All Communists are dead-beats

[Giz]

The only good zombie is a commie zombie.

Better undead than red

 

[GrouchoMarxist]

All the zombies I know are undead-beats.

 

[Region Rat]

All the zombies I know are undead-beats.

Ba-dump, Pshhhhh.

 

[Virus]

Communism hasn't killed anyone, nor have any Communist countries because there are no and have been no Communist countries in history.

Now that was a No True Scotsman fallacy.

 

[Virus]

But how many people have died in the hands of Capitalism?

Less than a hundred million. Much, much less.

Of course, I don't even know what "at the hands of capitalism" means. You mean killed by Microsoft and Wal-Mart? Something like zero.

 

[yomero]

People moving large amounts of capital is essentially what permits an average Joe to get a car loan, a rising entrepreneur to hire staff and a multinational corporation to build a massive factory. The current economy, and most of it's benefits, would be completely impossible if there weren't people spending all their time directing the flows of capital.

There is an argument to be made that these people are compensated too much, but to claim they produce no labor is pretty much equal to saying a doctor or a teacher produce nothing. They all produce a service and receive a compensation. The only difference is that while a doctor receives compensation as a salary, people juggling stocks simply shave a bit off the flows of money as they rush by.

I know nothing about Finance or Economics, so I could easily be wrong. But the way I see it, those financiers are a lot like ticket scalpers. They get between the source of capital and the person who needs it and skim off large amounts of money as it passes. Just as with ticket scalpers, the consumer gets no real benefit from his presence.

 

[DC]

Less than a hundred million. Much, much less.

Of course, I don't even know what "at the hands of capitalism" means. You mean killed by Microsoft and Wal-Mart? Something like zero.

funny, when people are starving or getting killed in a country called itself communist, the deaths counts for communism. When people in a Capitalist country starve or get killed, the deaths don't count for capitalism.

 

[Mirrorglass]

I know nothing about Finance or Economics, so I could easily be wrong. But the way I see it, those financiers are a lot like ticket scalpers. They get between the source of capital and the person who needs it and skim off large amounts of money as it passes. Just as with ticket scalpers, the consumer gets no real benefit from his presence.

It is a bit more complicated than that. You see, money isn't sentient; it doesn't move about by itself. It's the people handling it - precisely the stockbrokers, bankers et cetera we are talking about - that make the flows of capital what they are. In our economy, almost no one could build a house if there weren't people who possess enough money to lend away the prize of one. Similar transactions take place on all levels, and removing them would collapse the economy utterly.

So a more accurate analogy would be a toll bridge. It may be annoying to pay the toll every time, but it helps to remember that the alternative isn't simply not paying - it's blowing up the bridge and getting a boat.

 

[Kotatsu]

but obviously folks who do no work and just live of the profits of their investments, produce nothing.

Sure these people produce things. if you have a craving for some unemployment, then these people are the ones you should turn to. They're producing more deconstruction of worker rights and safety measures, devaluation of labour, and depreciation of human dignity than the world can currently consume, causing large amounts of it to be dumped in the ocean to keep up prices.

They also typically produce a large and quite unnecessary amount of capitalist propaganda.

 

[Kotatsu]

I am no Communist.

Well, you do seem to be against any system in which some people who contribute very little are given all kinds of free stuff and where this is actually encouraged. That would mean that you agree with one of the basic ideas of communism, meaning that you at the very least are not anti-communist.

Fact: Communism killed 10x as many people as Fascism.

Fact: how dead you get if you are killed does not depend on who killed you.

have there been any Capitalist countries?

some would argue that no country has been a purely Capitalist one, as per Adam Smith.

Some would argue that a lot of countries has been and still are closer to a pure capitalist one than any country has ever been close to being a communist one.

Nevertheless, countries are not the only murderers in the world. People who are communists have certainly killed a lot of people, regardless of if their country was purely communistic or not. But then again, people who are capitalists have certainly killed a lot of people, regardless of if their countries are purely capitalistic or not. People who are capitalists and people who are communists continue to murder people even today, but whereas the latter are usually condemned, the former are usually brushed away or even praised.

But you've insisted previously that communists are lazy and expect others to do their work for them. How on earth could they have managed something so ambitious?

Negligence?

Now that was a No True Scotsman fallacy.

If you have a list of countries which have called themselves communistic and have lacked a government, please feel free to share it.

