Plato vs Aristotle

There is a famous Raphael’s painting showing the contrast between Plato and Aristotle by means of their philosophical differences on the centre in the ancient Athenian academia. Plato pointing out above indicates his idealism whilst Aristotle pointing out below indicates his naturalism (disagreeing to describe his philosophy as realism). This passionate academic arena is indeed the place to visit if there were a time-machine.

The significant distinction between Plato and Aristotle is their focus on the human nature; Plato believed in something more transcendent to the human nature whereas Aristotle puts emphasis on the inevitable unchangeable human nature. Plato manifested the single ideal state model (Stratified guardian/spectator autocracy) meanwhile Aristotle described various unique state models adaptable to each unique nature of geo-politics and ethnicity (Monarchy/Dictatorship, Aristocracy/Oligarchy, and (Direct) Democracy.)

Plato’s Predecessor Socrates was the first remarkable idealist insisting on the moral universalism which all human individuals should aspire to follow to accomplish a unified ideal objective transcending to the human nature forming their living environment. By contrast, Aristotle admitted there is an inevitable but productive human nature underlining to form their characteristics and adaptation to the changing living environment. Plato claimed for the better alternative whereas Aristotle suggested for various unique states for each varying environmental condition.

This conflict model of the philosophical perspectives has been a universally discussed topic all over the world since then. Even in the Eastern Asia, there is a philosophical contract resemblance to this Western counterpart: Confucian is the idealist pursuing for the universal transcendental objective like Plato whilst Daoism describing various unique forms naturally adapted to each situation. In the modern era, even though the philosophical perspectives offer far more complex theory with a bigger picture, the same conflicting concept still remains.

In the modern era, there are many derivations partially adopting both Platonian and Aristotelian concepts. Thomas Hobbes based his theory on the moral relativism while adopting the Platonian-like stratified autocratic order providing the strong unity of all the individuals. Jeremy Bentham insisted on the moral universalism of pursuing the unified objective although its principle is derived from the conventional human nature instead of the transcendental alternative while supporting a more democratic state.

Kant achieved in providing the far more complex theory of its moral universalism than Plato. Considering Plato only discussed something A and something not-A, Kant clarified something defining and verifying the existence of both A and not-A as a priori which is resemblance to mathematical axiom. Then, instead of the substantial principle such as the guardian autocracy, he claimed for the abstract principle for something human individuals are supposed to obey. Then, regardless of any political form of states existing depending on each unique environmental condition, human individuals are supposed or encouraged at least to obey the universal abstract ethical principle as their maxim for accomplishing their ethically ideal goal little by little with try and error.

Kantian philosophy is rather called Conceptualism distinguished from Platonic idealism due to its flexibility as well as its complexity. Kant admitted some real substantial world obstacles disrupting individuals to establish an ideal state although he suggested they should make their best effort to accomplish their ideal transcendental to their conventional natural quality. Friedrich Hegel modified Kantian philosophy by adopting Platonic idealist concept. Hegel affirmed that human individuals are gradually evolving to establish their heavenly ideal state by referring to their ethical maxim.

David Hume can be seen as the first remarkable philosopher challenging against the aforementioned Socratic successors. Hume took over Hobbesian moral relativist perspectives while defying to manifest one particular form of state like Hobbes. Hume’s philosophy is definitely opposing to Plato by means of being sceptical about both the morality which human individuals can hypothetically define to impose upon themselves and the existence of something transcendental to the human nature without experiencing to explicitly prove their existence in real.

Kant started inventing his philosophy as the counterpart argument against Hume’s Experimentalist philosophical theory. Hume’s theory has influenced Benthamite Utilitarian philosophy by means of its emphasis on the naturalism and by means of its scepticism about the non-natural transcendental moral principle although Hume and Bentham disagreed with each other by means of their moral theory. It has also seemingly influenced the postmodern philosophies which are very similar to Hume’s perspective on the moral principle and the human nature because both support the moral relatives and the human naturalism.

In the postmodern era, there were many postmodernist philosophers introducing their own version of the pre-Socratic concepts detaching philosophies from both the idealism and the moral universalism. They often defied the universal nature of human individuals which Aristotle claimed for. Although they are reactionary to the post-Socratic philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and aforementioned modern philosophers, their reaction took place as the counterarguments against the post-Socratic philosophies so that the influence of Plato and Aristotle cannot be ignored even in their reactionary attitude.

