americas problem with communism?

[lawnseed]

The problem with communism and contrary to popular belief it has never been tried. That so many people seem to think that communist states have existed display nothing more than complete ignorance of what it is or entails. The Yanks problem with it is that it abolishes the need to make a profit from the sale of products and hence would abolish privileged based on wealth. A turkey is never going to vote for Christmas.

exactly! it has never been tried. pure communism has never been tried. it might be worth reminding people that devs dreamland ireland would now be considered communist but corruption and greed left him clinging on to power with a paper to publish his propaganda surrounded by cronies

[thewobbler]

'pure communism has never been tried'

Open the papers any day of the week and read about the greedy, the needy, the twisted, the sick, the insane, the biblically ensconced, the evil, the lazy, and the downright simple who live in our world.

Then please, FFS, let me know how you would arrange an egalitarian society around the above without having a group of people to marshall them, and ergo defeat egalitarianism.

Communism is a great concept, but a terrible idea.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

It is the antithesis of The American Dream is why they hate it.

Take other peoples stuff. O, actually that's Communism too.

i think you've made my point. now whats the solution? getting sucked into the united states of france/germany? wheres our democracy now?

Well while I am not be a fan of being a member of the United States of Franco-Germania, I am a fan of a United Europe as a democratic federal republic. Ireland being a unified state within that republic.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

'pure communism has never been tried'

Open the papers any day of the week and read about the greedy, the needy, the twisted, the sick, the insane, the biblically ensconced, the evil, the lazy, and the downright simple who live in our world.

Then please, FFS, let me know how you would arrange an egalitarian society around the above without having a group of people to marshall them, and ergo defeat egalitarianism.

Communism is a great concept, but a terrible idea.

We would need to develop a hive brain, losing all individuality. We would conquer the stars to the edge of the universe, but we wouldn't enjoy a bit of it.

[Eamonnca1]

over the last 70 years half the worlds population have lived under communism and for most part have got along equally as well as us here in the "free west".

[lawnseed]

'pure communism has never been tried'

Open the papers any day of the week and read about the greedy, the needy, the twisted, the sick, the insane, the biblically ensconced, the evil, the lazy, and the downright simple who live in our world.

Then please, FFS, let me know how you would arrange an egalitarian society around the above without having a group of people to marshall them, and ergo defeat egalitarianism.

Communism is a great concept, but a terrible idea.

so capitalism keeps the above group of people "in their place" I'd suggest to you that a good few of your rag tag misfits are actually running the show at the moment. i notice you avoid "the poor" they are such a nuisance

[Eamonnca1]

we have n.Korea labled 'communist' when it is infact a dictatorship it is no more communist than Kentucky.

Oh. My. f**king. God.

[lawnseed]

over the last 70 years half the worlds population have lived under communism and for most part have got along equally as well as us here in the "free west".

explain eamon

[lawnseed]

'pure communism has never been tried'

Open the papers any day of the week and read about the greedy, the needy, the twisted, the sick, the insane, the biblically ensconced, the evil, the lazy, and the downright simple who live in our world.

Then please, FFS, let me know how you would arrange an egalitarian society around the above without having a group of people to marshall them, and ergo defeat egalitarianism.

Communism is a great concept, but a terrible idea.

We would need to develop a hive brain, losing all individuality. We would conquer the stars to the edge of the universe, but we wouldn't enjoy a bit of it.

ala the united states of europe. run by bureaucrats.. unelected bureaucrats! sounds familar?

[Eamonnca1]

Since all systems are going to have some corruption creeping into them, you have to ask which is more prone to it. This economically illiterate nonsense about capitalism having "failed" the west is something that crops up every time a problem develops in the world's financial system.  I remember the same apocalyptic doom-mongers rubbing their hands gleefully about capitalism's imminent demise during the Asian financial crisis in 1997, during Argentina's default in 2002, and sure enough they have emerged again as predictably as serial end-of-the-world predictor Harold Camping. 

What they don't understand is that the capitalist system, for all its faults, allows for corrections.  When too many resources have been allocated into the wrong area where there's not enough demand (like an oversupply of housing) then a period of recession comes in as nature's way of correcting the problem.  Yes it is painful and yes it causes hardship for individuals who now have to wait until the system gets better aligned with reality, but this is not capitalism dying; this is capitalism working.

The Communist system has no such checks or balances.  It is a controlled economy that relies on the people at the top knowing exactly where the demand is and assigning production to meet it.  In an ideal world this would work fine, but in the real world the economy of even a small country is such a complex animal that not even the smartest man on gaaboard.com (that'd be me) can predict it or fully understand it.  Markets are the only mechanism that can come even close to adequately matching supply with demand. 

Here's an example. In Soviet Russia the government decided to reward the people in charge of the railways in terms of how many miles of freight they moved.  Sounds sensible, right?  Well what happened next was the railway people loaded their trains full of goods and sent it across the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok and back.  They responded logically to the fucked up incentives they were given, and the result was waste on a grand scale. The cost of that waste then had to be borne by the Soviet consumer. 

Here's another example.  In Moscow hotels you'd see people sitting at desks on every floor. Their job was to sit there and hand out room keys to guests coming and going. One person in the foyer could do the same amount of work along with a host of other duties, but in the interests of creating "full employment" you had a country full of people working in these "non jobs."  You might think a lift attendant is a waste of money until you see a lift attendant on every floor of the hotel.  The cost of these wages then had to be passed on to the consumer resulting in hotels that only the rich and foreign tourists could afford to stay in. 

