From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   QUORA: WHY DO YOU THINK COMMUNISM IS BAD?   
   --answered by Philip Husband, Lishniy Chelovek, Nov 30, 2023   
   The eminent biologist E.O. Wilson once commented about Communism by saying   
   “Great system, wrong species”; Wilson was an expert on ants. Communism is   
   “bad”, because like every other “ism”, it proposes a naively simple   
   solution to a very    
   complex problem; how can large groups of humans live together in relative   
   harmony, with everyone having access to the basic needs of life, such as food,   
   clothing, and shelter. Communism works on the assumption that humans are far   
   simpler and more    
   malleable than they actually are, and assumes that once Communism is   
   instantiated, the perfection of this socioeconomic system will be obvious to   
   all, save for a few deviants, who are likely insane; it was, in fact, not   
   unusual in the former USSR to “   
   treat” dissidents in psychiatric hospitals.   
      
   There is an excellent German film called “The Lives of Others”, which   
   concerns the Stasi surveillance of a playwright in the former East Germany. In   
   one scene, the Stasi officer running the surveillance is told by his boss that   
   as a relatively high    
   ranking officer, he should sit with him at lunchtime, rather than with the   
   younger and lower ranking operatives. He declines the offer, saying   
   “Socialism has to start somewhere!”, and sits at a table with the lower   
   ranked people. The attitude of the    
   boss is telling; in any socioeconomic system, hierarchies are inevitable, and   
   those of higher status will feel entitled to certain perks; a better   
   apartment, better food, respect from their underlings, and so on, and they   
   will generally get what they    
   want, since they are the ones with the power. Orwell’s “1984” accurately   
   depicts this reality; Winston Smith’s boss, O’Brian, is a member of the   
   “Inner Party”, and therefore lives much better than Winston, who’s just   
   a regular party drone.   
      
   Since hierarchies are inevitable, it is legitimate to analyze how they might   
   form in a Communist, as opposed to a democratic Capitalist system; ideally,   
   people would rise through the hierarchy based upon competence and loyalty, but   
   as with any human    
   organization, promotion within a Communist government will inevitably involve   
   favoritism, bootlicking, infighting, scheming, backroom deals, and other   
   entirely sub-optimal means of selecting the best candidates, which leads to   
   monsters like Josef Stalin    
   maneuvering themselves into a position of absolute power in a Communist   
   hierarchy. In modern times, Xi Jinping has essentially maneuvered himself into   
   a position of complete control over the Chinese Communist Party; is Xi   
   especially competent? No; China    
   is facing a demographic collapse, and severe economic problems due to a   
   property bubble.   
      
   A functional socioeconomic system has to be grounded upon a functional model   
   of decision making, which has to include accountability for the results of   
   decisions that are made; Communism tends towards a lack of accountability, due   
   to the way in which    
   power hierarchies are formed: ruthlessness, rather than competence, is   
   rewarded, which is why all Communist countries were economically marginal   
   dictatorships. Business decisions made by entrenched bureaucrats, rather than   
   businesspeople, tend to be    
   awful, since as part of the power hierarchy of a command economy, they are not   
   held accountable to market forces; nobody in West Germany would have chosen to   
   drive East Germany’s main model of vehicle, the Trabant; a two stroke piece   
   of crap that East    
   Germans had to join a long waiting list in order to acquire.   
      
   There is nothing inherently wrong with the “enough for everyone”   
   philosophy of Communism, but sub-optimal decision making and poor incentives   
   tend to mean that “enough” tends to mean very little in practice; in a   
   Capitalist economy, people tend    
   to work for their own benefit, and incentives include higher social status, a   
   better home, a nicer car, and so on, and such things are actually available;   
   such incentives are rather more effective than winning a medal for “Hero of   
   Socialist Labor”, a    
   week at a dingy and rundown resort on the Baltic, and finally owning a crappy   
   car after waiting for ten years. Other than running a black market business,   
   the only real way to get ahead in Communist societies was to become a member   
   of the Nomenklatura,    
   the political elite, and even then, there was always the danger of being   
   betrayed and denounced by someone who’s after your position.   
      
   Capitalism is a far from perfect system, but it can and does deliver greater   
   general prosperity when tempered by laws, and a system of accountable   
   government that can partially ameliorate the vast income disparities that   
   Capitalism generates according to    
   phenomena like the Pareto Principle and the Matthew Effect; to my mind, free   
   market fundamentalists are just as naive as Communists with regards to their   
   insistence on ideological purity, and their misplaced faith in the absolute   
   supremacy of their    
   respective socioeconomic systems. Pragmatists will tend to recognize that   
   regulated Capitalism, in combination with government provision of services   
   like education, welfare, and healthcare, tends to lead to better outcomes,   
   compared with the    
   implementation of simplistic socioeconomic models upon complex societies.   
      
   Capitalism can operate under both an authoritarian or democratic system of   
   government, whereas Communism requires a strong and coercive government in   
   order to prevent people from bettering themselves through their own private   
   enterprise; it is this    
   severe limitation of individual freedoms by an authoritarian and unaccountable   
   state which makes Communism “bad” in most people’s eyes, and why my   
   Slovak neighbors fled their country in the Eighties to seek and find a better   
   life in the West.   
      
   =============   
      
   QUORA: WHY DO SOME PEOPLE PRETEND TO KNOW EVERYTHING BUT ACTUALLY KNOW VERY   
   LITTLE?   
   --answered by Gregory W, PhD in Critical Thinking & Logic (philosophy), UC   
   Santa Barbara (Grad 1984), 9 months ago   
   Possibly the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is a cognitive bias in which people   
   wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends   
   to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately   
   assessing their own skills.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)