On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 2:42 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > Brent: > > Communism is not a terrible idea - it works fine for families. A lot of >> political problems come from trying to extend ethics that evolved for >> families and small tribes to nation states of millions of unrelated people. >> >> Thanks Brent, I keep saying this but seem to get reactions along the > lines of Stalin was evil therefore communism can't work for anyone, ever. >
When discussing communism people assume nations. Figuring out a solution for a family or tribe is easy and tells us nothing about its scalability. It's not just Stalin. It's also Mao (who killed millions with his cultural revolution and great leap forward), Pol Pot (more than 10% of the Cambodian population died in his killing fields), Nicolae Ceausescu and the great famine that his inane policies generated and the Kim dynasty (enough said). Then you have the long tail of poverty creators and oppressors of free speech like Fidel and Hugh Chavez. It's not that these people represent the ideals of communism, but it seems to be the case that one of these fine fellows always seems to end up in charge, across cultures and decades. > It not only works for tribes, families and villages, it can even work to a > reasonable extent in societies where people are closely related. There > appears to be a rough correlation between the degree of interrelatedness of > people in a socity and the degree to which social welfare programmes and so > on are implemented, in my admittedly limited experience. > This might explain why communism so frequently comes with genocide. > > You forgot to mention that it works very well for the upper class, too, > who tend to look after themselves with old boys' networks etc. Hence the > slogan of the West should really be - "capitalism for the masses, communism > for the rich!" > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
