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[Shrugging Khan]

Yea..."We know it was evil", "case closed", "'counter-argument' crap", "the concept is forever doomed". You never really even considered viewing the whole affair from a different perspective, did you?

[GTM]

I'm not going to argue for or against any system here, but this quote brings up a cool topic to talk about:

If communism was easy to code, it'd be easy to implement in real life. Since, you know..."planned economy" really does have the "plan" (or "programme", as in "programming", as in "coding", as in "code") as its central piece.

So it's an interesting point and nice etymological link, but I'll present a counterpoint.  Communism is, in fact, easy to code.  It's the operating system or the peripherals that aren't easy.

If you know that your country has 1,000,000 people and that one farmer can generate enough food to feed 100 people, then you design your system in such a way that there will be 10,000 farmers at any given time, plus or minus an acceptable value to account for natural disasters, disease, etc.  The rate of farmers entering the system has to counter the exit rate and so on.  Then you have to monitor it to anticipate changes and prepare for them.  If shit hits the fan, you need stored food at the very least and a contingency plan (eat the corn and ration the ethanol fuel for a few years).  From a computer science / civil engineering perspective, that's first year stuff, right?

The problem with history's communist regimes is that in their ideological fervor, they exiled/killed the thinkers and academics who could do that math, and they were left guessing (poorly).

Not to mention corrupt officials twisted the numbers, stole supplies, extorted their populace, and generally interrupted the flow of goods and information.

A planned economy might work when you can feed it good numbers and when you can rely on the actors, and that's easy in a computer simulation (and not so easy in real life).

[tps12]

If communism was easy to code, it'd be easy to implement in real life.

That doesn't follow. Negative gravity is easy to code, for example, very difficult IRL.

[Shrugging Khan]

It does follow from my bracketed explanation

Communism is not inherently inferior to capitalism, but it does centralise economic responsibility, thus making it very easy to blame the system rather than the participants. In capitalism, economic responsibility is terribly difficult to pinpoint; but often enough things do go wrong, and then some indefensible scapegoat is usually quickly found and blamed to all hell. Usually, it wasn't purely the blamed individual's or company's fault, but it's far easier to simply point fingers at a single entity than to look deeply enough into all the complicated interactions of the free market to actually make a factually correct statement. Thus, capitalism fails just as hard, but is impossible to blame for it.

And before someone rolls out the "but capitalism generates more wealth than communism!" argument: Historically, it was always poor countries with bad leadership that implemented planned economies, which can't really lead to wealth to the people. Granted, the wealthy capitalist countries are indeed wealthier even by relative comparison, but only in exchange for gross social inequality, lousy consumer protection, rapid resource depletion, ridiculously "optimised" life styles and a gravely and fatally non-transparent interaction between politics and economy.

What was my point again? Right, the relation between programming difficulty and communism. Afaik, it's such (in a similar vein as what GTM wrote): If you can design an automated system that keeps track of all easily quantified variables like industrial input and output, demographic trends, resource distribution, taxation, and whatnot - then you can nationalise a high number of industries and automatise a variety of bureaucratic functions. It's not the full implementation of communism; but it can take a lot of responsibility and risk out of the hands of amoral corporations and incompetent bureaucrats. Which, after all, is more communist than the current situation.

So yea. half-baked, but not without necessity.

[Shades]

If communism was easy to code, it'd be easy to implement in real life.

That doesn't follow. Negative gravity is easy to code, for example, very difficult IRL.

This amused me, kudos tps12

[Shrugging Khan]

But it's factually wrong. It must not be permitted to amuse you!

(Negative gravity does not make sense. Mass attracts. Unless you understand WHY mass attracts, and HOW to reverse that (which I suspect you don't), you can't actually code negative gravity. The best you can code is pretend-negative gravity.)

[Shades]

But it's factually wrong. It must not be permitted to amuse you!

(Negative gravity does not make sense. Mass attracts. Unless you understand WHY mass attracts, and HOW to reverse that (which I suspect you don't), you can't actually code negative gravity. The best you can code is pretend-negative gravity.)

