What's Your View On Communism?

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SvennoJ said:

That would be a capitalist utopia if the bottom of the pyramid can be replaced by machines running on solar power. We'll likely have decrease of luxury before that happens. Meanwhile cheap transportation and cheap labor is what is providing us with the luxury we're accustomed to. From the gadgets made in China, to the Mexican seasonal workers harvesting the food, to the child slave labour mining coltan for smart phones. Plus the imf ruining local economies to unlock more cheap labor for our lifestyle.

It's always easy to say how great a system is when you're the one benefitting from it which includes the poor of the western world. I'm not saying communism is any better, just seems less destructive, yet maybe that's just because it never manage to thrive.

Honestly, machines replacing workers is actually good for everyone. It allows companies to reduce costs, which reduce consumer prices (assuming a competitive market), or it allows them to invest in other ways, and allows for more high wage positions that would not otherwise exist. It is a gain for capitalists, bourgoise, proleritat, working-class, upper-class, poor, etc, etc. I work at Walmart currently so that I might reduce my student loan dependancy. I would much rather work to help customers in other ways than to do menial mechanical cashiering, that I do now, which is something a machine can do, for example.

There is not a net loss in the amount of jobs with the introduction of machines, just as there wasn't in the industrial revolution, and there wasn't in the internet age, the jobs just change in their nature. The more monetary wealth that exists, the more opportunities to find the job I, you, or anybody else prefers and enjoys doing. That is the difference between the wealthy countries and the less wealthy ones. There are more opportunities, not fewer. 

And for the Mexicans and the Chinese, well life is just better off with these opportunities that exist for them. Chinese persons today, the rich and the poor, are better off than they were under Mao and his strict socialism. Mexicans picking fruit in California are better off in the semi-"Capitalist" United States than they were in the more oppressive markets of Mexico. Hong Kongers (the freest market in the world) are so much better off than the mainland Chinese, and 40 years ago they were in the same financial situation. So I really don't see how communism is better than free-markets (whether or not you want to call it capitalism, is up to you.)