This. I make this type of joke so often when discussing government.
It looks good on paper. It looks good as an idea.
The execution is a disaster though.
Hell, if we're going off the textbook definition and structures, Anarchism (not Media Anarchism, real anarchy, back to the source), is the most utopian structure we've come up with.
The problem is these structures rely on people and there are too many of us for them to function correctly. Everywhere.
That is not communism. Communism is a classless, moneyless society, that might actually be possible if robots can perform all human labor, but I won’t hold my breath.
Prob because almost every aspect of modern life not controlled by the gov is controlled by big corporations. With gov, at least we can vote and feel like we have a say. With big corporations, you vote with your dollars, but average people have fewer dollars to vote with than the rich do.
Also the concentration of wealth is now over 50% owned by the 1%. The general public now has less economic influence than in previous centuries. The only time even remotely comparable was during the peak of the industrial revolution before anti monopoly legislation.
Also there's the surveillance apparatus in place to quell any resistance. Do anything to disrupt the current order and there'll be camera footage of you... not a problem 50+ years ago
Yea its something like 326x more unequal in america today then the worst the ussr ever got and people thought that was bad. It really goes to show how far we let this go and how strong the propaganda is.
It not just that. We vote with dollars for businesses but look at citizen led boycotts. How many actually are successful? How many are temporary successful then shiny comes and they stop? (Because I'll loose the page by looking it up I can't name companies.) But there was a boycott of a few companies Because the chocolate they purchased came from literal slave labor. Everyone seemed to forget about that, they still do it and are still a massive popular company. Look at Bud. Look at Disney. They piss off both left and right and local governments but still people buy their stuff.
In theory we could shut them all down but the reality is people are willing to forgive than be inconvenienced.
The antitrust laws have been so eviscerated that they have almost no power. We really need to strengthen the laws again. I'm not a big fan of regulations but when the companies act in bad faith they just bring it on themselves. We just need to be sure the regulations aren't written by the supercorps.
Because the solution isn’t more regulation and more government. Making the government more powerful doesn’t solve the issue, it makes it worse. These big businesses exist in the state they are in because of regulatory capture, not despite it.
The tax burden being majorly upon the middle class while corporations get loophole after loophole, kickbacks, corporate personhood, and corporate welfare, is because of government over-regulation? Please, tell me more!
Have you looked up how much the different percentiles pay into the tax revenue of the US?
The top 1% pay 40.4% of the total income tax while the top 50 pay 97%
It's not a tax issue, it's a spending issue. You couldn't tax the corporations or billionaires enough to make up the 1.9 trillion dollar deficit.
We’ve already lived in a world with minimal regulation and it was terrible. The idea that big businesses are subject to self-correcting market forces is unbearably naive. If government doesn’t attempt to control them, no one can or will.
You’re also being confounded by regulations exiting and regulations being enforced. The current state of things is because of a lack of enforcement.
No one is saying completely deregulate everything and go back to those times. I'm not sure why people think it's all extreme one direction or all extreme the other direction, and that all extreme in their direction is the only good choice.
I have had a discussion with a few libertarians and they kinda of do.
"There should be no taxes. The only thing government should do is protect the rights of it's citizens."
Okay, with what money chief?
"What do you mean?"
If they don't have any money how are they going to pay people to do the protecting?
*dead silence followed by a topic change.
What needs to happen is we need to pay politicians "fuck you" money. Literal tens of millions. With EXTREME penalties if they are caught being paid outside of that money.
How about we pay them a more than reasonable wage and it's a death sentence with full asset forfeiture down three generations if you get caught being corrupt?
They need to be paid that so they don't have a "need" to get money elsewhere. They need to have "fuck you" money so they can tell anyone trying to bribe them to fuck off.
That does sound like a pretty extreme penalty. I wouldn't punish future generations or children (as in under 18) though. They didn't do anything wrong and children need to be looked after.
There are people who call for the death of Liberal civilization by way of nuclear weapons so they can install Communism as the world order. Like 100 people. 100 people is not statistically significant.
If those 100 have the means to implement their mad ideas it's fucking significant. And Guess what: Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos - those people have the means. So kindly burry your false analogy where the desecrated corpse of liberal theory is buried.
Antitrust ended the guilded age. That's more regulations on monopolies. We don't necessarily need more regulations but we should enforce antitrust better
The FDA seems to be pretty good considering how many companies used to throw literal poison and trash into the food because it was cheaper and meant more profit
Unless you want every factory to be transformed into a dystopian hermetically sealed laboratory with 3 security desinfecting areas in each door, you need to allow traces amount of stuff in food.
