Well I agree with you for the most part, except for the following:

"in a communist society you CAN have ipods, fast cars"

Reason being because communism is all about equality, right? That would mean that people could only have ipods if everyone had one, or fast cars if everyone had one (perhaps with the exception of people who did not want these things.) It is very hard to say, since communism has never existed, how this would play out. If everyone did not have the same physical possessions, which is technically already against the concept of communism, then it would not be equal. Do you see how many variables there are in the equation? All of this is besides the point, however, as I was just going to say that there is simply not enough resources to support an entire world of having ipods and fast cars. Heck, it's physically impossible to feed one hamburger per week to every man in China. And that is assuming you give none to the U.S. There are not enough cows, and there physically cannot be enough cows on earth. What I am saying is that North America is very privileged. Luxuries that we have here are rare on earth. Things that happen everyday that we don't even notice are foreign to many other countries. Unless you spend signifiant time in other countries, this may be hard to understand. Life under communism would obviously prove much less materialistic (technically, 0% materialistic). If America really wants to support communism, or any sort of global equality whatsoever, they better be prepared to throw away 99% of all their toys, because the rest of the globe cannot have the same standard of living as North Americans do now.