Multiply that kind of inefficiency throughout the whole economic system and you have a country in which everything is so damn expensive that the people live in abject poverty with no way of changing the system. The laws of supply-and-demand were completely ignored and the whole system became unsustainable. Basic staples such as food were so scarce that they had to be rationed by means of making people stand in queues to wait for a chance to buy what little was left. Communism's collapse was bloody inevitable.  The only reason it took so long was because the regimes that kept the system in place did so with an iron fist and to go out and protest against it was to take your life in your hands, as the students in Beijing found out to their cost.

The problem with Communism is that it's such a breathtakingly unsustainable system that the only way to implement it is to impose it on the people whether they want it or not, and to forcibly keep it in place no matter how much the people hate it when it inevitably fails them. 

By the way, globalized capitalism has lifted millions of people out of poverty.  Brazil, Russia, India and China, all of whom have adopted market reforms, are the rising economic powers of the 21st century as their people become better off. This didn't happen by adopting Communist principles but by rejecting them.

[lawnseed]

Lawnseed. The World. Communism. Lovely.

i am not promoting communism as a system of governance. i am merely asking what is "Americas problem with communism?" in the handful of posts so far on this question no one has yet given a plausible reason for such venom against communism. the one thing that gets yanks going is the 'battle' against communism and yet Americans are perfectly happy to tr**p over injured and sick Americans on American streets who don't have medical insurance. the government of this great democracy are happy to intern US citizens never mind foreigners indefinitely. WE know how that went. if communism is such a failed system why are Americans so afraid of OTHER countries trying it out. the US meddled in the political affairs of south American countries that they saw developing Marxist type ideologies by actively promoting and aiding criminal gangs in those countries in efforts to destabilise them. they actually bombed south American government buildings killing all that were inside then introducing punitive sanctions announcing how they would bring that country 'back to the stoneage'. whats that about? why do they care?

[Ulick]

The Communist system has no such checks or balances.  It is a controlled economy that relies on the people at the top knowing exactly where the demand is and assigning production to meet it.  In an ideal world this would work fine, but in the real world the economy of even a small country is such a complex animal that not even the smartest man on gaaboard.com (that'd be me) can predict it or fully understand it.  Markets are the only mechanism that can come even close to adequately matching supply with demand. 

Here's an example. In Soviet Russia the government decided to reward the people in charge of the railways in terms of how many miles of freight they moved.  Sounds sensible, right?  Well what happened next was the railway people loaded their trains full of goods and sent it across the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok and back.  They responded logically to the fucked up incentives they were given, and the result was waste on a grand scale. The cost of that waste then had to be borne by the Soviet consumer. 

Here's another example.  In Moscow hotels you'd see people sitting at desks on every floor. Their job was to sit there and hand out room keys to guests coming and going. One person in the foyer could do the same amount of work along with a host of other duties, but in the interests of creating "full employment" you had a country full of people working in these "non jobs."  You might think a lift attendant is a waste of money until you see a lift attendant on every floor of the hotel.  The cost of these wages then had to be passed on to the consumer resulting in hotels that only the rich and foreign tourists could afford to stay in. 

Multiply that kind of inefficiency throughout the whole economic system and you have a country in which everything is so damn expensive that the people live in abject poverty with no way of changing the system. The laws of supply-and-demand were completely ignored and the whole system became unsustainable. Basic staples such as food were so scarce that they had to be rationed by means of making people stand in queues to wait for a chance to buy what little was left. Communism's collapse was bloody inevitable.  The only reason it took so long was because the regimes that kept the system in place did so with an iron fist and to go out and protest against it was to take your life in your hands, as the students in Beijing found out to their cost.

The problem with Communism is that it's such a breathtakingly unsustainable system that the only way to implement it is to impose it on the people whether they want it or not, and to forcibly keep it in place no matter how much the people hate it when it inevitably fails them. 

By the way, globalized capitalism has lifted millions of people out of poverty.  Brazil, Russia, India and China, all of whom have adopted market reforms, are the rising economic powers of the 21st century as their people become better off. This didn't happen by adopting Communist principles but by rejecting them.

As I said earlier, the problem with communism and contrary to popular belief it has never been tried. That so many people seem to think that communist states have existed display nothing more than complete ignorance of what it is or entails.

[Windmill abu]

What they don't understand is that the capitalist system, for all its faults, allows for corrections.

When too many resources have been allocated into the wrong area where there's not enough demand (like an oversupply of housing) then a period of recession comes in as nature's way of correcting the problem.

Yes it is painful and yes it causes hardship for individuals who now have to wait until the system gets better aligned with reality, but this is not capitalism dying; this is capitalism working.

Only if the people who invested in this system pay when the recession comes.

Yes it is painful and yes it causes hardship for individuals who now have to wait until the system gets better aligned with reality, but this is not capitalism dying; this is capitalism working

It is forcing ordinary hard working people into paying for the decisions made by money lenders and their respective Governments to bail them out.

How many banks have paid for their gambling debts?

We are paying for losing bets made by the banks while the bank share holders ciollect the winnings on successful bets,

[lawnseed]

all true eamon except i'd point out to you that the 'bric' countries are where the haves are making a killing out of the have nots. and whats happening is that instead of having 'poor countries' what capitalism is bringing is poor people in every country as the gap between rich and poor increases. what unregulated markets have brought is boom then bust.. boom then bust and each time the rich get richer and the small man gets edged out. the last american president who tried to rest power in america from the banks was assassinated. what followed was the 'roaring twenties' closely followed by the great depression.
    if you are right about the markets then why are the irish people up to their necks in debt paying of the debts of private individuals/banks? why if they have shown poor judgment in business are they not allowed to fail. the answer can only be corruption and cronyism since it is not pure capitalism

[Eamonnca1]

As I said earlier, the problem with communism and contrary to popular belief it has never been tried. That so many people seem to think that communist states have existed display nothing more than complete ignorance of what it is or entails.

I was in Russia in 1990. I can assure you that they were trying it then. I'm well aware of what it entails, thank you very much.