[Fuxy]

> Communism (Which is what this is), has failed. Why this generation seems determined to try it again is beyond me.

A bit of a stretch there and i should know i was born in a communist country. The reason Communism has failed is because of the lack of checks and balances on power compounded with corruption not because of concepts like this.

> This is about stealing money from the successful, and giving it to everyone, regardless of merit.

Be realistic most rich people are not rich because they are extraordinarily successful it's because they are born rich and there's entire companies with the sole goal of taking advantage of the system (in some cases doing morally wrong things that are technically legal) in order to make rich people get richer. Over the past 5 - 10 years the middle class has been getting poorer while the rich have been getting richer even with the economy collapsing. If you start off rich a lot of doors that are closed for regular people are wide open to you so you don't have to be successful just don't be a fool.

I see basic income as more of a equalizer so people who can't afford billion dollar companies and robotics to replace the workers get to eat as well.

[goldfeld]

The real reason Communism couldn't succeed (not necessarily the reason it failed) is because none of the countries trying it were or are advanced capitalistic economies before the revolution. Imagine a transition into communism in a less-scarcity scenario, where robots generate so much material wealth as to provide it to everyone, and no one HAS to work, and technology married to political science in turn allows more distributed forms of governance by the people for the people. Once you have that, and of course less bigots running the roost, you have a shot, as a society, to completely do away with 'marginalization', since every city and every community will be self-contained and no one will have to do commutes to serve a master.

Communism, for all I know, is the alternative to Totalitarism (be it from American corporate overlords or from so called extreme "left") in a future where jobs are no longer to be found lying around. It probably won't be called communism, though. China or Germany (and other smaller european countries) may have a shot, but the US seems destined to be ruled by corporate emperors.

[ajuc]

> because none of the countries trying it were or are advanced capitalistic economies before the revolution

revolution was the least common way to turn communist. Far more common was "forced by nearby communist country"

Also for example Czechoslovakia was advanced capitalist country. It's often overlooked - it was very industrialized country, with long capitalistic traditions, and democracy before WW2. It also went through war relatively unscratched. In 1950 it had GDP per capita roughly equal to Italy and Ireland, 50% higher than Spain.

> Imagine a transition into communism in a less-scarcity scenario

From the POV of medieval people We're already in a less-scarcity scenario. We just don't like to share, as a species. I highly doubt technology will change that.

[TeMPOraL]

> From the POV of medieval people We're already in a less-scarcity scenario. We just don't like to share, as a species. I highly doubt technology will change that.

It seems to me that technology will force that change on us. In a world when a robot can do every job you can, only faster and better, and doesn't eat, sleep or complain, there's little use for you and me. So either we get rid of the whole concept of jobs or starve (or stop the progress, but good luck with that, the very system that threatens to destroy us is the one that's driving progress).

[vidarh]

> Czechoslovakia was advanced capitalist country

Did it have sufficient over-production that redistribution would remove "common wants" for everyone?

As early as 1845, Marx set that out as a central criteria that would have to be met before a socialist revolution would have any hope of succeeding.

> We just don't like to share, as a species.

And in fact, this is a central aspect of Marx' argument for socialist revolutions: We don't like sharing, and so for the vast majority of workers, the only way of getting a reasonable share is to join up and force the upper classes to surrender their wealth.

Marxism is basically founded on two ideas: 1) Capitalism will eventually make production efficient enough to produce substantial surpluses. 2) Workers will only get "their" share by cooperating to fight the ruling classes, and if they don't they will eventually get marginalised as capitalist competition starts driving down employment and/or incomes.

Nothing assumes people wanting to share. On the contrary, the Marxist focus on revolution is basically based on the idea that there's no chance you'll get wealthy ruling classes to voluntarily give up their wealth.

[ajuc]

> Nothing assumes people wanting to share.

It assumes once workers won the surpluses won't decrease.

This turned out to be false assumption, because people don't like to share, so they don't work as well if they only get part of the fruits of their work, as they would if they got most of the fruits of their work for themselves.

[vidarh]

Today they don't generally get a share of the surplus, so by your argument they should be working even worse.

[ajuc]

In "the west" they get less than in 50s, but they still do.

The important thing is - salaries depend on their performance and on the demand for given product/service.

[TeMPOraL]

From what I learned, Communism has this successful capitalism as an assumption, as starting condition. They tried to speed up the process (with bloodshed), so it's no surprise it didn't work, just like you wouldn't expect a baby born 5 months premature to survive. It's not developed enough.

[bitJericho]

No doubt. Had companies in general not taken advantage of employees nobody would even be considering this option. This is what you get when companies look at the bare minimum they can pay somebody for the work they want.

[tiatia]

>> Communism (Which is what this is), has failed.

> communist country. The reason Communism has failed is > because of the lack of checks and balances on power > compounded with corruption not because of concepts like

Socialism did not fail because of corruption - capitalism has this too. Socialism failed because of its inability to put pricing on a product due to lack of a market place. On the other hand, Socialism had tremendous growth. Hitler (another socialist) said, "The Soviet Union is a rotten house - kick in the front door and the whole house will collapse". This was true in the WWI but in WWII the Soviet Union was a different country, they probably had a higher GDP than Germany. Why? Because Stalin achieved growth rates that may have dwarfed China (controversial, but he may have achieved up to 500% Growth in 13 years based on some estimates).

So socialism failed, back to capitalism. Yes, capitalism survived. But how much longer?

"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat...

Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-...

Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...