The thing is, America could never become Communist. You cannot tell a people for two centuries that they are entitled to what they earn, that working hard will make them rich, that the better they are the further they will rise, and then say "nope, sorry, we're going to drag you all back down to the same level now".

Because you can't really force the average person to become superhuman, you force the best among us to conform to mediocrity. In theory, you can still have inequality of ability, but why would anyone of any ability even bother? They will receive no compensation for their efforts, no money, no promotions, no fame, quite likely no recognition. It was all simply achieved "by humanity".

Well, things aren't achieved by humanity. Things are achieved by individuals and groups of people. And we have so far found no incentive for people to excel that works better than money and material gains. Perhaps that's a shame, but that's the way of humanity. Very few people will be willing to work their hardest knowing that they will never receive anything in return.

And that's just ideal communism. Let's not forget the fact that, where capitalism has succeeded and created prosperous nations in the USA and Canada, across Western Europe and now through Eastern Asia, Communism does not have a single success story to its name. Even in its realistic and somewhat bastardised form, capitalism still works. Communism, on the other hand, turns to dictatorship, and oppression, and the seizing of property and the formation of a new ruling class. Can you seriously tell me that Stalin was on equal footing with a Russian peasant? That Fidel Castro has never lived any better than his country's poorest workers? That Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have lived lives of humility and never considered themselves superior to the people they lead?

Perhaps another species, on another world, with different values, and an evolution that favoured sacrificing yourself for the greater good, but we have never been like that, and no number of guns pointed at our heads will ever make us like that.

As long as we allow the free flow of money, private ownership of property and freedom to live as you wish, I would say we live in a capitalist society.

Add socialism to the OP list and you may have a winner...

Yup, and the same thing can be said about capitalism. If everyone had no or extremely low taxes, people who choose to not donate to the less fortunate would be rewarded (by not losing money...), while those who choose to share some of their profit would suffer financially. In other words: Good people would be punished, while selfish people would be rewarded. People could choose to take the blow, but they don't work that way.

Or at least it is my belief that most people would choose the selfish/less risky path in that scenario.

This pretty much sums up my opinion on communism(nothing to do with pro/anti obama). As a person with a drive I could not stand living under the control of the government. For me it is 100% hardcore free market capitalism or bust.

But I'm like the girl in the picture building a tower. Many people do however like taking naps and for those people there is nothing wrong with communism. I'm sure many of you would love just hanging around playing games. For example my brother works a minimum wage job so that he can afford high end computers while living in the basement. Communism works perfectly for his life and many others but only when it doesn't leach off other's success.

The thing about Communism is it has never really been put into practice on a wide scale. Sure there have been so called Communist countries in the past and one's that claim to be Communist today but the reality is those countries never were Communist in the first place. All Communist countries we've seen to date have given us totalitarian states and a small dictatorial elite running the country. Communism is meant to be moneyless, stateless, about equality but in reality what we got was the complete opposite. The State become huge and oppressive, money was still used as a transaction and as Orwell put it so succinctly "All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others".

In Marx's seminal work 'A Communist Manifesto' we have to remember this was written during the industrial revolution and back then his ideas made a lot more sense. Capitalism back then was truly dreadful for the masses, with child labour, terrible living and poor working conditions, harsh punishments with a justice system that favoured the rich, no social safety net etc.

But as the more liberal and civilised countries started to democratise, Capitalism was forced to reform lest there be the revolution that Marx predicted. The elites recognised this and had to give way, ordinary people including women got the vote, labour movements were formed including political parties that represented workers and so on. Marx obviously didn't forsee all this and granted the reform of Capitalism happened after his death but Capitalism married with democracy did force it down a path where it even had to incorporate Socialist ideals (such as the Welfare State and Universal Healthcare).

It would be interesting to see the two extremes in action but we never will as people would never accept them in their purest forms and they probably wouldn't work unless every human in the planet was socially engineered at the same time to do so.

I don't see how anyone could realistically want communism unless they are power hungry elites who want to control their people. Either I could be rich through hard work and skill through capitalism and the lazy people will fail or the lazy people take MY money and we all live poor. Easy choice imo.

seems like a better debate would be between capitalism and socialism. The problem with communism is that the government owns everything and as a consequence essentially strips its citizens of individual freedoms.

your attacks on capitalism seem to be focused the class system that generally stems from such a system. Socialism would be a good comparison that is about redistribution without necessarily eliminating individual freedoms. Basically, the core comparison you want to make.

There's no such thing as 100% "hardcore free market capitalism". 

You have a public police force. Fire fighters. Military. Roads/highway. Education. The water you drink has to be regulated so that its safe to drink. FDA. etc. etc. etc. These are all public utilities basically, they're not magically free. 

The people who whine about the tax rate in the US IMO have it wrong. The tax rate today in the US is lower than at any point in the 20th century. Whether it was Nixon, Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, whoever. 

What's actually happening to the US is an erosion of the middle class, it's becoming closer and closer to Mexico, which is one small very wealthy elite and then a bunch of masses living paycheque to paycheque. 

My POV is a little different, I was born into a relatively wealthy family, and I'll admit it straight up. The whole point of being wealthy is to prevent "trickle down" economics as much as possible. 

When you have money you hire accountants and lawyers to exploit every loophole. You make investments in the best markets, not based on patriotism, but where you will get the best return. The whole point is to keep as much of that wealth from trickling down as possible and to amass it into your investments (portfolio, real estate, ahem ... offshore accounts). 

You look at countries like Canada, Denmark, etc. and it looks like people are generally much happier and it seems like people in the US are miserable, and they have a mix of free market + socialism in effect (the US does too, just to a lesser degree, and yes they always have). 

Socialism is also a state that is set up to fail though ...

Essentially, people will consistently vote for benefits for themselves and for someone else to pay for it which will ultimately lead to "killing the goose that laid the golden egg" (tax the rich), a default on the massive levels of debt that were built up, or a collapse in the currency due to monetization of this out of control spending.