The fatal flaw of communism. A discussion of economic theory.

[Kubanator]

Communism is the idea that if everyone earned equal amounts of money, nobody would be poor/hungry/. There is one major problem. People don't do equal amounts of work. First of all, lets define work.

Work is the product of labour and effectiveness, meaning that the amount of work you do depends on how much you work, and how much your work is valued. Meaning that a doctor does more work than a janitor. Not because a doctors job is harder than a janitors, or that the doctor works more hours, but a doctor is far more useful to humanity than a janitor, and thus he makes more money. This is fair. I am better than you at cooking, thus I become head chef and make more money. Work = Money. They are the same thing, except money is physical.

Thus communism is the idea that even though I am better than you, we are equal. That even though I can design factories, and you can work in them, your work is just as valuable as mine. Communism is unfair. It punishes those with ability, and promotes those with a lack of it. It forces the strong to carry the weak. That's not an act of good. You are taking power from those who deserve it, who earned it, and giving it to every incapable labourer.

The strong will not stand for this. When they realize that their labour doesn't correlate to their reward, they will cease to work. The strong drive the economy forward. It's their minds which keep it moving. If you decide punish them, the economy will cease to move, and the country will fall.

 

[Inverse Skies]

Communism has been repeatedly shown to fail, it just doesn't work when put into real life and it never will. It sounds like a good idea to try and make everyone happy, but in society there is always going to be some segregation of the classes, that is inevitable and a basic fact of human nature. It's nothing to be worried about, you just have to learn to accept it.

 

[Kasawd]

A command economy? what's to discuss? It often works very well in a short term way but fails to provide the citizens with luxury items and creates nasty nasty queue lines.

 

[Kollega]

Pure communism,without differences in wealth and class division,will not work. Ever. It has been demonstrated. But we can try and build something similar - where everyone,even a janitor,is valuable and respected. We can't eliminate wealth levels in society,but we surely can make differences tolerable.

 

[Irishhoodlum]

I would say the biggest downfall of Communism is corruption and ambition. Not everyone will be happy being a cog in the machine getting the same pay as the next guy, if they know they can do better. And not everyone at the top will be able to sit by without skimming profits every once in a while.

 

[Eldarion]

Communism will never work.

It has been tried soooo many times and has failed due to its MANY flaws.

 

[lostclause]

Part of the reason I'm only socialist. Whilst I believe in closing the gap between rich and poor, there does need to be some reward for ability and time investment.

Edit: Isnt the OP just talking objectivism? That doesn't work either.

 

[Baby Eater]

im surprised idealistcommi hasn't shown up

 

[Malcheior Sveth]

Real communism has never been seen on this earth, and it never will be seen. Since people are generally selfish, they would have no motivation to do anything for the community if they didn't get anything in return, since doing something to help themselves alone would take less effort and be more profitable.

 

[Timotei]

Communism sounds good on paper, especially to the people of an oppressed nation. However not too many communist nations exist anymore, and those that do are often considered 2nd or 3rd world nations.

 

[Eldarion]

Real communism has never been seen on this earth, and it never will be seen. Since people are generally selfish, they would have no motivation to do anything for the community if they didn't get anything in return, since doing something to help themselves alone would take less effort and be more profitable.

No, there has been communist attempts. The rules fit the definition and everything.

The fact that it fails due to people does not make it "not real communisum" it means "communisum failed again"

If it is so easy to corrupt in practice, there is something wrong with the theory.

 

[Kubanator]

Part of the reason I'm only socialist. Whilst I believe in closing the gap between rich and poor, there does need to be some reward for ability and time investment.

Edit: Isnt the OP just talking objectivism? That doesn't work either.

I was referring to the economic side of objectivism, which is capitalism. Socialism works for things like health care and education, because health care is cheaper when socialized, and education would be horrible with economic biases. The other aspect partially
work.

Real communism has never been seen on this earth, and it never will be seen. Since people are generally selfish, they would have no motivation to do anything for the community if they didn't get anything in return, since doing something to help themselves alone would take less effort and be more profitable.

If real communism is a fairy tale, why do people take it seriously?

 

[Malcheior Sveth]

Real communism has never been seen on this earth, and it never will be seen. Since people are generally selfish, they would have no motivation to do anything for the community if they didn't get anything in return, since doing something to help themselves alone would take less effort and be more profitable.

No, there has been communist attempts. The rules fit the definition and everything.