In conclusion, regardless of which perspective, Platonic or Aristotelian, to take and of challenging against both of them, none can escape from the influence of Plato (the legitimate Socrates’s predecessor) and Aristotle (the post-Socratic influencer). Without these two legends, the entire human world history would have been a really different by means of its characteristics as well as its quality. This dichotomic theoretical development has trained human individuals to enable their world view to rationally analyse themselves and their living world to encourage their evolution. 

The AWS IoT architectural plan for manufacturering companies

 

While working for various manufacturing industry, it is often wondering whether their administrative processes can be more efficient. They had better adopt the internet of things (IoT) and the cloud data management. These manufacturers and their retailers should take an advantage of the currently available public cloud technology as the means of the digital transformation (DX) which national governments frequently put emphasis on nowadays.

 

There are still many manually carried out tasks in a manufacturing business. There are too many repetitive input and output processes which can be reduced by sharing the database via the globally connected public cloud network. Furthermore, by applying the artificial intelligence (AI) and the statistical inferences using the shared database, it will instantly optimise balancing the available supply of production and stock and the demand from the purchase order.

 

Let’s examine the possibility of the IoT tool for the manufacturing industrial DX with reference to Amazon Web Service (AWS), the public cloud infrastructure provider accounting for the largest public cloud market share at 33%. The whole company group across regional and even national borders can share the same Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) and various types of databases such as Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for structured data and Amazon Dynamo DB for non-structured data inside the AWS network. In addition, various advanced technologies for gathering streaming data, big data analysis, and the artificial intelligence (AI) based deep learning are available.

 

Sharing EC2 enables all the members across the borders to access applications and data installed into the shared platform inside the public cloud infrastructure. This prevents the repetitive processes of forwarding data between the departments by logging in from each location. Vendors outside the company group can also directly access the platform within the restriction by the information privacy. Moreover, the risk of causing the security hole of the entire network can be mitigated under the unified cyber security tool and various firewalls already prepared by the AWS instead of expecting all the departments to look after under their own responsibility.

 

Please kindly refer to this architectural map to read the following parts.

 

Amazon Kinesis can collect the real time streaming data from a factory to send this data to the IoT device set. This IoT devices prepared in the public cloud enable to control and monitor the production line and the storage conditions by simultaneously referring to both the external and the internal data timely delivered to the production site. There is also the correlational data-analysis estimating the potential influence over the storage volume and the quality control in advance. Thus, this is expected to prevent some critical supply management errors such as mismatching the recorded data and the actual data.

 

The information related to the product supply is then forwarded to the database. The database also simultaneously collects the purchase order data processed the retail management side. Then, AWS Lambda analyses these simultaneously collected data to send to the AI module called Amazon SageMaker offering the deep-learning analysis of various factors. Instead of allocating the costly human resources for bridging between the production site and the customer side, this automated data-link is expected to instantly match the supply requirements with the timely demand requirements without the conventional time-consuming negotiation.

 

Amazon SageMaker, the AI module, connected with the big data of the business is expected to enable this manufacturing business to optimise both demand and supply simultaneously at an instant pace. The production supply and its logistics can be optimised by referring to the customer demand trends and the exogenous factors influencing the supply quantity and quality.

 

These simultaneous data analyses can instantly offer the timely business management reports by using the database specialising in the graph presentation with some analytic footnotes such as Amazon Neptune and Amazon Redshift. This automated process can eliminate the conventional repetitive manual workloads. Moreover, it helps their management decision process with a fast objective report purely based on the mechanical data analysis because this new reporting system prevents the human bias and errors.

 

Regarding the customer relation, the manufacturer may directly contact to and deal with their customers via their own retailing website which can be directly connected to the entire supply management system equipped with the IoT devices and the big data analytics. They may no longer need their retail specialist agents negotiating between the manufacturer and their customers. All the conventional middle-men jobs are automatically carried out within the entire public cloud architectural mechanism with little humans’ help.

 

This autoscaling mechanism of the public cloud can instantly adjust the customer service costs depending on the real time demand volume. The conventional way relying on the contracted retailers requires to keep paying the agent fee regardless of the sales shortage. Furthermore, this conventional way cannot catch up with the suddenly but temporarily increasing sales volume. The human retailers are unable to be scaled up/down instantly like machines. By contrast, this new system is literally the machine base with the excellent scalability! Therefore, there is neither excess nor shortage of the product supply volume regardless of any demand level on spot.

 

Overall, this public cloud provision is efficient by means of not only time-wise but also cost-wise. It reduces the reliance on humans’ intuition requiring the long-term experience as well as the complex human relationship easily causing some corruption issues.

