Well said, John. I would add one more thing. Communism doesn’t work because, it is fundamentally, not an economic system but, rather, a redistribution system. Since the two jealous, lazy layabouts, Marx and Engles, wrote their nonsensical, unreadable papers and books, they wrongly assumed that production would continue irrespective of how the wealth created would be distributed. This stunning failure to understand human nature explains why it always fails.
I have something to add! It was an epiphany a few years back.
In psychology, there are two basic ways to get behavior: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
If we want people to produce things for consumption, we have to give them a reason to do so. Nature ("natural law") inhernetly has positive reinforcement. If you produce more you have more. A free market system inherits this, since it is the absence of coercive force.
Positive reinforcement naturally leads to inequality, as Friedman, Sowell, and many others have noted.
Communism essentially rejects this. It can't use positive reinforcement, because that means some people get rewards that others do not get, and the core element of communism is that everyone gets the same. So positive reinforcement is off the table.
That leaves only negative reinforcement. You have to force them. They won't produce without a reward, and you refuse to give rewards. So either you deal with extremely low production or you have to punish people for non-compliance. In most cases communism gets a blend of the two.
It's not some sort of aberration that communism ends in totalitarianism. Without rewards, force is all that is left.
One of the great blessings of my life was the fact that as a kid I was fortunate enough to have a tutor in Russian,
Her name was Nataleeyah Alyeksyevna Beklimishena. There is a tower in the Kremlin named the Beklimishena Tower for her family.
She was one of only a handful of her family members to survive the Communist slaughter of the aristocracy and who managed to make it out of Russia when Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government and successfully implemented his Bolshevik Party's coup.
She served as a nurse in the medical corps of the White Russian Army that fought and almost defeated the Reds in the Russian Civil War. When the Whites were defeated, she and her uncle who had been a colonel in Admiral Koltchak's White Russian Army. She married an American doctor and she and her uncle settled in Atlanta.
People would ask Natasha if Russia would ever be fee of the Communists.
She would reply calmly - without a trace of desperate hope that the Soviet government would fall, that it was inevitable that Russia would someday be free of Communism.
She would point out that "under the Tsar Russia fed Europe. Under the Communists Russia has never been able to feed itself."
She would explain that this was because Communism had never worked, was not working now and could never work...for 4 reasons:
"Communism is against God's law. Communism is against natural law. Communism is against science. Communism is against human nature. Things can only endure if they are in obedience to God's law, natural law, science and human nature. That which is false cannot endure. So it is inevitable that Russia will break free of Communism someday."
Natasha lived to be almost 100 years old. Unfortunately, she died about 2 years before - as she predicted - the Russian people (and NOT Ronald Reagan as American conservatives like to claim) overthrew the Communist Party despite the opposition of the CIA, the American State Department, the American Media and President George Bush (the first one).
If she had lived a little longer, she would have seen her prediction come true and - as she said - the Soviet government was overthrown by the Russian people and NOT by the West, which she correctly predicted would never overthrow Communism.
Great last sentence, John! It really cuts to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? How many people who want communism actually love America? The answer is probably none. They are suffering from a form of insanity in that their minds cannot function correctly, and they cannot accept reality as it is; instead they "imagine" something "different and better." Kamala Harris is in that class of people- doesn't understand much but she thinks she's really smart and people who don't agree with her are not. And she actually had a chance to win(!) if she hadn't been so dumb as to wiff on a softball question (from the equally execrable Sunny Hostin) "Looking back at the Biden administration's policies, what would you have done differently?" Answer; "nothing comes to mind." Bingo, we have a dufus! Lazy and incompetent describe her and her supporters very accurately, which would make her vulnerable to the same dumb communist schemes. Thank God for Trump and all the swing staters- like me- who voted for him and hopefully put at least a thumb in the dike...
Well said, John. I would add one more thing. Communism doesn’t work because, it is fundamentally, not an economic system but, rather, a redistribution system. Since the two jealous, lazy layabouts, Marx and Engles, wrote their nonsensical, unreadable papers and books, they wrongly assumed that production would continue irrespective of how the wealth created would be distributed. This stunning failure to understand human nature explains why it always fails.
I have something to add! It was an epiphany a few years back.
In psychology, there are two basic ways to get behavior: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
If we want people to produce things for consumption, we have to give them a reason to do so. Nature ("natural law") inhernetly has positive reinforcement. If you produce more you have more. A free market system inherits this, since it is the absence of coercive force.
Positive reinforcement naturally leads to inequality, as Friedman, Sowell, and many others have noted.
Communism essentially rejects this. It can't use positive reinforcement, because that means some people get rewards that others do not get, and the core element of communism is that everyone gets the same. So positive reinforcement is off the table.
That leaves only negative reinforcement. You have to force them. They won't produce without a reward, and you refuse to give rewards. So either you deal with extremely low production or you have to punish people for non-compliance. In most cases communism gets a blend of the two.
It's not some sort of aberration that communism ends in totalitarianism. Without rewards, force is all that is left.
Well said, and very clearly stated! Thanks for posting this comment, Jay.
One of the great blessings of my life was the fact that as a kid I was fortunate enough to have a tutor in Russian,
Her name was Nataleeyah Alyeksyevna Beklimishena. There is a tower in the Kremlin named the Beklimishena Tower for her family.
She was one of only a handful of her family members to survive the Communist slaughter of the aristocracy and who managed to make it out of Russia when Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government and successfully implemented his Bolshevik Party's coup.
She served as a nurse in the medical corps of the White Russian Army that fought and almost defeated the Reds in the Russian Civil War. When the Whites were defeated, she and her uncle who had been a colonel in Admiral Koltchak's White Russian Army. She married an American doctor and she and her uncle settled in Atlanta.
People would ask Natasha if Russia would ever be fee of the Communists.
She would reply calmly - without a trace of desperate hope that the Soviet government would fall, that it was inevitable that Russia would someday be free of Communism.
She would point out that "under the Tsar Russia fed Europe. Under the Communists Russia has never been able to feed itself."
She would explain that this was because Communism had never worked, was not working now and could never work...for 4 reasons:
"Communism is against God's law. Communism is against natural law. Communism is against science. Communism is against human nature. Things can only endure if they are in obedience to God's law, natural law, science and human nature. That which is false cannot endure. So it is inevitable that Russia will break free of Communism someday."
Natasha lived to be almost 100 years old. Unfortunately, she died about 2 years before - as she predicted - the Russian people (and NOT Ronald Reagan as American conservatives like to claim) overthrew the Communist Party despite the opposition of the CIA, the American State Department, the American Media and President George Bush (the first one).
If she had lived a little longer, she would have seen her prediction come true and - as she said - the Soviet government was overthrown by the Russian people and NOT by the West, which she correctly predicted would never overthrow Communism.
Great last sentence, John! It really cuts to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? How many people who want communism actually love America? The answer is probably none. They are suffering from a form of insanity in that their minds cannot function correctly, and they cannot accept reality as it is; instead they "imagine" something "different and better." Kamala Harris is in that class of people- doesn't understand much but she thinks she's really smart and people who don't agree with her are not. And she actually had a chance to win(!) if she hadn't been so dumb as to wiff on a softball question (from the equally execrable Sunny Hostin) "Looking back at the Biden administration's policies, what would you have done differently?" Answer; "nothing comes to mind." Bingo, we have a dufus! Lazy and incompetent describe her and her supporters very accurately, which would make her vulnerable to the same dumb communist schemes. Thank God for Trump and all the swing staters- like me- who voted for him and hopefully put at least a thumb in the dike...