Communism does indeed require a political model to institute the power. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a dictatorship. You can indeed have a democratic communist state. Where the property is owned by and controlled by the will of the people.

I see a conflict of interests in the tyranny of the majority and communism. I think the two are quite incompatible. Even if you had a true democracy with a communist agenda, it would still be subject to the same laws of politics that every other system is subject to. Certain parties would eventually take control, even if they had to do it through popular vote. Hell, they already do that in this system and we don't even have an obligation to Communist ideals.

The only Communist system I can ever see working even for a little while is one where some omniscient and objective supercomputer or something with enough resources to allocate to each according to his needs controlled everything, and even that wouldn't last long, since when people's needs are filled they always start looking for other stuff. It would only be a short matter of time before they began trading again, and a short time after that before the whole system flopped.

True success and happiness are earned, not given, not entitled, not guaranteed. There's nothing wrong with giving others a hand from time to time if they are struggling, but you cannot build a system based upon entitlement. Or at least, not yet.

That's why real communism will never work:yep:

I'd go for a system in which all basic needs are taken care off. Free health insurance, free education, some basic food if you can't afford any better, etc.
All luxury goods like cars, tv's etc. would still have to be paid for.

That would be nice, and I used to think the same thing, but it just doesn't work as well as a free market. There's a "line loss", so to speak, when the state gets involved. State involvement also creates a lot of economic drag. There's also the inevitable outcome of the state stratifying the structure or allowing it to be taken over by special interests.

Competition is key to any effective industry. I can see education, food, and healthcare being taken care of by a voucher system, maybe (that's what's left of the socialist in me) but such things must be handled very carefully. Governemnt is very slow and cumbersome, but markets are very quick and agile. If the system doesn't reward doctors or educators or producers or consumers or whatever, you will quickly find yourself with a shortage of these things.

The hardest thing to explain to a socialist is that there is no "quick fix" to anything. If the market is in control you will see an increase in the general standard of living over time, but it takes years or decades of continuous free-market operation to improve the quality of life in a nation, so it isn't quick. Conversely, a lot of socialist policies will result in an immediate improvement, but then an increasing decline into poverty an unproductivity over time, so it isn't a fix. Some believe that there can be a benign mix of socialism and capitalism, but the truth is that if you give an entrenched interest a hammer to fix your house, they will eventually nail you to a cross.

I won't elaborate further due to my tendency to write ridiculously long posts on this subject, but I will suggest that you read Milton Friedman's book Free to Choose. Perhaps you will agree with the tenets presented therein, and perhaps not, but it will at least give you a good perspective on why some of us are so certain that free basic services will not work. And to clarify, I'm not totally against state help for people who really can't take care of themselves. I just don't think that the state should be the first recourse. State help tends to get abused, both by the state and the helped, so again, you have to be careful with it.

Perhaps my view on the subject is best summed up by Geroge Washington: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.":yep:

I think Communism could work if the society is small enough, and by small I mean everyone knows everyone else. Anything larger is going to quickly turn authoritarian.

So, say like a small space station, then? :hmmm: I guess they'd have to be far-removed from any centralized authority, though.

Well, there are, and have been for millenia, tribal villages where there is no
distinct ownership of significant property, no centralised power structure,
simple welfare systems and no rich-poor gap.

I'm not sure I would call that a communist group tho. I think that would be
to distill the meaning too much.

That sounds a lot like a book I read earlier this year, it was called "For us, the living". In it the government grants all citizens a flat stipend for food, housing etc. People are free to work at whatever they want and earn additional currency to spend as they wish. Most people turn to jobs that they enjoy, the number of actors, artisans and scientists increases as the number of service jobs decrease due to automation. For those familiar with 4X strategy games the US enters a "Golden Age" where the number of Talents exceeded the number of Workers.

The one part I think you might enjoy UnderseaLcpl is the method of declaring war, (except in situations where the US is attacked) a vote is called, all who vote yes are enlisted for the duration of hostilities. Interesting to consider this system when it was written; in 1938 by a Naval Officer.

Alpha Centauri? :DL

Does the book describe how the government pays for this stipend?

:rock:

Heinlein deiscribes a system where as long a there are goods to purchase the government can print money for its citizens to purchase them.

True, but industry should serve the people. Not the other way around. If there's a flourishing industry but the employers are suffering (e.g. 19th century industry), then I can't see how this "effective industry" could possibly be a good thing.
Again true. But it can be done. Easily. It's not far from what we have in the Netherlands. For the people who need it, health insurances and education are essentially free. If you can afford it, you can pay extra for a better health insurance though.

But TBH, I'm afraid that the "free education" thing will change very soon... As of now, if your parents can't afford to pay for your study (like mine to some degree), the government gives you the money. But many political parties want to change this system, so that it essentially becomes an interest-free loan, which you have to pay back when you've finished your study.
And in the meantime our great dearest (ex-)Prime Minister complains about us Dutchmen not studying enough:roll: If you want more people to study, the last thing you should do is make studying much more expensive. But try to tell that to our government:88)

Depends on the socialist:) I call myself a socialist, but it's all too clear to me that there ain't no quick fix to anything.