Book Recommendation: Natural Law Liberalism

 First of all, before introducing the book, it is important to know the brief introduction of the disputed types of Liberalism. The brief birth story of Liberalism in the modern era is needed. The two mainstreams of Liberalism are roughly explained as follows.

Liberalism is a political philosophy claiming for liberty of autonomous individuals emancipated from authoritarian oppression with their naturally endowed right and equality of obtaining it. It distinguishes liberty from a simple freedom as it claims for some degree of restriction on one’s freedom of doing whatever s/he wants on a temporary basis. It insists providing individuals with a broader meaning of freedom in a permanent basis as well as the social public environment and its minimum required rule securing all the individuals to accomplish it.

Although it is often believed that Liberalism emerged in the early modern age, the base concept was already emphasised by Aristotle (The ancient Greek) and Thomas Aquinas (The medieval European) at the pre-modern time period. Both Aristotle and Aquinas expressed humans as autonomous individuals who should be free to act and think with their own freewill. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke claimed for Liberty as the universal naturally endowed to complete the overall picture of the characteristics of Liberalism in the beginning of the modernity

The first mainstream of Liberalism in the modern world politics formed its characteristic identity by adopting the utilitarianism asserting to maximise the sum of pleasures while minimising the sum of pains by letting individuals to act freely with their constitutional right under the mutual social agreement. This is also related to economic freedom encouraging the market competition guaranteeing the equality of opportunity for individuals to join to be rewarded by means of their contribution merit. This is the Liberalism encouraging the overall liberty in a comprehensive meaning so that it is introduced as Comprehensive Liberalism.

On the other hand, there is the second mainstream of Liberalism challenging the aforementioned Liberalism where liberty is limited to the constitutional and metaphysical level. This new branch of Liberalism attempt to modify the older version of Liberalism to the newer alternative more applicable to the political intention of accomplishing the liberalist ideal ethics.

This second mainstream of Liberalism insisting on providing individuals with their right of the comprehensive freedom but also an impartial spectator intervening resource distribution, social justice mediation, and rehabilitating the handicapped minorities. The most notable figure is John Rawls having introduced the political theory called Political Liberalism claiming for more proactive interventions rather than the conventional laissez-faire (little or no intervention policy).

The provision of liberty requires the daily political level intervention to individuals more than guaranteeing their right under the constitution or the customary agreement. There is the veil of ignorance penalising some individuals lacking the necessary information before acting freely. In order to accomplish the equality of opportunity under a fair competition, it requires a certain degree of the redistribution of resources to enable all the individuals to become competent and able. The minority individuals are often marginalised under the laissez-faire majority rules so that it requires the culturally and religiously intermediate pluralist intervention into it. It thus requires the proactive intervention by this impartial spectator is thus necessary to mitigate these obstacles causing unfairness.

Nevertheless, there is a counterargument being sceptical about these modern types of Liberalism whose political methods are controversial enough to judge whether or not they can encourage individuals’ liberty. The book introduced here indicates one of the counterarguments. 

This book “Natural Law Liberalism” is highly recommended to read to understand the characteristics and their transformation of various derivations of Liberalism in the modern world. The author of this book manifestos his own version of Liberalism challenging against the two mainstream versions of the modern Liberalism.

His own manifesting political philosophy is explained in the last one third of this book whilst the first two thirds of this book is about introducing what versions of Liberalism exist. It mostly covers the historical evolution of Liberalism having produced various derivations from the pre-modern periods including the ancient Greece and the medieval Europe to the modern time period. Therefore, this book is actually useful as a textbook of understanding the evolution of Liberalism.

This book puts strong emphasis on the sceptic perspective on the modern types of Liberalism by criticising them with reference to his manifesting alternative. However, even though its main intention is criticising it, it well-summarises the characteristics of both Utilitarian Comprehensive Liberalism and Rawlsian Political Liberalism while explaining how either of them has become popular in the political arena nowadays. Thus, this book is recommended to study it at a fast pace because of its objectively well-summarised description.

The counterargument against Rawlsian Political Liberalism is based on the scepticism about the impartial spectator as a mediator of social justice and also about its moral neutrality. This public institute as an impartial spectator promoting the pluralism of cultural, ethnic, and moral diversity is still prone to the bias manipulated by the powerful influential cohort of this political arena. The objectivity and plurality can therefore also be under the threat of political lobbying.

