…sorta. I think the better question is to what degree should we be communist? Should people be homeless and hungry in 2023? Do people have the right to a doctor, access to free education, and communication through the Internet as basic human rights?

I’m pretty sure we can do these things, we just don’t.

My bad, I did mean useless in terms of a production standpoint.

I’ve never personally had a problem with being useless. The time I value most in my life is the time I spend idle because it feels like I have so little idle time.

Great plain language breakdown for the uninitiated. Doesn’t disregard socialism as a solution to the problems outlined, but that’s a whole other discussion.

I’ve always pictured socialism as more a middle step toward full blown communism. I also recognize the value of private enterprise and competition. So whatever communist society we end up with still needs to find ways for that healthy competition to thrive.

But like… We can easily meet human needs at this point for everyone. It’s unjust and stupid not to do so

Why would you think innovation would disappear?

Let’s take the socialist (communist) medical systems in foreign countries. There is still IMMENSE value in winning the government contracts that use your medicine. And I’m a weird communist who still values personal property and intellectual property, I still see that as integral to the process. So like, if you invent the cure for cancer you can still demand $X per treatment, we’re just talking about who’s footing that bill in the end. I’m just cool with the government being able to design a competing product/treatment. That’s kinda really it. If NASA had been able to charge for half the stuff they gave the world for free they’d be the richest corporation on the planet, since the MRI, CAT scanner, and a whole ton of other technology was made by them. Yet NASA doesn’t profit on any of it, and is one of the most innovative entities in the world. Kinda puts a dent in your ‘well there’d be no innovation’ right? I dunno man, have you ever met scientists and engineers? I’m convinced if you just gave them all unlimited budgets and material all our problems would be solved overnight, and most of them would refuse anything beyond the satisfaction of having made something new and decent living wages and conditions.

And that seems to be working wonderfully for the EU countries who’ve already adopted this system, and for the Chinese, it’s not like innovation just dissipated from there, hell they’re beating us in a few areas right now.

I want to comment on this first:

… while we have had many counties try and fail to make a thriving socialist society. We have had capitalism thrive and make everyones lives better.

First, socialist countries haven’t been allowed to thrive. They’re a threat to the established capitalist status-quo. That’s what the entire red scare period was about; undermining leftist nations so they fail. See the Guatemala coup for example. The country removed their dictatorship and formed a democracy. It happened to elect a leftist president who implemented a minimum wage and began granting land to peasants. This pissed off the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) who were benefiting from cheap land and exploiting labor. They had the US overthrow the democracy and instate a dictatorship (which ended up committing a genocide).

This has happened many times. The only leftist nations that were able to survive this are ones with strong governments and cultural hegymony (basically dictatorships with strong restrictions on citizens). This doesn’t mean that’s the only possibility because that’s the only ones that survived, it just means those are more stable when undermined by a powerful external force. It’s like asking why everyone who has been shot in the head has died. It’s not their fault someone else shot them.

(Also, many capitalist nations have failed, and that equally is not a sign that capitalism is destined to fail.)

Now for this:

So I’m curious how do you expect innovation to happen in a communist world.

Innovation happens all the time without capitalism. In fact, capitalism often hinders innovation. The requirement of capitalism is profit seeking. If you don’t think something will make a profit, you shouldn’t invest in it.

I think it’s penicillin that almost didn’t exist because of capitalism. (This is from memory, so some parts may be wrong) The company was trying to create a certain drug. During the experiments penicillin was found. The company told them to move on, but the people running the experiment saw an opportunity and continued developing it on their own. Under capitalism, you shouldn’t persue unlikely but potentially beneficial, though possibly not profitable, possibilities. Can you imagine the number of times this has happened and the people involved listened to what they were told?

People like to innovate. Just look at makers online. They make all kinds of stupid shit that won’t ever make money just to see what will happen. Profit is not the thing that creates innovation. Human ingenuity is. If you give humans enough resources to persue what they want, they will innovate.

Also, generally communism or other leftist ideals aren’t advocating for equality in outcomes. They’re advocating for equality in opportunity. If you’re born wealthy, you shouldn’t get special access to thing that an average person doesn’t have access to. You shouldn’t be allowed to persue your goals when an average person can’t. However, if you create something that makes your life easier or better, that’s not going to be removed from you. There’s equal opportunity to improve your life, but not everyone will persue things equally.

So why do you think we should change to communism, instead of eradicating blind brand loyalty and cracking down on wealth gained through stifling others.

Personally, I’m more towards anarchism than communism, but I see value in both and they share so much in common.

How would you go about eradicating “eradicating blind brand loyalty and cracking down on wealth gained through stifling others”? Those are fundamental aspects of capitalism. The goal of capitalism is to increase profits by any means possible, which includes breaking laws when it’s more profitable to do so. Eradicating brand loyalty is only possible if you elemenate labels, but that also creates the opportunity for cheap alternatives to undercut on quality. Exploiting labor is also fundamental to capitalism. If the goal is profit then you should pay as little as possible for as much as possible. If you don’t then someone else will undercut you and you’ll fail while they exploit.

There’s no avoiding it under capitalism because the fundamental goals are misaligned with morality. The only choice is a system that favors morality, potentially by making moral options profitable or just not prioritizing profit. You can’t really “fix” capitalism. The fundamentals are rotten. You can improve it, but it’ll always be misaligned with what we want. There may be a place for capitalism under another system, but capitalism as the foundation is never going to prioritize humanity, good, and doing what’s right.

Couple things, here.

All in all, lots of assumptions with no ground to stand on. As a leftist, I think it’s safe to say that democracy is generally a good thing, as is decentralization, so a better system than top-down Capitalism would be an economy with democratic participation from the bottom-up. Communism can achieve this.

Unfortunately many terrible people like the second solution of just killing off the unemployable in various ways.

Not a lot of communistic / socialistic people actually believe that garbage, the whole point of communism and socialism is to provide for people’s basic needs. I’ve never once met someone that seriously talks about communism who would actually suggest using people like that. And communism doesn’t mean democracy, the best systems are obviously ones where people have equal opportunity to voice their opinions and needs equally.

It’s actually a bad faith argument by capitalists who struggle to see the use of a human being beyond how much labor they can be used for.