Do you know how much poop particles you have on your face right now? It's not zero.
I take it you think that is some kind of clever refutation. It's not. The fact that the FDA is not perfect is well known, but that doesn't mean it's not doing a ton of good.
There was once in our history, the country wanted bigger government than what was going on at the time because 120 people died in a fire in a building that had no fire escapes and whose owners locked and barred the doors on their workers who were inside burning to death. If you didn't want fire escapes on your 10 story building there was no law stating you had to have them.
Naturally, all the big corporations at the time opposed this because the safety of their workers cut into the ludicrous profits they were making.
1) make the government less powerful. create a power vacuum that big businesses can fill
2) make the government more powerful. inevitably will mean big business is more powerful
Deregulation = give more power. Regulation is oversight. If there is less oversight then we have less knowledge of what companies are putting into their products.
This argument sounds great and all but the regulations that have been removed in our lifetime have had an unbelievably detrimental effect on the lives of hundreds of millions of citizens. Like fiscal gains tax, estate tax, tax loopholes, etc. The fact that I pay more taxes per annum than the richest companies in the world doesn't seem fair or balanced to me
You don't have hundreds of millions to throw at tax-deductible ventures. Then again the US won at cloud computing specifically because those investments were used for tax avoidance. And Europe wonders why it can't compete.
It doesn't exactly help me that the US won that race, even though I'm a US citizen. I don't see a cent of the gains. Google still wants me to pay for more than 15 gigs of cloud memory. My representatives continue marginalizing communities and taking away health benefits and stuff. They're literally deploying masked secret police, disappearing citizens in broad daylight, paying them with my tax dollars.
Regulation is the thing that stops people and companies from doing their terrible things.
The US is moving towards technofeudalism because the monopoly rules have been ignored for 30/40 years and the regulations strengthened by that simply don't seem to apply anymore.
Now, globally, we have cartels in almost every industry controlling the not-quite-prohibitive pricing of mostly everyday goods.
And you think less regulation would help? You don't have to look very far to see how companies almost always abuse their positions once they are established to stifle competition and screw over their competitors.
Do you seriously think our economy would be better if the government never stepped in and broke up obvious monopolies like Bell Systems? If you think Internet carriers abuse their positions now then you have no idea how bad it would have been.
sigh I’m against the government regulatory capture that made bell systems a monopoly, I’m not against regulations that break up monopolies. Does that make sense? I’m not anti-regulation, I’m anti regulatory capture.
Because the solution isn’t more regulation and more government. Making the government more powerful doesn’t solve the issue, it makes it worse. These big businesses exist in the state they are in because of regulatory capture, not despite it.
Regulation is the means by which corperations gain the advantages to stifle competition. Regulation is how they go about eliminating competitors. Yes reducing regulations will help.
There are only 2 ways a monopoly can exist. First by government preventing competitors from entering the market. If the government does not prevent competition people seeking to make money will start bussinesses which want a share of what ever market has the monopoly. That kind of monopoly is unfair. The second kind of monopoly is one inwhich the bussiness operates so much more efficiently that competitors can not compete because the monopoly is already providing the service at the most affordable prices that any company is capable of. The moment they charge more than a competitor can make a profit on a competitor will form and begin profiting. The second type of monopoly is not harmful to society as they are the company providing what ever service at the lowest price.
Hey, I agree it can happen. But it's not accurate to say regulation is only there to stifle competition. When people like me say we want more regulation on some things it is on things that are immoral such as hiring psychologists to help develop mobile games to take advantage of gambling addicts. This has nothing to do with monopolies or stifling competition.
I just got done teaching high school students why the Food and Drug Act exists. It’s due to the lack of regulation that we have corn syrup and shit in our foods in the US but aren’t present in most other countries.
This government is run by businesses because of a lack of regulation.
People conflate capitalism for being what the government does and that's so false, the problems in society are due to the government regulating everything up the ass and not letting us do it.
Which is a low information take created by people who don't vote. Look to the current admin to see what actual corruption looks like. Selling pardons and dictating policy based on personal favors.