This book highlights the criticism on both Comprehensive Liberalism neglecting to install the core moral principle and Rawlsian Political Liberalism overestimating the neutrality of the secular (believed to be morally neutral) interventionist social reform. Instead, it suggests Liberalism to focus on the inevitable influence by the majority mainstream and the longevitive tradition to policy making and societal environments. For example, the history of religious influence over social norms and values is significantly longer than the history of the modern secular politics.

The author of this book is a stronger supporter of the metaphysical and ethical philosophy of Natural Law most notably defined by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Both Aristotle and Aquinas expected for human individuals as naturally social so that their spontaneously formed social order is sufficient enough to encourage both stability and fairness.

The Natural Law theory by Aristotle and Aquinas describes the error correction mechanism called an unmovable mover which indicates the unchangeable virtue even in necessary multiple drastic social transformations. All in all, while individuals and their society may constantly change to adapt individuals and their society to each new environment with new challenges within the minimum necessary restriction imposed by the unchangeable virtuous guideline.

The seemingly most essential point of this book is underlining the importance of a strong sense of morality of all the individuals and their community functionally cohabiting together in a society. An authoritarian state does not require a strong morality of its individual citizens under a cohesive stability. By contrast, a state with less or no authoritarianism requires individuals being moral enough to enable them to voluntarily comply with the spontaneous order stabilising their state.

Overall, regardless of political opinions and perspectives, this book is highly recommendable to understand characteristics and challenges of the various versions of Liberalism in history. Also, it explains that Natural Law, the metaphysical and ethical philosophy, is compatible with Liberalism in practice for the current daily politics. This attempts to explain that Aristotle and Aquinas are ones of the remarkable Liberalist political thinkers. Even though it is not agreeable, it is thought provoking enough to get interested in Liberalism and its historical footprints.

Worrying Pure Logics and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

 

Pure logics lacks the core principle enabling it to self-evaluate its validity such as mathematical axiom. Therefore, there are multiple possible answers not unified under an axiomatic rule. In philosophy, philosophers define their theoretical criterion as the core foundation basing their logical consistency prior to configuring their theoretical architecture of logics. Natural science refers to the empirical evidence shown in the substantial world experiment basing their logical arguments.

By contrast, economics and the other social scientific subjects nowadays tend to ignore this fundamental argument on their theoretical validity. Since the 20th century, people have tended to treat economics and the other social scientific subjects such as sociology, political science, and psychology as the pure physical science by detaching them from a metaphysical foundation. Prior to that time period, those social scientific subjects were strongly tied up with philosophy taking account of metaphysics defining the fundamental principle of their arguments.

Unlike natural science, social science including economics seldom presents an empirical experience instantly proven with the substantial experiment. This is why they used to be more tied up with a philosophical perspective providing the guidance of their direction of experiment. For example, economic and social policies as well as psychological therapy must be related to ethics with its metaphysical background and its guiding base principle. Moreover, epistemology weighs on convincing people with these social scientific theories needing to convince people to trust in what these theories insist on. This is because their theoretical validity is hardly proven by the empirical experiment like natural science.

Despite this factor, people nowadays tend to be obsessed with the narrow-minded short-term objectives such as money making gaming and labelling individuals according to their conformance to the mainstream society. This tendency is notorious in financial economics and psychology related to sociology. Economists nowadays tend to focus on the market speculation and pedantically modifying the already existing theories. Social psychologists impose the cohesively unified theory authorised by the academic elite peer group to people with little empirical experimental evidence and little discussion among various perspectives. This is in fact a worrying phenomenon for individual people and their world environment.

The prisoner’s dilemma theory is the clear example indicating this worrying matter when individuals are motivated by following the pure logics without the philosophical principle while pursuing the narrow-minded short-term goal. The prisoner’s dilemma explains that the spontaneously equilibrium point is not always good; Its outcome can be actually bad! The original theory explains that each one of these two prisoners betrays each other to eventually induce themselves to the worst overall outcome in consequence although their cooperation would bring the best outcome. This is not due to their stupidity at all. Their rational attitude towards their pure logical thought process induces their action leading to the worst outcome. This analysis of the prisoner’s dilemma can be used as the analogy of the market speculation in economics.

In this case scenario, private economic agents seldom voluntarily cooperate together to divert their economy from the worst outcome. Instead, they often induce the worst outcome called the bad equilibrium without any forcible countermeasure against it. During the deflationary recession, their action perpetuates the deflation by saving more while investing less to the market although they had better cooperate to invest more to divert the deflation to overcome the recession. At the time of the economic overheat causing the surging price inflation, their action accelerates the inflation by investing more than the prudential level instead of suppressing it by being prudent.

