As growing up, i realized that kids in america are brain-washed basically at 1-12 grades in regards to "ohhh capitalism is the best, all the way with democracy", and then the whole notion of "communism is the devil, we should never talk about it".
Communism:
- True communism is not about dictatorship. Its about brotherhood with the "lower class " and the "middle class".
- It includes control by the government.
- Russia/cuba/china were never communist countries. They are called communists by the feat by the western world governments.
- Government in communism = the people
- It basically requires people to work together, while obeying society's law but getting no punishment for it. And in the end there is no gold at the end of the rainbow.
- Its something that can never be achieved in our world.
The problem with your thinking is that you are unifying both government and economy without really realizing how or why.
Communism is, essentially, the idea that everyone works for the benefit of everyone else. IE - when I go to work, it is "for the society."
The problem with communism is thus:
Suppose we are living in 1900. We are in the process of expanding power throughout the world and have even come up with an idea for how to get it distributed to everyone who needs it. People go to work on the power lines and the people who are producing crops hand food over to people who distribute that food throughout society. Meanwhile, other people go about repairing homes and infrastructure supplied with materials produced on the virtue of producing them by various peoples and industries.
It sounds like a wonderful system. Doesn't even really need government if we take for granted that power distribution ideas were embedded in our social fabric.
Someone, however, is tinkering away in their basement. They have been playing around with this newfangled electricity and variations on the lightbulb. See, this person has noticed that when a metal plate is placed on the other side of a heated element within a 'light bulb,' it allows for the build-up of an electric potential. Further, if a metal grid is placed between those plates and a voltage applied, the much higher voltage of the tube can be controlled.
The two-pole device would be known as the vacuum tube diode and the three-element device known as a triode - or vacuum tube amplifier.
This, coupled with some of Tesla's pioneering work into high frequency/high voltage electronics, allowed for the development of the first radios. A technology we take for granted, today.
Within a communist society - how does one go about distributing this new, wondrous concept/device?
All of that time spent haggling away on it? Perhaps he neglected a few of his responsibilities. Or - should he really have been consuming all of the resources in researching this? Who gave him the glass for the vacuum tubes? Why would they give them to him? Was he going without light in one of his rooms?
Let's suppose he was legit and his use of these things was permissible because society recognizes the benefits of hobbies (though is a whole work shop in your garage a hobby? Or is that a small factory that should be owned by the people?).
So, he's built the first radio transmitter with, perhaps, a full heterodyned receiver (because he was just that much on top of his game).
How does he make another one?
With his hobby 'budget?'
Why should he make another one? Can he give it away for a side of beef, or something? Isn't that .... *capitalism?* ....
But, he loves his family - his society. He thinks this thing should be produced in mass scale so that everyone can have one. People could talk to each other over hundreds, even thousands of miles.
So, who decides what factory starts making them?
"The people" - but how do you get their opinion on it?
You could vote on it - but every year you would have a million and a half newfangled inventions that no one has any idea how they would apply to their lives just yet or any real appreciation for what costs go into making the product.
Communism is still bound by real rules of the world. Forests can only supply a certain amount of wood. Even though re-seeding can make the process sustainable - loggers can't just log the living shit out of the forest because everyone wants an oak table.
Likewise, the hobby manufacturing method used by the inventor will not likely translate well to mass production - a whole phase of development would exist simply to figure out how to make efficient use of the factory space to produce these 'radios' - or at the very least, the components within them. How do you produce enough vacuum tubes to meet demands of production and facilitate repairs/maintenance of the first editions to hit the market?
The only way to decide all of this within communism, practically, is with a much smaller body assuming responsibility for these decisions. Whether that body is a dictatorship or an elected representation is irrelevant.
These groups now become the privileged people. They live above the communist system and can directly influence the appropriation of raw resources to include labor.
For all intents and purposes - they become the 'elite.'
So... assuming they recognize the benefits of this 'radio' (which is assuming a lot) - who gets the first radios to hit the distributors?
Who has the greatest need for this device?
Obviously, the people making the decisions. It is much easier to communicate nearly instantly and without the need for vast networks of copper lines. They are the first ones to get radios - and the radio transmitters.
So, it is now the elites of the society who have decided to whom the fruits of labor go and for what purposes they will be used.
At this point, communism has collapsed into a totalitarian oligarchy that simply needs time to mature into its express form.
"But I said that communism could never exis-"
That is what communism is. Communism requires nearly stagnant innovation and the entire economic system is rigged to suppress human instincts.
Thus, it is inherently oppressive in sentient beings.
It exists perfectly fine in ant colonies, but few outside of insects express hive instincts.
Capitalism:
- True capitalism ended basically when unions started forming and the government stepped in.
- It basically "rich keep on getting rich, while the poor stay poor".
- You cannot tell people not to discriminate, you can't force them to pay you higher, because labor is easy to find.
- Its basically the start of economic dictatorship.
- Its ran by the people.. however, the rich people.
- It has existed, but hard to maintain it.
Where did you learn this about capitalism?
Capitalism is the idea that the product of a person's labor is owned by that person.
That's it.
If I whip up a high efficiency generator that can fit on a desk from a CNC machine and spools of wire - it's mine. If I make 100 of them - they are all mine.
