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Marx was right about almost everything except one critical detail. His theory doesn't scale. It works great at the family level. It does not work great at the

Marx was right about almost everything except one critical detail. His theory doesn't scale. It works great at the family level. It does not work great at the town level and is a disaster at any larger level where most people do not know the rest of the people.

hajile 6y ago
Libertarianism allows for opt-in communists. The reverse is not true.
- ralusek 6y ago
  This is why I hate the notion that communism could be state-less. It is a prescriptive ideology that is concerned with describing systems and ensuring outcomes. Any mechanism that enforces that will be an authoritarian state, regardless of what you call it. Any absence of that mechanism would just immediately result in a market economy. Capitalism make no such prescriptions. It doesn't care how you structure your economic relationships, and it doesn't care to manage the outcomes of those economic relationships. Which is why communes exist in capitalist systems. What I don't understand is why more communists don't just collective resources and go live in communes; land is incredibly cheap with pooled resources. Instead we have to have our entire societies constantly bombarded with attempts to restructure them into these dystopian models.
  - hajile 6y ago
    Most people like the idea of communes more than the reality. Take a middle class kid who’s never done a real day’s work in their life into a commune and they’ll generally be wanting to go home within a couple days. Bernie talked about the evil millionaires until he became one and now he’s all about the evil billionaires. He’s fine keeping his own money because “he earned it”, while still advocating for taking money from others. People generally only favor redistribution of the kind that involves stealing from someone else. Our programmer community is exceedingly well off and could easily solve a large portion of the countries poverty if were redistributed our wealth. If we gave 10-20% to charity like fundamentalist Christians, the 4 million programmers could lift at least 4 million families above the poverty line. Instead, we blame the billionaires and do little to nothing despite our Twitter claims to want to help the disenfranchised.
    - ConceptJunkie 6y ago
      And of course, Bernie himself was kicked out of a commune for being a lazy bum.
    - ConceptJunkie 6y ago
      > If we gave 10-20% to charity like fundamentalist Christians, the 4 million programmers could lift at least 4 million families above the poverty line. Instead, we blame the billionaires and do little to nothing despite our Twitter claims to want to help the disenfranchised. Yes, but we give 40% to the Federal government who spends trillions to take care of poverty, more so than the 10% tithe ever would amount to, and the problem never gets better. Donate money to the poor? Great idea, but we're _already_ doing that via taxation and wealth redistribution, and no matter how much we do, we're told it's never enough.

hajile 6y ago

Libertarianism allows for opt-in communists. The reverse is not true.

ralusek 6y ago
This is why I hate the notion that communism could be state-less. It is a prescriptive ideology that is concerned with describing systems and ensuring outcomes. Any mechanism that enforces that will be an authoritarian state, regardless of what you call it. Any absence of that mechanism would just immediately result in a market economy. Capitalism make no such prescriptions. It doesn't care how you structure your economic relationships, and it doesn't care to manage the outcomes of those economic relationships. Which is why communes exist in capitalist systems. What I don't understand is why more communists don't just collective resources and go live in communes; land is incredibly cheap with pooled resources. Instead we have to have our entire societies constantly bombarded with attempts to restructure them into these dystopian models.
- hajile 6y ago
  Most people like the idea of communes more than the reality. Take a middle class kid who’s never done a real day’s work in their life into a commune and they’ll generally be wanting to go home within a couple days. Bernie talked about the evil millionaires until he became one and now he’s all about the evil billionaires. He’s fine keeping his own money because “he earned it”, while still advocating for taking money from others. People generally only favor redistribution of the kind that involves stealing from someone else. Our programmer community is exceedingly well off and could easily solve a large portion of the countries poverty if were redistributed our wealth. If we gave 10-20% to charity like fundamentalist Christians, the 4 million programmers could lift at least 4 million families above the poverty line. Instead, we blame the billionaires and do little to nothing despite our Twitter claims to want to help the disenfranchised.
  - ConceptJunkie 6y ago
    And of course, Bernie himself was kicked out of a commune for being a lazy bum.
  - ConceptJunkie 6y ago
    > If we gave 10-20% to charity like fundamentalist Christians, the 4 million programmers could lift at least 4 million families above the poverty line. Instead, we blame the billionaires and do little to nothing despite our Twitter claims to want to help the disenfranchised. Yes, but we give 40% to the Federal government who spends trillions to take care of poverty, more so than the 10% tithe ever would amount to, and the problem never gets better. Donate money to the poor? Great idea, but we're _already_ doing that via taxation and wealth redistribution, and no matter how much we do, we're told it's never enough.