximize profits for themselves. Some industries are allowed to operate at larger "economy of scale" for the sake of efficiency but ideally such a state wouldn't allow businesses to grow too large and would tax them such that doing so much more work would yield fast diminishing returns on investment.

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"The government did all the nice things you mention" you don't get it, that's not the government doing things, all of those are mechanisms for democracy that barely exist in western countries. You're basically saying "well yeah those things did exist, but have you considered that you get to vote for republicans/democrats (US) or socialdemocrats/christian-conservatives (EU) every 4 years to decide which of the two parties will apply austerity policy?" You're not talking about democracy, you're talking about electoralism, yes we have electoralismo in the west more than they had in the USSR, it's just that electoralism isn't democracy.

committed genocides, mass starvation

Not true, there's not one case of genocide committed by the USSR. There was famine in the preindustrial soviet union during the period of land collectivisation, but guess what, there's famine everywhere in preindustrial societies recurringly, and once the country industrialised, hunger disappeared.

massively oppressed its people

Again, revisionism. We are literally living in an era in which the NSA has access to your information in a digital database, and in which the government will happily tell you how they use facial recognition on protests to see who's protesting. There are literally more people in jail in the USA TODAY than there were in Gulags at the peak of the gulag system.

spent so much on its military

The academic consensus is that the USSR constantly tried to put an end to the arms race with the US, at times going as far as unilaterally reducing their nuclear arsenal, which the US never corresponded back. The militaristic empire which forced huge military expenditure in the USSR was none other than the USA, and again, that's academic consensus. Fucking Zbigniew Brzezinski used to brag about that himself.

they crashed the economy

Again, ahistorical bullshit that you've never even bothered to look into. The USSR NEVER suffered a crisis after WW2, the only time that there were some problems economically was during the liberalization process in Perestroika, towards the end of the soviet union. It's the illegal and antidemocratic dismantling of the eastern block its centrally planned economy which drove the economy to the gutter and ended the lives of millions of people through unemployment, lack of basic goods, lack of healthcare, homelessness, alcoholism and suicide. Seriously, do a quick search, look at the historic GDP of the USSR/Russia, and tell me when it falls, before or after 1991.

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~~capitalists~~ the upper class. This exists in communism and every other system as well.

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The only real problem I have with capitalism is the people that refuse to consider any other way of operating, or immediately make it a binary choice between capitalism and “scary” communism.

Economic systems don’t need to be corralled into boxes and never be allowed cross lines. The people forcing that take are the ones profiting from the status quo, by power and/or wealth.

Any of the systems can be combined, the problem is fight against greed that makes people bend the system to funnel power money to a specific group. Whether it be the dictator and his cronies or a bunch of oligarchs. If this cannot be prevented, then no system will work without eventually crushing the average person.

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Exactly. Greed and self-interest are not eliminated by changing economic systems. They wil justl manifest differently (for example, the nomenklatura in the USSR).

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Socialism invariably fails and ends ups corrupted into some shithole authoritarianism decorated with leftie-sounding slogans. It is however meant to do the greatest good for the greatest number, it's just that in practice in the real world it's crap at it so it doesn't work because of human nature.

Capitalism doesn't even try to do the greatest good for the greatest number - it's quite literally The Sociopath's Credo: only care about what's best for yourself.

Ultimately they both fail at making most people's lives better, but Capitalism doesn't even try.

The best we've achieved has been Capitalism narrowly applied to just Trade and overseen by some other separate political theory that actually tries in some way to go towards the greatest good for the greatest number, such as Social Democracy, but as we've been seeing right now in realtime, with enough time Capitalism ultimately grounds down such bounds and oversight and corrupts everything.

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"It's either fully privatised Healthcare or it's Stalinism"

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Does Kerala (though only a state and receives national funds) or Allendé's Chile (Overthrown by US supported military coup after a couple of years) count, or do they not for the reasons in brackets or others?

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We can at least agree that it was a dictatorship under Stalin, right?

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Capitalism is private control over the factors of production. So you can for example have a socialist society in which the factors of production are owned by the community, but there's still markets and commerce.

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Was it not improved by upgrading from Feudalism to Capitalism?

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We have no choice but to compare imperfect systems and pick something.

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Raises below inflation

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I have definitely read enough to not write something as incoherent as

No....not everyone hates capitalism. Everyone hates uncontrolled capitalism

and just proving the OP's post right.

I think you need to read more of the theory.

I truly could not care less about the opinion of someone like you who is defending capitalism with such passion in these comments

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Leading to lack of material resources?

Here’s some socialists feeling the effects of centrally-controlled economic distributuon:

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There’s nothing capitalist about American healthcare. If we had a free market I’d be able to buy my antidepressants ($15/mo) without seeing a doctor ($120).

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At first, yes. To make that shift you have to throw the aristocracy, and perhaps a monarchy here or there, into the trash and divvy up the spoils. Over time, the new system can (and some say will inevitably) revert. Once you have enough wealth concentration in the hands of a few, you essentially re-create an aristocracy and the feudal system that goes with it.

It can also be argued that a feudal system is capitalist to begin with. Land and laborers to work it, used to be the key deciding factor in wealth and therefore, power. Wars are where you steal land from others, assuming control of the people that live on it, thereby securing more wealth and power. The industrial revolution saw a gradual shift towards energy production and consumption as a defining factor. So still somewhat land based, but with very different constraints and far less dependence on who lives on it. Now, in the late information age, access to energy and data are emerging as the main deciding factors. But it's also not hard to imagine players that have the most access to energy and data as feudal lords, provided they can influence politics and people's lives in the same way a feudal system can (just without borders). And all of that is top-to-bottom running within a capitalist framework.

Did we improve things? Well, moving towards a central government that supports an actual justice system that isn't prey to your employer or landlord's whims (feudal lord) is a huge win. For instance in the UK, that happened a long time ago. In practice, I think that is still mostly true, but there are some lingering artifacts and maybe even some creep backwards. Consider de-facto class systems, institutionalized bigotry, and racism. On balance, I'd say yes, but I can't say with certainty that it's an absolute win.