Generic ideological tangents are off topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They don't count as interesting in HN's sense, i.e. they don't gratify intellectual curiosity. The more grandiose a topic, the fewer new meaningful things there are to say about it.

I somewhat agree, but any connection between Communism and Socialism needs to similarly find its way to that trash heap. Communism's failing is its seemingly inescapable combination with totalitarianism and despotism, which was a significant problem with Nazism as well. It's not the principle that society is responsible for caring for and providing for it's citizens. For too long, we've resisted more socialist policies because those with a vested interest in the status quo were able to paint them as communist.

But Socialism has been successful enough in European countries at this point to be fully differentiated from Communism despite sharing that single principle. In The United States, in particular, there is still a legacy of the 'red scare' that's used to push back against socialist policies that would greatly improve this country and that needs to end too.

Exactly, and as a European I'd like to caution that this article plays into the "oooh communism isn't so great now is it" mentality that is prevalent in the US due to the cold war.

Let's separate the principles of a system of government with how it's been implemented, there's still a good discussion to be had on individualism vs society and the tradeoffs when forming governmental structures.

That is not what socialism used to mean. European countries are capitalist with a welfare state. This was first set up in Germany by Bismarck, and the socialists were opposed to it. Socialism used to mean that the means of production were in the hands of the government, and by that standard Europe is certainly not socialist. The capital is privately owned and the decisions about how to use that capital are made by those owners. The wealth that is redistributed in Europe is created by capitalism. Europe does not differ significantly from the US in this regard; the government expenditure as a percentage of GDP in "socialist" Europe is not very different than "capitalist" United States. The US spends 42% whereas France and Sweden (usually considered the two most socialist countries in Europe) it is 56% and 51%, respectively. In Germany it's 45% and in Switzerland 35%.

What is the percentage of non-defense GDP spending? I'd guess that the delta is larger.

The US spends 3.3% of GDP on military whereas France spends 2.3%, so while excluding this makes the delta larger, it won't make a significant dent.

IIRC, that 3.3% is just for the 5 branches of the military and doesn't include intelligence spending (~$80b/yr) or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which are around $2.4 trillion dollars thus far over ~14 years. A more honest number is probably above 4%.

Fair, though France's military spending is the highest in Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...).

My understanding is that US spending is relatively 'inefficient' compared to European countries, esp for healthcare. We spend more for comparatively worse outcomes (this is definitely true when compared to UK NHS, probably for France too).

There are more nuanced critiques of either of the predominant systems discussed in this comment section. If you want to throw unfair death totals for what are at best regimes loosely approximating their underlying communist or capitalist ideologies, you can just as easily claim capitalism kills tons. https://i.redd.it/h0l4hqcf5inz.jpg

but honestly, I don't think body counts are the right way to judge either. Makes for a great way to emotionally charge the conversation, though.

none of those things have to do with capitalism. those were all acts of government and the antithesis of free enterprise.

Almost like how a totalitarian dictator killing his own people has nothing to do with communism?

scoreboard really. name a single capitalist totalitarian dictator? Capitalism implicitly does not incentivize centralization of power. Now name how many successful western countries haven't embraced capitalism as, at the very least, their main source of funds to experiment with.

>name a single capitalist totalitarian dictator?

Pinochet.

>Now name how many successful western countries haven't embraced capitalism as, at the very least, their main source of funds to experiment with.

Almost all western countries are capitalist I believe? Usually I take western to mean (1) democratic (2) capitalist. Besides as I'm arguing elsewhere, the failure of many socialist states is due to US intervention. Cuba's Embargo is a great example, the coup that placed Pinochet in power is another. America hates socialism/communism so it constantly acts aggressively towards those states while helping capitalist states. It's tough to look at the scoreboard and judge when the ref is obviously biased.

> Pinochet.

So just because he instituted some free market policies, hes capitalist? In no way did any capitalist figurehead advocate any of his violence. Also, what was Pinochet's body count? many orders of magnitude less than just Mao right?

> Almost all western countries are capitalist I believe? Usually I take western to mean (1) democratic (2) capitalist.

You are stretching the word capitalist beyond any recognition. It simply does not describe a government embargo nor aggressive government actions by any definition.

