Why do we let people be millionaires or billionaires?

And we don't need to eliminate the rich in order to have a good society. We just have to tax them a little more.

And throwing money at a society suffering from drought won't end the drought, or necessarily end the problems of that society.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

And I applaud you for all that; all I am saying is that you should work equally as hard for the sake of your community, not for the sake of money; and this can be achieved under communism. You are clearly capable of working hard, so why not do it for the greater good?

Precisely.

Actually, the rich are rich because of their exploitation; so yes, we do need to equalize them, and seize their illegitimate wealth for the greater good.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Exploitation isn't always bad. In capitalism, someone has something you need and you pay for it plus a little extra for their efforts. Who is being exploited when George Lucas makes a movie everyone wants to see?

 

Yes. It can also be achieved under capitalism - and, historically, most often is.

He is.

Again, how much have you, as a professed communist, contributed to the poor of the world?

 

Also, one person being wealthy while another person is poor is immoral; classism and hierarchy are NOT parts of civilized society.

And yes, exploitation IS always bad, kind of by definition.

 

It's only immoral if there are systems in place to keep other people from also becoming rich. If everyone can potentially be rich, but some people are not, that's just life. Talents aren't equal, thus riches should not be equal.

I suggest that what you are calling exploitation is actually just fair exchange.

What's wrong with a progressive tax system that uses the wealth of the rich to raise the poor into middle class, to provide them with all the tools they need to become rich, like education?

 

It's inherently unfair that some people are simply blessed with the dumb luck and talent while others aren't.

It is also quite wrong to encourage individual self-interest when the collective interest is far more important; the individual should work for the community, not for himself, because by working for the community he inevitably benefits himself.

And the wealthy wouldn't be wealthy without society, so every damn penny should go to paying back SOCIETY. You don't need more than 50K to live, so every dollar above that can benefit the collective.

That's a part of being in society.

 

Life isn't fair. While I agree that the community would be greatly helped if the poor had access to education and a minimum of food, I don't think it would be helped by a total lack of rich people. Otherwise, what incentive is there to be anything other than poor?

 

Poor exists only in contrast to rich; if people simply worked for the betterment of the community, there would be no individual wealth, and no individual poverty.

You belong to society. So do I, and so does everyone else; we shouldn't encourage individual hoarding of wealth when there are those without the rights of life. And even when things are equalized, we should not encourage individual hoarding of wealth...because hoarding is wrong.

 

An ideal Democratic Socialist society would also prevent anyone from being derived from the right to life. Your vision of society would prevent great individual accomplishments and make everyone uniformly miserable. Bill Gates also works for the betterment of the community. I for one enjoy having a PC.

 

That's because you're talking to a teen that thinks being communist is a cool way of rebelling. Everything I've read of his posts show a glaring lack of knowledge of how society really works.

 

In point of fact, classism and hierarchy are more-or-less hallmarks of "civilization." The defining features of civilization - division of labor, urbanization, maintenance of technological and priestly classes, etc. - are inherently aspects of hierarchal organization. This is all Human Science 101, last I checked, and communism, by this late date, is largely a historical object lesson in why you can't have it both ways.

Unless you're misusing "civilized" to mean "morally approved of by myself," that is.

 

Even in the USSR that was never true. How else do you explain the Nomenklatura? An utterly distinctionless society is a fantasy.

 

Yes. And it's unfair that someone should be expected to work hard and not reap any reward from their work. If everyone is compensated the same, why wouldn't everyone put the same amount of effort into their work? (i.e. the minimum possible)

And here in the US, by working for himself he eventually benefits the community. Again, Bill Gates is a good example. There's no way he would ever have been able to give billions to the poor if he had tried to build his company in a communist state.

 

It's low that the only reason people innovate is for the sake of selfish gain.

You owe society; you shouldn't have to be paid to do what you are supposed to do, which is serve your community.

Actually, I'm not. How about you stop jumping to conclusions?

Not everybody who is a communist is a "teenage punk".

Equality is vitally important to any civilized society....we are all equal, and we will all be made equal whether you like it or not.

I'm sorry that communism denies you your "right" to be a supremacist and exploit others.

Because there is less to share if people are lazy.

So the only way people can do something good is for money?

That seems pretty shallow to me.

 

And yet you might pause to consider that a number of individuals who have been criticizing/challenging you both within this thread and elsewhere are, in fact, self-professed Marxists, anarchists, and/or some variation thereof.

(And I'm not necessarily referring to MacGuyver here, I believe Mac to be a S.M.I.U. (Small Mobile Intelligent Unit) like the esteemed Mr. Robert Fripp.)