When I hear someone call themselves a Democratic Socialist, I’m reminded of a common cartoon trope where one of the dumber characters in the strip takes two large bulky household appliances that have no functional connection to each other and tapes them together, claiming to have invented a hot new consumer product. Neither device does anything different than it did before but combined together they become even more cumbersome and harder to use.
Socialism is a system of universal slavery in which individuals have no personal rights unless granted by the state. There is no meaningful difference between Socialism, Communism, Nazism, or Fascism. The state owns everything and you become a beggar. Want an abortion? Better check first with the Socialist Labor Board as to how many future farmers will be needed to increase the dwindling food supplies or how many miners are need to replace the ones dying from overwork or chemical poisons. Of course, in return for giving up your all your personal rights, you won’t have any disparity between rich and poor. Everyone (except the dear leaders of the political class) will be poor, hungry, and without hope. Those classified as deplorable will be shipped off to Gulags and/or gas ovens. The only thing voters get to decide is which low-level functionaries get to move the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Democracies, however, provide individuals with a broad range of personal choices and personal rights. If sufficiently motivated they can remove the ruling class. Incentives and commercial innovation for the masses provide a rising level of prosperity, and as long as a free market moderately flourishes and the government doesn’t overreach through unnecessary and expensive regulations., the level of poverty will probably diminish. How can that coexist with socialism? Unfortunately, that means some people will be even more prosperous than others. On the other hand, the closer to socialism a state gets, the more impoverished it becomes. As the old saw goes, under capitalism, the rich become powerful; under socialism the powerful become rich.
When someone combines these two massive inconsistent and unrelated entities, Democracy and Socialism, into a compound noun, one wonders what they actually think it means. Everyone sits around a knitting circle, drinking tea and eating scones, while casually deciding how many tons of steel should be produced over the next ten years, what resources it will take, and what it should be used for? The most ruthless socialists in the world couldn’t solve these problems. The democratic knitting circle won’t either.
Socialism can’t allow democratic capitalism to exist because it contradicts the nature of socialist slavery. What is it that the serfs will vote for. For a common sense understanding of this nonsensical term, try to come up with any mostly socialist state that allowed the voters to democratically reinstate a capitalist oriented Government that could subsequently repeal socialism. Of course, revolutions against socialism, especially in the Communist slave world, overthrew socialist governments in an act of revolution, but not by voting. The more socialist a state becomes, the less democratic and less prosperous it becomes.
You can either have a democratic state with financial inequality that reduces the level of poverty or you can have a socialist state that consumes the national wealth and increases the level of poverty. Your choice. But, if you choose socialist slavery, it will probably be the last meaningful democratic vote you can cast. Better get a good meal first. There won’t be very many left in your future.