Communism - Just like Star Trek

reddragon · 2005-08-17 17:59:17

Actually its called freedom...
Anarchy would be where I didnt respect your right to the same.

Such freedom would never work, because not everyone would respect everyone else's rights. When this happens and there is no government to step in, the system collapses, and you have regular old anarchy. In this case, groups of people start banding together to protect first their lives and then their rights. They will follow those who can protect them, even when it involves sacrificing some rights. Gradually the groups most able to survive and to gain power do so, and the other groups are destroyed, repressed, or assimilated. The simple governing structure of groups evolves to form the governments of states either instituted to protect the rights of the people or forced upon the people by their protectors who have become corrupted by power.

Another problem with all respecting each other's rights is that we disagree on what these rights are. Martian Republic has a very good point that we need to determine what freedom is.

idiom · 2005-08-18 01:26:41

True freedom is the right to do unto others as I wish without effective judgement or reproach.

Like America, but as a person.

reddragon · 2005-08-18 09:38:15

True freedom is the right to do unto others as I wish without effective judgement or reproach.

Yes, I guess that would be freedom, but it is also undesirable. Perhaps we must clarify what we mean when we say we want freedom.

Martian Republic · 2005-08-18 10:22:05

Beside arguing over what is freedom or individual rights which everybody has there own opinion of and we would have to come to agreement on, there are also right as a group of people that is called a common wealth or general welfare. So even if we could come to an agreement of what is freedom and what it should look like, it will ultimately conflict with those private freedoms or individual rights. So ultimately we will have to have a compromise between those two and which one trumps the other one when there a conflict between those two issue. We don’t want a system that trumps our freedom at every turn so we don’t have freedom, but we also don’t want a system that can trump group interest so we don’t have a group interest of benefits either. So we are going to have to discuss what that balance needs to be too.

Larry,

Stormrage · 2005-08-22 05:27:20

Has anyone ever read the book Animal Farm? It's about an old Pig who tells all the animals in a farm about a farm run by animals for animals. The animals were being cruelly treated by their human owners so they rebelled when the old pig died. After that their is a political struggle between two pigs. Snowball (Leon Trotsky) and Napoleon(Stalin). Napoleon wins and manages to ruin the farm. All the pigs act like human while the other animals suffer even worse under the pigs then the humans.

A nice story about the corruption of Communism from it's true ideals to the Stalinization created by Stalin.

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2006-03-23 10:04:17

We do not want reds communist any where! The evil empire is dead lets not bring it back for free health care. Slaude!

You guys can spend billions to go celebrate your 2019 Apollo birthday on the Moon, meanwhile Chinese will have the red planet

http://www.asu.edu/feature/includes/spr … /mars2.jpg

Ittiz · 2006-08-24 22:25:57

It doesn't matter which way you cut that block of cheese communism still stinks. I don't care if you carve it into a statue of Michelangelo, it will still stink.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-25 08:12:38

*To be quite blunt and frank: Yes, I do think a lot of corporations are evil.
1. Campbell's in the early 1990s. Resorted to massive "downsizing" targeting older employees just about to retire, thereby cheating those decades-long employees out of their promised pensions.
2. Enron and similar corps in the early 2000s: Cooking the books (lying and fraud), cheating investors, causing hundreds of employees to lose their 401(k) money (at least half of which money came from their own paychecks). One former Enron employee lost tens of thousands of 401(k) savings; by the time his bosses got done screwing around with the books, the employee was left with $600.00.
3. Corporate welfare anyone? They get in a bind/pickle/whatever and who bails the assholes out? The taxpayer.
4. Sure the corps provide lots of jobs. Because they squeeze out/squash any competition and become almost monopolies. Independent/small businesses are essentially screwed from the get-go. Independent/small business also provide jobs. And what if I want to work for myself/be my own boss? It's getting more and more difficult to do that.
5. The corporations call the shots in D.C.; lots of politicians are their paid-off puppets (lavish parties, perks, high-priced favors, on and on). Now the corporations are giving the Supreme Court marching orders, apparently.
I'm not interested in being a serf to the nobility. But it seems America has gone full circle from its break with Europe and its former serf/noble-landlord oppression.
The American Dream is being stomped into the ground by the Corporate Boot and I'm not interested in licking that boot.
Unless, of course, lying, cheating, fraud and bribery are considered good and desirable attributes.
My 2 cents' worth.
--Cindy
P.S.: And isn't it "interesting" that as the employee gets more and more benefits/raises taken away, the CEOs get ever-fatter salaries, perks, etc.? Gosh, what a coincidence.