Why would I make a hundred of them? Because I plan on allowing someone else to trade what is theirs for what is mine. Perhaps it is a standard unit of currency. Regardless - the idea is that I can focus on productive interests - be they innovative or sustaining in nature, and people who wish to make use of that productivity exchange a portion of their productivity. It may be a bartering of service; or it may be a bartering of items, or it may be that I just like that person and am willing to hand over something I've made without an expectation of exchange.
Capitalism is the idea that, using what I've traded for those first few generators - I could purchase what I need to make even more - or perhaps a factory that allows me to make them for even less cost to me (both in terms of resources and personally invested time).
So I make 5,000 of them and sell as many of them as I can for $3,000 a piece. I know there are more people out there who want one - who need one... but don't think it's worth it at $3,000. Fine by me - it only cost me about $250 to make each one - so I lower the cost to $2500... and see some interest spike before settling. And a couple more stages of 'bidding' happen before I end up settling on around $500 for an MSRP with the major resale markets picking them up for $350 a motor (but at contracts for 50,000 units at production costs of $175 per generator).
That's capitalism.
The enthusiasts and must-have-it-first people with the money and desire to have it usually end up paying for the establishment of the production lines and the first market runs. Then your industry prospectors take note once the device illustrates itself as cost-effective (even in the consumer world, this is true - consumers always value products based on whether or not it saves time, hassle, etc), then your general consumer market begins to jump in when retail prices are a fraction of what your first production runs were selling for.
The person who creates something that other people find useful is elevated in economic status for a time being. Those who invest and help him/her along the way end up having their economic status temporarily elevated for their taking a chance on a new idea that could very well fail. They saw someone with a plausible idea that could work and decided to lend money to that cause... and not just the cause - but also the person at the helm of that cause. Good ideas with bad captains are poor investments.
At no point in any of this is the government necessary.
The only people who need to sit and figure out how to go about procuring the resources to develop this new product are those who are willing to spend money on it (and those who are receiving money to help set it up). No one else has to be involved.
"But - Aim, Capitalism is where the big greedy people buy out the small people and get rich off of their idea."
There will always be crooks in the world who will take advantage of others. Capitalism, if anything, compartmentalizes the damage of this crooked behavior. Even if someone who is 'evilly greedy' and coerces ideas out of innovators to exploit - his/her harm is limited to that person. -How- the idea gets to market does not change what the rules of the market are.
That said - not everyone who is 'bought out' has been taken advantage of.
If someone were to come to me and offer me $2M dollars for a few of the ideas I've been working on - I'd part with the rights in a heartbeat.
Sure - the ideas could potentially be worth billions (if worth anything) - but a large company has the resources to invest in that idea... I don't - and perhaps never would, were it not for the opportunity to exchange the rights to a few of my ideas for the resources to invest in some of my other ideas on my own.
Or... I could make $2M go a long way. Perhaps I just want to retire and play video games the rest of my life and not have to worry about working. I could just sit and dream in modest comfort.
... Well - truthfully, someone like me would never be comfortable having the resources to have a 'lab' without being in said lab, tinkering away ... but I can guarantee that only a fraction of my ideas have an immediately apparent market value.... and many of them I would just make because I could.
Debate:
- Why do we spread lies of Russia/cuba/china ever being communist countries? While knowing there is no communist country to have ever existed on this planet.
Because they are precisely what happens when you try to apply Communism to humans.
- What is your take on true capitalism vs true communism? Pro capitalism? or pro communism?
See the above.
Capitalism produces a result resembling the end goals of communism without the need for broad sweeping bureaucracies.
- Would the society be better by mixing both of them, or following 1 specific idea?
It would be better to go with the system that is compatible with the instincts of sentient beings.
- What are the issues with real communism?
It didn't work very well for the first Pilgrims to land in America, and it makes very little sense to attempt it again.
Yeah, your history books left out some important details about what happened to the Pilgrims.
It wasn't that the people who left Europe as farmers suddenly forgot how to farm once in America - nor was it that they were incapable of sustaining themselves off of the local flora and fauna. It was because they had a system of communism when they first arrived, inspired partially by Puritan religious beliefs.
And it slaughtered them like fools.
The cure?
Allow farmers to keep their crops and trade them as they saw fit. Within one season, they had more food than they knew what to do with.
- what are the issues with real capitalism?
The main challenge with capitalism is politics.
The "rich" are a favorite target of politics because it is easy to provoke envy and jealousy for the purposes of political gain.
Likewise, as politicians increase their power and can begin making decisions to decide which businesses succeed and fail - then the world of business becomes very entwined with politics. Businesses end up investing large sums of money to stay in the favor of politicians who can arbitrarily damage their operations and the livelihoods of people.
What this ends up establishing is "legislated markets."
This means that he who owns the legislation owns the markets.
Capitalism works exceptionally well within a market that is kept very free of contrived interventions. Capitalism ends up looking very similar to communism (which is a totalitarian oligarchy) when you allow governments to have heavy influences on markets, businesses, etc.
The more control you give hand fulls of people over the efforts of their nation's labor... the more totalitarian and corrupt you become no matter what concept of ownership you are using.