This is why the authoritarian paternalistic government intervention is often desired to forcibly divert these worst outcomes. However, this officious government intervention often antagonises individual citizens thinking of their government as rather impertinent than compassionate. Furthermore, the government also often fail to achieve such an intervention due to their long complicated bureaucratic processes slowing the process down as well as corruption and incompetence discouraging it.

This market dysfunction is caused by the rational but over-speculative attitude of these economic agents. It is considered to be derived from their narrow-minded mentality without any philosophical principle. It reminds of the proverb “Reality is but a mirror reflecting your inner world.” which both Epicurus and Schopenhauer inferred in their philosophy at each contemporary time period. The world turns to be a chaotic game of speculation without any noble ethical principle.

Sum up, the reliance on pure logics without any guiding principle is unproductive as well as worrying. This can be the reason why the current world situation is in a chaotic state. Whilst the intelligence and the technology of applying more complex logics than the past, it still struggles to reach a productive and virtuous state. Hence, it must be the time to revise to evaluate the core principle basing logics foundation and enabling it to self-evaluate to verify its validity itself.

Logics and its reliability

Logics is not mathematics; it is a form of art. The validity of Mathematical equations is derived from mathematical axiom to induce the unified valid legitimate answer. By contrast, pure logics lacks this kind of criterion like mathematical axiom verifying the validity of the logical inference. Therefore, many logical subjects are unable to derive a solid unified answer so that they often provoke the conflict among different perspectives.

Logics is a form of expression to display the outcome which an individual wishes to achieve. For instance, the abduction shows A will induce C if A is/implies B as well as B is/implies C. At the same time, this answer can be modified by taking account of some external compound effect inside this algorism. There is no criterion enabling this algorism to self-evaluate to judge whether it is valid or invalid according to something like mathematical axiom.

Plato seems to be introduced as a figure head of the idealist philosopher in the history. However, his idealism hardly goes beyond the daily-life custom and experience. His logical inference is purely based on A and not A. Plato actually ended up with being an ultra-realist insisting on the importance of the power structure stabilising the human society instead of inventing some abstract concept beyond the human nature. But yet, Plato as well as his predecessor Socrates opened the gate of pursuing a universal objective to achieve the ideal state which a human individual may want to aspire.

By contrast, both Bentham and Kant invented their own theory of self-evaluating the validity of their logical inference with reference to the fundamental axiom of philosophical logics. This invention has enabled thinkers to imagine their ideal state beyond their real-life experiences. There shall be something verifying the validity of both A and not-A as well as inferring the unseen valid alternative of neither A nor not-A.

The crucial difference between Benthamite and Kantian logics is either human nature is changeable or not. Bentham affirmed the criterion is to admit and follow the quasi-instinct of humans as natural whereas Kant insisted on something transcending the human nature forming human custom, desire, habit, superstition, tradition, etc. Even though philosophers keep disputing over which criterion is more convincing than the other, these modern idealists provided individuals with the imagination ability of thinking outside the box to think bigger.

Those who are called Pragmatists have adopted the combined perspectives of Benthamite and Kantian perspectives. They accept various unique criteria existing for each distinct verification process for each unique subject. They have distinguished criteria and objectives which individual refer to and pursue between the metaphysical subjects such as philosophy and religion and the physical scientific subjects such as natural science and daily-life matters such as household economy and business activities.

The metaphysical subject depends on norms and values of each unique world view whilst each physical science is ought to focus on their own short-term goal as their pursuing criterion detached from a metaphysical/philosophical (the big picture model). Natural science pursuing to discover the concepts explaining the nature of the substantial world mechanism by means of their experiment in nature. The real business management, distinguished from the academic subject called business management, verifies its legitimacy of existence by means of their business performance, portfolio, and profitability.



Ayn Rand ardently disagreed with these modern idealists cohesively imposing a solid answer for defining the legitimacy of human actions and thoughts because imposing a universal principle defined by a certain privileged individual group to the other majority individuals is hypocritical. She admitted that philosophy does not need to be something axiomatic like mathematics to forcibly deriving an absolute answer. She described human’s life is an everlasting pursuit of finding their own way of spending life as well as feeling and thinking their own imagination while being adjusted to each unique life environment varying across different times, places, and occasions.