The fact that it fails due to people does not make it "not real communisum" it means "communisum failed again"

If it is so easy to corrupt in practice, there is something wrong with the theory.

True Communism has no governmental structure, which in turn means it's impossible to implement on a large scale.

 

[greeentea]

LOL SOMEONE JUST READ ATLAS SHRUGGED.

First of all, your definition of communism is wrong. Communism is not an idea, it's a system of government, whereby the government allocates societies resources rather than the free market. The idea is that the common workman is less exploitable when there is no incentive to exploit them. The idea actually is "to each his need, from each his ability".

Now communism has been ineffective in reality. Not because the uber-leet philosopher-pirates strike from society and steal back their gold, but because the government isn't nearly as good at allocating resources as the free market is. However, pure (Randian) capitalism has flaws as well, namely because selfishness leads to both efficiency and exploitation, and you get things like destruction of the environment, and child labor. So you add in regulations, and people shout "SOCIALIST! COMMUNIST! WE WON'T STAND FOR IT!". But really, a reasonable balance has shown to be the most effective and I think it will stay that way.

 

[Fulax]

Socialism, Soviet communism or any other type of planned economy can never work because of economic calculation.

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap26sec1.asp

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Part of the reason I'm only socialist. Whilst I believe in closing the gap between rich and poor, there does need to be some reward for ability and time investment.

Edit: Isnt the OP just talking objectivism? That doesn't work either.

If I may ask, why does the gap between the rich and the poor need to be closed if the rich person worked his way there and the poor person is unlucky/lazy/some other reason. Why should someone else's success be distributed to other when it is that singular persons success?

I'm all giving the destitute of one's country a second chance but whydoes it need to come at the price of a person who doesn't need that second chance?

 

[duchaked]

Real communism has never been seen on this earth, and it never will be seen. Since people are generally selfish, they would have no motivation to do anything for the community if they didn't get anything in return, since doing something to help themselves alone would take less effort and be more profitable.

No, there has been communist attempts. The rules fit the definition and everything.

The fact that it fails due to people does not make it "not real communisum" it means "communisum failed again"

If it is so easy to corrupt in practice, there is something wrong with the theory.

I feel these two points can be more or less one and the same.

Of course power will be abused...a "perfect theory" can't really work in an imperfect world. After all, the leaders are bound to abuse power once they get enough of it =/

 

[Eldarion]

Real communism has never been seen on this earth, and it never will be seen. Since people are generally selfish, they would have no motivation to do anything for the community if they didn't get anything in return, since doing something to help themselves alone would take less effort and be more profitable.

No, there has been communist attempts. The rules fit the definition and everything.

The fact that it fails due to people does not make it "not real communisum" it means "communisum failed again"

If it is so easy to corrupt in practice, there is something wrong with the theory.

True Communism has no governmental structure, which in turn means it's impossible to implement on a large scale.

Alright, I'll give you that one.

 

[lostclause]

Part of the reason I'm only socialist. Whilst I believe in closing the gap between rich and poor, there does need to be some reward for ability and time investment.

Edit: Isnt the OP just talking objectivism? That doesn't work either.

If I may ask, why does the gap between the rich and the poor need to be closed if the rich person worked his way there and the poor person is unlucky/lazy/some other reason. Why should someone else's success be distributed to other when it is that singular persons success?

I'm all giving the destitute of one's country a second chance but whydoes it need to come at the price of a person who doesn't need that second chance?

Appealing to basic humanity here, each person deserves a chance to work and live, supporting themselves. I'm not suggesting that you support someone who doesn't work for their living, they can rot. All I'm saying is that people deserve a basic living standard, above that of sweat shops and labour camps, something is would be considered normal, or even below that, by our standards, not inhuman conditions. If that means CEO's can't take million dollar bonuses then I'm fine with that.

I was referring to the economic side of objectivism, which is capitalism. Socialism works for things like health care and education, because health care is cheaper when socialized, and education would be horrible with economic biases. The other aspect partially
work

Yeah I thought so. Problem with that is our current system doesn't really do that. Ability is not rewarded often. Researchers are the most able people but are not the richest by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Bendon]

I was going to post my opinion on how communism has been tried countless billions of thousands of millions of times before and failed because it only looks good on paper, but then I realized I have no fucking Idea what it looks like even on paper and that I based my entire opinion on when Russia fucked it up.

Maybe I should still post that opinion, what do you guys think?