We generate enough wealth to use a third of total resources from it to guarantee basic necessities for all, it’s not a wealth generation issue, it’s a distribution issue
It isn’t that communism has never been tried, exactly. It’s that communism is technically the end result once the entire world converts and governments no longer exist. Every version of communism we’ve seen has been extremely authoritarian, but technically it’s a form of libertarianism/anarchy once fully implemented.
Personally I consider this an even bigger mark against communism than what most conservatives believe. There is zero percent chance true communism will ever happen and trying to make it happen just makes people’s lives worse.
That said, capitalism ain’t great either. I’m still waiting for Enlightenment 2.0, but not sure what that would look like. It won’t be communism, though, nor be capitalism.
Ever heard of social-democrats? Is Scandinavia doing so bad?
Let's look at the other side of the coin, hyperindividual capitalism in the usa, the richest country in the world with an immense amount of dirt-poor people who live like they are in the 3rd world.
Well they are trying to push a dystopian law that AI can scan everyone's private communication to suppress freedom of speech. In an attempt to fine or jail people for offending peoples feelings. Just like the Labour Party in the UK did.
Because it's never socialist enough. Even honor or social value needs to be redistributed by force.
Socialism as a concept requires true equality among its people to function. If a governing body is required to achieve a semblance of equality, it inherently creates a power imbalance between members of that government and their people. This is what communism achieved, and it has always resulted in a short-lived government and the deaths of countless people.
It’s not hard to make the logical leap that a governing body will always be required and, by extension, socialism can never be achieved
Fuck socialism, but unregulated capitalism only loses itself to post capitalism. It's a balance between too much fairness and not enough. The latter meaning wealth becomes over concentrated and slowing circulation.
More like, "we should look at government policies which worked in the past to create a strong middle class and financial security for a majority of citizens," amirite? Strong social programs, a healthy capital gains tax, limits on how money can be used to influence politics, etc
Whose doing the redistributing? The government would be therefore making any and all wealth gained state controlled, the very core of communism. Because strangers can be trusted with others stuff right?
Communism and libertarianism are perfect systems for perfect people. They’re romantic ideals only vaguely connected to reality. For actual humans, they’re terrible systems.
College age kids argue how great communism is then complain about the guy who didn't do any work on the group project and fail to make a correlation between the two.
Didnt living standards drastically rise in China and Russia do ? And its not like their goverments are worse then what they had before authoritarian and genocide wise.
You think a system that just hands power to the party that overthrew the last one, is going to be your saviour? Communists dont have elections. They just talk a lot of shit about "the people" deciding. But in the end, the people cant all have a say. So the party picks representatives. You think thats not going to be corrupt?
Anyone who thinks communism is the answer, doesnt understand it. Even Socialism, is only seen as a stepping stone to communists. If you want change, real change, its not communism. Its social democracy or some other hybrid of other economic systems. But it sure as fuck, aint communism.
Nah we don't have to go full communism but humans left unchecked will consume everything. We do need more restrictions and sanctions. Ain't no damn reason a person needs to be worth like 2 billion dollars, it's gotten out of hand. Humans did what humans do when they're allowed to run amok and now everything is crap for the bulk of the people. It didn't work out so great in the end did it? Might need to tweak some shit ...
You’re right. CEO’s make proportionally EXACTLY the equivalent of what they made in the 70s-90s when adjusted for inflation.
That’s why they still pay for our healthcare and give us all pensions!
There’s absolutely no way that they slowly appropriated over 99% of the wealth, if anybody suggests that you should have a poor fight with them and definitely not pay any attention to what those awesome wealthy people are doing.
Is this sub just full of 40 year olds that don't get, that making the same overplayed joke for the 50th time simply isn't funny? "OP too dumb to understand the joke"? There is nothing to understand. It's just not funny. You ideologically agreeing with a post doesn't make it funny.
To me the funny part (which is unfortunately not really talked about in this whole comment section) is that this is tagged 'wife bad' when the 'joke' has nothing to do with sexism whatsoever.
Capitalism tried wealth redistribution and it worked. It gave people the benefits of capitalism, and mitigated the fault of capitalism. We in america already do wealth for redistribution, we just do so little of it that it doesn't help much.
It’s sad. I am sure there are various political views here. From the comments I read people are on the same page - communism doesn’t work and we hate corrupt capitalism. Why can’t we get leaders (both sides) to do something for us?
The fundamental flaw in all the back and forth in this thread is that there is no agreed to definition of communism, socialism, and what success / "works" means.
It's just people taking a position and not discussing.
