> Authoritarianism is about taking things from me. Communism, in its noncorporeal theoretical form, is about giving things away
That seems slightly wrong to me. I feel like this is comparing apples to oranges. Authoritarianism is a ruling arrangement, but communism is an economic arrangement.
In a way, democracy is to the right to rule as what communism is to the right to wealth.
In a democracy, all citizen has equal right to rule, everyone gets one vote. In communism, all citizen has equal right to wealth, everyone gets the same amount of ownership into the sum total wealth of the country. (in practice, just like there are false democracies where fraud is rampant and not everyone truly gets an equal vote, communism in practice till now seem to not have truly given equal wealth to all)
Why has there never been a democratic communist country is a good question, but there are quite a few social democracies and those have worked quite well till now... like most western countries except the US (and even the US has quite a lot of socialism built in and is really a social democracy even if maybe more libertarian than others).
I'm not saying that communism would work better, but I do find it annoying when people restrict the search space into alternative economic arrangements by pointing out the correlation between communism and authoritarianism.
I see communism as more of giving me things, then giving things away. It only seems to give things away if you start with the assumption you own more things to begin with. But the current distribution is that communism should in theory give more people more things, while only taking away from a small percentage which currently disproportionately own most wealth.
The counterpoint being the size of the pie. If we all own an equal share of a small pie, you might still have less pie than if you were to own the smallest slice of a much bigger pie. This is the best argument I've heard for capitalism. And with a little sprinkle of socialism, you can regulate capitalism so that there are limits on how small a slice can be, giving people a reasonable living baseline and growing the overall size of the pie at the same time.
The weaker part of this argument is establishing a proof that there are no other ways that would also yield a bigger pie while also having a more even distribution of it.
That seems slightly wrong to me. I feel like this is comparing apples to oranges. Authoritarianism is a ruling arrangement, but communism is an economic arrangement.
In a way, democracy is to the right to rule as what communism is to the right to wealth.
In a democracy, all citizen has equal right to rule, everyone gets one vote. In communism, all citizen has equal right to wealth, everyone gets the same amount of ownership into the sum total wealth of the country. (in practice, just like there are false democracies where fraud is rampant and not everyone truly gets an equal vote, communism in practice till now seem to not have truly given equal wealth to all)
Why has there never been a democratic communist country is a good question, but there are quite a few social democracies and those have worked quite well till now... like most western countries except the US (and even the US has quite a lot of socialism built in and is really a social democracy even if maybe more libertarian than others).
I'm not saying that communism would work better, but I do find it annoying when people restrict the search space into alternative economic arrangements by pointing out the correlation between communism and authoritarianism.
I see communism as more of giving me things, then giving things away. It only seems to give things away if you start with the assumption you own more things to begin with. But the current distribution is that communism should in theory give more people more things, while only taking away from a small percentage which currently disproportionately own most wealth.
The counterpoint being the size of the pie. If we all own an equal share of a small pie, you might still have less pie than if you were to own the smallest slice of a much bigger pie. This is the best argument I've heard for capitalism. And with a little sprinkle of socialism, you can regulate capitalism so that there are limits on how small a slice can be, giving people a reasonable living baseline and growing the overall size of the pie at the same time.
The weaker part of this argument is establishing a proof that there are no other ways that would also yield a bigger pie while also having a more even distribution of it.