What's so terrible about Communism ?

guys we are in a poker forum and most of us did actually try FULLY LAISSEZ FAIRE capitalism for poker at least, and it was beyond great for anyone with talent and wisdom.

No legal recourse with the state was available in any form in case of controversy, no taxation either though, and it was far far far far far far better than the best regulations could make it be currently.

gambling is a losing sum game that does no public good and is obviously harmful for society. You sure you wanna run with that example?

Yes because it's a clear cut recent example we most have experienced.

And I am not sure why externalities matter at all in determining how smooth a market functions and how much talented people can profit interacting with such a market, which is how I personally judge if an organizational system works or not.

Also, claiming skill based gambling is "obviously harmful for society" is disastrously wrong but that's another topic.

Separating stupid people from their money without violence is exceptionally good for society. Resources being in the hands of smarter people will lead to smarter consumption and investment choices definitionally, so for the same resources, better production of better goods and services.

It is morally positive to have resources in the hands of objectively smarter people centers paribus. And achieving that without violence is exceptionally healthy for society.

Everytime a fish loses a grand to a reg the world is a better place objectively, morally.

Then the reg spends that grand on coke and hookers and the world is objectively a morally better place

all wealth and power should simply forever flow to the single best person so that the world can truly be a beautiful place

Higher IQ people won't spend money worse than lower IQ people, and you know that. On average of course.

And btw spending on hookers isn't bad at all for society, the money doesn't disappear, the hooker spends it again and what happened is just more healthy endorphines around, plenty of worse ways to use real resources.

I'll take the under on being good at poker equating to moral decision making or the public good

Anyway, moving on from your derail (i repeat: it's completly irrelevant what you think about gambling, when discussing actual laissez-faire capitalism and it's effect), idea is we did have some niche examples of actual real capitalism, and it worked very very well.

Another example would be vaping before all regulations existed about it. Just exceptionally good for all involved parties, dramatically better than the alternative, and infinitely better than currently regulated vaping.

Sto Scherzando amico, non preoccuparti.😀

Actually we have a ton of evidence that it doesn't work, doesn't make sense, and only a tiny minority of fringe radicals even advocate for it. You've made it clear that you think all evidence that is contrary to your beliefs is somehow manufactured by the left and that all "experts" are coopted by some sort of leftist nefarious plot. So there is no real reason to argue with you i guess.

Any communist would do very well to worry about communism, because per tradition there is a phase of "kill the other communists" before you transition to the one-party state.

Now, some of you that are inclined towards socialism might say "But I don't want the one party state"... and if you stop to think about that for a second, you should consider that this puts you at the top of the list of socialists that should worry about communism.

whereas with Western liberalism there is no phase. its just continuous killing.

The name Bolshevik stems from the Russian term "greater" and can be translated to "One of the majority". It is the name chosen by Lenin's socialist faction which rejected democratic inclusion of the people and held that the people's majority had to steered by a small group of chosen revolutionaries. It isn't terribly difficult to guess who would choose these revolutionaries.

Some might say there is a touch of irony to the name.

Anyways, as one can imagine, this caused big rifts with social democrats, democratic socialists and the big bad wolf which was the liberal. These horrifyingly evil figures that wanted the people to have the right to vote, assembly and free speech.

Accusation of cooperation with these groups would later become used widely during the red terror as justification for persecution, incarceration, torture and mass murder.

Anyways, the remnants of Leninism are pretty easy to identify. They will talk a lot about fascism, but spend their actual time concerning themselves with socialists who don't pass this week's purity test, social democrats and liberals.

Two of my main thoughts on communism.

First of all, I don’t think the labor theory of value is the correct way to interpret what we mean by economic value. That alone should be enough to undermine Marxist communism, and if it’s not Marxist communism one just has to wonder what exactly is it that makes it communist as that seems like an equivocation.

Second, historically societies that have attempted communism have not only wildly failed economically, they have also failed in terms of bringing about the egalitarian ethos on which they are supposedly founded. But the economic failure is enough to start to question it, and I think that the reason why it fails is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to get a buy-in from the masses. The masses aren’t concerned with their class, but rather their own welfare. That’s why powerful kings can gain popularity if they are good to their subjects. The real starting point of any political egalitarianism is bringing about a high amount of welfare to counteract traditions which lead to a path of bad outcomes. This has mainly been achieved by social democracy and social liberalism.

