I'm picking up the challenge(if you can really call it that) of debating in favor of communism better than Mort-Hog can. So, I want people to toss out arguments in favor of capitalism and arguments that undermine communism and I will address them from a pragmatic pro-communist standpoint. And I ask that true pro-communist people not make any arguments in favor of communism themselves. This to show them how to do it but still be rational.

Now, I am not good at starting arguements, so someone give me a synopsis on why capitalism is better and works better than communism and we will go from there. I'm giving the pro-capitalists the advantage by being on offense first.

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Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a *****?

[This message has been edited by Kieran Horn (edited May 13, 2004).]

Capitalism allows me to buy clothes that are both expensive to buy and cheap to make, maximising profit for the clothing manufacturers.

Score!

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Don't knock on deaths door. Ring the doorbell and run away; he hates that.
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A severd foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.
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Procrastinators unite!
....Tomorrow!

That has nothing to do with being capitalist. The government can order clothing to be sold at a high price too. But under a communism that wouldn't be prudent because that means only those with more saved money can buy the clothing and that would inspire inequality of status. Besides, there is no point to set the price so high for the domestic product since it is for the domestic consumers and it just doesn't make sense. The point of a communist business isn't to make a profit off it's own people, it is to make enough money to keep things working. This lessens the possiblity of corruption within the employess and local management.

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Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a *****?

[This message has been edited by Kieran Horn (edited May 13, 2004).]

comminism sucks forcing bull**** on you own people is NOT good!look at china...

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He has a very valid point back up by research....Hey, nice sig.

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OSC Empire | A.H.N.U.L.D.
[Jim7 PING reply]: 666secs

I'm actually pro-feudalism myself, but since nobody knows what that is I'm pro-cummunist. But I like playing the devil's advocate.
Capitalism allows me to work harder and reap the benefits; a better house, an nice car, wide screen TV. In cummunism it doesn't matter how hard you work, you get stuck with the same as if you did the bare minimum.

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"Father to your hands I commend my spirirt. Father to your hands-Wy have you forsaken me?"

Why would you be pro-fuedelism? There are no benefits to feudalism at all. All the people are stripped completely of their freedoms and the lord of the area consumes over 75% of the wealth in the area..

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"Just remember -- No matter how bad things get, Northern Minnesota will always be there"
-- Garrison Keeler

[This message has been edited by fishstickz (edited May 13, 2004).]

No offense, but you have to be joking. Not only is feudalism bad for many reasons but it certainly doesn't go along with Communism. Feudalism's hierarchy is not exactly what I would call equality.

What is "keep things working?" Who will do the "working?" I assume the workers. But what if the money made from the products is low because these workers feel that, due to income equality of the people, they don't need to work hard? If the money from the business is not very helpful in "keeping things working", the community of people will suffer.

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No it's not at all equal. But it can be good for everyone. If you are a poor dude, you swear loyalty to a lord and he owns you. You are poor as dirt and get treated like dirt, plus you have to do hard labor. But in return for that you get meals (sometimes), and protection. Protection is the biggy. If everything is dangerous, safety is the key to survival. So you find the big cheese who is dangerous to the dangerous ppl, and you make yourself his man. And you are safe from the outside, unless another bigger cheese comes along. And not everyone is poor in feudalism. There is a middle class, which is mainly blacksmiths, people who own mills, and people who trade merchantise on their own. Plus becoming a soldier in your lord's defense can get you more benifets.

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"Father to your hands I commend my spirirt. Father to your hands-Wy have you forsaken me?"

Welcome to the modern day....

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[This message has been edited by Echoman (edited May 13, 2004).]

Feudalism: If you stick with Capitalism or Communism, you wont HAVE to worry about other feudal lords coming to take over your land. And yeah, if you're going to argue fedualism, argue it for modern day.

Communism: It would give me no reason to work hard at all. No matter if I produce more, less, or the same as my neighbor, I will get exactly the same as he does. I might as well half-*** my work and save myself the trouble, because in the end I'll get just the same as I would if I went above and beyond my duty. Capitalism inspires people to work hard at achieving their goals, because if you half-*** your way through the Capitalistic world, you probably wont get as far as those who work their hardest.

China: It was never communist. They claimed to be, but they werent. There has never been a true Marxist communist state. The ones that have claimed to be communist have really gone against some of the strongest ideals of true communism.

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"And when I vest my flashing sword And my hand takes hold in judgement I will take vengeance upon mine enemies And I will repay those who hase me O Lord, raise me to Thy right hand And count me amoung Thy saints." - Il Duce, The Boondock Saints

[This message has been edited by Vash (edited May 13, 2004).]

Well in society today it has no place. But if terrorists and rebel factions made a lot of countries unstable it could come into play. In some places it can still work, mainly areas where there is constant fighting. Places like the Balkans, parts of the mid-east, any thing with "slav" in the name. It requires everything else being unstable to work. Back to communism...

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"Father to your hands I commend my spirirt. Father to your hands-Why have you forsaken me?"

Oh now Kieran, this isn't a very communist way of going about things, going in direct competition with me.
But I'll respect your wish and not respond...much.
But chop chop, there's a few rock solid arguments here for capitalism, so get to work!

