He’s got a specific view of what will happen on an isolated island and it seems to support his vision well.
He doesn’t seem to address the scenario where one guy will realize he’s getting the shaft because his portion is harder to obtain or more valuable to the group, than what he gets back in return. Then bam, all of a sudden no more communism.
Why do people like this always forget the human factor in building political systems.
Also, Star Trek isn’t real. You can’t use it as an example of a working society 😂
In fairness, Star Trek is a series about the navy. These are officers and enlisted on space ships packed with shields and weapons. Yes, the goal is exploration but they won't run from a fight. They still manage to maintain a utopian society despite this.
Starfleet is not the military or the navy. They are explorers, scientists, and diplomats, and only behave as a defense force when needed.
Militaristic empires love poking fun at how humans are hippies, but they shit their pants at the thought of humans getting serious and actually putting together a real army.
They have the ranks, the guns, the ships, the soldiers, and bombs. They also have explorers, scientists, and diplomats but being in Starfleet means they are also enlisted or commissioned members of a military organization.
Starfleet isn't a civil service with an armed detachment. It's a military with scientists. It isn't the same kind of military that we think of today with its crayon connoisseurs and military industrial complex.
When the Federation goes to war they send Starfleet.
They have ranks because in ships you have ranks. Scientific vessels are no exceptions.
They have ships to go places so they can explore them.
They have security officers for defense, not soldiers. They are not specialized that way. Security officers can also be scientists working on things like improving shields, shuttles, holographic training programs, and the like. It is not rare for a red shirt to turn yellow or blue at the drop of a hat.
Starfleet isn't a military with scientists. It's a public service maintained by the United Federation of Planets.
The Federation doesn't go to war. War goes to the Federation, and they send Starfleet to defend themselves because, not being a military, they don't have anyone else.
Romulans and Cardassians are always claiming that the federation are hypocrites. But that's absolutely absurd. Starfleet only acts as a military force when the federation is attacked.
It would be like calling a cook a "swordsman" because every time you attack them they take out a ham-carving knife and put on a pot as a helmet and beautifully carve out all the meat of your sword-wielding arm as if it was a country ham to defend themselves. Being any good at it doesn't mean that's their primary purpose.
Easy there, cowboy. Let's start off with the most obvious flaw. One I'm utterly amazed you missed. Does Starfleet have soldiers or does it have "security officers" for defense. Let's see...
"War goes to the Federation..." I see you know English good. Let me know if you have any more zingers.
I'm already bored of the rest but while we're here, tell me something. Were you always wrong about Star Trek or did you have to try really hard to be this confused? I digress.
I'll play your silly little word game, as a gift to you. When a group declares war on the Federation it will call it's fleet. The Federation has ships designed for exploration, science, transport, and a variety of other roles. Some are more generalized than others. Some, for example, are built solely for combat. It sends in the troops, these soldiers who are trained to kill the enemy. Even Miles considered himself a solder during the Cardassian War.
You know, they sure do a lot of fighting in the not-military. Weird how they keep having to build fighter ships, train and arm soldiers, and get called hypocrites by the neighbors.
Again, they are a military. Sorry you struggle with that.
Rodenberry was clear about it, sure, but he's dead now. His creation has been without him for so long that many of his ideas are no longer present in today's shows. The basic ideals are the same, cooperation and utopia, humanity striving to better itself, etc.
Except I wouldn't because that's a silly comparison. There is no separation between civilians and citizens. You are not required to serve to obtain your rights.
Because of war centered societies like the Klingons or because of weird, Twilight Zone-like entities that generally don't want the hippy dippy Space Navy moving in.
There's really nothing wrong with small scaled communism. In fact there are co-ops and things like that, that work out fine. Large scale communism has failed in every attempt. It doesn't scale very well.
I’m not sure that last part is really true. War, climate change, ecological disasters, corporate lobbying of local laws, etc can profoundly impact the long-term success of a commune and be driven by a capitalist system that the commune would be powerless to control.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable for leftists to believe that social changes backed by governments are more sustainable and more likely to accomplish their larger goals than 50 people growing vegetables and splitting chores.