Why do things have to be right to amuse me?

Furthermore one of the current models of gravity that seems to be in favour is that of particle exchange in a way that matches the other forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic) however as a particle has, to my knowledge at least, yet to be discovered and there are a number of flaws I no reason enforce some of the conclusions just because they don't make sense to you. The other major model of gravity is of course that of space-time curvature which again has flaws but of course would allow negative gravity.

Finally all code is simulation at best which is basically another word for pretending. Even the best physic models don't actually create mass and monitor their effects on each other

[Shrugging Khan]

What is this nonsense? "amusement", "simulation"! You must be humourless and infinitely concrete to do science! Stop it!

[Shades]

What is this nonsense? "amusement", "simulation"! You must be humourless and infinitely concrete to do science! Stop it!

They are called mad scientists for a reason...

[cog disso]

The misinformation spread that colludes "communist" with "fascist", combined with what would be a hilarious anti-intellectual fervor that marks the American right were it not so painstakingly upheld as virtuous, is rather distressing.

[Xyus]

I propose that we demolish all standing economies and place the world's production under my personal authoritarian control.

I've been dying to try out a few of my ideas for running the world into the ground in a fun way. If the way I run my fortresses is any indication, I should be fairly good at doing this.

Even the best physic models don't actually create mass and monitor their effects on each other

I want this device.

[SmileyMan]

I occasionally play "Commie Fortress" by turning on all labours for all dwarves (you have to sadly make a distinction between miners and woodcutters but otherwise it can be done)

It's bloody irritating, and you end up with a lot of shoddy goods while your skilled workers are hauling rocks from one end of corridor to the other.

So, fairly accurate IMO.

A slightly less insane version is to lump all the "skill only affects speed" and "no skill required" jobs into one lump, and assign about half of your dwarves to it  If you're really brave, bang out a axes and throw woodcutting in as well (I wouldn't do mining, because of the chances of gem extraction).  Your skilled workers then only do their skilled jobs.  This is actually very efficient - the increased number of dwarves available to do an unskilled job more than compensates for the speed at which they do it.

And if I'm using Dwarf Therapist, I use a custom profession called "Comrade"

[MaDeR Levap]

Yea..."We know it was evil", "case closed", "'counter-argument' crap", "the concept is forever doomed".

Boy, I am from former communist country. While I am too young to know it in full (it fell* when I was about 7), I know, heard and talk with my parents ant other people. I remember only wonderful shops with retarded name, where you could got Legos(!) and other luxuries for DOLLARS(!!) and empty normal shops (economy of communistic countries was in state of permanent semi-catastrophe). Oh, and standing in lines. BIG lines. On bright side, everyone was employed - and half of them was sitting doing nothing and taking their little money (it was part of reason why economy was like this).

You never really even considered viewing the whole affair from a different perspective, did you?

Different perspective? You mean, sitting my ass in dirty capitalistic nation, where you can actually have decent living in diginity**? Yeah, how I could.

Communism is not inherently inferior to capitalism,

Experience of significant part of world says otherwise. Compare North and South Korea, or East and West Germany. Guess what part is better developed, what part have higher life average, what part have home budgets in less % for necessites etc?

(shortcoming of communism easier to blame than shortcommings of capitalism)

Nice way to deal with cognitive dissonance, folk. Explain, explain it away! LALA...

Historically, it was always poor countries with bad leadership that implemented planned economies, which can't really lead to wealth to the people.

I gave above examples (Korea, Germany) of nations that was one before dividing up and failing into hands of different powers. You could not have better comparative experiment. Results are obvious. Ergo, your argument go into drain. By the way, someone would wonder why "poor countries" would always choose communism... maybe because of mentioned by you "bad leadership"? Heheh.

gross social inequality, lousy consumer protection, rapid resource depletion, ridiculously "optimised" life styles and a gravely and fatally non-transparent interaction between politics and economy.

