I will state that Communism has had some success in SMALL groups, but it fails miserably as it scales upward. It has been tested many times.
Again that depends on how you define communism. There are systems that could be called communistic working today with a history of centuries. But yes, only in relatively small scale (as in a radius you could walk in a day).
But more importantly:
That it has never worked is even more true of voluntarism. That breaks down even faster, the biggest systems that survive at least a few years are under the 30 people clan size and even those have many pains.
That is generally what is known as "laissez faire" or Free Market Capitalism.
Yes, and that thing (what was closest to it and what historians call pauperism, you can easily get an impression in Charles Dickens works) made Marx made his analysis.
When has it been tried at a government level? Like I said people say it won't work. And I guess some people say it doesn't work since you just did. Yet, show me when it was tried.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I neversaid it has been tried at government level, only that every instance I know of has not worked (for long).
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
When has it been tried?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Don't expect me to point you to a website. I do not bookmark them and in most cases I have seen those groups in TV.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I'll give you examples of where it IS being tried now and is working. Kickstarter, Indie Go Go, and essentially any crowd sourcing. Those essentially attempt to do the same thing people think "socialism" will do with some big differences. It is 100% voluntary thus the people have to think, make choices, and they get to decide 100% what they want to support. It truly could be considered compassionate depending upon what people are CHOOSING to do.
Those are representations of how I think we could solve most problems without a government, and without FORCING compliance from people based upon the opinions of a few.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Huh? You say you don't want a government, and then you show examples that are even more government then a state?
Kickstarter (name as placeholder) has moderators, community managers or whatever they are called.
Those enforce the rules of Kickstarter. Rules where you have no influence. And even if you abide by the rules Kickstarter can just kick you out and - without the state - could just confiscate everything you have put in.
Kickstarter is it's own legislative, judiciary and executive in one entitiy, not independend from each other.
In a state - even a dictatorship, through revolution - you can change the rules and get your rights. In Kickstarter (without the state) not.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Kickstarter is voluntary. Just as a Free Market it voluntary. Has Zero to do with government. So I didn't show you government ANYWHERE in those examples. Now those places DO get influenced by government as all things do in reality currently. Yet they are examples of how we can accomplish things without government.
They are not governing, and dictating. You opt into what you want, and for how much you want. No force. No mandate. No involuntary redistribution.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You can choose to use Kickstarter or go away. You can choose to use your state government or go away. You are not living in a country that forces you to use Kickstarter or to not leave the country (like the GDR I was born in).
The decision is yours. One may be harder then the other (for same leaving facebook is harder then leaving the country they are in), but in both cases you are still free to decide on your own free will.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That is a bullshit false comparison and you know it.
I don't have to go away from anything to use Kickstarter. Indeed I can even opt into different things on it.
Not using kickstarter may have no impact on my life.
I cannot CHOOSE to go away from my government. I cannot realistically uproot my life, ignore any property I have and say OH WELL it is a loss and move some where.
Kickstarter can't force ANYTHING upon me. The government can.
So a very disingenuous and unrealistic comparison.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I never meant that. I said you can use Kickstarter or go away - from Kickstarter.
You cannot realistically promote voluntarism :P
And for some this uprooting is very easy. Or they have to do it anyway. To say YOU can't do and imply that is true for everyone else - isn't that a bit snobby ;)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
NOT in the slightest. Dickens and all the others occurred under crony capitalism. You are doing EXACTLY what I described in the document. That is not Laissez Faire. In fact places that have implemented it the OPPOSITE of pauperism has occurred in ALL cases until the government got involved. At that point the cronyism kicked in and all the WOES you are trying to lay on the label of capitalism came with it.
Here is one example:
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/how-laissez-faire-made-sweden-rich
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Nothing of that has to do with voluntarism, and everything there you can have in a high tax environment (except low taxes of course). And to say that high taxes confiscate all the wealth is of course bullshit. That was not even true in the US when it had a 90% maximum tax.
And even if there would be a high "confiscation rate" the wealth does not disappear, it gets distributed. Quite contrary, in your Sweden too, the good times came with widespread wealth, not with concentrated wealth.
(btw. basing politics of a highly industrialized country on results of a starving subsidarian agrarian society is simply idiocy, I thing you agree. Indeed collecting taxes from those poor farmers does not work out the simple fact that what you could get out of them is less then what the collection would cost. Having no taxes on them is the best action here.)
The rest sounds just like "commonism" (not CommUnisn), which is what I believe in we should strive for.
Still the problem consists: In a free market the "invisible hand" does NOT stimulate us to help others. It does not even happen today when there is such a big public pressure towards that. As long as profit maximizing is the ultimate goal, it will always tend towards monopolies and exploitation. You could argue the current trend to "social enterprises" is the free hand working towards our all goal, but that movement is still small and it does not look like it will survive outside some niches.
I argue the economic boom is mostly based on the transparency of the government, the freedom of religion and the abolishment of serfdom.
Every "Golden Age" I know of is based on those (you have a Golden Age either build on total slavery OR the recent freedom of slaves together with other societal reforms), and as your text writes itself, when the privileges came back to the few (and the "slavery" to the many). There was such a mismanagement of politics and war that the result was a revolution.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit