Oddbean

I haven't been making judgments, though, so the only insight you've managed to gain into my reasoning is the depth of my understanding of communism. You ask questions, I do my best to guess what a communist would say. The ideology may be flawed, but it's fairly coherent. Having some flawed logic doesn't make it utterly incomprehensible, and even if we don't agree with the conclusions it draws, it sheds light on the grievances people held or hold, and it prepares you to make your own informed judgment. I don't care how anyone feels about communism, I'm just tired of not being able to have nice things like healthcare because people don't understand that politicians and news pundits are lying to them when they call it communism to stop businesses from literally price gouging you to death.

Oh I'm with you, I am very upset about all this stuff going on on society also. We share grievances with the way things work right now. But I think I know what causes them and what the solutions are. The cause isn't capitalism, it's government manipulation of markets, and the solution isn't communism, it's the opposite. Remember when people could afford to go to the doctor? That was when people just paid the doctor for services like any other merchant. Same with education. It is only after governments got involved and these inefficiencies were created and insurance and guaranteed loans and stuff were made inseparable from the industries via regulation that we find ourselves in this situation. You can see the same thing with housing, withinimum square footage requirements and stuff like that, basically any unaffordable thing that people need is unaffordable because of regulations protecting incumbents and preventing new entrants from competing.

well said. mister_monster does not seem to be engaging in good faith. Funny, because that is also something Marx says is necessary to maintain capitalisms hold over the poor - lying and cheating is the fastest way to get rich.