This is the sort of assumption that seems easy if you are utopian and don't really understand tribalism in nearly-hairless primates. Suffice to say it's not nearly as simple as you think and far from the guarantee you clearly believe."
Content filtering is possible, but it's equally possible in a representative democracy with a corporate media, you could argue it's pretty clear that it happens (news outlets catering for left-wing, right-wing, etc...).
Educating the population to think for themselves and to be open to conflicting views is the key to mitigating against this. Agreed?
> "Implicit power structures are worse. This is because they lack accountability mechanisms and centralize power, making corruption easy while also making it difficult to get rid of. This is in no way an improvement."
I attempted to clarify what you were referring to by implicit power structures, please give an example of the type of power structures you are referring to.
> "Frankly, it's becoming painfully clear to me that you simply don't understand power."
> "Bully for you."
> "I'm afraid I'm done with this conversation. If I believed in God, I'd be praying very hard that you never find yourself near levers of power. You have no conception of how much your naivety terrifies me."
Is it really necessary to resort to ad hominems? I've tried to be polite, we clearly disagree but have I said something that offended you personally?
As for the underlying substance, yes I'm well aware that humans aren't perfect.
> "I imagine you think it's just a coincidence that without exception, every single historical case wherein sincere attempts at Communism were made the result was a dictatorial bloodbath. You think the examples aren't relevant."
No, I don't think it's a coincidence. Why is that? Marx suggested that it was necessary to have a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as an intermediate step on the way towards communism... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletar...
I disagree that such a step is necessary, I believe instead that you can bring in communist ideals gradually. There are some examples of how this works in practice, Chile under the leadership of Salvador Allende offers a good example.
This is only true if you make a series of very large assumptions about the people involved. Such as that voters individually choose to consume an inclusive variety of media, instead of filtering to just the media that caters to their tribe.
This is the sort of assumption that seems easy if you are utopian and don't really understand tribalism in nearly-hairless primates. Suffice to say it's not nearly as simple as you think and far from the guarantee you clearly believe.
> So your argument is that implicit power structures are just as problematic as explicit power structures as you can still have a small number of actors who seek to game the system to their own advantage?
Implicit power structures are worse. This is because they lack accountability mechanisms and centralize power, making corruption easy while also making it difficult to get rid of. This is in no way an improvement.
Frankly, it's becoming painfully clear to me that you simply don't understand power.
> I find that insulting, quite frankly.
Bully for you.
> As I've said before, none of those societies you're referring to were communist societies, nor did they start out as communist societies and devolve into something else. They were never communist to begin with, and did not make efforts to become more communist as time went on.
I imagine you think it's just a coincidence that without exception, every single historical case wherein sincere attempts at Communism were made the result was a dictatorial bloodbath. You think the examples aren't relevant.
After all, they were not true Scotsman.
I'm afraid I'm done with this conversation. If I believed in God, I'd be praying very hard that you never find yourself near levers of power. You have no conception of how much your naivety terrifies me.