Communism Vs Capitalism

lala88

Not sure if this is the right place for this but anyway. Was talking to a Polish friend of mine the other day and he said he was just back from Poland. I was asking him how things were over there etc and he said to me that he tuaght Poland was better off under communist rule! I asked why and he said when they were a communist country that there was never any homeless people and now there everywhere! How he said communism may not be the best but he said it seemed alot better then capitalism. People may not what to admit be but capitalism is alot of the reson Ireland is the may it is now

What do people think?

TiGeR KiNgS

lala88 wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place for this but anyway. Was talking to a Polish friend of mine the other day and he said he was just back from Poland. I was asking him how things were over there etc and he said to me that he tuaght Poland was better off under communist rule! I asked why and he said when they were a communist country that there was never any homeless people and now there everywhere! How he said communism may not be the best but he said it seemed alot better then capitalism. People may not what to admit be but capitalism is alot of the reson Ireland is the may it is now

What do people think?

Because they were sent to the gulags or forced labour camps.

Boom and Bust is a fact of life in Capitalism. The benefits of this far outweigh communism.

RichardAnd

TiGeR KiNgS wrote: »

Because they were sent to the gulags or forced labour camps.

And leaving them on the street is just magnanimous eh.

Capitalism and Communism both have positives and they both have negatives. An extreme case of either will be bad. The key is to find the best mix of the pair, not an easy thing to do.

TiGeR KiNgS

RichardAnd wrote: »

And leaving them on the street is just magnanimous eh.
.

A Gulag was a death sentence.

Domitius Felix Invictus Aurelianus

Germany was better off under the Nazis, at least for a brief period. Communism is/was clearly another way of state control over EVERYTHING and ANYTHING the individual can or is allowed to do. id rather live in a poor broke country that live in one that treats people like robots and inevitably ends up destroyed by its foreign polices and wars.

andrew

If only there was some metric other than homelessness with which we could judge different economic systems. :pac:

Zonda999

Well, IMHO, you'll soon get into an argument trying to gauge people's perceived quality of life in capitalist and communist states. Perceived quality of life and happiness of the population are very different things however, not that that has anything to do with the economy of a country. Look at North and South Korea for a good example of thw two, capitalism at work in one, and a supposedly 'communist' dicatatorship in the other(As in communism for 99% of the population)

Suryavarman

lala88 wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place for this but anyway. Was talking to a Polish friend of mine the other day and he said he was just back from Poland. I was asking him how things were over there etc and he said to me that he tuaght Poland was better off under communist rule! I asked why and he said when they were a communist country that there was never any homeless people and now there everywhere! How he said communism may not be the best but he said it seemed alot better then capitalism. People may not what to admit be but capitalism is alot of the reson Ireland is the may it is now

What do people think?

I'm guessing you are referring to the fact that Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world?

scotty_irish

I could recommend some reading for you which might change your mind on that one.

What age is your friend? Is he by any chance to young to properly remember Communist life?

Liam Byrne

Domitius Pius Felix Invictus Aurelianus wrote: »

Germany was better off under the Nazis, at least for a brief period. Communism is/was clearly another way of state control over EVERYTHING and ANYTHING the individual can or is allowed to do. id rather live in a poor broke country that live in one that treats people like robots and inevitably ends up destroyed by its foreign polices and wars.

Off-topic I know, but on mobile that post has 4.2 billion thanks !!!! :eek:

RichieC

I think they're both failed experiments at the extremes of ideology, unless someone can think of an altogether new one we're just going to have to settle somewhere in the middle.