Communism is a pretty idea, but here's doubting it will ever come fully to fruition anywhere.

Okay, you want to know why pure communism doesn't work? It's the same reason shipping stuff costs a lot of money. Communism, and actually Marx himself I might argue, assumed that every little village can make everything it needs without allowing for any kind of transportation of goods. Shipping steel girders or power transformers (MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE DUNUNUN) across huge distances is expensive. In addition to creating gigantic military weaponry and parading it around like a mother living vicariously through her daughter, a big part of the Soviet Union going broke was that they just didn't have enough money to keep sending trains full of stuff over 6000 miles of tundra. Basically, shipping things creates a huge short-term loss. You're not producing or extracting anything, so the money you spent on coal or gas for your train just goes out the window until the transported goods can be put to use. When it's privatized, no one has to worry about that because the cost of fuel and labor is covered up front.

Another reason? A government can't manage absolutely everything that goes on in a country. Communist governments (Okay, China and the USSR specifically. I don't know much about how Cuba or Vietnam's governments work, really, and North Korea is an exception too bizarre to discuss here) inevitably get huge. I don't mean huge in the "OMG THE LIBERALS WANT TO EXPAND OUR GOVERNMENT AND TAX YOUR BABIES" way (that just might turn out to be a good thing), but in the sheer number of bureaucrats it has to employ to manage everything. And we all know what bureaucrats are like. I'm reminded of an anecdote about my friend's parents trying to get married in the Soviet Union. All told, they had to go through nine different departments and bribe (literally) eighteen different officials over two years to get a marriage license. The bribing thing kind of goes off on the corruption argument against communism, but I'm sure everyone and their mother is going regurgitate that crap from tenth grade social studies in here.

I'm not a huge supporter of pure capitalism, either. Socialism works when it's restricted to nationalizing essential services(utilities, health care), because it's not over-complicating the government but still gets people what they need.

Pure communism won't ever work, regardless of what idealistic high schoolers like yourself think. Free-market socialism is the best system anyone's come up with yet, and until someone dreams up something better I think we should stick with that.

Oh, and the "There has never been a pure communist state!!!" argument is ridiculous. It's true, in a sense, but it's ignoring the fact that Marx was wrong. There was a 19th-century enlightenment thinker for every ****ed up idea you can think of, but Marx and Engles just happened to have one that sounded good to some goofy intellectuals in Russia and France (Czarist Russia sucked pretty bad, and by that time post-revolutionary France had tried just about everything else).

[This message has been edited by Ross (edited May 13, 2004).]

True, working harder in communism will get you the same in relative terms. However, in terms of absolute wealth, working harder will still improve your situation (and everyone else's along with it).

(I frequently debate both sides.)

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"Why aren't I'm using at these pictures?" - Cloud, 4/14/02

Wtf...I just don't get how people even WANT a working communist society??? It makes no sense unless you are a lazy parasite.



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"If there's one thing I've learned it's this - you just can't shake hands with a fist" - David Allen Coe

How the hell could that be a good thing?!?!

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I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.
:wq

but when you do that you put yourself in a high position in society and look down on others. This creates hate and prejudice in society and that can lead to horrible results. Look at all the impoverished americans (who are mostly black) and all of the middle class and upper class americans (who are mostly white). Now, yes, race is one reason for the hate that exists, especially before civil rights. That is because americans exploited the blacks as slaves, putting them in far lower status in society, and some even exploited them after the abolition of slavery. Poll taxes, the ex-slave lack of education, and other things like Jim Crow laws led to a serious tension between lower class blacks and middle to upper class whites. It is more economic status than racial issues though. The racial cards are just an excuse that seems more valid than economic difference. If blacks and whites were on the same economic footing, then there would be a suprising decrease in hate crimes.

This seems like a problem with Communism, but it can be solved. Mao almost did it. In Maoism, there is constant revolution so that there is constant fervor and zeal. But in things such as the Great Leap Forward, Mao concentrated everyone into making steel and neglected agriculture, causing a famine. Instead of having one big Great Leap Forward, you would have several small ones, specific to your job. Or you could do something along the lines of occasional job rotations, where factory workers would move to working construction vehicles and such. Obviously you could not do this with all jobs because some you need a level of expertise in it. Another way is to discipline workers like you would a child. When they do something good, you congratulate them and pat them on the back. If they do something wrong, you take them aside and tell them what is wrong. If they continue, you punish them(not harshly like having them flogged or something). This way it seems easier to meet reasonable standards of production(unlike what Russia did). You don't overhaul them like what happened in Soviet Russia and China.

Communism is like capitalism in the sense that there are many different brands of it. If you went by your perception, America wouldn't be a capitalism because it isn't 100% laissez faire.

The reason pure communism doesn't work is the same reason pure capitalism doesn't work: they both are too short sighted. In order to get communism to work you have to deviate somewhat from the original idea once you put it into practice. This happens with everything. Villages should not be expected to make everything it needs. Instead, each village in the nation should concentrate on one thing and it will be distributed to everyone else along with all other products.

