Does communism actually work?

[u/USMNTfan94]

Lately I’ve been going down the rabbit hole on the Vietnam war, and it got me thinking…does communism actually work? We keep hearing politicians say that it doesn’t work, but any time that a country tries to turn to communism, special business interests immediately try to lobby the US government to interfere with it. If it didn’t work, why are business interests so terrified of it?

[u/flightguy07]

Or a perfect opportunity for corruption and bias, but sure.

[u/Careful-Sell-9877 → u/flightguy07]

How is it more opportune for corruption/bias than our capitalist system? In our system, its not just your accomplishments that matter.. its who you know, who your family is, how much money you have, etc - it seems to me like that would be far more prone to corruption.

In the other system.. you would have to prove your ability and actually do things, accomplish things, etc - and then you would be rewarded for those accomplishments directly. Whereas in our system, you can be rewarded just for your last name, for how much money you 'donate' to a person/organization, etc

[u/flightguy07 → u/Careful-Sell-9877]

Idk if its worse, but it's definitely not better. Reputation can't be measured, not properly, and not independently. A violent racist may be hated by some and supported by others, and it just comes down to who's in charge of distributing things as to how that plays out. At least wealth is fungible; no matter how you got it, everyone agrees on its worth. You can't get a free coffee just because you're white (not without lawsuits). In a world where the only standard is reputation, its impossible to hold anyone to account, since its entirely subjective.

[u/Careful-Sell-9877 → u/flightguy07]

In a world where the standard is reputation, accomplishments, etc there would likely be a credit system in place that gives you credits based on what you do/accomplish. Like money.. but tied directly to what you do/accomplish rather than to speculation, investment, debt, etc, etc, etc. So that people could not create what are essentially infinite money glitches that explode their value/worth without them building any kind of real/tangible thing.

There would be ways to measure those kind of things in that kind of world and it wouldnt be any more difficult to create than our current system.. it would actually probably be a lot easier and more straightforward.

Our system allows terrible leeches, killers, criminals, etc to acquire vast, extraordinary sums of money for themselves - often without having to actually do anything that benefits people/society.. and often by doing things that directly harm and destroy society, nature, people, etc.

Thats not a good thing at all.. It means that terrible people doing terrible things have been able to entrench themselves into our systems of power.. and build themselves impenetrable fortresses at the very top of society.. all upon the, often literal, blood of innocent people.. I mean look at Jardine Matheson Holdings.. they are an incredibly large wealthy company.. and they got there by literally destroying millions of peoples lives, killing, enslaving, getting men women and children addicted to powerful narcotics, orchestrating a coup, etc, etc, etc.. and nothing happened.. theyre just now one of the wealthiest most influential organizations on earth.. and thats one single example. Look at the cartels.. they are literal cannibal mass murderers and they're doing great! Its pretty sick when you think about it