So a more accurate analogy would be a toll bridge. It may be annoying to pay the toll every time, but it helps to remember that the alternative isn't simply not paying - it's blowing up the bridge and getting a boat.

Not paying every time you pass is an alternative that works very well in my country. We do pay taxes for these things, though, so I don't know what that does to your analogy. Possibly that if everyone paid more taxes, they could get loans from the government (who is at least indirectly in charge of the bridges in my country), which may or may not charge interest.

 

[SezMe]

Less than a hundred million. Much, much less.

Of course, I don't even know what "at the hands of capitalism" means. You mean killed by Microsoft and Wal-Mart? Something like zero.

I assume you are aware of the string of suicides in Chinese factories. They were killed by capitalism.

Remember those 11 guys killed in the Gulf blowout. Ditto.

You've seen the estimates of premature deaths due to air pollution. Ditto. Water pollution. Ditto.

And so on.

Zero is probably the worst estimate you could make.

 

[Mirrorglass]

Not paying every time you pass is an alternative that works very well in my country. We do pay taxes for these things, though, so I don't know what that does to your analogy. Possibly that if everyone paid more taxes, they could get loans from the government (who is at least indirectly in charge of the bridges in my country), which may or may not charge interest.

Dude, it's an analogy. Talking about what your country does with actual bridges is only going to confuse matters.

But anyway; in this analogy, the Analogy-country only has these bridges owned by the stockbrokers. Now if you wanted to stop the bridgebrokers from making money, you would have to do one of the following:

-Demolish the old bridges and start building new ones. The problem is, until you get the new bridges built, people are going to have to manage the old-fashioned way. So a flurry of boats appears on the river, the transactions over the river dwindle down to a trickle, and as a consequence, many, many things that were previously simple - like building a house, or starting a business - become next to impossible. The economy will shrink, the country's coffers will drain and eventually, the Soviet Union will collapse.

-Take over the bridges and throw the brokers in the river. Possible, but the brokers aren't likely to be friendly; changes are, they'll take a lot of the capital that was previously feeding the economy with them. Not to mention you now have a bunch of bridges, but not the expertise or manpower to keep them functioning nor the international customer base that made the bridges so profitable in the first place. Something similar was attempted in the Soviet Union, but in the end, it didn't go so well.

-Simply make do without the bridges. Who needs to built their own house anyway? The leaders of the country can distribute both labour, housing and food fairly among the citizens. Only we better make some nuclear weapons too. Those capitalist pigs are always out to get us. We'll show 'em. What? Famine? Silence! There is no cause more important than preparing for the glorious Victory! Hey, no running over to South Korea!


I'm not certain how clear my analogy actually is, but the point is that while communism does look good on paper, I've yet to see even a theoretical model of transforming a current country to a communist one without completely wrecking the economy, and more importantly, quality of life of the citizens for decades or centuries before any benefit can be seen.

 

[DC]

Capitalism is murdering the climate.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

Less than a hundred million. Much, much less.

Of course, I don't even know what "at the hands of capitalism" means. You mean killed by Microsoft and Wal-Mart? Something like zero.

So, hmm. If it's not Communist (and no government really was, because a communist county would HAVE no government..)

So you're telling me that WWI+II+Civil War+any war in Europe post 1766 < excesses of communism?

 

[Virus]

So, hmm. If it's not Communist (and no government really was, because a communist county would HAVE no government..)

That would be anarchist, not communist.

So you're telling me that WWI+II+Civil War+any war in Europe post 1766 < excesses of communism?

WW2 casualties count against capitalism? Why? WW2 was started by the fascists.

I assume you are aware of the string of suicides in Chinese factories. They were killed by capitalism.

Remember those 11 guys killed in the Gulf blowout. Ditto.

You've seen the estimates of premature deaths due to air pollution. Ditto. Water pollution. Ditto.

And so on.

Zero is probably the worst estimate you could make.

Air pollution? Suicide? Let's stick to apples and apples. Communists deliberately killed millions for "errors in thought" and worked millions to death in slave pits. Why not throw in car accidents and add them to the capitalist rap sheet too? And cancers. What the hell.

 

[Kotatsu]

Dude, it's an analogy. Talking about what your country does with actual bridges is only going to confuse matters.

Like with most analogies, it just got more confusing when you added stuff... I have no idea what various elements in your analogy is supposed to map to in reality...

