Originally posted by Shuckins
Capt., many socialistic and communistic governments during the 20th century were started with the purist of motives, but the communistic system seems to lend itself to the worst abuses of government, and therefore degenerates into despotism faster than does a democracy...or a socialistic system for that matter.
Nevertheless, I contend that even the most wholesome of democracies will ultimately degrade into tyranny as time passes, unless the populace is extremely vigilant.
not to keep beating the point but, again, you can have a communist gov't that is also democratic, so they're not really two ideas you can contrast between.
communism would be more fairly contrasted with anarchism, socialism, capitalism, totalitarianism.
I don't think that communism is necessarily quicker to fail than capitalism. they both have some serious un-addressed fatal flaws.
with capitalism the big problem is that money and power can be used to influence the gov't to make laws that favor those who have that money and power.
the influence they buy allows them to amass even more money and power, giving them the ability to further tilt the laws to favor them. this continues with the powerful gaining more power and influence at a ever increasing rate.
the rich get richer, the middle class drifts into the poorer class until it no longer exists, and the rest of us live our lives with that same feeling you have in the last 20 minutes of a game of monopoly. you know what I mean, right? where you know you ain't got a chance in hell of coming out on top. you're just surviving until you land on boardwalk and it wipes you out.
eventually you get to a point where there are few or none in any sort of a middle class, the poor and powerless are the vast majority, and a very small elite minority controls the so much of the wealth and power that they are making virtually all of the decisions for the majority who they are completely out of touch with.
this continues until you have enough people becoming powerless and desperate at the same time, so that you have a lot of people with absolutely nothing to lose. at that point they start killing the rich, dividing up their property and wiping the board clean. then it starts over and works well until a couple people amass enough wealth that they can use it to influence the laws to give them more, and the cycle begins again.
with communism the fatal flaw is it doesn't take into account basic human nature. the traits that seem relevant to me are greed and laziness. in a true communist society, each citizens contribution to society will be based on his ability, and will be compensated based on his need. a very noble and idyllic plan until greed and laziness rear their heads. you'll always have deadbeats who will try to do as little as possible while still taking their share, and of course you'll have the greedy who try to get more than their share. or worse yet you could get a guy who is both greedy and lazy, takes a double share and contributes nothing. it's been my experience through life that you will have no problem acquiring an ample supply of people with one or both of these tendency's, more than enough to screw up your utopia.
you'll also run into people who are independent, resourceful, gifted in ability, and blessed with out major liabilities. many of them will figure out that the society isn't profitable for them, since they are producing more than they receive. it won't be long before they figure out that they'd do better on their own or in a more independent gov't and would rather not participate in your system.
so now you're in a tight spot. those who are likely to opt out would be those who are able to contribute to a higher level than their need. if you let them leave (or even just go on about their business working out their own needs while choosing to not participate), you will be left with a nation made up of people who have higher needs and lesser ability to contribute.
your only other option is to play the 'heavy' and force someone to participate against their will. holding them prisoner in their own nation. you'd probably have to do something extreme maybe kill a few to scare the others into line, make a few examples. you can't just lock up those who opt out. you need their contribution to survive, so locking them up defeats the purpose and also uses up additional resources to make sure they stay where you put them.
the heavy option is somewhat effective in the short run. but isn't exactly conducive to a 'happy worker'/'team player' state of mind. eventually the use of this tactic will foster an attitude that will make people feel less a part of the society and more like looking out for themselves. that leads back to the greed and laziness, which ensures a constant supply of dissidents who you need to play the heavy with.
IMO the reasons why our capitalist society has a longer run than the soviet communist society are a bit more complicated than just the nature of the systems. a couple points to consider is that at the onset of the cold war we were an established nation with over 150yrs under our belt, the USSR was a baby as nations go, and we get in to direct competition. not just to come out on top but to destroy the other system, and consider any country who chooses their style of gov't to be enemies of our state. why were we so afraid of this idea if it was doomed to fall apart anyway? we sure put a lot of effort and resources into the cold war if we were fighting an adversary that had one leg in the grave already.
I believe that if we'd have both minded our own damn business, and took the stance that we don't give a rats-prettythang what form of gov't some other country wants to operate under. both nations, and pretty much everyone else on the planet as well would be much better off today.
I find it amusing that is almost always the very same people who are first to state that communism is a doomed and unworkable system that has built in insurmountable flaws, are also the very same people who will tell you how Ronald Reagan was a great man who finally, and apparently nearly single handedly, put an end to the soviet union.
so which is it? is Ronny just a fake, a con-man who took credit for a situation that was an inevitable eventuality that would have happened no matter what he did? or was he the great American hero, who single handedly destroyed our rival, who had such a strong, workable system that we had to be constantly vigilant so they didn't over-power us?
Originally posted by Shuckins
My fear is that the American people may ultimately become so complacent and comfortable with our system that they fail to detect the signs of deterioration into despotism.
I agree with you 100% on this. I also believe that this point of complacency, feelings of safety, the idea that it can't happen here, or whatever you want to call it and not the setting up of the gov't is the point were it becomes doomed and won't become repaired in any real way without bloodshed.
I also believe we are already there. passed it quite a while back in fact.
