The left, right, and center disagree on the merits of socialism. But these disagreements are often impenetrable, as they rarely even agree which countries are socialist. Socialist-skeptics point to Venezuela as an example of socialism run amok, while socialists point to the Nordics as evidence of its virtues. To counter the obvious success of the Nordics, some will define them as actually capitalist. The capitalism-or-socialism binary gets further complicated as debaters introduce terms like “welfare state capitalism,” “social democracy,” “democratic socialism,” “state capitalism,” “state socialism,” and more. This debate doesn’t get any clearer among self-identified socialists, as many have their own pet definitions. With such barriers in the discourse, how can we possibly measure how people experience socialism?
Instead of cramming countries into a discrete buckets of “socialism” or “capitalism,” it’s better to view countries as bundles of institutions. Those institutions can operate along a socialist-capitalist spectrum, and exist with other institutions that fall elsewhere. This approach forces us to consider which institutions are most relevant and how they can best be measured to capture the differences between socialism and capitalism. Once we have a pliable measurement, we can then see whether people in socialist societies can be happy — or destined to a life of misery.