These are all management issues you speak of. How does that implicate the corporation in general? If you get rid of the corporation, what are you going to replace it with? A government agency perhaps? Such an agency still requires management, and is still subject to the managerial abuses you speak of, but a government agency is not subject to the compedative pressures of a private corporation, so the money it spends comes from taxpayers, and who are going to be the taxpayers if not corporations?

Corporations are the source of all the money the government has to spend. Corporations pay the people who pay their taxes and on top of that corporations pay taxes themselves. Corporations compete with other corporations and to gain the customer's business, corporations often have to cut costs to lower its price to attract the customer. Point number 4 you make is questionable. If a corporation was a monopoly, it would provide fewer jobs, not more. Monopolistic company would try to maximise profits so as to enrich its stockholders, it wouldn't hire any more people than necessary, it wouldn't innovate or improve efficiency or service either. Monopolies try to provide as little service as possible for the maximum amount of money. What I'm trying to say is that a market with a bunch of competing corporations produces more jobs than one that is dominated by a single monopoly.

Most corporations aren't monopolies however, it would be a grave mistake to get rid of all corporations because some of them are monopolies, because the corporations that compete actually produce wealth and if you get rid of them, you are actually killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Nothing else creates wealth quite as efficiently as private compedative corporations do.

You know something else that's funny? There are even left wing corporations that don't believe in Capitalism, but they still are corporations. The New York Times Corporation is one such example. You get rid of all corporations you will also get rid of the New York Times, that great spokesman for all left wing causes.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-25 08:37:33

We do not want reds communist any where! The evil empire is dead lets not bring it back for free health care. Slaude!
You guys can spend billions to go celebrate your 2019 Apollo birthday on the Moon, meanwhile Chinese will have the red planet
http://www.asu.edu/feature/includes/spr … /mars2.jpg

China is not a communist country, even though it says it is. The Communist party runs it, that's for sure, but they have abandoned the principles of communism a long time ago, their main concern now is to stay in power. China may get to Mars, first, we shall see, but whether they do or not doesn't prove a thing about Communism or what it is capable of.

Eigon · 2006-08-29 13:26:34

Martian Republic, and others: Actually, communism does work, but only on a small scale, say 450 people or less. This is the way the kibbutzim were run in Israel in the early days (some of them still are), and how the early Baptist communities were run (based, of course, on the descriptions of early Christian communities in Acts).

For a system that would be able to administer an entire planet, we would have to look elsewhere.

Anarcho-syndicalism is one possibility - it may seem a contradiction in terms, but this is organised anarchism. Again, it may only work on a small scale (my brother-in-law lives in an anarcho-syndicalist community in Germany), but it's never been tried on a large scale. It may be instructive to read The Dispossessed, by Ursula le Guin; she imagines anarcho-syndicalism as a planet-wide system (well, a moon-wide system, actually), in opposition to capitalism on the main planet.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-29 14:13:35

Why are you looking for alternatives to a standard republican form of government with elected representatives? On the small scale, you can have direct participatory Democracy where citizens can vote legislation directly rather than acting through elected representatives, what else do you really need? Why do you have to experiment with different forms of communal ownership? We are only talking about colonizing a different planet, there is no evidence that human nature will change if we change locations.

Capitalism works, democracy works, if we are trying to tackle the problem of settling another planet, why should we attempt to solve problems that don't need solving? Life on Mars will be hard enough as it is.

idiom · 2006-08-29 18:02:52

That is half the point of going, to try out new political experiments, just as the American colonies experimented with new ideas of constitutionalism and republics.

American democracy and a number of others have descended to mob rule in a lot of cases, where 51% is considered a mandate from heaven. Early democratic leaders and philosophers considered that a law should not be passed without 80% or so consensus. If 49% of your population objects to your shiny new law, is it really a good law?

Open democracy has congealed in the US into two opposed mobs who vote based on allegiance rather than ideology. Sentiments such as "my parents belonged to the party, I was raised in the party and I will die in the party" are commonplace.

Also pure capitalism died in America in 1929. Free Market ideas are still opposed with trade organisations and tariffs being used as instruments of less-lethal warfare. Anti-trust legislation was introduced because the 'invisible hand of the market' does not literally exist. Without government oversight a lot of markets tend towards monopolies.

I think that maybe there is room for new ideas. Mars is one of the few opportunites to freely try them out. Maybe we can figure out a way to encourage vibrant democracies or freemarkets that dont tend towards monopolies or feudalistic company structures. Who knows, that why went want to go to Mars, to try new things. If we wanted to be repressed by encrusted republics we would stay here.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-30 09:40:42

That is half the point of going, to try out new political experiments, just as the American colonies experimented with new ideas of constitutionalism and republics.
American democracy and a number of others have descended to mob rule in a lot of cases, where 51% is considered a mandate from heaven. Early democratic leaders and philosophers considered that a law should not be passed without 80% or so consensus. If 49% of your population objects to your shiny new law, is it really a good law?

51% or even 50.01% is a good idea when a leader must be chosen and decided upon quickly. If half the population wants one leader and the other half wants another, choosing the leader might as well be a coin toss, but it is better to choose a leader than not to choose a leader, the consequences of not making a choice or endless squabbling are higher. Laws require the passage by two legislative bodies and the approval of the chief executive with the possibility of the legislature overruling the chief executive's veto, I think that's a far cry from 51% approval for law passage, I think the hurdle is higher than that for My country at least.

Open democracy has congealed in the US into two opposed mobs who vote based on allegiance rather than ideology. Sentiments such as "my parents belonged to the party, I was raised in the party and I will die in the party" are commonplace.

That is something Monarchists used to say when disparaging democracy and championing the divine right of Kings to rule in the name of God.

Also pure capitalism died in America in 1929. Free Market ideas are still opposed with trade organisations and tariffs being used as instruments of less-lethal warfare. Anti-trust legislation was introduced because the 'invisible hand of the market' does not literally exist. Without government oversight a lot of markets tend towards monopolies.

Capitalism is the motive force, but what happens if you launch a rocket without a guidance system? Suppose you launched a rocket without fins, thrusters or anything else to stear that rocket, suppose you just trusted that rocket to know where its supposed to go, will that get you to Mars? No, but you still need the motive force of that rocket to get you there. if you have a rocket that is all guidance systems but no rocket motor, you are just going to sit on the launch pad and not go anywhere. Capitalism requires, guidance, direction, and regulation, but not too much of those. Generally speaking the market should serve the people, individual purchases should be the main driver of the economy and what is produced, not some central plan, too much regulation weighs down an economy, just like too much payload weighs down a rocket and may prevent it from reaching Mars. You need to have respect for all parts of the rocket, the motor the guidance system, the engines must be sufficient to get you there and the payload must not be too taxing. Everything must be in balance for things to work right and for the mission to be accomplished, capitalistic economies are much the same in that respect. Capitalism is the prime motive force in an economy, you don't get that same motive force under socialism. Socialism is all controls and very little pep. I don't expect Capitalism to know where its going, but I do respect the power Capitalism has to drive an economy in whatever direction it is steered in. If you abolish capitalism because your expect it to do something it wasn't designed for, then your going to end up with a stagnant economy. You tax the capitalistic economy a little so you have resources to work with to solve societies other problems that Capitalism won't solve, you don't have the government take over the economy and attempt to replace capitalism with itself, the problems in society don't require that, and that is an overkill solution and you'd be strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs. That goose is not responsible for how its gold is spend, that is how I view Capitalism, you mustn't over tax it, and if you don't it will yield greater resources for you to spend on societies problems later on. Socialists don't have patience for this, they want all the economic pie now, and they don't care about growing the economy, sacrificing the future to solve the problems of the present.

I think that maybe there is room for new ideas. Mars is one of the few opportunites to freely try them out. Maybe we can figure out a way to encourage vibrant democracies or freemarkets that dont tend towards monopolies or feudalistic company structures. Who knows, that why went want to go to Mars, to try new things. If we wanted to be repressed by encrusted republics we would stay here.

Beware of new ideas though, the Russians were not properly cautious during their revolution and look what happened. The American Founding Fathers were very much afraid of the revolution they were fostering, they rebelled because they were backed into a corner by Great Britian, but they were very suspicious of a central authority and very much distrustful to giving too much power to General Washington, because of that distrust, they designed a constitution that provided for the balance of powers between the branches of government and as a result we have a long lasting successful republic. The Russians attitide was that anything was better than their Czar, they got "anything" and look what happened.

idiom · 2006-08-30 22:47:43

51% or even 50.01% is a good idea when a leader must be chosen and decided upon quickly. If half the population wants one leader and the other half wants another, choosing the leader might as well be a coin toss, but it is better to choose a leader than not to choose a leader, the consequences of not making a choice or endless squabbling are higher. Laws require the passage by two legislative bodies and the approval of the chief executive with the possibility of the legislature overruling the chief executive's veto, I think that's a far cry from 51% approval for law passage, I think the hurdle is higher than that for My country at least.

Who said anything about a leader? If half of you each of your legislatures think the new law is a really bad idea but the executive approves it any way, that is very nearly 51% of the vote.

Socialism is all controls and very little pep. I don't expect Capitalism to know where its going, but I do respect the power Capitalism has to drive an economy in whatever direction it is steered in.

You seem to assume that there are only two possible options for future governments. Little Americas or the insanity of Pol-pot. The real communist revolutions occured in 1848, the others were simply massive abuse of peasants.

Socialist ideas managed to save a failing America and have done pretty well in a numbe of countries.

I think there are probably better ideas than anything we have thought of so far and better ways to implement the ideas we already have. New off world colonies give us the clean slates to try them out with out bloody revolutions.

On the otherhand you seem to very happy with the status quo, so why would you want to leave?

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-31 01:39:30

So what happened in 1848? I think the real important events occured from 1861 to 1865, but what was 1848 anyway? My interpretation of Socialism is as a substitute economic system replacing capitalism, but why does it need to be replaced? If a steel sword chops off the head on an innocent person, does that mean we need a substitute for steel? I think charity did not begin in 1848, people gave alms for the poor before that time, Socialism existed as far back as the ancient city-state of Sparta.

Capitalism describes an economic system where people with money make their own economic decisions, the laws of capitalism describe what happens when people are allowed to do so.

Democracy is when people choose their own government by voting.

Socialism is when government interfers with the economic decision making of individuals.

If some people are rich and talented and other people are not, then the capitalistic system favors the rich and talented as that is the most economically efficient decision to make. If you are going to pay someone a million dollars to play baseball, he better draw in the crowds and boost ticket sales, that is in a word Capitalism. If the government says the same busnessman must pay Joe Blow 1 million dollars or he'll be arrested, then that is socialism.

idiom · 2006-08-31 06:34:35

If people elect the government and the government spends their money then they people are deciding how to spend their money. If there is a problem here it is with the responsiveness and granularity of your government. If you wanted you could elect a zero tax government, but apparently your democracy has not lead to that.

Extortion, pyramid schemes, anti-competitive practices, these are the tools of true capitalists.

So what happened in 1848? Apart from the publication of the Communist Manifesto which actaully had original content somewhat like Adam Smiths elucidation of the free market.

Of course their are no ethical questions raised by multiple millions being given to sports stars, well beyond whether professionalism ruins sport.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-31 09:02:37

Wouldn't you rather spend your money than have the people decide how to spend your money? Do you need a majority vote by the people to decide whether you can buy ice cream and the shop rather than you just deciding to get it yourself? I believe its called your money because you are the one who is authorized to spend it, it belongs to you, not the people. If something needs to be done by government and only government can do it, then you pay a tax and the government spends the money for the people if it is a democratic government or otherwise it spends it for itself, but the government is only authorised to spend that protion of your money that it collects in taxes. The people decide how much taxes to collect from individuals by selecting legislators and Senators. Beyond the taxes you pay, the people have no business deciding how to spend your money as that money belongs to you, not to the people.

Extorion is illegal, as are pyramid schemes, and anti-competitive practises, those aren't the tools of true capitalists but of criminal organizations. I did tell you that Capitalism is something that needs to be regulated if it is to function properly, and people need to play by the rules. The true capitalists play by the rules, they do not break the law, otherwise any Mafia Godfather can tell you that he is only following the rules of capitalism when he engages in anti-compedative practises such as rubbing out his rivals.

Of all the people who engage in anti-compedative practices, the once that do it most often are governments. Why for instance is 90% of the World's oil supply in government hands? Because the governments of OPEC nations and Russia are engaging in anticompedative practises of nationalizing the oil fields and pushing aside private oil companies, these anti-compedative practises by governments are the reason why we pay so much for gasoline.

And what about the Communist Manifesto? Its just a book that some people have taken too seriously. Because of that book, many countries in Latin America have not developed properly. There has been alot of violence and killing because of that book. That book has given people the idea that they have the right to spend other people's money and that has made countries poor as it has prevented capital formation. If you spend your life saving and investing and the government suddenly takes it all away and distributes it among the people, you are going to do alot less saving and investing and the government is going to run out of money to redistribute and the country grows poor. I think Latin America would have been alot richer if the common citizens hadn't gotten the idea that they had a right to spend other people's money and worried about making their own money the honest way rather than appropriating and redistributing other people's money through majority vote. If majority vote decides all economic decisions and investment patterns then people who are not qualified to make economic decisions will be making them and wasting alot of resources.

