Is worldwide "communism" inevitable?

Great Debates
21

Just a comment on the Scandinavians…

Don’t confuse a homogeneous population containing people with a much-higher performance level (compared with a world average) with a heterogeneous society that has larger numbers of under-performers on the various skillsets key to creating a robust modern society.

It’s not that hard to have a model society if everyone has pretty much the same background gene pool for skillsets, history, and world paradigm–along with enough performance ability to create wealth in the first place. Consider how much easier it is for you to help out someone in your family circle voluntarily than it is for you to be coerced into ponying up resources for St Elsewhere. The ease with which altruistic structures are both created and executed is proportional to the homogeneity of the society in which the structure is being effected.

Neither Scandinavia nor Switzerland has had much success with many of their immigrant sub-groups…

22

In other words, Scandinavia’s doing OK because they don’t have any negroes there. :rolleyes:

23

This is functionally what we have now…regardless of the party in power. We have a handful of people who we trust to run our country. They are “benevolent” in that they are constantly meddling in every single aspect of our lives for our own good. We have an unelected bureaucracy that does the dirty work and does not have to answer directly to the people.

The masses do not want to be in charge. In time they will elect a dictator who promises to provide for their every need. People want the illusion of being in charge at the voting booth but they really want to elect their next benevolent dictator.

Pure democracy is horrible as there is no braking mechanism on popular opinion and, of course, tyranny of the majority.

24

  1. This is debatable. Is it worse for millions of Brazilians, Russians Indians and Chinese people who are seeing their country’s economy grow?

  2. “Worse conditions for middle class / poor” does not necessarily correlate with “communism/socialism is preferable or even more likely”.

People working together for their individual benefit is capitalism. We don’t enter into a deal because it’s good for humanity. We do it because we each believe we will benefit. The fundamental tenet of capitalism is that you own your property, capital, labor and intellectual property. When you are allowed to freely enter into agreements with similar-minded people, both parties benefit otherwise they wouldn’t enter into those agreements.

Communism and socialism (and Vulcanomics apparently) believes “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one”. Your individual choices or freedoms are less important than the “greater good”.
There are several reasons why capitalism is superior and several reasons why it is less superior.

In capitalism, wealth is created because anyone with a smart idea can build a business and get rich on it. The economy as a whole benefits from the products, jobs, related industries created by those businesses. Of course, if you are lazy, untalented, unmotivated or don’t have access to resources, you’re sort of out of luck. Also, not every service lends itself to free market negotiations.

In communism, since everything is centralized, there is no opportunity to create new businesses since they need to be approved by some central ministry. Even if you could start a new business, why would you want to since it would just be confiscated for the “greater good”. Any sort of collectivist economy tends to create a “free rider problem”. People inevitably want more out of the system than they want to put in. Eventually, not enough people are putting in and it collapses (or runs at a really crappy level of service).
Some sort of socialist or communist economy may become inevitable. I’ve read some theories that when levels of production reach a point where very few people are actually required to perform the work needed to run society, there would not be enough meaningful work to keep a highly educated workforce busy. Much of the wealth would reside in the few “producers” (or their corporations). Ultimately these would lead to a surplus of “intellectuals” with not much to do besides get involved in matters that don’t directly concern them, ultimately leading to greater political pressure to implement more socialized policies.

25

The problem with communism is that the notion that everyone has an equal start is noble and worthwhile, but once everyone passes into adulthood demonstrably has different abilities, talents, drive, etc. and it actually ceases being fair that everyone is compensated equally despite their own personal decisions and abilities.

A small quibbling example would be a living wage arguing that a father of 3 should be paid more for doing the same job as a single person because the family man “needs” it more and it’s more “fair”. Debating whether or not a CEO should be paid the same as a garbage man is a messier argument.

Capitalism with socialistic “safety nets” to me seems to be the least worst system yet. If anyone cares to make an argument otherwise, feel free.

26

Or any Star Trek series with matter-replicators in it.

27

Of course not all people are born with equal talents/abilities/potential and no one really believes they are, not even Thomas Jefferson (he meant only that all have equal rights, not abilities; or, as Thomas Paine put it, “The mass of humanity were not born with saddles on their backs, nor the chosen few booted and spurred to ride them”); but whenever you say that it sounds like pseudoscientific racialism, owing to your long posting history in that regard.

28

I disagree. We are hwaaaay better off now that when I was a kid. Yes, true, the very rich have become the ultra rich. But I have better healthcare, better tech, better food, a better car, better entertainment, and a better life.

29

All true. But people always base their desires on the top 1% or the richer neighbor down the block. They will never be happy for long, since they will always find the next scarce commodity to fight over.

You say you have better tech than 20 years ago. By that standard you should be perfectly content with 5 MBit internet. Yet, are you not jealous of the people who have access to the Google Fiber? I know I am.

30

It’s certainly not inevitable. For example, if automation gets good enough to replace everyone, instead of having a post scarcity economy the rich 1% could order their equally automated army to exterminate the 99%, instead of sharing the wealth. I could certainly see that happening in America, with great self righteousness and satisfaction among the “elite” ordering the slaughter.

Many, perhaps most people don’t.

31

The fact that I have pretty much the same cell phone, drinking water, cable networks, personal computer, clothes, etc. that Bill Gates has really doesn’t make me too envious of the top 1%.

Access to google fiber isn’t a matter of money. The aforementioned Bill Gates in Washington state doesn’t have access to google fiber yet either. And even if he/I was jealous, I don’t think it’s to the point where it’s significantly detracting from my quality of life.

