Agreed that my primary objection is that these are really bad examples of capitalism and socialism, since both were massively authoritarian regimes (candy comes from teacher, teacher specifies exactly what can be done with candy).
I don’t actually know how one COULD demonstrate the difference in a single middle-school lesson, though. In fact, I’m not sure I understand what people generally mean by the terms: a lot seem to use “capitalism” to mean “ridiculously protected monopolies and near-oligarchy to benefit the past winners” and “socialism” to mean “sane capitalism, though with bait-and-switch levels (that is, changing depending on the argument you’re having) of forced redistribution”.
Agreed that my primary objection is that these are really bad examples of capitalism and socialism, since both were massively authoritarian regimes (candy comes from teacher, teacher specifies exactly what can be done with candy).
I don’t actually know how one COULD demonstrate the difference in a single middle-school lesson, though. In fact, I’m not sure I understand what people generally mean by the terms: a lot seem to use “capitalism” to mean “ridiculously protected monopolies and near-oligarchy to benefit the past winners” and “socialism” to mean “sane capitalism, though with bait-and-switch levels (that is, changing depending on the argument you’re having) of forced redistribution”.