I’ve spent the last few months walking the streets of Medellín, talking to people who still remember what it felt like when the last left-leaning administration was in charge. The mood shifted the day a conservative candidate they call The Tiger took the oath. Flags came out. Music started. It was not abstract theory on display. It was relief you could see in the way shop owners stood a little straighter and conversations on the bus turned lighter. That scene keeps replaying in my head whenever I read about rising approval numbers for the same ideas north of the border.
The Quiet Reversal Across an Entire Continent
Look at the map for a moment. Bolivia ended two decades of rule by a party that put socialism in its own name. Chile chose a candidate over a Communist Party option. Honduras voted out a democratic socialist government. Ecuador rejected the political heirs of an earlier left project for the second time in short order. El Salvador wiped the former guerrilla-linked party from the legislature completely. Peru installed a new leader after rejecting a figure tied to a Marxist predecessor who had been removed and imprisoned. Argentina, after years of nationalizations and inflation that climbed past two hundred percent, handed power to someone who openly promised to reverse the pattern.
These were not small adjustments. Different branding, same core approach: more state direction over production, more redistribution through seizure and control rather than through growth. Voters lived with the outcomes and decided they preferred something else. Crime rates, economic pressure, and daily insecurity were not theoretical. They were the daily experience. That experience produced a continent-wide course correction within roughly three years.
Meanwhile the country that still attracts people risking everything to reach it shows the opposite trend in opinion polls. A clear majority of one major party now views socialism favorably. Among adults under thirty the favorable share is even higher. South America tried versions of the idea and is stepping back. North America, with far less direct experience of the full package, is stepping forward. That contrast is the part that stays with me.
What People Actually Mean When They Say Socialism
Most conversations go off the rails right at the definition. Many who speak warmly of the word picture affordable healthcare, housing that does not consume half a paycheck, and childcare that does not force impossible choices. Those are goals. They are not the system. Denmark’s own prime minister once stated plainly that his country is a market economy, not a planned socialist one. The Scandinavian model rests on private ownership of production, high taxes on the wealth that private activity creates, and generous services funded by that wealth. That is not the same thing as transferring ownership of the factories, farms, and firms to the state or to collectives.
Decades ago a solid share of Americans could still define the concept correctly as government ownership or control of the productive parts of the economy. That understanding has drifted. Today a larger share answer with words about equality or fairness. The technical meaning has softened into a general feeling. Clear thinking requires putting the definition back where it belongs. Socialism centers on who owns the means of production. Under private ownership, individuals and firms keep the returns and bear the losses. Under the other arrangement, ownership sits with the collective or, far more often in practice, with the government. Tax rates, benefit levels, and inequality statistics can vary under either system. Ownership is the dividing line.
You can run a market economy with high taxes and strong safety nets. You can run one with low taxes and thinner nets. You can also run a system where the state directs the major levers of production and the results, historically and recently, have been different. Venezuela and Cuba remain the clearest modern illustrations of how far the ownership shift can go and what follows. Latin American voters who recently changed course cut the experiment short before it reached those extremes. That does not mean the ideology was never tested. An idea is tested whenever people who hold it gain power and begin to govern according to it.
A Conversation That Stays With You
One afternoon after Spanish class I stopped for a man who asked for help. He had been born in Venezuela, raised for decades in the United States, and then removed. He was living on the streets of Medellín. He called the current American president the modern version of a historical dictator. In the same conversation he expressed gratitude that the same president had taken action against the leader still associated with the system that emptied his country of opportunity. The contradiction was not lost on him. It was simply the reality he carried.
He is not alone. Colombia hosts a large Venezuelan population that left because the combination of price controls, nationalizations, and politicized institutions destroyed ordinary economic life. People who once lived in a relatively prosperous oil-rich society with strong education levels now navigate another country’s informal economy. Many of them watch online protests in the United States against actions taken toward the former Venezuelan leadership and shake their heads. The people who lived under that leadership tend to feel differently.
The pattern is familiar. Promises of abundant services and greater equality bring a government into power. Wealth is redirected through taxes, seizures, and state revenues. Private industry is gradually displaced by public control. Early numbers can look promising while reserves or existing capital are still being drawn down. Over time less new wealth is created because the incentives and information that private owners respond to are weakened. Bureaucratic control tightens. Economic leverage for ordinary citizens shrinks. Physical leverage, when it exists at all, is limited. Equality arrives, but it is equality at a lower level of material life. The claim that it simply has never been done correctly begins to sound less convincing after enough repetitions across different countries and decades.