I hate to be that guy, I really do, but… cite? At least explanation?

32

Access to medical care has been getting worse - more advanced medicine is useless if you have no access to it. There are more homeless and extremely impoverished people than there used to be. People work longer hours; what use is better entertainment if you can’t ever see it? What use is better food if you can’t afford it? Go tell the guy with untreated disease eating plain noodles in an unheated cockroach infested apartment how great his life is.

33

That’s not a cite. That’s just more scripted diarrhea.

34

Even if it were the case that civilization must trend toward some humanist ideal utopia (which seems like a dubious proposition), there’s still an excellent chance that the human race wipes itself out long before we get there. Let’s think about a few options:

Right this minute, we could have a full nuclear exchange which renders the planet basically uninhabitable - nuclear winter, fallout, the collapse of every economy and monetary system in the world. It’s a lot less likely than it was back during the Cold War, but the technological capability still definitely exists. I don’t know if we’d be able to claw our way back to civilization after an event like that, but if we did, I don’t see anything keeping us from doing it again, and again, and again, blowing everything up every few hundred or thousand years, and never reaching that ideal.

In the moderate term, we still haven’t done much to cut back on global warming. You may have heard of thermohaline circulation? And how there’s a decent chance it will shut down if we don’t stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere? I heard that outcome described as “Everything dies, and the Earth smells like twenty billion rotten eggs”. I’m not sure if that would end human civilization, but it would definitely be a setback to our utopian ideal, insofar as we would have to conduct our perfectly happy lives wearing gas masks anytime we went outdoors, assuming you can go outdoors at all.

In the long term, there’s plenty of large scale non-manmade disasters still ready to help rid the Earth of its hairless monkey infestation;
The Yellowstone Supervolcano is about due. When it blows, it’s going to take most of the western half of North America with it.
We don’t actually know how many potentially Earth-threatening asteroids are out there, only that it’s a lot and that if one decides we need to go the way of the dinosaurs, there’s not much we’ll be able to do about it.
Heck, we could have a hypernova detonate in our galactic neighborhood, and just irradiate every living thing for lightyears in every direction.

No, I’d say there’s nothing inevitable about an post-scarcity technological utopia. I don’t think it’s impossible either, and I enjoy reading about the possibility, but in the end, it’s clearly at best only that - a possibility.

35

They asked for an explanation, I gave one. I stopped caring about cites much when I noticed they were universally ignored. Why spend an hour searching for links no one will read?

36

Der Trihs, you are absolutely right. It all started with the strongest caveman lording over the tribe, then … the most clever caveman outwitted the brutes and took over, using “Royaty” and “Religion” as methods of power aquisition … the brutes became the “Army” and the “Police”. Fast forward 10,000 years, and the clever tribal leaders are the super-wealthy and their politician servants. The Army and Police are ever the brutes.
I know quite a few billionaires … they all hate the poor and barely tolerate the middle class. I’m convinced that the 1% would grind up all the “useless eaters” if given the opportunity, and I think the moment “we” aren’t useful as pawns in a democratic voter game, that’s exactly what will happen, to one degree or another.

37

So are fascistic and nativist movements.

Capitalism is not intrinsically opposed to altrusim and egalitarianism unless you’re a Randian who thinks altruism is the ultimate evil.

Not a bad way to put it as Negroes (the word ought to be capitalized) while not genetically inferior are genetically inferior but rather because Scandanavia unlike the US did not have a large, historically oppressed minority.

What a bunch of rubbish.

Ultimately, I believe a world government is inevitable but it will not be some sort of a communist utopia (for communism as a workable political philosophy is dead) but rather the end product of what many leftists fear-that is the outcome of globalization, increasing free trade, and American-backed democracy movements.

38

Actually leftists like me do think that that is a good thing, the problem is to assume and not look to pressure the globalization agents to help enforce basic things like worker’s rights and safety nets.

No, suicide nets is not what I’m talking about, :frowning: (one does not know if the right laughs cries about or ignores things like that) but it does point at the issues that we should not forget.

39

Surely you know no cite is needed to realize most of the world live that way – including a very sizable working poor population in the US. Katrina ring a bell?

Just for shits & giggles I brought-up the same topic with a couple of my BIL’s* chauffeurs a couple of days ago. As in “how/what do you do in you very little free time.” The responses I got would have made an 18th Century slave feel he had it great. Meaning they mostly had 8/10 hours of more work in their own homes (in their 36 hours off) or made a buck or two helping others. Free time is sort of a foreign subject. Best they could muster was having a beer or three late on Saturday while playing dominoes.

And yes, there’s that much of a gap – especially in Third World nation, where 1% go from city to resorts in private helicopters and the rest are trying to (barely) keep their families from starving.
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Chief, with all due. The masses might not want to be in charge but they surely don’t want to be in a living hell which slaps the in the face day by day. And no need to be “altruistic” when you’re already making a billion or more a year – I think those folks would carry on just as well if we double their taxes.

What is happening now is simply immoral as through most of history. Which is why what TheSeaOtter poses is not as implausible as many may think…

Feel really bad for my kid and his generation, but I honestly think we’re going backwards. And sure, this being GD, I’d provide some cites. But this is common/basic knowledge…for most people here anyway. Or so I should hope.

*Part owner of one of the biggest businesses here – he inherited his share, not really interest in anything that might jeopardize his routine. Great guy, truly humble and all…but change you are not going to get

40

That’s tellin’ me. Thanks for the thoughtful and well-reasoned comment.