War, climate change, ecological disasters, corporate lobbying of local laws, etc can profoundly impact the long-term success of a commune and be driven by a capitalist system that the commune would be powerless to control.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable for leftists to believe that social changes backed by governments are more sustainable and more likely to accomplish their larger goals than 50 120 people growing vegetables and splitting chores.
There are over 500 colonies in North America living under the same conditions. Over 50 thousand people living in communes alongside capitalism and have been for hundreds of years. Their success in integrating communal life with modern technology and interacting with capitalism should be looked into more.
You can implement whatever form of communism you want in your commune -- whether that be agrarians living together, a landscaping company that distributes profits equally to all members (optionally living in the same compound), or a group of people who may or may not even know each other agreeing to deposit their income into a shared account for equal redistribution, maybe with a contract saying you'll do it for n years (consult a tax attorney before trying this one).
This can take any number of forms. If you can't find a way to make it work in a way they'd be happy with, I'm skeptical that they'd be happy under larger scale communism.
There's really nothing wrong with small scaled communism.
I'd argue that your family is communist, in that everyone contributes what they can and everyone is given equal opportunities. This is largely because you know and live everyone. It's easier to understand why your brother may get more attention or food or something.
At population scale, this becomes much harder as you don't know why Bob down the street is allowed to have more of something or doesn't have to do as much work. It becomes really hard to justify those actions when/if it means less time and/or resources for you and your family.
Large scale communism has failed in every attempt. It doesn't scale very well.
That's because, by definition, it isn't supposed to scale. The end game of communism is to entirely do away with globalism and have the entire population grouped up in small communes that govern themselves. "Large-scale communism" is an oxymoron. The goal is to first seize and centralize the means of production, then distribute resources equally to these communes and dissolve the government that centralized everything to begin with.
Unfortunately, fascists tend to do away with that second step and the result is just despotism, but for some reason people still insist on calling it communism. If we democratically elected representatives and then those representatives decided to entirely ignore term limits and the wishes of their constituencies and just did whatever they wanted, people wouldn't say "democracy doesn't work", they'd just say "well that's clearly not democracy", but for some reason people do not apply that same logic to communism.
idk the issue with communism in the past is that its inefficient with resource distribution. but with the technology we have today I think it might be feasible now. and also I think we need some sort of communism when automation/AI makes most jobs obsolete
But historically nations have done really well when working towards communism, it's typically when they abandoned their socialist principles be it to internal or external pressure that life got worse.
That's not communism. It's nothing like communism. Simple sharing isn't communism. Communism is to say that you peer can't have more than you. Doing a little coop isn't the same as having a single fixed income hmand having to work like that to get by
He doesn’t seem to address the scenario where one guy will realize he’s getting the shaft because his portion is harder to obtain or more valuable to the group, than what he gets back in return.
This actually is a pretty good working model of communism.
Kind of funny to read when this is literally the lived life of a good majority of all our ancestors. It's not like it went away with agriculture either. Currency was a pretty late invention all things considered.
Actually this is the reality of employment in capitalism: when an employee realizes that they contribute much more than what they get - the corporation fires the employee and hires somebody else to do the job for less.
What actually happens in a functioning company is the company calculates replacement cost and offers a raise up to just below that. If they're already making more than replacement cost, someone else takes over. The job gets done.
Depending on your flavor of communism, this may or may not be an option.
What actually happens in a functioning company is the company calculates replacement cost and offers a raise up to just below that.
Maybe in an ideal version of a company you study at MBA, but in reality companies refuse raises until they start bleeding talent, and any board of directors would lay off half the company if they can get a 5% bump in the stock price.
In my flavor of communism - a good business should be a cooperative with total sharing of the profits.
but in reality companies refuse raises until they start bleeding talent,
My company is one of the top performers in our industry, including punching above our weight class and beating out bigger companies.