While I should ***** slap you for arguing for communism, I won't

Communism requires just as much if not more work than capitalism. In communism, everyone has to put in there ability to create a better nation than all the others and a better lifestyle for all. That is what hope is. In capitalism, all you have is individual initiative. Yes, it can drive people to succeed, but systems in a capitalist system can also provide for ways for people to just coast through life without doing any real work and leech off the hard workers.

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Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a *****?

[This message has been edited by Kieran Horn (edited May 13, 2004).]

Okay. How? That was the whole point of that paragraph - you can't do that (effectively) when shipping is not a private enterprise.

I get the feeling you're used to debating communism in very vague terms with people who don't have any idea what they're talking about (i.e. "comminism sucks forcing bull**** on you own people is NOT good!look at china..."). I'm trying to be specific, so saying "the state'll do it" isn't going to work.

Hahah, sometimes I love you, SAJN.

Only sometimes, though.



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"I'd rather be hated for who I am rather than loved for who I pretend to be." -Janis Joplin

Well, lets use trains as an example. It would work exactly the same way under a communism as it would a capitalism except the government is paying for the maintenance of the trains, tracks, powering the trains, and wages of the workers. The government doesn't have to pay for the shipping itself because they own the train company and don't have to pay any premiums. They get the money to maintain the railroad from the people and businesses it taxes and from any exports it has. You'd be suprised by the sheer amount of money businesses can make and if you take away all except what they need to keep running effectively you have an extremely large amount of money. And when you nationalize the business you can do that even more quickly and lucratively than if the government relied on taxes. God knows how many tax breaks businesses can find in systems like America. Also, the communism would have interests in other countries that it runs, bringing in even more money from those countries.

This is the first time I've ever argued in favor of communism. The reason I'm doing it is because of this thread. The important part is in page 2.

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Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a *****?

[This message has been edited by Kieran Horn (edited May 13, 2004).]

Doing a mighty fine job of it too, actually. I have some stuff I'd like to add, but I'll wait a while. Give me the go ahead when you feel you're done.

Thanks Mort Hog. But I think you should stay out of this one. Even the Red in me is scared by your take on communism.

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Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a *****?

Hey, you said nothing about people who weren't true pro-communists arguing for communism.

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"Why aren't I'm using at these pictures?" - Cloud, 4/14/02

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Well, lets use trains as an example. It would work exactly the same way under a communism as it would a capitalism except the government is paying for the maintenance of the trains, tracks, powering the trains, and wages of the workers. The government doesn't have to pay for the shipping itself because they own the train company and don't have to pay any premiums. They get the money to maintain the railroad from the people and businesses it taxes and from any exports it has.

</font>[/quote]

And what about the workers of the trains? They are all being paid the same wage so why do they need to work hard and support the transportation system? Without economic benefits, I doubt they will maintain the shipping in good condition and run without much problems.

And what if a train crashes? The repair people won't really "jump" to the suituation because they don't need to worry about the transportation system and under no real policy based on extent of work. The products of the shipping would have to switch to another, probably unreliable, transportation method.


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[This message has been edited by Echoman (edited May 14, 2004).]

I can't be bothered to read the whole thread, so I'll summarize communism as I see it:

Communism is a well-meaning but ultimately impractical system whereby everybody shares everything equally. Realistically, however, this means a very, very small increase in standard of living for the masses and a massive decrease for the wealthy few (who, coincidentally enough, may have actually earned the nice things that they had).

Simply put, the rabid supporters of communism are thinking of a flawless utopia like the United Federation of Planets where every single person can live in luxury and opulence without having to do any work to get it. In the real world, there isn't enough buying power in any single nation, or even the entire planet in order to provide even American lower middle class lifestyles to everyone in the world. If we all shared things equally, we'd all[/b] be hunting rats for food.

And yes, kids, economics still applies to a system which pretends it has no economy.

A couple of points that maybe some of you may be overlooking:

1.) You can do all of your fancy schmancy mathematical calcualations to determine that if we murdered Bill Gates and looted his dragon hoard we'd be able to give everybody in the world a bajillion hozillion dollars. Unfortunately, at the same time, by giving so many people so much American buying power you're basically raping the American economy with a pool cue.
It's not that the money exists. That's okay. The reason why all of these gigaquadrillionares aren't totally unbalancing the economy is because they keep their money tied up.

2.) The fundamental flaw of Communism is that it treats individual humans as though they were identical to one another. This is painfully and obviously untrue.

Think about high school. You have Bob. He's an alcholic, a drug addict and a smoker. In fact, he frequently does all 3 at the same time. In class. He passes... um... Hematology III with a F- because he's a flipping moron.

Meanwhile, Jenny the hot smart girl every guy in the entire world really wants, gets an A+ for studying every single night and avoiding certain distracting things like "a social life" or "something shiny".

Now, it's quite clear that the dumbass doesn't deserve crap. But in Communism, they'll both get a D+.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this story. Communism is unfair? No matter how hard you try, you'll always do an average job? I don't know. Communism sucks though.

[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited May 14, 2004).]

bump?

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