Ayn Rand praised both art and pure logics which all the human individuals should be devoted in. She explained art is the outcome of each unique logical construction by each individual expressing their own beauty, functionality, intelligence, and value.　There should be no unified verification criterion/principle for approving their legitimacy. Instead, “try and error” guides individuals to their own ideal goal with the minimum required contracts and restrictions promoting and protecting the freedom of each individual to prevent unnecessary conflict, violation of freedom.

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Nowadays, many academics as well as business and financial reporters often fail to address this aforementioned issue. There is no discussion over where the principle which their logical inference is based on. These authoritarians tend to hypocritically behave as though they were the transcendental guardians of all the humans whereas their logical inference is never universally valid in the real life of all the individuals. Their logical inference is simply the mere interpretation of their subjective desires and wishes.

In conclusion, it is important to question how logics is structured and the ulterior motive of the presenter using logics. For example, when a presenter uses her/his logics to forecast some outlook, her/his ulterior motive can be simply a subjective desire rather than an objective rationality. Instead of ranting on wishy-washy outcomes, it is rather productive to do some activities fulfilling the ethically worth something regardless of the future anticipation. If someone is excessively logical to explain or excuse something, there is a risk of this person intentionally intriguing to take an advantage of manipulating the others only for this person’s interest. 

Social Democracy is not exactly equal to Socialism

 

The terminologies of political ideologies are really complex to explain as well as indeed maniac for most people unless they are keen to study political science. In particular, when it comes to define Socialism, the definition varies across interpreters. Moreover, Social Democracy does not exactly imply Socialism whereas Democratic Socialism implies Socialism for certain.

 

The definition of Socialism involves a wide range of policy-implementations in terms of both economic and social scales. Generally, Socialism means to proactively take the external influences of policies on society (taking an account of the group of individuals, their interactions, and the external environment where they cohabit together in) into consideration. The fundamental problem of Socialism is the subjective interpretation of what are good for society so that its interpretation often depends on each interpreter implementing Socialist policies.

 

Focusing on the economic policies, Socialism is often used as the synonym of the collective/command economy based on the cohesive planning ahead as opposed to the market economy based on the laissez-faire planning. The market economy allows each individual economic agent to decide while trading their goods and services where it relies on the spontaneously driven distribution order. By contrast, Socialists insist on planning of, or intervention to at least, economy to induce their desired outcome. There tends to be a paternalistic institute, which can be either government or commune, instructing each individual and their firms with reference to their Socialist planning.

 

The types of Socialism are unique from each other depending on the instrument of implementing their policies interpret as producing good outcomes for society. Their uniqueness is more obvious in the social-policy scale than the economic-policy scale of political science. The orthodox Marxism in particular puts emphasis on the revolutionary government by the proletariat autocracy commanded by the chosen elites selected from the proletariat citizens who are supposed to be excel at knowing what are the best for their society are. Anarch-Syndicalism relies on the community of individuals who are voluntarily gathered into it from any social background to negotiate and decide their policies to implement. Democratic Socialism stands between these two policies as it allows the open political decision-making processes while it weighs on the responsibility of the chosen represents by non-random selection.

 

The confusion is that Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy are not technically equal to each other. Democratic Socialism prioritises the paternalistic planning/intervention into individuals' life and their living environment (i.e. society) while encouraging the minimum required open decision-making processes. Social Democracy still takes policy-impacts on society into consideration to the certain extend. However, it defies the paternalistic collective order and responsibility imposed by Socialism restricting each individual's freedom of choice and voluntary will.

 

In terms of the social-policy scale, the difference between Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy is slight because both support the open decision-making process conducted by the representatives elected by the citizens as well as the certain degree of political freedom for individuals unless threatening the system stability. On the other hand, in terms of the economic-policy scale, their difference is obvious. Social Democracy embraces the market economy with the optimum level of the intervention required for solving their social issues of concern whereas it avoids being the perfectionist paternalism suppressing both economic efficiency and individuals' own freedom of choice.

 

Social Democracy is actually the derivation of Liberalism encouraging each individual's own voluntary actions and free will instead of collectively intervening into them. Social Democracy is relatively more friendly to Socialism than the other types of Liberalism. It trusts in the invisible hand spontaneously adjusting the socioeconomic environment by letting individuals and their interactions be free. This is the critically unique point distinguishing it from Democratic Socialism supporting much stronger interventions into individuals and their interactions for their perfectionist objective.

 

Sum up, the word order makes a distinctive contrast between those two policies: Socialism and Social Democracy. They are neither exactly different nor same. It may be insignificant in our daily life and journalism meanwhile its difference is significant in political science. Hence, it is important to take enough attention to quote this kind of terminologies.