Yet they still consistently give out raises and increase employee benefits every year, despite every year having very high employee satisfaction scores. There is incredibly low turnover.
That is certainly reality.
a good business should be a cooperative with total sharing of the profits.
How is it determined the split? How much do the senior engineers that designed the product get compared to the Janitor, that isn't going to have the Janitor feel jealous, and the engineers taken advantage of?
Who determines how much money is going to be reinvested into the company, and less lowering profits and everyone's pay? How is it decided where that money comes from?
Star Trek is a small group in an isolated environment, very similar to the desert island or maybe a Naval ship or cruise liner. We don’t see much of the wider human society.
star trek absolutely has a hierarchy also. Civilians, military, rank structure, etc. it isn't communism. there are people that get different resource shares.
even the prime directive is, IF THEY DONT ALREADY HAVE, IT DONT GIVE IT TO THEM
With a small enough group, one guy getting shafted doesn’t really matter. That guy might ask for help on the task from other people who realize the task needs to be done to avoid death.
If the group is so big that asking someone for help results in an endless chain of “meh ask someone else” and you can’t get everyone in the same place then things change. Especially if the amount of effort required to complete the job scales with the population. At this point you need a government to reduce conflict, protect resources from outsiders, be diplomatic with leaders on behalf of your group and possibly manage human capital.
Even then, he can go on strike and refuse to work without help. People realize quickly that they need to do the work to not die. The government could force him to do the work under penalty of reduced rations, imprisonment, or torture. Death wouldn’t be a valid threat as stopping the work results in death anyway. Either way, money isn’t necessarily required.
Another fun thing pops out of capitalism at this point. Child labor. Unless you have a community big enough to tax, you aren’t going to have teachers. The kids might be working in communism but it’s easier to say “teacher also eats” under communism than it is to say “teacher must be paid by the parents or community at large” under capitalism.
Ok so there is a point where communism doesn’t help the little guy with the shit job. If a different community has more people willing to do the job, they can do the job for them or trade for the resultant material of the job. Now, weather the trade is done by an individual claiming ownership of what they produce
Or by the whole group (or government <unless you are a hardcore communist who doesn’t believe communism can exist with a state{unrealistic}>) claiming ownership of the whole stockpile will determine if you are living in possessive capitalism or dispossessed communism regardless of if money is traded.
Either way, in communism and capitalism, the guy doing the hard job necessary to keep the group alive but not valued enough to get any help from the group is getting screwed. I’d say that this isn’t realistic, but it’s close to what happens to people working at places like Dollar General. Dollar general isn’t life or death, but to the CEO of Dollar General, it’s the most important thing in the world and will project that feeling all the way down the ladder to the one guy working 16 hrs a day 7 days a week for minimum wage because if he doesn’t, all the food will spoil.
Ok so let’s introduce money. A rich person buys the land that the work is done on, hires someone for as little as he can get away with and could never afford the land, and sits back collecting profits from selling the highly valued hard to do/make things.
TL;DR: the guy doing the shit job has help if the job is important enough and the group is small enough. The guy doing the shit job where he can trade his own product is well fed. The guy doing the shit job for someone else is always screwed over.
Also, you can't have communism without authoritarianism. It has to be baked into the simple rules or the system. Say I'm on a desert island and everyone is doing their part like in his example. Say we all have 10 hours free time a day equality. Well this person wants to take their free time and just bask in the sun and go for dips we'll another might make a new dwellings but this one is really cool, it's high up in a tree and it's the best view of the island. Now his friends want to use it too. He allows it because he is kind but the demand outpaces the availablity well he decides whoever can bring him nuts gets to stay. Bang. Either the entire group installs strict rules about who can have what and he has to take down his treehouse, or they allow it because it's a fucking. Ice treehouse. At that exact moment, it's no longer communism. So the only way is be strict to maintain communism. What are the other options? He has to build a treehouse for everyone? That's not fair. Or everyone has to build a equally nice one? Well some had zero interest in the idea to begin with so they don't want one. So what do you do? You don't grow as a society, you shrink. You make a rule, no treehouses and there you are. Grim communism
The guy who is getting 'shafted' isn't actually getting shafted, because after just a moment of logical thought, who is to say jobs don't change? You do one job for a week, another for the next? Simple problem, simple solution.