Suryavarman

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Off-topic I know, but on mobile that post has 4.2 billion thanks !!!! :eek:

It has that many thanks on a computer as well!

irishh_bob

lala88 wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place for this but anyway. Was talking to a Polish friend of mine the other day and he said he was just back from Poland. I was asking him how things were over there etc and he said to me that he tuaght Poland was better off under communist rule! I asked why and he said when they were a communist country that there was never any homeless people and now there everywhere! How he said communism may not be the best but he said it seemed alot better then capitalism. People may not what to admit be but capitalism is alot of the reson Ireland is the may it is now

What do people think?

under communism , those in ireland on the bottom rung of the economic ladder would be considerabley worse off

laoisfella

RichieC wrote: »

I think they're both failed experiments at the extremes of ideology, unless someone can think of an altogether new one we're just going to have to settle somewhere in the middle.

help 1 another would be bang rite in the middle me thinks. any other way is either up or down.

matthew8

And my Ukrainian friend was recently telling me about how his parents often had to eat dog food in Soviet Russia. You can't get an image of a country or an ideology through tidbits of information from people who lived there.

Liam Byrne

Suryavarman wrote: »

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Off-topic I know, but on mobile that post has 4.2 billion thanks !!!! :eek:

It has that many thanks on a computer as well!

Kevin Cardiff got a new job in charge of boards.ie stats ?

RichieC

matthew8 wrote: »

And my Ukrainian friend was recently telling me about how his parents often had to eat dog food in Soviet Russia. You can't get an image of a country or an ideology through tidbits of information from people who lived there.

Chile was uber liberal capitalist under general pinochet who slaughtered people. does anyone blame capitalism on that? no, they blame the authoritarian regime.

not with Stalin and the rest of his boys, no, the economic ideology they chose is to blame..

double standards.

andrew

RichieC wrote: »

matthew8 wrote: »

And my Ukrainian friend was recently telling me about how his parents often had to eat dog food in Soviet Russia. You can't get an image of a country or an ideology through tidbits of information from people who lived there.

Chile was uber liberal capitalist under general pinochet who slaughtered people. does anyone blame capitalism on that? no, they blame the authoritarian regime.

not with Stalin and the rest of his boys, no, the economic ideology they chose is to blame..

double standards.

Both capitalism and communism are flawed. The reason people blame communism for authoritarianism is that communism's flaw seems to be a strong tendency toward dictatorship. in practice, its hard to appropriate the populations property without being a an all powerful dictator. in contrast, capitalism doesn't tend to lead to authoritarianism. it's flawed real world implementations lead to many bad things, but not dictatorships.

RichieC

andrew wrote: »

Both capitalism and communism are flawed. The reason people blame communism for authoritarianism is that communism's flaw seems to be a strong tendency toward dictatorship. in practice, its hard to appropriate the populations property without being a an all powerful dictator. in contrast, capitalism doesn't tend to lead to authoritarianism. it's flawed real world implementations lead to many bad things, but not dictatorships.

You're putting the cart in front of the horse to justify your western bias.

andrew

RichieC wrote: »

andrew wrote: »

Both capitalism and communism are flawed. The reason people blame communism for authoritarianism is that communism's flaw seems to be a strong tendency toward dictatorship. in practice, its hard to appropriate the populations property without being a an all powerful dictator. in contrast, capitalism doesn't tend to lead to authoritarianism. it's flawed real world implementations lead to many bad things, but not dictatorships.

You're putting the cart in front of the horse to justify your western bias.

So you're saying that there were dictators, and then they tried to implement communism? why is it that there has never been a state which democratically decided to go communist then? I'd say its because communism is impossible to implement democratically; humans are inherently self interested and selfish, and nothing can change that.

Suryavarman

RichieC wrote: »

Chile was uber liberal capitalist under general pinochet who slaughtered people. does anyone blame capitalism on that? no, they blame the authoritarian regime.

not with Stalin and the rest of his boys, no, the economic ideology they chose is to blame..

double standards.

The thread was started with anecdotal evidence saying that communism was better than capitalism. Matthew8 then presented contradictory anecdotal evidence before dismissing the use of anecdotal evidence to contrast systems. You then go on a big rant about Pinochet. There's no double standards here, it's just you getting all worked up because you hate capitalism.