Wouldn't that cause some kind of hyperinflation?

I take it you meant "employees"? In any case, let's look at the 19th century. When most people think of 19th century industry or the industrial revolution they think of some smoke-filled hell where young children and women labored ceaselessly for pitiful wages and poor fathers couldn't earn enough to support their families. While this is true to some extent, it is important to remember the context within which all this was happening. Life was a lot harder back then. Pretty much everything was labor-intensive, and since the machinery was new and modern fabrication techniques were not around, it was very expensive.

But for some reason, people flocked to get jobs at these mills despite the apparently deploreable conditions, wages and safety. The reason was the same reason that China's mills and factories in the SEZs are filled with women, children, and poor men today- it beats the hell out of life on the farm. 14 hours a day for pennies sure beats 12-18 hours or more performing backbreaking labor or pinching worms and beetles between your fingers for nothing if the weather doesn't cooperate, and very little if it does. To the people of that time, the mills weren't a bad gig at all. You can see this process in China right now. Bit by bit, private industry is letting people climb out of the cesspit that the state put them in. It's dirty and difficult, but the eventual outcome is inevitable if you just let people do what they do.

Thanks to the efforts of private industry and the people who served in its ranks, life slowly began to get better and better for everyone, until we reached the point where we are today where we look back and say "My God, how did they do it? How awful!" What's better is that the process speeds up as time goes on. Many of us joke about things like typewriters and even computers or cars that are less than three decades old, but in another two decades people will be saying "My God, how did they do it? How awful?" Or at least, they'll be saying that if we don't totally debauch the currency and plunge headfirst into complete fiscal chaos.

I've heard other people say that industry should serve the people but, doesn't it already? When I turn on a light switch or recieve a parcel or buy a product or order a meal, industry is serving me. Of course, they don't do it for free, and if anyone thinks they should I've got a job opening for you doing my yardwork.

Most likely, you're referring to the idea of corporate citizenship in one of its many forms and guises. The basic idea being that it is the responsibility of private firms to make the community a better place. Notwithstanding the fact that they already do that by providing jobs, goods, services, and usually charity of their own volition, some people think that business has an obligation to take care of varying commmunity needs to various degrees. It's a cute idea, but it's complete hogwash and would never work as a system. For one thing, people have different ideas about just what the firms should be handing out and to whom. If we try to create a system around this basic structure, we just end up with a tax and a government agency that will not discharge its duties any better effectively, or cheaply than any other government agency.

The second major problem is that business has a hard enough time as it is. Corporate taxes account for a major portion of all tax revenue, so they are already being forced to be "socially responsible". Competition alone drives most companies out of business, and those that it doesn't have to fight hard just to stick around. That doesn't leave a lot of time, and more importantly, capital to be focusing on productive things like expanding, investing, or offering a better widget, much less trying to satisfy the bottomless pit of free junk that people want.

Judging from the standard of living here in the US, I'd say private industry is serving us quite well. What else do you want from it?

Two things here:
1) The Netherlands has a young economy and political system, thanks to it being largely reset after WW2....I think. I never really researched the Netherlands much beyond basic stuff. If it is like many other European nations, it probably has recieved a lot of money from the US to re-start the economy (again, after WW2) and it still has a long way to go before it matches the long success of the US. I'm not so sure about the political system being restarted or revamped, please enlighten me.

2)The government of the Netherlands doesn't have as much in common with the US government as the latter does with the E.U., which is falling apart in record time. The Netherlands is more like a small, progressive, but reasonably lassiez-faire state in the US than it is like the US itself. I don't say that to be condescending to your nation or anything, just trying to set a sense of scale in the political sense.

Such is the nature of governments. Even when they get it right, they'll mess it up.

Then you're not much of a socialist. I'd expect that from someone who hails from one of the most economically-free nations in the world.

[/quote]Wouldn't that cause some kind of hyperinflation?[/QUOTE]

Too little information to say. It depends on the system. We already have a system where the government prints money to serve as a medium exchange for goods and services produced, but it doesn't necessarily cause hyperinflation. It can actually cause deflation if the currency supply doesn't keep up with economic output. I imagine that if a supercomputer were keeping tabs on things, the currency supply would remain stable relative to economic output, in order to create a stable price structure.

So the choice is:
Socialism: slow in "building"
Capitalism: fast in "demolishing"

Yeah right, great options ............

The real question is fundamentally one:
Can/Should there be a limit on personal wealth?

It took the recent (and continuing) economic cricis for many people to realize the yearly income of the varius "golden boys". Now, I'm not saying that the "pay" of said "boys" caused the crisis (although their decisions and practices probably did to a large extent) but the "greed" factor can not go unchecked forever...:hmmm:



.

So let me ask you Diopos, would you take the "golden boy" yearly income if it were offered to you? It'd be your money and you could do anything you (legally) want with it, including giving most of it back to "the people".

Or would you say "nobody deserves that much" and refuse it?