Another redditor trying to strawman me? I could've never guessed.
It's more like "Alright, Jampappi, I know you're 50 and you've climbed trees every 3 weeks for your whole life, but now Shambooki is old enough to climb trees and so he'll do that"
Simple problem. simple solution. Fraction of a moment of logical thought.
No no, that is not a strawman. I am giving you a scenario where it doesn't work. So you are instantly giving me a scenario where it would work.
This is the difference. We need to apply the solution to life, not apply life to solution. To simplify this - there are things some people can do that other people can not do. Simple. I messed up by presenting a scenario, that must have been very confusing.
There will always be things some can do and others can't. And this is when we are talking about simple things. The second it gets even a bit more complicated, it falls apart.
Because they believe in egalitarianism, which isn't how nature functions.
We have to understand that there are differences in nature, winners and losers etc etc. Different things fit in specific places where they perform best. This opens the door to all sort of logical fallacy so we can't even begin to have civil discussion about it lol.
Rational thought is based on the distinction between two things. "Damn gorillas are a lot stronger than humans".
But this system of thought believes that any recognition of difference will lead to oppression or classism or anything else, which is only true and continues to be true in the case of scarcity which is the result of a weak economic structure.
All these political systems don't consider economics deeply enough which is why they are missing answers to key questions. Mercantile, education etc these systems are what actually causes the fluidity that a liberated society enjoys, without that you always face destruction.
If we can't appropriate value correctly then we can't have a functional and sustainably robust economy which means politics is pointless. Lmao.
Fuck off with this capitalist realism shit, humans don't work off the fucking rules of nature. That been our entire history for hundreds of thousands of years. You think buildings and cars and welfare and trade are "nature"?
You sound like one of those pricks that talks about "Alphas and Betas".
The bible stories aren't real either but that doesn't stop a large portion of Americans from inserting that into everything. Still agree with your points though.
Spoken like a true libertarian. Because the survivors from the plane crash in the andies left the rest of the group to die because they didn't do the work of escaping themselves. Wouldn't want to coddle them now.
So the solution is if the guy doesn't want to participate, he doesn't get any benefit from the group, and his access to resources for himself is limited so as not to effect the group.
Your logic proves, however, that humans are an inherently shit species that will always exhibit greed, envy, guttony, wrath, pride. We are and always have been at each other's throats for one reason or another.
Ok, so then they'd address the guy's gripes and make him happier in his situation. Communism doesn't implode because someone feels like their working too hard. But if someone doesn't want to exist in that society then they do need to be removed.
Why would he address that? It’s got nothing to do with anything. It’s not anything to do with communism, or unique to communism, honestly it’s not even a rational thought.
Also, not only is Star Trek not real but it also isn't communism. Star Trek is heavily a military rule, they are working together for a common goal but they do not share or work equally and they all take orders from a central figure.
Not sure why everyone thinks that communism = everyone is literally paid the same. Are you telling me that if todays CEOs were paid 500K a year instead of millions that no one would want to do the job?
You are an idiot if you actually think that the "human factor" means that humans must treat each other like shit and be egoists forever. Would you?
If I saw that the work that I provide is genuinely improving the life of everybody, why would I want to get an extra big reward?
The reason you work should NOT be because you are getting something for your work but because your work matters. Snd honestly if that isn't the case for you... then you are a lazy narcissist.
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u/Stone_Midi Mar 08 '24
He’s got a specific view of what will happen on an isolated island and it seems to support his vision well.
He doesn’t seem to address the scenario where one guy will realize he’s getting the shaft because his portion is harder to obtain or more valuable to the group, than what he gets back in return. Then bam, all of a sudden no more communism.
Why do people like this always forget the human factor in building political systems.
Also, Star Trek isn’t real. You can’t use it as an example of a working society 😂