[Radim]

Hmm, why does this remind me of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"?

The dangerously seductive, utopian naivety of such statements rubs me the wrong way.

I wish all the kumbaya nature's-way-is-stupid-here's-my-brilliant-social-engineering-idea-instead people would collectively go and... try their social experiments elsewhere.

[colordrops]

The idea that the status quo is "nature's way" is utterly wrong. Whatever we do as humans is "nature's way", as we are not separate from nature. Many different social structures have worked now and in the past. There is an enormous body of debate that our current system is terribly and perhaps fatally flawed (e.g. unable to act on climate change), so writing off people who want change as hippies that should go away is actually really rude.

[Radim]

Any example of a radically different social structure that has worked for humans in the past?

Btw I agree 100% that change is necessary and "natural". Vacuous hippie statements are not "it" though -- rational discourse and careful simulation is. This cannot be another "Oh, I had an idea in the bathtub, how about we try this ideology on the entire world's population?".

Given the room for disaster, and history's record of emotionally-loaded ideologies not backed by facts leading to such disaster quite reliably, that rhetoric is utterly unconvincing (as well as scary).

[colordrops]

I don't think you are really understanding the context of the original quote. I would hope that most people with a reasonable thought process would recognize that building social structure is a very complex and difficult problem, but the path from here to "there", wherever "there" is requires "there" to be defined. I think the quote is talking about the ends, not the means. You seem to be talking about the means. The goal is building as peaceful, productive, happy, innovative, exploratory, fulfilled society as possible. Perhaps capitalism is our best mechanism at the moment, but as we evolve, we will hopefully get closer to that goal of not needing to spend money on war and being able to feed everyone, whether through better capitalism, or something else.

[Radim]

I see you're attempting to shift the goal posts :)

Instead of veiled insults, just re-read the original utopian quote. It's nothing like what you're describing. In fact, it's exactly the opposite -- a direct call to action.

[castle-bravo]

That's a nice bit rhetorical judo. Disarming and ensuring that the bottom level of Maslow's hierarchy is met -> communism! The originator of that quote was anything but a communist.

I think you ought to think a little harder about what defense and military spending really is: welfare for engineers and those desperate or foolish enough to test their inventions. It's "from each ... to each ..." but under a different system of values.

[MR4D]

So, there are a couple possible originators of that quote... 1 - Marx, who, obviously, was a Communist, in which case your statement is wrong 2 - Joseph Smith, who founded a classless commune. I think that invalidates your comment as well.

Is there someone else who you are thinking of as an originator who was "anything but a communist" as you put it? I'm more than willing to listen if there is.

[TheOtherHobbes]

They've been tried elsewhere, and they usually work out pretty well.

Countries that try them may not be utopias, but they do have consistently high citizen satisfaction scores.

Perhaps a little more realism and a little less moralising would be helpful.

To add: these science programs are good examples of collective action. Can anyone seriously imagine Facebook or Google paying for a project like Cassini?

[shrimp_emoji]

>They've been tried elsewhere, and they usually work out pretty well.

To which one are you referring, China or North Korea?

[mason240]

Or maybe he's talking about the USSR, Cuba, or Venezuela. All bastions of progress and high standards of living.

[ue_]

I am a Communist, and I will say that a slogan is neither something to build your country upon, nor something to criticise a country on. No country has thus far managed to progress past capitalism, certainly not the ones you litsted nor the ones GP listed. Marx was referring to how life ought to be under Socialism, rather than an implementation of this principle under a capitalist system, which he believed was impossible.

[mason240]

To be fair, communist as described will never be able to exist - the furthest it will get is the USSR stage.

[throw_away]

It's a Bill Hicks quote: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/494647-the-world-is-like-a-r...

[ue_]

> nature's-way-is-stupid-here's-my-brilliant-social-engineering-idea-instead

So then instead of trying to change the world for the better, we ought to just submit to a naturalistic fallacy and live our lives in ignorance of the ways society could be better organised? It seems like you're criticising Communism based on this quote, which is in fact supposed to show how life ought to be under Socialism, rather than how we ought to implement it with capitalism.

What gives you the ideat that capitalism is "nature's way"? This couldn't be further than the truth.