-Demolish the old bridges and start building new ones. The problem is, until you get the new bridges built, people are going to have to manage the old-fashioned way. So a flurry of boats appears on the river, the transactions over the river dwindle down to a trickle, and as a consequence, many, many things that were previously simple - like building a house, or starting a business - become next to impossible. The economy will shrink, the country's coffers will drain and eventually, the Soviet Union will collapse.

How can the transactions across the river dwindle down to a trickle if there is a flurry of boats? Are they so much more inefficient than a bridge? Is there a limit to how many boats there can be?

-Take over the bridges and throw the brokers in the river. Possible, but the brokers aren't likely to be friendly; changes are, they'll take a lot of the capital that was previously feeding the economy with them. Not to mention you now have a bunch of bridges, but not the expertise or manpower to keep them functioning nor the international customer base that made the bridges so profitable in the first place. Something similar was attempted in the Soviet Union, but in the end, it didn't go so well.

Again, your expansion is more confusing than anything else. Were the stockbrokers personally seeing to the maintenance of the bridge beforehand? Otherwise, why cannot the people who did it before we got rid of the stockbrokers continue doing it, but being paid by the government or something instead?

I also don't necessarily see where this is really relevant, as you seem to continue to measure the success of the change in capitalist terms. The whole point would be to get rid of the capitalism mindset, so neither losing an international customer base nor having a less profitable bridge is really a problem. If the bridge is needed, it is needed regardless of if it turns a profit or not.

-Simply make do without the bridges. Who needs to built their own house anyway? The leaders of the country can distribute both labour, housing and food fairly among the citizens. Only we better make some nuclear weapons too. Those capitalist pigs are always out to get us. We'll show 'em. What? Famine? Silence! There is no cause more important than preparing for the glorious Victory! Hey, no running over to South Korea!

Well, this is not really any kind of analogy with a communist solution, as there are no leaders and no countries in the ideal communist world.

I'm not certain how clear my analogy actually is, but the point is that while communism does look good on paper, I've yet to see even a theoretical model of transforming a current country to a communist one without completely wrecking the economy, and more importantly, quality of life of the citizens for decades or centuries before any benefit can be seen.

Agreed. I certainly cannot imagine how on earth for instance a modern university or a large hospital would work in a pure communist society, and I am not sure that I would want to get rid of those regardless of what other perks society would gain from a switch of society.

This is the greatest drawback of the ideology: that it seems to require that society voluntarily abandons many great scientific breakthroughs and goes back to the way it was at the time when the ideology was first formulated. In many cases, a switch back to some sort of small-scale production society would perhaps be preferable (although it would inevitably mean either that large amounts of people starve to death rather rapidly, or that we'd have to convert all of Siberia and the Sahara to agricultural land very quickly...), but it certainly does not work for all areas of modern society.

The problem is that capitalism is also wrecking the quality of life for citizens, and it plans to do so in perpetuity unless it is stopped.

 

[Kotatsu]

That would be anarchist, not communist.

Once the goals of either ideology has been achieved, there is no difference. It has been argued by many of the great names of anarchist and socialist theory that the end goal of socialism and communism is necessarily anarchism. Of course, other great names have disagreed.

 

[DC]

That would be anarchist, not communist.



WW2 casualties count against capitalism? Why? WW2 was started by the fascists.



Air pollution? Suicide? Let's stick to apples and apples. Communists deliberately killed millions for "errors in thought" and worked millions to death in slave pits. Why not throw in car accidents and add them to the capitalist rap sheet too? And cancers. What the hell.

Do you count the deaths of Stalinism as deaths off Communism?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Now that was a No True Scotsman fallacy.

No, no it wasn't. It would be exactly like me saying "There are no absolute monarchies in the North Americas." or even "There are no dictatorships in the European Union". It's simply true, and if France decided for no reason whatsoever to change their name to "The Ultra-Fascist Dictatorship of France" but not change its government in any way, it would still be true. A Communist country has never, ever existed. They weren't even Marxist-Socialist.

That would be anarchist, not communist.

Actually, Communism has no government either, according to, you know, Marx and Engels, the people who came up with the idea. Even the pseudo-Marxist states admitted that they weren't communist because they still had and needed a strong central government. Communism involves by necessity the formation of a strong Marxist-Socialist central government, from which a much purer state can form whereby there is no NEED for a government because everyone voluntarily works for the state and only ever takes what they need from the central pot, thus the government is eventually abolished. That's one of the primary reasons I think it's insanely stupid as a political philosophy.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

The only good zombie is a commie zombie.

They shre the infection equally. It's only fair you know.