Throwing my voice in the ring...
*On topic --* I agree with the 'shades of grey' view of things. Life is not simple, and (with exactly one single exception, AFAIK) anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves and possibly others. There are just varying kinds of complexity. The sole exception I can find is blissful ignorance, and I for one want nothing of that.
*Not-entirely-on-topic-but-we're-talking-about-it-so-whatever --* "socialism" got its bad rap because of a different but similar system called "communism". Someone somewhere got the bright idea (not!) to conflate the two, and away we went. Actual, real, true socialism (Marxist or otherwise) has, as far as I'm aware, never been actually tested as a means of governance. Communism has, but that's different, in a way that (as usual) is nuanced and can't be really reduced to a sound bite quite nearly as easily as "socialism is bad ya'll".
For those who do not study political science enough to know the difference -- in a nutshell, socialism relies on the people to overthrow their existing government and replace it with socialism. Communism is a revolution from within the government, in that the people are not to be trusted to pull it all off correctly and so the government must do it for them. This demonstrably leads to paranoia in governance and a totalitarian state.
*Nota Bene -- *mind you, while I consider myself a socialist, I am NOT NOT NOT FLAMING NOT a Marxist. Marx's original idea called, as the end product, for a "non-state" (for lack of a better term) -- what amounted to a sort of cooperative anarchy wherein a government didn't exist because it was to be superfluous. I do not have anywhere near enough faith in humanity (or anything else) to imagine that such an organization (again, for lack of a better term) would last one hot minute. The first yahoo born who realizes how easy it is to game that system is going to bring the whole thing crashing down -- and, given how crafty we all are as it is, that's going to happen in a time frame best measured in fractional heartbeats. What I would like to see, would look a little more like the way many Nordic countries operate -- what they call "social democracy". I personally think there are ways to improve even those systems, but that's the model I'd primarily start with if I were given the order to reinvent civilization from the ground up... (please don't ever give me that order, though, as I will freely volunteer that I am in no way qualified for the job. I'm just another armchair emperor, so to speak...)