What's Wrong With Communism?
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Communist societies are slave societies where individual workers cannot contract and endeavor toward a better standard of living than the one their society chooses to provide them. In practice this leads to a lot of passive aggressive withholding of ones innate talents (understandable IMHO) due to the absence of reward-- and then the slow deterioration of the economy and culture which the free market built is soon to follow.
If you want to live in a society of slaves then communism is great. I prefer not to.
If you want to live in a society of slaves then communism is great. I prefer not to.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that communism or socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment".
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D!
No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that communism or socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
That class had insisted that communism or socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment".
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D!
No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that communism or socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
A random person said:
xxiadamixx said:
This has a lot to do with mentality though. Everyone has been out for themselves for the last milleniums so you can't expect people to adapt immideatly. If you were to try it for some 200-300 years or so perhaps people would be different. For example, communities far from the cities with a harsh climate usually has very helpful and trusting inhabitants because that's what they needed to survive. I think that most native tribes were like that before they were discovered and "civilized".This shows that human beings are not inheritently selfish. That depends on the environment where they are raised. They can adapt to being helpful if it's on their own and the communities interest. We are flock animals after all and we wouldn't be that if everyone was inherently selfish.EnglishMuffin said:
Also, I don't think there's anything in the books about Communism that states that everyone has to have the exact same wage all the time. If you have a graph that shows the wealth of the population you will se that it very much resembles a set of stairs were the difference between each step becomes larger the higher and further you come. The idea is that you cut a bit from the ones above the middle and give that to the lower ones the lower ones would contribute more to society.
They also define the highest steps as the ones that works the hardest and most. There are very few jobs that are actually worth less than any other job. A doctor for example has to rely on nurses and cleaners to do his job. It might look more important but he couldn't do it on his own therefore the other ones are just as important.
I might be thinking about Socialism though.
Mankind was sort of communist from the beginning. The founder of the first stone tools probably didn't charge the other tribe members for making their own. Most people that study this suggests that they had one appointed stone-tool maker that spent some of the days making stone tools and he/she got fed until their needs were satisfied.
The way things work now is that corporations runs a lot of the show and as much as one might think politicians are very inefficient CEOs aren't that much more efficient. The only real difference is that a government is a lot easier to keep track of and you can demand politicians to retire. Also, a politicians job is to make it as much of the population as happy as possible while a CEO's job is to make money for the corporation. I'd rather trust the politician. What you choose in the end, i guess, is if you prefer as many people as possible happy or if you want some people to be happier than the rest.
I think the problem with most of the communist countries to this day is that they were achieved trough armed revolutions rather than elections. The revolutionaries were the lower-class under-educated people and therefore they had no clue how to actually make this kind of government work. A lot of the well-educated people left those countries because the revolutionaries saw them as their old enemies that they wanted revenge on and they could provide for their families much better were they got paid better. You need disciplined intellectuals to make a government like this to work.
The way i see it. Communism could work if the change came slowly so people could adapt and it was worldwide so the selfish couldn't escape their duty. If mankind worked together towards creating a better world for everyone rather than just their own we could probably advance in technology faster and thus everyone could have it just as good as the CEOs have it today. It would just be a matter of time.
I would very much like comments on this so i can improve on my reasonings and find solutions to the problems you see.
People don;t change even generation to generation it is rare to see real change in humanitys 50,000 year history there have been but a few major changes and human nature is to be greedy and do as little work as possible because if you can conserve energy and get what you need nature tells us that we have succeeded but in communism you can not have the basic instinct but all humans have it and forever will have it.Akai Shizuku said:
The reason most people are afraid of communism is because it has never been successfully put into practice. It has always been corrupted by greed, pride or power.
It's a good system in theory, but whenever it's been attempted, things like Stalin and Mao happen
It's a good system in theory, but whenever it's been attempted, things like Stalin and Mao happen
I'm not ENTIRELY sure what communism is exactly, and I am too lazy to find out.
From what I can tell though, as long as humans are humans, it will never work, because we think of whats best for us before we think of whats best for others.
Also, Free healthcare is not communist. Its "Socialist". Socialist is when its controlled by the Government.
Britain has it, France has it, my country of Canada has it. (Free Helathcare)
In the USA, there actually are quite a few socialist aspects in there. (if my definition of Socialism is correct.)
