= new reply since forum marked as read
I don't concede your interpretations of my statements.
People drawn to socialism are actually free to join a socialized enterprise right here in the U.S. Or start one. Unfortunately, no one here ever even says he's gone to work for Publix, much less started a worker-owned bakery or gone to live his ideology on a commune. It's always about the dream of living in a socialist nation where universal economic equality has been imposed and enforced and where freedom to fail has been replaced with lifelong government-provided security.
Of course there must be defined governmental structure to enable socialized economies to exist. Capitalism, trade for profit in its most basic sense, has always occurred naturally wherever people interact freely, requiring no structure, no compulsion or government, happening even in spite of the prohibitions of governments.
Socialist economy, OTOH, is a construct that has to be imposed, controlled and maintained by a governing body (or bodies), AND which for the most part requires outlawing competition from more vigorous free enterprise. This alone requires an intrinsically authoritarian centralized construct (or constructs) to run and control it and to eliminate incompatible economic activities. (Illegal black markets always develop in attempted socialist economies due to unmet needs of the populace.)
And on and on. Both liberalism and socialism believe in spreading the wealth around," as President Obama put it, but from there to the "ways" that can be done, liberalism remains liberal, committed to liberalism's concept of "inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." While socialism in all attempts to apply it on national scales must be fundamentally authoritarian, and thus both illiberal and anti-democratic.
very different conclusions on this subject, Farmer Rick. 
Fwiw, socialism's influences on politics are not my problem with it, or even with honest socialist ideologues. (I do get aggravated with those who embrace the ridiculously blatant lie that capitalism-funded social programs in capitalist European nations are examples of socialism. MAGAs don't own willful craziness.)
My problems with socialism include, again, that as a national socioeconomic system it has never worked, neither even close to as it should nor in the various, often tragically dysfunctional forms it takes before failing. That's practical, housewife-level sense. Whatever we do has to work, and work well.
AND, that, given that its authoritarian and anti-democratic aspects would make it very wrong for by far most people even if it could work economically, it shouldn't. (This should have gone first.)
Socialism has always been an extremist ideology for these, and various other, reasons. And that's the reason for all the lies and obfuscating rhetoric.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Winston Churchill, but ONLY in theory. In practice there's never been "equal sharing," just widespread. We will continue to evolve, but it must be function- and ideals-driven to improvement, not disaster.
A check to figure out if claims are true that a nation has a socialist economy, Sky Jewels, is to evaluate the nation's prosperity. If it's prosperous, it's NOT socialist.
All of Europe's wealthy western liberal democracies have capitalism-based economies. Their people also voted to give themselves generous capitalism-funded programs that distribute the capitalism-generated wealth more equitably than voters have chosen to do here. So far.
And if it's poor and troubled, and almost certainly has an authoritarian government to keep the people from throwing it off, it may be an attempt at socialism.
that they almost invariably (and unironically) point to liberal democracies that have capitalist economies.
Fuck them to fucking hell. 
