Re- "Socialism"
If you like having a fire department, you're at least a bit of a socialist.
Imho, a lot of goods and services can be delivered much more efficiently using a socialist or combined socialist/capitalist approach.
There have been many deliberate efforts to confuse socialism and communism with political tyranny; but like capitalism, they are primarily economic systems. You can have tyrannical socialism, communism, or capitalism; and you can have democratic socialism, communism, or capitalism.
(Note: whenever a pundit says we need to spread "democracy," try substituting the word "capitalism," because that's usually what they really mean.)
I hope people are starting to wise up about all this.
Another way to think about it is that socialism is like having the good or service owned and controlled by the public more directly, managed through their elected representatives, while capitalism involves having the good or service owned and controlled by private profit-seekers. Sometimes the latter system works best, at least in part, e.g. where you're less worried about profit extraction and duplicative efforts and more interested in incentivizing competitive innovation.
Imho, there are plenty of things we're better off using an at least partly socialist approach for, especially infrastructure, utilities, and services that require big investments and/or are more or less essential basics, e.g. roads & bridges, water, health care, primary & secondary education, & space exploration, among others.
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