Partial Experiments Still Count
Critics sometimes answer that none of these recent Latin American cases completed a full conversion, so the results cannot be blamed on the ideology. That misses the practical test. When a leader states openly that he is a socialist and then governs for years according to that worldview, the outcomes under that leadership form part of the record. The same logic will apply to any city or region that elects someone running on those principles. Declaring afterward that the place never became fully socialist will not erase the concrete results people experienced while the worldview held power.
The reverse claim also appears: because some market economies keep a few state-owned companies, especially in natural resources, they must be socialist. That confuses the exception with the rule. Public ownership of selected assets inside a system that remains predominantly private is not the same as making public ownership the default. Alaska collects resource revenue without turning the rest of its economy into a planned model. Norway does something similar. Ownership structure still decides the character of the system.
How to Discuss the Topic Without Losing the Room
Abstract arguments usually harden positions. A more useful sequence starts by asking the other person what they mean by the word. In most cases the answer will list services and living standards. Agree with the goals if you share them. Most people do. Then offer the ownership definition without heat. If Scandinavian examples appear, point out that those countries describe themselves as market economies that fund services by taxing private creation of wealth. Only after that foundation is set does the evidence from places that moved further along the ownership spectrum become useful. Present it as information rather than as a final verdict. People change their minds more readily when they feel they reached the conclusion themselves.
I’ve found that this sequence keeps relationships intact more often than the alternative of trading slogans. The goal is not to win a debate score. It is to leave both sides clearer about what is actually being proposed and what the historical pattern has been when the proposal is put into practice.
The Version of Capitalism That Lost Support
Defending every current feature of the existing system is a poor way to answer the appeal of alternatives. Parts of the present arrangement look captured. Political spending by outside groups has grown dramatically. A small number of large donors can match the combined contributions of millions of smaller ones. Firms move production across borders while institutional capital outbids ordinary households for housing. Rules are sometimes shaped more by the industries they are meant to govern than by broader public interest. Young adults who face high housing costs, uneven wage growth, and a sense that the game favors those already ahead draw the conclusion that the system is tilted. That conclusion is not entirely imaginary.
In earlier decades the same system delivered rising real wages for a wider share of households and housing that felt attainable for people starting out. Socialism had almost no political constituency then because the alternative was producing visible results for enough people. Restoring competitive markets and reducing the degree to which rules can be purchased is not a theoretical exercise. It is a repair job: clearer limits on political spending, housing rules that allow more supply where demand is strongest, and a general preference for rules that apply evenly rather than through selective access. A capitalism that again delivers broad opportunity is the strongest practical answer to the appeal of systems that have repeatedly reduced the size of the pie they then try to divide more equally.
Judging by Results Rather Than Intentions
You no longer need only historical volumes to form a view. You can speak with people who left countries that moved furthest in the direction of state ownership. You can watch the voting patterns of an entire region that tried intermediate versions and is now choosing differently. The evidence is current, it speaks Spanish in many cases, and it has been casting ballots against the same cluster of policies for several consecutive years.
An entire continent tested the worldview at different intensities and is climbing back out. Standing at the edge of a similar hole and asking what would happen if the jump were repeated is a choice that can still be avoided. The practical record is available. The definitions can be restored. The conversations can be held without turning every exchange into a loyalty test. What remains is whether the lessons that were paid for in real hardship elsewhere will be noticed before the same costs are paid closer to home.
I keep returning to the man on the street in Medellín who could hold two contradictory feelings at once about the same political figure. Experience had taught him that some systems leave fewer options than others. That kind of knowledge is harder to dismiss than any slogan. It is also the kind of knowledge that travels poorly through opinion polls that never ask people what they actually lived through. Perhaps the most useful thing anyone can do is listen longer to the people who already know the difference between the theory and the daily result.
The shift across Latin America was not driven by abstract philosophy seminars. It was driven by the cumulative weight of higher insecurity, weaker growth, and the sense that promises of equity had delivered equal hardship instead. Governments that nationalized key industries, expanded state payrolls rapidly, and treated private capital as something to be directed rather than encouraged eventually faced voters who preferred a different path. The speed of the reversal in multiple countries at once suggests the dissatisfaction was broad rather than limited to any single national circumstance.
In the United States the conversation often stays at the level of desired services. That is understandable. Healthcare costs, housing costs, and childcare costs are real pressures. Yet treating the ownership structure of the economy as a secondary detail risks repeating patterns that have already been tested. When private firms remain the main engines of production and the state focuses on regulation, taxation, and targeted transfers, the Scandinavian outcomes become possible. When the state itself becomes the dominant owner and director of production, the incentives that generate the surplus needed for those transfers weaken. The distinction matters more than the emotional charge currently attached to the word itself.
