They're not great on paper. They ignore some powerful personal human motivation that we know exists. Perhaps you should say "They're great for robots that can be programmed to think in whatever way is convenient for the academic imagining them".

Well, yes, the same could be said of Chomsky.

IMHO the biggest mistake and "the root of all evil" of marxist and capitalistic countries was that people with:

- capitalistic mindset were not allowed to get out; (marxist countries)

- communist mindset were allowed to stay in. (capitalistic countries)

This created discontentment and abuses, undermining the system and his initial followers: "If they are taking advantage, I am stupid if I don't do the same"

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That has been tried too, in Britain in the 1960s the govt introduced punitive taxation but didn't close the borders. What happened next was the origin of the phrase "brain drain".

I'm not aware of any capitalist society that erected barriers to members wanting to go and live in a communist country. Weirdly, they didn't want to. Take the late Eric Hobsbawm for example, wouldn't stop banging on about how great the USSR was. But for himself, he preferred the life of a wealthy author in the West...

I live in South Europe. Here we want the best of both worlds: the best of Marxism and the best of Capitalism. IMHO, this is the root of our problems because this mindset is not sustainable. Just have a look on Greece. Tsipras (the Greek people) wants to follow both. This indecision will undermine them.

It's not just Capitalism that has good things, Marxism have good things also (I have lived in East Europe where you can still feel the marxist mindset presence and believe me, some things are MUCH better than in the West). But I am not even arguing which direction to take, it's just not possible to follow both.