Your loss...

@BeardMaster:Personally, I think its economic upturn stemmed from the inclusion of capitalist policies and companies and the droves of cheap labor. Communism may have gotten the ball rolling, but it's a glass pedestal. They need to rebalance or they're done for.

@RushKing: In all, I still think that stateless communism is a utopian pipe dream. Every time progress is made towards a society like this, it's torn down by human inhibition. It's too easy to corrupt, too easy to kill. I admire the merits behind a system like it, but it relies on people not acting human.
Collectively, we can't be trusted.

Well, I should have been a bit less general. I understand that resources are only able to be given out if they are produced to begin with, I wasn't trying to say that the amount is static, regardless of contribution. If less is produced, less is distributed among the people. The main issue with this, though, is the blow is softened to those who don't contribute as much because the loss is dispersed among everyone. Depending on the person in this situation, they'd either work harder to get themselves more or be satisfied with what they received and continue to do so in the future as the cost is less to them personally. The issue lies in whether you believe people would be motivated to work for that minimal increase or settle for that minimal decrease if it suits their needs. This one is up in the air as many people would react differently in this situation. The situation with the jobs is also a bit hazy. In the US, the market decides what job we get, but in communism, the state decides what job you get depending on your skills. I don't believe either are naturally suited for deciding what people should do for their lives as there will always be the need for many, many unskilled workers, and no matter what system you live under, many people will be disgruntled with their jobs. I believe that having the hope that you can change your situation in life is better than knowing you're stuck doing what you do now. Regardless, each system has it's own share of problems in the job market.

Efficiency in the workplace suffers under communism as well. As the state dictates all citizens must be employed, it can create an over-saturation in certain fields, namely the necessary blue-collar work done by unskilled workers. As more people are employed, the work becomes trivial and work is created to keep the workers busy. At this point, you're just making more without worrying about how well it is done or whether or not it is actually needed. There is less profit to hand out as you hire more people, so you spend less to train them, their work becomes sloppy, they lose motivation as they lack any incentive to do the job. It effectively stagnates progression as the workforce becomes little more than (and this is grossly overstated) children who you're just trying to find things to do. The focus becomes the quantity of workers, not the quality. People could care less about their jobs and don't try to do their best as there are others who can do the job as well, and this has been documented in the former USSR. Where in the US it's stress causing friction, in communism it's sloth.

I, purely and honestly, have a hard time not seeing communism as relying on the selfless citizen, from an on-paper standpoint. You're going to have to explain your stance on this.

You wrote what I was basically trying to get at. I think we're about level.

Best I've ever done is get someone to realize that their arguments are stupid, but I don't think I've ever gotten someone to pull a full 180. They normally come back with points that are harder to shoot down.

Still supporting a wrong ideal with stronger evidence you had to dig for and study is better than blindly believing something without reason. It may even get them to change their stance over time the more they research it and question what they read.

@WiiCubeM1:

I understand the ideas behind communism, and I know what you mean by it never truly existing, but the sad and ugly truth is it is still a utopian pipe dream. People, as a whole, cannot be selfless and share in the collective burden. Capitalism placates people by rewarding them for the amount of work they do. Religion promises salvation to those who believe and damnation for those who don't. The successful systems thrive because they feed the selfish part of us all that tells us people will reap what they sow. Communism, pure communism, wants to throw this element out the window entirely and hopes that everyone under it's umbrella can suppress this selfishness for the common good, that no one will seize more or want more than they need.

Trust me, I understand entirely what you're saying, and sometimes I wish that a system like this could work, but communism offers no way to placate this side of ourselves. It won't work because some people don't want to participate, and others want to take as much as they can for themselves. Communism runs off of a trust system, that man can be trusted to regulate itself without some kind of intervention that would constitute the beginnings of a totalitarian state or some type of socialism/capitalism hybrid state. I agree with what you are saying, that a purely communistic state has never existed, but again, that's because it simply can't. If that is all you are trying to get across, that pure communism has never been practiced, most people agree with you, but if are trying to say that Communism could work on a large and permanent scale, that's where anyone with political insight would draw the line.

It will always be used to oppress the masses in good time. It lends far too much power to the central government, and in the wrong hands, it will become no better than every other example of failed communistic states. That's just one possible way it could fail.

The human element is the weak link in the system. It's an idealist concept of government that will only work if the people put in charge and the people it is in charge of are truly only interested in making the system work. Communism has never been truly implemented because it works against human nature, on many fronts. Emotions would take over in time and cause rifts and tears in the system. A key component of communism, from what I remember from uni, was the equal distribution of resources among the populace. Over short periods, this works fine, but if people realize over time that they get the same amount of resources, no matter what they contribute as a whole, they'll produce less. This'll force others to either become spiteful of the slacking populace and react any number of ways, from open resentment or attempted modification of the system to give only if they contribute, to open warfare or worse. Human nature is fickle and greedy. It demands attention for its work, and due reward for what it does. If the slacker gets the same as me when I contribute the most, you bet something will go down, from cracks in the system to its utter destruction. Human nature wants power and acclaim, and will do whatever it can to get it. In some, it goes too far, and the system of communism becomes a totalitarian dictatorship. The whole of Communism relies on people acting selfless, and that just isn't how it works. Capitalism flourishes because it relies on people acting selfish. You gain recognition for the work you do, and this pushes you to do more, or at least work as hard as you are.

Communism doesn't exist because it can't exist. It's a utopian pipe dream. Your argument seems to be more of a straw man than anything. Yes, communism may never have been truly implemented, but that's because it won't work in the first place. It's been tried, and it failed exactly the way people thought it would, by the greed and selfishness of man, either through implementation of capitalistic elements to placate the hard work and egos of the common man, or through takeover by a dictator. At best, it's a temporary patch for economic troubles, but it can never work on large-scale permanently.

Oh, god damn it, this thing still exists? It's been around since the bulletin system existed on Youtube, and I thought it died with it. That was 4-5 years ago.

Why the hell is it back?

@deeliman: Generally speaking, a young person who is left to their own political devices is often ideological, meaning they'll buy into the general "leftist Democrat" way of thinking. Not always the case, but I've met more left-wing Democratic teens and 20-somethings than I have Republicans or independents.

Again, generally speaking. I'm 21 and buy into the moderate Republican viewpoint more than anything, but that still doesn't make my political views necessarily more correct. I think it stems from the fact that since few people are willing to do the research necessary to have a good grasp of the ever-changing political field, young people are seen as more ignorant than older people who do the same as the older ones at least have experience of a different socio-economic time and grasp onto an archaic way of thinking as it worked at one time, whereas the younger generation are seen as ideological with only theories and speculations to back up their hasty reasoning. That's the general thought process among many, anyway.