Schools? Socialist. The Police and Firefighters? Socialist. Library's? Socialist.
As long as the government is in charge of it, its socialist... I think.
I don't know why people in the US are so afraid of socialism. Propaganda and all that I suppose.
From what I can tell though, as long as humans are humans, it will never work, because we think of whats best for us before we think of whats best for others.
Also, Free healthcare is not communist. Its "Socialist". Socialist is when its controlled by the Government.
Britain has it, France has it, my country of Canada has it. (Free Helathcare)
In the USA, there actually are quite a few socialist aspects in there. (if my definition of Socialism is correct.)
Schools? Socialist. The Police and Firefighters? Socialist. Library's? Socialist.
As long as the government is in charge of it, its socialist... I think.
I don't know why people in the US are so afraid of socialism. Propaganda and all that I suppose.
Mankind is to easily corrupted, therefore it would quickly turn into a dictatorship. And if all people would get the same wages, the people would not strive for promotions and therefore to do lack of manual labor and the sorts the economy would completely collapse. Communism works in theory but only in theory.
This.HotShooter said:
At it's core communism will not work. Funny that a Chinese proverb says it best "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime". To severely dumb it down, with a communist society there is no real need to better yourself, because it is all given to you. Therefore you are breeding complacent robots... not productive humans.
Probably a bit too optimistic, but you bring up good points. People do naturally have altruistic instincts (have to say that while humans aren't perfect, they aren't crap either), and some of the problems with the USSR and China could be traced to the revolutionaries not being that educated and how sudden the new system was.Hedberger said:
Overall, I still think a communist government is best on a small scale, some because of the communist part, but mostly because of the government part. Government is less efficient on larger scales simply because people can't manage larger scales as well. Human limitations, really.
What I think is the overarching problem with communist theory is that it's just too simplistic. There are only three eras of history: ancient, feudal, and capitalist; and these were based entirely on European history of course. How would it fit into the history of, say, Polynesia? There are only two kinds of people: oppressors and the oppressed. Absolutely, positively everything is controlled by economics. Marx even had the gall to try and predict the future, and failed worse than Arthur C. Clarke. For example, the Communist Revolution should have started in the most industrialized nations first, i.e. Great Britain, not a backwater like Russia. Marx wouldn't have believed it if you went back and told him. The social, political, and economic system we have now could use some improvements, but at least it can account for the chaos that is mass human civilization.
But that's just my idea. Feel free to talk about it.
But that's just my idea. Feel free to talk about it.
Thank you for proving my point with such an excellent example.red the fister said:
As you said, a ton of feathers and a ton of depleted uranium armour piercing high explosive shells both weigh a ton.
And again, as you say, because there's a ton of each, they are equal.
But they're not the same.
They are equal.
Because there's a ton of each.
But they're not the same.
And thus concludes my argument, thanks to your excellent example of how equality does not necessitate the absence of individuality.
Thank you.
What's wrong with true communism? Nothing. A true communist society is a utopia. Unfortunately, the people within the system are the problem. The initial generation or 2 who start a communist society understand what they came from and the poverty they wanted to escape by making all people equal economically. Unfortunately further generations do not quite understand the problems that their society came from and couple that with the fact that a communist system is easily abused, people will eventually not have the motivation to work, or at least not work hard. Why would you spend near 10 years of training to become a doctor and have to work in such a stressing job holding fragile lives in your hands when you could do anything else for the same pay? The answer is because you want to save lives, and you will get people who do want to save lives despite the problems with becoming a doctor and the stress that job entails. However, unlike in a capitalist system, you will lose those people who would do it for the potential money involved. Similar to how in ancient Chinese dynasties further generations did not experience the revolution that was necessary to put their family in power and thus begin to decline in maintaining their nation, people will eventually forget the economic hardships they came from in a communist system and thus will not work as hard to maintain the economy.
It'a not really the actual process of communism that is bad, but the people that try and implement it. For it to really work people have to truly believe we are all truly equal and we all should contribute for one another. Now that would be nice, but it will never happen.
Firstly, I do not believe it is human nature or instinct to be selfish, because I know several people who are not selfish at all, either by nature or by actions.Ph33nix said:
And it is not opinion that people can change, it is a fact. And there have been mass changes in the past.
Then what we need to do is to find out what's wrong with the process and correct the problem, and our airship can take to the sky.quiet_samurai said: