in theory they sound nice, in practice they don't work

This is why those ideologies thrive in an environment where it doesn't matter if it doesn't work (academics etc)

they don't even sound nice in theory.

what's nice about "it does not matter how hard you work you will never get rewarded for it"?

and "it does not matter what you *want* to do, because you have a responsibility to do whatever will most help our society"

one could go on for hours with all the things that do not even sound good in theory.

then again... once we have replicators and phasers i'm fine with it 😄

well it sounds nice when you put it "Everyone who works will be able to afford everything they need, and not live in poverty

sugarcoat it

Yeah, it looks really good on first glance, you realize it's unfeasible with just a little bit of thought, and then you're thankful it's so unfeasible after thinking more about the implications of living under communism.

But I'd argue that the whole 'stateless society' concept is why communism 1. is deceptively attractive to people who think it's not ultimately authoritarian, and 2. the main reason it ends in dictatorship. It's why Social Democracy, admittedly, works a fair bit better than communism-minded socialism.

Social Democracy is generally the same as communism minded socialism

You just exchanged the means of production,
With the means of sustainance,


Basically,
Instead of redistributing resources,
You redistribute money to pay for those resources.

It's an enhanced form of statism, as opposed to a freefall of anarchy that leads to harsh totalitarian statism

Basically it cuts out the middleman. I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying it's slightly more stable.

~~STATISM, MORE LIKE SATANISM~~

~~My brain's too non-focused to weigh in, just making a funny, carry on~~

It's pretty stable as far as systems go.
Most people (Especially younger people) who say they're communist have in mind the stateless, or at least kind of libertarian concept of it. Not Stalinism.
There are a few stalinists out there though. They vary from stupid to malicious. Seem to be in the minority from what i can tell, as least in north america.

I think i can safely call people who want political prisoners and gulags to be a thing 'malicious'

I dunno

Just call them political tenants and political residents and it sounds a lot better

The holocaust did happen but Israel is really milking it for international support

The African Slave Trade existed in Africa before American the AA's are milking it in America.

Inconvenient facts.

a bigger inconvenient fact is that the term slave comes from enslaved white people,

the "Slavs" from eastern europe

so they literally appropriated white terms! 😮

If the N word was invented by white people, are black people who use it culturally appropriating it?

yes

You were damn fast on that, herr doctor.

every time they wear beads and use a mirror they're appropraiting white culture

We sold those "shinies" to tribes so they'd capture our slaves! 😛

@RyeNorth thats what she said 😦

Oh. :(

so i reported her to ICE and she's now back in Mexico! 😉

Zing!

@Ryecast, @Dr.Wol about your thing from yesterday.

Ryecast is right. The reality is that hierarchies always form. A lot of it is just that not all people are equal in ability and ambition and there are people who tend to want to follow and people who want to lead. You put any significant number of people in a group and someone emerges as a de facto leader. When that person gains the ability to force conformity (an inevitability in a group of people with any shared identity and collective problems) you are left with the beginnings of a tyranny.

This is fundamental human nature. It is also is the case that as power concentrates, power corrupts and the formed institutions become vulnerable to subversion and abuse.

Ultimately, we must ask though, when it comes to stateless communism and democratic socialism, what is the difference between production and consumption and how is it allocated. In a capitalist system this is decided with money and ownership of property. If we abolish money and property but instead use 'abstract points' to allocate resources, is that not equivalent to money? What if we use cultural influence? Would the fact that Tim Pool has more influence and a bigger platform for any of use indicate he should have a better say in the distribution of resources? Would these things not form a hierarchy and something akin to money (you could, after all, count something like twitter followers and derive some kind of index of influence)?

"fairly distributed society" is like true stateless society, it's a myth. Democratic socialism falls from the same issues of socialism except that it admits the reality of a state and of money. But conceptually, you run into alot of the same issues when it comes to the allocation of resources (namely, it's very easy to game).

As it is, we should also remember that not all "democracies" are democratic. China has freedom of speech enshrined in it's constitution (and some Chinese will insist they are more free to speak than we are) but I don't think there are any illusions about how effective that guarantee actually is. North Korea is a "Democratic People's Republic" (with elections!) but it's rather totalitarian in practice. Simply creating a democratic superstructure is insufficient to actually guarantee democracy.

a faction that calls itself "Democratic" can be as democratic as the leftists are for freedom, or be actually democratic (aka, true to what they call themselves)

That said

Capitalism solved the issue of how money should be allocated, and its a heirarchy made by the people themselves.

You get compensated for how many resources deliver,
And society determines the value of these resources.

Look at athletes,
They don't exactly contribute to the success of a society, but they get paid millions.
Because they are of high value to the company that pays them.
That company gains millions by having them attract the public.

If the public decides an athlete isn't interesting, they wont attend, the company that pays them has no use for having them around, so the athlete doesn't get anything

Its like that for all things, you can pay Tim Pool because you value the information and opinions he gives.
His work is as valuable as the consumers make it.

Thats the glory of private property, YOU get to decide what you do, not someone else. So if you agree, you can support it with your resources, if you don't, you don't have to and no one will take it from you

the issue with social democracy is saying "We get to decide what you do with your money" and they get to do it under any pretense, "the good of society", "help the poor"

Which means your money isn't even your money to begin with anymore. as with socialism and the lack of private property

All you have is by the grace of the state at that point

and as you said yourself, the state is corruptable too

I'm with JP on this one. When you look around at the stuff that does work, even if it's barely limping along, I have to wonder how it functions at all

Like, why does the US not be even more like China?

Why does a piece of paper have any power?