Younger cohorts in particular have grown up with a different lived experience of the market system than earlier generations. Student debt, housing prices that rose faster than wages in many cities, and a labor market that rewards credentials and networks unevenly all contribute to skepticism. That skepticism is not irrational. It becomes a problem only when the proposed alternative has a longer and less encouraging track record than the system it seeks to replace. Rebuilding broad-based opportunity inside a market framework is harder work than pointing to failures and declaring the whole arrangement broken. It is also the work that has previously produced the living standards that still attract migration from places that tried the other route.
One practical starting point is language. When someone says they support socialism, the next sentence should explore what they believe that word requires. If the answer centers on services, the conversation can move toward how those services are best funded and delivered without first arguing about ownership of every factory. If the answer centers on transferring ownership of productive assets, then the historical record of that specific change becomes relevant. Clarity about the target reduces the chance that both sides argue past each other for an hour and leave more convinced of their original positions.
Another practical point concerns the current version of market arrangements. When large pools of capital can outbid working households for housing stock, when regulatory complexity favors incumbents who can afford specialized compliance teams, and when political influence scales with the ability to fund campaigns, the system begins to look less like open competition and more like a closed circle. Addressing those features does not require abandoning private ownership. It requires rules that keep competition genuine and political access less dependent on wealth. That repair is available without importing the ownership model that Latin American voters have been leaving behind.
The Venezuelan diaspora scattered across Colombia and other neighboring countries carries a living memory of how quickly a relatively prosperous society can lose ground once the incentives for private investment and production are systematically weakened. Price controls that aimed to protect consumers ended up emptying shelves. Currency controls that aimed to manage scarcity created parallel markets and corruption. Nationalizations that aimed to keep wealth inside the country reduced the expertise and capital needed to maintain output. Each step had a stated social goal. The cumulative result was mass emigration and a collapse in living standards that still shapes regional politics years later.
Similar dynamics appeared in milder form in several of the countries that recently changed direction. Expanded state employment, heavier regulation of private activity, and rhetorical hostility toward capital did not produce the broad prosperity that had been promised. Crime and informal economies grew in the gaps. Voters eventually decided the trade-offs were no longer acceptable. The speed with which multiple countries reached that conclusion within a short window is itself information. It suggests the underlying problems were shared rather than unique to any single leader’s personality.
North American opinion trends move in the opposite direction for reasons that are partly cultural and partly economic. Decades without direct experience of full state ownership leave the concept available as a vessel for general dissatisfaction. Media and educational environments that emphasize distribution over production reinforce the tendency. The result is a gap between the lived record in places that tested the ideas more thoroughly and the favorable impressions held by people who have mainly encountered the ideas as aspirational language.
Closing that gap does not require lectures. It requires more contact with the people who already lived the consequences and more precision about what different systems actually do with ownership and incentives. It also requires honesty about the shortcomings of the present market arrangements so that the defense of private ownership does not become a defense of every distortion that has grown up around it. A system that again makes ordinary advancement feel realistic will reduce the emotional pull of alternatives that have repeatedly failed to deliver the same advancement at scale.
The streets of Medellín on the day of the recent political change offered a simple illustration. People were not celebrating a textbook. They were responding to a shift they hoped would ease daily pressures they had felt under the previous approach. That kind of response is harder to dismiss than any theoretical model. It is also the kind of response that has now appeared in enough countries to form a pattern. Patterns of that sort are worth noticing before the same pressures produce the same experiments closer to home.
In the end the question is practical rather than purely ideological. Which set of arrangements has more reliably expanded the resources available for ordinary people to improve their lives? Which set has more often reduced those resources while promising the opposite? The recent voting record across a large and diverse region supplies one set of answers. Opinion surveys farther north supply a different set. Reconciling the two begins with clearer definitions, closer attention to results, and a willingness to repair the version of market competition that once commanded broader confidence. The alternative is to keep rediscovering lessons that have already been paid for elsewhere.
I left Colombia with a sharper sense of how abstract words land differently once they have been tested against ordinary life. The man who could praise and condemn the same political figure in one conversation understood something that polls often miss. Systems are judged by the options they leave open or close. When the options narrow, people move, vote, or both. That movement is visible across an entire continent right now. Whether the lesson travels is still an open question, but the evidence itself is no longer theoretical. It is walking around, speaking from experience, and casting ballots against the ideas that once sounded promising on paper.
