I tend to agree with you here and I don't really have anything else to add. I just wanted to state that when you mentioned the "greater good", it made me think of "Hot Fuzz" and I imagined a group of people in black robes all chanting that right after I read it. :D Very funny movie!

It's not leveling the playing field, it's tilting the playing field so that the losing team can win.

This is the problem with Pinko legislation.

Communism (theoretically) is just about as realistic as Candy Land. Sure, Candy Land would be great since Candy is good and in a magical world like this, it would be healthy. But it doesn't exist and won't exist. What Communism ends up bringing is a dictator who uses the poor to gain control. This is what History has taught us. Nothing good ever derived from the promise of a Communist Rule.

Communism is bad because it destroys that thing that drives you to do better.

This point is meaningful if and only if we assume that humans weren't driven or motivated to do better, or creative until the middle 19th century.

Why would you kill yourself at work while everyone else is doing the bare minimum?

Why even assume that everyone else is doing the bare minimum?

And at the end of the day, will you accept the same pay as those that were inefficient?

Why is pay even an issue? Communist and Socialist literature regards the means of production and private property, not how much you get paid to do a specific job.

What if they took the fruit of your labor and paid you what they thought it was worth instead of what you thought it was worth.This doesn't make much sense. Communism still proposes a standard of exchange. While you can certainly try to pay what you think something is worth, it doesn't mean that a seller has to sell a commodity at that price.

And what if you found out that the ruling class had it better than you?

Communism is classless.

Have you read Animal Farm?

Yes, have you read Communist or Socialist literature? Woman on the Edge of Time, Of Cannibals, Herland, the always popular (though rarely read...) Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital?

Yes, animal farm is a book about Communist Russia, probably the most imperfect "Communism" ever to exist. it was more of a Capitalist, Fascist state than a Communist state and therefore is no basis for argument against Communism.

Implementations of communism and the concept of communism are two very different things.

Just because you read Animal farm does not mean you are a communism expert. If you can say that communism is bad based off a book then I should be able to ignore everything I know about capitalism, look at the financial industry debacle of recent years, and say I am an expert on capitalism.

The concept of communism has value.

Do investors, stock traders, CEO's, etc deserve to make 100 times more money than the lumber jack that works long hours at an extremely labor intensive and dangerous job?

This link, http://blackfriarsinc.com/sizing-release.html estimates that in one year, us companies will spend 1 trillion dollars on marketing. That's one million millions, its a lot of money. Communism doesn't have marketing. In a perfect communist system, the best products would be found and would be made available with no capital being spent on convincing people which one they should like. Eliminating competition eliminates a lot of waste. Capitalism can be extremely wasteful. Our implementation is definitely wasteful.

I'm no expert on either, but i know that just because we have yet to see a viable and fair implementation of communism doesn't mean that there will never be one or that we can't learn anything from the concept.

Of course you're right, but the theory of communism is based on equality. Every government is a wee bit corrupt, and things never go as planned. I treated this debate based on pure theory.

I don't have the right to control our army or vote in the senate.

I'm not saying i want to be able to control the army or vote in the Senate, but evil dictators have nothing to do with the principles of communism. You can have communism in a democratic society.

Please don't confuse totalitarian regimes with Communism, just because some totalitarian regimes used "Communism" as a title for their experiment. Communism is antithetical to large government.

really... down vote an no rebuttal.

I'm gonna blame "Kinda" for this... and too bad, because they seemed to not read my full response.

I explained why both the theory and the realism were bad... and he/she down votes me and gives some shitty explanation on how Communism is an economic theory. It's a theory on a UTOPIA (Read Communist Manifesto). Socialism is the economic status of a Communist nation. The reason why Marx uses both terms interchangeably in his book.

Kinda did not rebut ANYTHING I said.

Retarded belief that somehow everyone will just agree to work for each other and work on their skill to benefit society and not in any way for personal gain. Doctors cure you, farmers grow food, butchers feed you.

What is so retarded about everyone working together instead of for themselves?

...NO ONE wants unnecessary material goods (iPods, fast cars, drugs, good alcohol, guns, thin lubricated condoms, porn, computers, etc.)

Communism isn't about living as a minimalist and just contributing long enough to make sure everyone's basic needs are met. As technology advances, more and more consumer items become very easily reproduced.

If i record a song and give it away for free, millions of people could potentially be able to access my song over night. If I chose to use the song for personal gain, I have to deal with the record industry, distribution industry, and still only those that are willing to pay for my song are able to access it.

Society benefits more from sharing the song than from copyrighting it. The amount of gain that the group writing/recording/producing the song would receive from selling the song minus the wasted resources of protecting and distributing the song is much less than the amount of gain that society as a whole would receive if it was given away.

It's bad because it's stupid.

This and the first 2 words i quoted are probably why you were voted down.

Well seeing as you got so upset I guess I might waswell tell you what's wrong (unless my idea of communism is wrong)

Firstly you're basing the fact that it's retarded because you think people will not work for personal gain. Basically you're saying that humans can't be selfless when it comes to work. Secondly, in a communist society you CAN have ipods, fast cars etc. However if there was no capital societies then ipods would probably have not been designed.

Those examples of communists you gave were under a totalitarian government that didn't truly practice communism. Communism is in no way responsible for the stuff you said it does. It's the governments that did that... not communism. You've said it yourself. UNDER GOVERNMENT ORDERS... not communist orders. Communism isn't a government.. it's a form of economy.

Ideally and Realistically, Communism limits open mindedness and incentive. But either way, it's just a bad thing.

This is the part that made me think you dunno what you're talking about. Maybe I've got the wrong understanding of communism, but it's about communities working together to push society with each person responsible for his/her duties. You say there are no incentives.. but there are. The difference is that the incentives affect everybody and not just one person.