Here is a definition that might be helpful in our discussion. What we consider capitalism is a market economy. Socialism is a command economy. What are known as "blue laws" are part of a traditional economy. .....
- A market economy is one in which almost all economic activity happens in markets with little or no interference by the government. Because of the lack of government intervention, this system is also often referred to as laissez-faire, which is French for 'let well alone'.
- A command economy is one in which all economic activity is directed by the government.
- A traditional economy is one in which production and distribution are handled along the lines of long-standing cultural traditions. For example, until the caste system was abolished in India during the last century, the production of nearly every good and service was permitted only by someone born into the appropriate caste. Similarly, in medieval Europe, people were usually unable to be part of the government or attain high military rank unless they were born into the nobility.
Because nearly every modern economy is a mixture of these three pure forms, most modern economies fall into the very inclusive category called mixed economies. With the exception of a few isolated traditional societies, however, the traditional economy part of the mixture has tended to decline in significance because most production has shifted to markets and because traditional economic restrictions on things like age and gender have become less important (and more illegal).
The result is that most mixed economies today are a mixture of the other two pure types: the command economy and the market economy. The mixtures that you find in most countries typically feature governments that mostly allow markets to determine what's produced, but that also mix in limited interventions in an attempt to make improvements over what the market would do if left to its own devices.
I assume business regulations fall under the category of command economy.
BUT!! .......
There is no "pure" economy ...... --an economy that lacks reforms and lacks modifications. There is
no capitalist economy that is as pure as the textbook ideal. Education very often involves learning the ideal first, then studying variations. Learning to fly a fighter jet as taught by an instructor is a process of learning the ideal. Later, with experience, a person can vary practice into variations like stunt flying and methods of the test pilot, and yet they are still jet pilots; they are not qualified to operate high-speed rail or even a freight train.
Again, there is no ideal form of capitalism on earth except in textbooks. And yet there are many forms of capitalism, complete with modifications. They remain systems in which individuals may create privately-owned businesses for their own private profit. Capitalist textbooks say that is the minimal definition of capitalism. Private ownership for private profit can never be socialism, which is defined by socialists as a system of worker ownership that bans private ownership and private profit. And so we see there is no socialist country on this planet. There are countries that have tried, an some that continue to try, to create a socialist system but none have gotten there yet. Try naming one.
In ancient Roman slave systems there were cases of people raising crops on land owned by others for an established agreement, yet the system was not feudalism.
In ancient Roman slave systems there were people manufacturing tools and weapons for others to use, and they did so for an agreed-upon benefit. Yet the system was not capitalism.
In feudalism there were private businesses, yet the system remained feudalism.
In capitalism we have had sharecroppers and slave systems, and yet we did not have a slave society. We have the equivalent of slavery today in many prisons, and yet this is not a slave society.
So what is the deciding factor? Logically and obviously
the deciding factor is the predominant economic model plus the dominant government orientation in what it predominantly facilitates, protects, and promotes.
A society's economic system is indicated by it's
dominant economic form.
Roman society was not a mix. It was a slavery system with non-slave supportive activities.
Feudal society was not a mix. It was predominantly a feudal system with non-agricultural activities in support of the feudal system.
Capitalist society is not a mix. It is
predominantly a capitalist system with supportive, socially-beneficial programs. So it is identified as "capitalism".
Did the US begin a path to socialism when FDR signed the New Deal and other programs into law? Let him answer that. At the end of his term he said "I saved capitalism".
Capitalism and socialism are antagonistic. They are mutually exclusive. There cannot be an economic system that facilitates, promotes, and protects private ownership of business for private profit, AND also facilitates, promotes, and protects a ban on private ownership and private profit and/or collective ownership. They conflict because they each encroach on the other in detrimental ways. Hence, in the end, one of them would dominate and exclude the other.
We live in class society. We have a class of people who own and operate and control corporations and other business types for profit, and we have another class of people who only have their labor to sell. So all these questions have a class character to their existence and function. And the question then, is "what class is being served and how?"
The notion of capitalism consisting of a "mixture" of capitalism and socialism contributes to confusion. If it were true, then how can we have a socialist society? The answer would be "by installing more socially-beneficial reforms to capitalism". IOW by having a system increasingly dominated by socially-beneficial programs and policies. But FDR tried that and look where that is today, which the Republican Party openly stating a plan to eliminate even Social Security and Medicare! And since FDR the public has had to constantly fight to hold onto the gains of FDR's time.... and gradually lose them, one by one. Clearly socially-beneficial reforms didn't produce a viable mix of economies.
Any attempt to establish a socialist economy would be fiercely fought by capitalists, as it has been even when the attempt was not in the US, but in another country. And socially-beneficial reforms are temporary.
