[oceanplexian]

> This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep.

Western civilization has brought more food, clean water, and rescued more people from poverty in the 20th century than the entire history of human civilization. None of that was done by offering guarantees, it was achieved through free market capitalism. Competing economic systems that offered the guarantees you’re describing not only slaughtered millions and caused mass starvation but collapsed from economic dysfunction.

[polio]

I agree with both statements you've made, however I don't see why offering food and housing security would necessitate mass murder, if we were to try it from a less ideological fervent posture. It wouldn't be described as a proletariat revolution or seizing the means of anything. It would just be another social program that I hope would be administered efficiently and ambitiously, and which would replace some of the other legacy programs we've built. I'd hope we'd test it at a small scale and then go from there. The scope of the communism you're identifying in my suggestion would be limited.

I'm generally a supporter of capitalism, but I think present conditions could be improved to facilitate that competition. Workers need to be able to use public transit in peace, which means getting homeless people out. We need to be able to offer shelter so that forceful removal is justifiable. Children need unequivocal access to nutrition so that malnourishment doesn't impair their ability to compete in the arena of idea-generation and in the knowledge economy. I think if the government were in the business of offering floors on quality of life that people could spend their time more productively instead of solving the same hunter-gatherer types of problems individually over and over again. Food insecurity may have been the impetus for work in the past, but I believe that status insecurity can replace it going forward. Nobody needs to starve for the West to prosper.