that's an interesting piece of philosophical history I didn't know about, thanks for sharing that. I always thought there were strong parallels between ancient

that's an interesting piece of philosophical history I didn't know about, thanks for sharing that. I always thought there were strong parallels between ancient Greek philosophy and the primary strands of modern politics. > Communism is Karl Marx's scaling attempt at Epicurean communes. Not a very good idea IMO. I tend to think that the idea wasn't bad, but people trying to force it to occur faster than the natural societal evolution end up killing a lot of people. The debates we're seeing now about how to deal with automation of large swathes of the job market are similar to Marx's theory that socialism would automate production to the point of creating a post-scarcity society. Of course, that doesn't account for the environment, but then global warming wasn't on the menu in the mid 1800s. The ironic thing is that it's capitalism that is doing the automating.