Split Thread Is communism a viable alternative economic system these days?

[Virus]

Looking around the net I see that book claims 100,000,000 Native Americans were killed by capitalism which is absolute ass balls.

 

[trustbutverify]

Why not include estimates of potential deaths on other planets caused by capitalism?

 

[timhau]

Looking around the net I see that book claims 100,000,000 Native Americans were killed by capitalism which is absolute ass balls.

They were all water-drinkers. The Coca-Cola Company sells bottled water. Ergo, the Coca-Cola Company is directly responsible for the death of at least 100 million people, and probably a lot more.

 

[McHrozni]

and the second paragraph:
An appendix provides an incomplete list of 20th century death tolls which Perrault attributes to the capitalist system. The list, which includes both combatant and noncombatant dead, includes an estimated 58 million dead from the First and Second World Wars, plus death tolls from various colonial wars, anticommunist wars and repressions, ethnic conflicts, and some victims of famines or malnutrition,which brings the incomplete list to a combined total of about 100 million deaths attributed to capitalism in the 20th century.

Does it happen to include deaths of Vietnam, Korean and Afghanistan wars? Yes or no for each please.

McHrozni

 

[JihadJane]

20000 years ago all humans were "employed" in food production. Now only a few percent are. Are the rest unemployed?

Increasingly, yes, or making stuff for landfill.

20,000 years people only "worked" a few hours a day.

 

[McHrozni]

That's basically it. In Western democracies, citizen feedback is usually encouraged only in election speeches, and in practice its effect is slow and dampened by bureaucratic and political inertia. In Eastern Bloc countries, most forms of citizen feedback were de facto criminalized. Neither system is ideal, but one of them worked (and works) a hell of a lot better than the other.

I was more thinking in the terms of our decentralized economic system, where every single entity, no matter how small or how large, is constantly tamed by market forces, which encourage innovation and effeciency. This is not the case in socialism, where virtually all ideas come from a small, closed elite. That's the main reason why it can't work over a longer period of time.

But yes, the same principle also works for politics, albeit in a more moderate way.

McHrozni

 

[WildCat]

If it wasn't for capitalism you'd be slaving away on a collective potato farm somewhere and living in a dirt-floor shack, rather than living in luxurious retirement thanks to capitalism providing the means to pay you 6 firgures while you were working.

eta: or maybe you fancy yourself as one of the party elite with a dacha on the sea while the peasants toil away for your benefit?

 

[WildCat]

Increasingly, yes, or making stuff for landfill.

20,000 years people only "worked" a few hours a day.

And died of old age at 35 or 40, if the rampant violence prevalent in hunter-gatherer cultures didn't kill you much earlier.

 

[respect]

If it wasn't for capitalism you'd be slaving away on a collective potato farm somewhere and living in a dirt-floor shack, rather than living in luxurious retirement thanks to capitalism providing the means to pay you 6 firgures while you were working.

eta: or maybe you fancy yourself as one of the party elite with a dacha on the sea while the peasants toil away for your benefit?

I'm sure when he fantasizes about totalitarian regimes taking over every country he imagines himself to be one of the totalitarian rulers.

 

[JihadJane]

I was more thinking in the terms of our decentralized economic system, where every single entity, no matter how small or how large, is constantly tamed by market forces, which encourage innovation and effeciency. This is not the case in socialism, where virtually all ideas come from a small, closed elite. That's the main reason why it can't work over a longer period of time.

But yes, the same principle also works for politics, albeit in a more moderate way.

McHrozni

Market forces didn't tame the financial "services" sector. Why is that?

 

[McHrozni]

Market forces didn't tame the financial "services" sector. Why is that?

Excuse me? We have the current crisis for precisely those reasons. The financial services went overboard with bad descisions, and are now being tamed. That they weren't tamed at the best possible time in no way suggest they weren't tamed at all.

McHrozni

 

[JihadJane]

Excuse me? We have the current crisis for precisely those reasons. The financial services went overboard with bad descisions, and are now being tamed. That they weren't tamed at the best possible time in no way suggest they weren't tamed at all.

McHrozni

How does rewarding failure tranlate into "taming"?

 

[Robrob]

What system hasn't been used to justify war and theft?

 

[Bad Lieutenant]

Looking around the net I see that book claims 100,000,000 Native Americans were killed by capitalism which is absolute ass balls.

Looking around the net I notice the same figure. It must be reliable.

 

[Virus]

The horror of Communism:

The scene Burtianski described was repeated in towns and cities all over Ukraine. In the countryside, entire villages were being wiped out. The hunger drove many people to desperation and madness. Many instances of cannibalism were recorded, with people living off the remains of other starvation victims or in some instances resorting to murder. Most peasant families had five or six children, and some mothers killed their weakest children in order to feed the others.

Burtianski said at one point, he avoided buying meat from a vendor because he suspected it was human flesh. When the authorities heard about the incident, he was forced to attend the trial of a man and his two sons who were suspected of murdering people for food. Burtianski says during the trial one of the sons admitted in chilling terms to eating the flesh of his own mother, who had died of starvation.

"He said, 'Thank you to Father Stalin for depriving us of food. Our mother died of hunger and we ate her, our own dead mother. And after our mother we did not take pity on anyone. We would not have spared Stalin himself.'"

Never again.

 

[Bad Lieutenant]

Food production/storage technique has moved on just a little since then. I can see how you might have missed the developments though Virus.

 

[WildCat]

Food production/storage technique has moved on just a little since then.

You think that was the problem?

 

[IDB87]

Food production/storage technique has moved on just a little since then. I can see how you might have missed the developments though Virus.

"We'll get it right this time, I know we will. Just trust us guys!"

-Communism.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

and the second paragraph:
An appendix provides an incomplete list of 20th century death tolls which Perrault attributes to the capitalist system. The list, which includes both combatant and noncombatant dead, includes an estimated 58 million dead from the First and Second World Wars, plus death tolls from various colonial wars, anticommunist wars and repressions, ethnic conflicts, and some victims of famines or malnutrition,which brings the incomplete list to a combined total of about 100 million deaths attributed to capitalism in the 20th century.

Oh if you'd like to discuss things in terms of death toll look no further than below. I counted between 60 and 90 million people under just two authoritarian regimes. It's ironic that you should be pointing out the tyranny of capitalism especially with a numbers game.

Just as a reference, Stalin killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people during his reign. Mao of the People's Republic of China runs up around 40 million. Let's not forget the late Kim Jong Mentally Ill who claims to have been born under a holy rainbow, living in luxury while his entire country lives in famine, or maybe we forgot Hitler, with approximately 6 million. We can also thrown in communist wannabe Hugo Chavez for his heavy handed corruption, but I digress.

As the saying goes... Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

How does rewarding failure tranlate into "taming"?

Communism has obviously failed harder. Communism is a nice idea in theory, but in practice the results range between failure, and failure of epic proportions. As someone who pounces on a history of American Imperialism you appear deftly unfamiliar with the history of the regimes mentioned in my other post.