Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled his vision of "democratic socialism" during a recent speech at George Washington University.  Unfortunately, he did more to confuse the meaning of democratic socialism than to clarify it.  The words capitalism and socialism have meanings, so let's get things clear up front.  Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of property coordinated through voluntary exchange in markets.  Socialism is an economic system that abolishes private property in the means of production — the land, capital, and labor used to make everything — and replaces it with some form of collective ownership.  Whenever socialism has been implemented at a national level, collective ownership in practice has meant state ownership, and government plans have replaced markets as the primary mechanism to coordinate economic...(Read Full Post)