Eric Cartman

capitalism puts everyone in the best position to make what they want of life, it provides freedom, choice and competition and drives down prices. Socialism pidgeonholes everybody, lets everyone be lazy and creates the culture of mooching that can be seen all over Ireland today

RichieC

Eric Cartman wrote: »

capitalism puts everyone in the best position to make what they want of life, it provides freedom, choice and competition and drives down prices. Socialism pidgeonholes everybody, lets everyone be lazy and creates the culture of mooching that can be seen all over Ireland today

What a great post card. reality is rather more different.

sarumite

RichieC wrote: »

What a great post card. reality is rather more different.

The reality is thatcommunism is a failed philosphy. It just doesn't work as well as capitalism.

breadmonster

In a strange kinda way it feels like were living in a communist state as it is most people are working just to pay tax and have nothing to show for it.

RichieC

Suryavarman wrote: »

The thread was started with anecdotal evidence saying that communism was better than capitalism. Matthew8 then presented contradictory anecdotal evidence before dismissing the use of anecdotal evidence to contrast systems. You then go on a big rant about Pinochet. There's no double standards here, it's just you getting all worked up because you hate capitalism.

Okay so, I'll forget all of everything I know about the world simply to stay within the realm of THIS PARTICULAR DEBATE.

sarumite wrote: »

The reality is thatcommunism is a failed philosphy. It just doesn't work as well as capitalism.

Both have failed. look around you. both have led to economic hardship and millions of deaths.
What does it say when OUR prosperity depends on the hardship of millions of others? WHAT THE FK DOES IT SAY?

sarumite

RichieC wrote: »

Both have failed. look around you. both have led to economic hardship and millions of deaths.
What does it say when OUR prosperity depends on the hardship of millions of others? WHAT THE FK DOES IT SAY?

How far afield do I need to look around. I don't actually see millions of deaths looking around me. Capitalism hasn't failed. Its having a trough after a peak lasting over a decade. Communism has is a failed enterprise. Capitalism is just a struggling one.

RichieC

sarumite wrote: »

How far afield do I need to look around. I don't actually see millions of deaths looking around me. Capitalism hasn't failed. Its having a trough after a peak lasting over a decade. Communism has is a failed enterprise. Capitalism is just a struggling one.

Do you own an Iphone? you realise that's built by children's hands? What has been sold to us as a stepping stone to the poorest people on earth's prosperity is nothing but a money and resource grabbing colonialist enterprise. It's grand for us to accept these lies being the lucky people born where we are. but there are millions who will die with naught but a pot to piss in to show for these "advances".. entire lives, not within one country but throughout the entire planet, with some affected more than others.

Stalins excesses affected his realm, ours, the entire planet.

val_jester

sarumite wrote: »

The reality is thatcommunism is a failed philosphy. It just doesn't work as well as capitalism.

It could be argued that communism isn't a failed philosophy because it has never been implemented truly in the way it is set out. In theory it is the perfect economic system and social system but in reality it is a pipe dream that will never work, there are too many flaws within it for it ever work and in order for it too work we would have to ignore, or hope that we overcome, the main human fault of greed and being power hungry.

There is no doubt that the average person is worse off under a communist/dictatorial regime and the North/South Korea example used earlier is proof of this.

Good loser

Communism abolishes freedom.

jank

RichieC wrote: »

Chile was uber liberal capitalist under general pinochet who slaughtered people. does anyone blame capitalism on that? no, they blame the authoritarian regime.

not with Stalin and the rest of his boys, no, the economic ideology they chose is to blame..

double standards.

One of Communism's key foundation is state control on pretty much everything. Politics, economics, society. It is then no wonder that the two go hand in hand. Sure authoritarian regimes can exist under a capitalist system but the these are generally the exception rather than the rule. Can you name one communist regime that was NOT an authoritarian regime? I struggle to think of any.