On a side note about environment, Russia and China both had disastrous environmental policies outside of mere CO2 emissions, which are not the only measures of environmental destructions. This is often due to both corruption and denial of rationalism that comes from a top-down system.

Well I don’t think this works when you do an anthropology of poker players in general. In fact, in high stakes games oftentimes the “losers” are the most economically productive members of society (eg Bill Perkins). And there are confounding variables which is that high risk tolerances should be redirected towards more socially positive outcomes, like entrepreneurship.

If there is a “cheat” to gaining money which has a bad social impact, like gambling, we would prefer that those people that end up pursuing it would eventually take that money and use it towards better ends. For instance, Doug Polk took his money and created multiple businesses which then employ people and allowed him to improve his town, community, family, etc. But if he stayed as a degen poker player like Ivey, this would be objectively bad for society. Ivey’s talents would be much better served running businesses, but instead he plays games for a living and tries to part people with their money. In society, we much prefer Doug Polks to Phil Iveys.

I don't see anyone offering a constructive answer to the question posed in the OP which relates to capitalism's failure to protect the environment we depend upon for survival.

Capitalism as currently being practiced ignores the value of the shared environment. Capitalism encourages exploitation of the shared environment.

Our current existence is parallel to bacteria in a petri dish with a favorable substrate. Eventually the bacteria consume all of the food supply and drown in their toxic waste.

Well the concern is that in the materialist dialectical account of history, communism would actually demand a greater expansion of material productivity. So it’s not quite clear how something can both expend energy and be expected to preserve energy, outside of a massive paradigm shift that could be produced by capitalism anyway.

That’s why you don’t see communist-aligned societies being historically aligned with better climate policies, because they too demand and expansion of material outputs to satisfy the common good. If anything the idea has been historically that it would be greater, not lesser, under a communist state.

wats the question?

This kind of sounds a bit more like a highly regulated form of capitalism or market socialism.

If wages and currency still exists, the system is still operating under a market based economy as opposed to Marx's idea of abolishing monney and distributing based on need?

Why not just nationalize certain companies like you stated and tax the ever loving **** out of corporations to fund essential programs + regulating waste management laws and emission standards to prevent corporations from abusing the environment?

Sure, that may sound challenging, but it has at least been partially accomplished in Scandinavian countries which are still capitalist.

Because in good faith, im still not sure how the transition from a capitalist society in the US, switches to either the workers or an authoritarian or bureaucratic rule.

Because right now, you, personally say that we get to keep our cars while nutnut says that their gone, how do go about orchestrating who gets to make the decisions when it's very likely that neither of you would get the support of votes needed to make these dramatic changes?

...but anyways, I sincerely appreciate you stating your case in here. It's all just extroadinarly complicated and often not argued in good faith.

Under communism, we could eliminate wages and currency.

That's not what Marx said though, like at all.

Nor what your fellow communists in this thread are telling you, like deuce.

Btw if all jobs treat you exactly the same in terms of access to resources, who's going to work the shitty jobs, or those requiring massive training?

If all jobs are paid identically who is treating Alzheimer patients?

Don’t forget :” except when those smarter people are part for the government or are leftwing “.

You are losing your way luciom.

Normalizing inequality doesnt seem a worthwhile endeavour to me.
What’s more important to me is to encourage excellence while not forgetting to take care of the less fortunate ( regardless coming from genes, bad environment, born in a bad family, w.e the f the reason ) .

Capitalism has looked different at different times. In a cooperative the decision to move a company overseas would be voted on, or maybe not even because the result is too certain. Without the ability of owners to move operations wherever they want capitalism would look a lot different. I do take your implication that the tendency of workers to be manipulated into voting for everything happening now could be easily underestimated.

That's an important question. Communism doesn't mean everyone gets paid the same, but I still think it is interesting to think about the implications of everyone making the same. The way I like to put it is how would you divide up work if everyone in society were genetic clones of you and had the same skills/education?