Talk:Lemon socialism/Archive 1

Icelandic terms
To give a little background on the Icelandic terms, I met an Icelander who told me of the term “socialism of the devil”, which I found striking. I then looked it up, finding Professor Thorvaldur Gylfason, who kindly gave me the Icelandic term (which exists at Icelandic Wikipedia) and explained the other term (also at Icelandic Wikipedia). As it turns out, his grandfather, Vilmundur Jónsson, coined the term, so it is not entirely surprising that he should be an authority on the matter – a thank you to Professor Gylfason.

I’d be interested in whether similar terms exist in other languages, and what they may be, if any polyglot Wikipedians may assist!
 * —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 09:39, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Context?
I added a context tag, the article ought to give more background to how the term evolved and who is using it. --Soman (talk) 13:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I will happy to read more about the context, because I'm very tempted to tag this article as ideologically biased. --Poldavo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.220.89.188 (talk) 17:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The article puts a lot of the emphasis on lemon socialism as a means for transitioning a capitalist economy into a socialistic one but I'm not sure that's a good focus. The term seems to be more often used as aberrant behavior in a free market capitalist economy where risk is socialized and reward is privatized. That's kind of buried. Edited supposedly out of the article as it is biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dugmartsch (talk • contribs) 17:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Biased? It avoids a false tautology -- governments don't bailout companies in actual free market societies by definition, but the point is this is an exception to the rule. -- Kendrick7talk 13:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

No the article isn't bias, it isn't up for debate if lemon socialism is defined as a concept of socialism applied to a capticalist economy; not really an opinionon what Lemon Socialism is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.162.128.53 (talk) 14:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this may need some editing to bring it to NPOV. For example, "corruption of free-market capitalist systems" sure looks to me like a loaded phrase. Worldwalker (talk) 07:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I deleted the "unbalanced" tag, because it doesn't seem appropriate here. The concept is well referenced with sources both left and right. Trbdavies (talk) 06:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Second sentence in introduction
"Lemon socialism is a term for the practice in supposedly free market capitalist economies in which the government steps in to bail out or otherwise subsidize weak or failing firms. A government attempting to transition from capitalism to socialism by this method takes control of the worst industries — the "lemons" — first, which undermines such an approach."

I definitely do not understand the second sentence and ask for explanation. What is the "approach" addressed? Does lemon socialism imply that the government desires such a transition? I don't think so. --KnightMove (talk) 08:27, 4 February 2013 (UTC)