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Re:Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks by kaba0 on Sunday April 24, 2022 @05:15PM (#31148406)
A commune in isolation can not protect itself. Another more aggressive group will overtake them given time. That's why I don't believe that end-goal communism or anarchism could ever work (where the former is contrary to many people's idea, is about small communes, not some Big Government). But with a necessarily strong government it is absolutely not impossible to scale a small commune to a whole country. Pair it with the best kind of democracy (as that is an entirely different axis) we have and I also on the opinion that many of today's problems could be solved.

But even in today's capitalist system UBI could be implemented relatively easily paid for by tax money.

Re:Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks by WalterBright on Sunday April 24, 2022 @05:48PM (#31148652)
A commune in isolation can not protect itself.

The US ones did not fail because some more aggressive group overtook them. They failed because they did not work and eventually the members tired of it and left.

The state-sponsored kibbutzen in Israel also fail, because they can't exist without massive government subsidy.

Communism has been tried many times on a nation scale. 100% failure.

Your ideas are not new and they have been tried, again and again. They just don't work. They don't work on a small scale, they don't work on a large scale. They don't work when voluntary, they don't work by force.

There is just something about communism that is fundamentally anti-ethical to human nature.

Re:Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks by kaba0 on Monday April 25, 2022 @03:22AM (#31151484)
Did you even get my point that communism is different from socialism? I very much stated exactly that communism (in my opinion can’t work either). But socialism as a spectrum of ideas has plenty of working aspects included in basically every Western democracy.
Re:Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks by WalterBright on Monday April 25, 2022 @04:23AM (#31151807)
Socialism produces mediocre works, and can't compete with free market operations. This is why socialist operations tend to be heavily subsidized or they simply make free market competitors illegal.

It's most obvious when agriculture is socialized, because it's impossible for people to believe the lie that they aren't starving.

Yes, I know that communism is supposed to be without a government.

Re:Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks by kaba0 on Monday April 25, 2022 @04:32AM (#31151860)
Free market is not inherently incompatible with socialism. Hell, free market only works properly (according to its very creator, Adam Smith) when it is confined to a well-regulated market.

The only entity capable of creating such a market is the government itself. Also, don’t forget that plenty of areas simply don’t operate on a supply-demand basis — e.g. healthcare.

Re:Project Gutenberg – Library of over 60k free eBooks by WalterBright on Monday April 25, 2022 @03:12PM (#31159331)
Socialism isn't defined in terms of a "well-regulated market". Socialism is when the government provides goods and services.

> don’t forget that plenty of areas simply don’t operate on a supply-demand basis — e.g. healthcare

Supply-demand is in play even under socialism.

But here's a simple example. Take your corner drugstore. It has a couple aisles of all sorts of healthcare products, from aspirin to toothbrushes to athlete's foot cream to cold remedies. There are multiple brands with multiple formulations at various price points. How does supply & demand not apply there?

More generally, pick any health care issue. For each, there are a multiple of options available, with varying costs, efficacies, risks, and pain. Including doing nothing (by far most diseases disappear on their own). How is that not supply & demand?