> In no way did any capitalist figurehead advocate any of his violence.

You should really do some research before you make claims like this. One place to start would be Marvin Liebman and the American-Chilean Council, which planted pro-Chilean propaganda in several high-profile conservative press outlets.

In what way, shape, or form does slavery have nothing to do with capitalism?

The millions of American Indians that were murdered because they wouldn't give up their valuable land?

How is throwing away good food because no one pays for it, and thereby letting poor people starve, not capitalist? How is it the "antithesis of free enterprise"?

Thats a pretty shallow interpretation of history.

To the degree that they did trade peacefully (free enterprise), they flourished - thus the lesson of Thanksgiving. Not to mention they were fleeing religious persecution themselves in North America. Of course establishing private property in a new land was not without friction and abuse. However, the killing of Indians by the Union army were direct actions of Government - not the enlightenment principles of capitalism, free trade & movement, as expounded by the likes of Mises and Adam Smith.

and it was financed by European royalty in South America. How did that go?

The truth is there weren't many options. But I would attribute abuses by violent governments to government, not private enterprise.

I have to believe this is a troll comment but maybe Poe's gotten the best of me again...

If you can lay blame for Mao's famines at the feet of Karl Marx, then why not assign the deaths of the 30 Years War directly to Jesus?

What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? People are dying because of this shit too.

45 million people died over 4 years in Mao's Great Leap Forward from starvation and execution. 10+ million people died in Stalin's gulags alone. Are you really trying to equate this with healthcare in America?

Totally, we're past these times and living in a more stable and richer world, how is it that we're still letting people die because of competition? I think it's a fair comparison in today's standards.

> What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it?

Well if you're going to be sensationalist about it. What about Socialism, where your material needs are provided for through extreme violence, via theft; using guns to take from one person against their will, to give to another. The entire foundation of all forms of Socialism, require extreme violence as a means to redistribute and at no time can that violence be relaxed, for it works at all times against human nature and self-interest. It's also why every nation that has ever attempted Socialism has collapsed into perpetual barbaric violence against its people, holding them as State slaves with few rights: Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, Soviet Russia, East Germany, Mao's China, Venezuela, North Vietnam, National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, the numerous Soviet satellites, Socialist Ba'athist Iraq, and so on.

Military dictatorships are responsible for the atrocities you mention. Not communism. Evil people. Atrocities have also happened in capitalist counties - we're not placing the blame for those on the style of market the government chooses to adapt and it would be idiotic to do so.

There isn't a single communist country that wasn't a dictatorship. There are plenty of capitalist societies that aren't dictatorships.

I find these discussions always fly into the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Are you saying communism cannot exist separately from (evil) dictator? Lots of the ideas do (there are plenty of functioning highly socialist countries). Theoretically at least communism could exist peacefully (although it seems you would need everyone in the country to agree and remain agreed to the principals for that to work).

Also - dictatorships can work. There have been several 'benevolent' dictators who made communism work without introducing any more evil than many democratically elected leaders. A dictatorship doesn't naturally lead to Mao/Stalin etc.

This is the same tired argument: "But communism would work if people did it right." This is neither an historical nor a scientific argument. It is pure wide-eyed ideology that ignores the devastation that communism has caused everywhere it has been tried. Communism = oppression, poverty, and starvation.

> Are you saying communism cannot exist separately from (evil) dictator?

History does seem to bear that out.

Around 100 years of history isn't a big sample size when it comes to political/economic ideologies. Also, I would argue their are examples of it existing with non-evil dictators. I won't bother naming anyone specifically as it's easy to say 'but x did y' however I feel like that applies to a majority of world leaders under any system. There are certainly leaders of communist countries who did no-more evil than some of our recent democratically elected leaders in the west.

There have been many attempts at communism and it has had a 100% rate of ending in dictatorship. Which of those dictators would you consider non-evil? Should we want dictatorship, even if the the dictator is non-evil? Given the absurdly bad consequences in many cases and the fact that it's not all that surprising that an ideology like communism ends in dictatorship, I'd suggest that trying it again is not very wise.

> There are certainly leaders of communist countries who did no-more evil than some of our recent democratically elected leaders in the west.

What if they had the most powerful army in the world at their disposal?

What examples can you come up with?