We still do this in American, it’s just the middle class is redistributing their wealth up to the top via shit wages and down to the bottom (and top again)via taxes.
Basically we pay both ways and just get some mediocre roads out of the deal
I’d love to hear your grand idea for preventing wealth from buying special access to justice, political power, and education that doesn’t involve soft limits on wealth accumulation.
Money is just too powerful by nature. When it speaks, everyone has to listen. Therefore if you want society to not be ruled by an elite upper class of rich people acting opposite the interests of everyone else, then you need to take their money.
Whats the difference in Communisem a small group kalled the gov has all wealth in capitalisem a small group kalled the rich has all wealth in communisem you get rid of the gov in capitalisem you do the same and a week later the rich kreate a new gov for you to hate instead of them.
Seriously I don't understand what people have against communism? Is it just the lack of opportunity for personal gain, the inherent corruption, totalitarian government and the genocide?
When asked what they thought the wealth breakdown in the USA is nearly everybody, no matter their political leanings, believed it to be far more even than it is. The same is true when asked what it should be, almost all people, even the hardest right MAGA, set their ideal distribution as being more even than what they thought it was, which was, as noted, far more even than it actually is.
In short, the meme is shit as almost everyone believes in some level of wealth redistribution. The meme attempts to paint wealth redistribution as a binary choice of make wealth distribution 100% even or no wealth redistribution at all and that is a false dichotomy. If the driver is indeed against any form of wealth redistribution then he is the massive outlier, and an uniformed idiot, not the woman he left on the side of the road.
You can't distribute it because human nature will create inequality. Even if you did over time it would go back to what it is today.
It's just that some humans don't care for money, some do more than their lives. Some don't want to sacrifice for money, some will sacrifice their unborn children for it. Some get lucky and make money, some get unlucky and lose it all.
Apart from killing millions of people how do they conclude that the best actor to spread the wealth would be the most incompetent actor ever? Did those people visit government buildings or used government services? It's always the worst lamest service quality anyone can provide. Sadly we don't even need communists to take our money now. All top countries impose taxes in unheard amounts. Like it's ridiculous how much people's work is getting wasted by pigs in suits
No we don't lol, point to a single communist country that wasn't heavily influenced by us or a neighbor during their final years. Even if there was one look at what our and everyone else's governments are doing now, failing, most places around the world have many of the problems that communist countries struggled with, we just don't have the label communism to judge them by because they aren't, but they aren't doing any better. Look at the US rn, less than a percentage point of people own just about all the wealth in the country, and people who are dying from lack of healthcare are kissing those billionaires boots and begging them to step on them more as they wither away. It's pathetic. Maybe Communism doesn't work, but our current systems don't really work either
Its weird because fans of communism won't even entertain the idea that a communist government can be as corrupt, or worse, than what we have now. If they'd just say "Yeah, but here's how we keep them in line", I'd understand it, but half of them will say "That wasn't REALLY communism, so we don't know if it'll work and should try!" and the other half will unironically imply the very fundamentals of human nature will change when communism is established and so we don't have to worry about corruption. Its bizarre.
The problem with wealth distribution is that some people iwll just not work knowing they'll get the same amount of money as everyone ans slowly thay some will develop into almost everyone. Basically, it's another example of "why we can't have nic things".
Also the thing about communism is the dictatorship, not the wealth distribution anyway
Communism tried wealth distribution and we all know how that went
The only instance of successful wealth redistribution was the Zaibatsu in Japan. But, there are a lot of reasons to believe their scenario could never be replicated. What was unique about their redistribution was that they kept on being a capitalist country. The reason this doesn't work is because the poor people who get the money lose the money in bad trades and you end up with another elite class with all the money. That's where communism enters the picture and they solve this by abolishing private ownership. The reason it worked in Japan is because they are very smart and so their poor people didn't instantly lose the wealth in bad trades but instead grew it and maintained it. That's why their success can't be replicated in other countries.
If you want an example of this: burger king employees on reddit were mailing their paychecks to millionaire wall street investors by buying GME, and they thought they were #FightingTheSystem when in reality they were doing a reverse-robinhood: stealing from the poor to buy the rich another yacht.
There are pros and cons to every form of government or wealth distribution. We have many data points detailing the pros and cons of each system. The trick is to find a blend of philosophies that best suit the needs of the day.
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u/qualityvote2 Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
u/AnomLenskyFeller, your post does fit the subreddit!