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2006-09-06 20:48:59

Really, what use is government, anyway?
To protect the rights of the people.
That I think is the only just function of a government, and unfortunately the need for a government of some sort to do this seems to be unavoidable at present. Certainly if we could all live happily and peacefully without any government I'd want to move away from government too.
This basic function of government is very open to interpretation. It can be considered to require anything from an ultra-libertarian, laissez-faire capitalist society to a planned economy police-state. I go for a democratic-republic with moderate restrictions on business and only really necessary ones on the individual and a government that enforces the necessary laws but refrains from making an overly complex or over-bearing code of law. Even this is, of course, very open to interpretation.
One thing that I think my interpretation of the role of government does unquestionably demand is a move away from the often religious inspired laws to protect the morals of the people and from laws that only protect people from their own idiocy. (This second one gets difficult in the realm of drugs which usually harm the user the most but often harm others to a lesser extent. For example I believe that laws to limit people's exposure to second-hand smoke in public places are justified.)

some Western fiction
http://www.strangewords.com/archive/reddust.html
http://www.moria.co.nz/sf/redplanetmars.htm
the reality
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl? … 25/1340221
"China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars"

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-06 23:18:00

And maybe Japan and the USA will plan another Mars mission. It would be interesting to see who gets there first. I believe the Japanese have a lot of useful technology in their field of robotics that can be applied to Mars exploration.

maxie · 2006-09-13 00:51:40

Well, speaking about how bad might be communism, capitalism, fascism, anarchy and every other form of government (or no government), I think we should always remember something history teaches us for thousands of years: no matter how wonderful is the system, there are always people which will corrupt, pervert or ruin it for their own selfish goals. It's the human nature killing and enslaving us, nothing else.

All social systems presented till now are vulnerable to such things.

Can there be a system totally proof to selfish people ?! I think not...

On Mars maybe a lot more resources could be diverted to education, psychology etc, than here on Earth.

For example, I've never heard of a school in any country which would teach children how to protect themselves from manipulation.

But this doesn't surprise me at all. No politician will ever support such an idea unless he's forced to. Why ? Because without manipulation, who will vote for him ?!

And that's just an example.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-13 12:26:20

Well, speaking about how bad might be communism, capitalism, fascism, anarchy and every other form of government (or no government), I think we should always remember something history teaches us for thousands of years: no matter how wonderful is the system, there are always people which will corrupt, pervert or ruin it for their own selfish goals. It's the human nature killing and enslaving us, nothing else.

Well capitalism takes human imperfection into account, it makes people compete against other people and tends to discourage corruption as that makes compeditors inefficient when they pay off unproductive people, the vulnerable spot is with government that taxes the productive sector, there you can have corruption because their is no competition in government.

Under Communism their is no competition in the entire economy, everone works for the government and so corruption is everywhere.

idiom · 2006-09-20 07:23:55

For example, I've never heard of a school in any country which would teach children how to protect themselves from manipulation.

I was taught about rhetoric and manipulation in gradeschool. We were even required to practice these arts ourselves, however most people fail to pay attention in school.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-20 08:25:05

For example, I've never heard of a school in any country which would teach children how to protect themselves from manipulation.
I was taught about rhetoric and manipulation in gradeschool. We were even required to practice these arts ourselves, however most people fail to pay attention in school.

What does this have to do with Communism?
Communism places alot of trust and power in the hands of a few people, of whom it is assumed will make the right decisions, and if that trust is misplaced there is no way of removing these leaders from office as these leaders have all the levers of power and there are no real checks and balances on him since all power radiates from him, he controls the press, he controls the education, he controls who gets a job and who doesn't, practically everyone in the country is working for him, this is pretty much the structure of society in Castro's Cuba.

idiom · 2006-09-21 02:46:19

Given that communism is run under a democracy that a bid of an odd thing to say. It is probably an accurate description of a totalitarian state with a communist economy, but not of a communist politcal system, i.e. full democracy.

In a democracy you are not rewarded for work, you only get one vote. If you are lazy and useless you still get one vote. Some republics have adapted the communist ideal so that if you work hard you can buy yourself political favour even in what would otherwise be a functional democracy.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-21 09:11:39

The next democratic communist country I see will be the first. The problem is, under communism, the state controls all employment, it is illegal to start a business or to hire workers if you are not the government, this doesn't present an independent base for the opposition to run against those who are in government. The Soviet Union had elections and so does Cuba. If you are a Cuban who plans to run against Fidel Castro or his brother in the next Cuban Presidential election, you can expect to lose your job as Castro will fire you, you can expect your campaign to get no coverage or negative coverage from the government run Cuban press, and people will be afraid to donate to your campaign because they are afraid they might lose their jobs too. It is very hard to run in a campaign against your employer and in a communist system, your only legal employer is the government your running against, this does not make for a very democratic situation.

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