Thanks for the nice posting, I was hoping it would degrade to name calling and then I'd win :)
When most of us right-wing-nut-job think of Socialism, it's Stalin, Pol-Pot, or Cuba. As you would term it "Authoritarian Socialism" - and I don't see any practical difference between it and Fascism. Both are devolve into one-party states that kill millions of people and have shitty economies.
But here's my silly point - democratic Socialism is not the panacea that we all wish it was, as there's no democratic socialism state that can even support it's own population. All of western Europe is having trouble keeping their birth-rates up. My pet theory, is that mentally people are so taxes that they can't even thing about having children - especially when both parents work.
Socialism also removes a bit of Darwinin strees on a culture/people - it protects people who don't or can't contribute. This may or may not be bad given your long term viewpoint.
Our family fought this by just not being greedy - we don't own a bunch of junk so we have enough money and time to spawn. ...
I do love a good CoOp - but they work simply because you can leave whenever you want to and thus have to 'compete' to survive. ...
Enjoy your latte - I hope it's shade grown organic fair trade. ;)