What? You talk like these things are nonexistant under communist rule. I can only laugh. Some fine points:

• gross social inequality: compare quality of life of soviet leaders and proletariat. As saying goes, people indeed ate caviar... by mouth of their communistic representatives.
• rapid resource depletion: many communistic leader had fixation about heavy industry. Do the math.
• fatally non-transparent interaction between politics and economy: planned economy is FATAL.

* Can you please explain why so wonderful system could fell and people actually wanted this? Heheh.
** I am of course assuming that you are american or from western europe or other non-communist country. If you ARE from such comunistic or post-communistic country, you are even more reality-detached.

Damn, it got so political that I will stop. Only one thing: ease of programming economic system (or really anything) have nothing to do with reality. Nothing.

[Shrugging Khan]

Highly emotional statements.

I get it already. You grew up in ye olde Poland, times were harsh, and oh for the love, go a little easy on the hysteria.
So when you're done with playing the "appeal to emotional outrage!" card, you may go ahead and notice how I didn't, at any point, state that historical communism was in any way successful, or that it provided a higher quality of life for its subject populations than its capitalist competition.

My points so far were (or were supposed to be, so take this post as clarifications) that firstly; it's entirely inadequate to introduce a highly subjective term like "evil" to the entire debate. Secondly, judging the communist concept as "doomed" or impossible to implement in reality simply because a dozen psychotic dictatorships and corrupt oligarchies didn't make anything useful of it in the 20th century is both rash and short-sighted. Thirdly that both planned and free markets have their valid applications, and that neither is inherently superior to the other. And for a fourth, I recall there was the issue of how sophisticated programming can be a vital tool in centralising branches of the economy.

Somehow, you extrapolated from those that I must be intending to glorify the communist dictatorships of the past! Hooray! How did you know that? Was it my refusal to chant "Stalin is Satan! Stalin is Satan!"? Or that I didn't first consider how your delicate sensibilities might be insulted by my lack of concern for your people's historical hardships?

Well, let's cut it short. IMHO, capitalism is not the non-plus-ultra of economic systems. Communism was, in those past cases in which it wasn't just a classic dictatorship with a red flag, implemented in horrendously misguided ways. You or people around you have been personally put through hard times because of that. Thusly, you refuse to treat the communist concept as anything other than "evil", or otherwise irredeemably super-bad. Way to go. The fire burned you, thus you prefer to stay cold.

tl;dr: Just because the past fucked up doesn't mean the future can't do better.

[Marconius]

Not to start a huge argument here, but if capitalism is the "best" system imaginable and communism/socialism is of the devil or however you want to put it... then why is it that pretty much all through Europe and North America, the so-called advanced countries, a significant amount of the populace is living among inhumane circumstances, barely able to earn enough to support themselves and their families? Why is it that the streets are full of the homeless and that people resort to loans with ridiculously high rates in a desperate attempt to go on living?

Yes, I will agree that a lot of things Stalin and Hitler did were terrible and should not have been done. You could consider them "evil", if you believe such a thing exists... that is your decision, since "evil" is not an objective term, unless scientists have discovered it encoded in the universe somewhere and I missed the news. But you must admit that Russia became the superpower it is today during the communist era; and while Hitler did commit atrocities, he also pulled Germany out of the gutter, both spiritually and financially. The system before the nazis came to power was terrible, Germany was at a definite lowpoint due to in no small part the peace treaty made at the end of the first World War.

And just in case someone hasn't noticed: yes, blatantly racist political parties are actually getting into the parliaments all over Europe, which is pretty much exactly what was happening in the 1930s, when (surprise, surprise) there was also an economic crisis all over the advanced world.

By the way, it might be interesting to note that while the basis of capitalism is a free market, prices driven purely by supply and demand, this has actually been upset recently quite a few times. Just think of the bailout of the auto industry in the USA (among others); that's something pure capitalism would not allow and is actually a step towards a more planned economy. In fact, a lot of areas of life are driven by socialist ideals; take for example the fact that healthcare is free or highly supported by the state, making it available to almost everyone, rather than just the rich. CT scans are not cheap, if sick people had to pay for all of that (as they should in a pure capitalism), I imagine life expectancy would be a lot lower.