Being a socialist does not mean that I think we all should be poor and not have nice things. Unfortunately socialism/communism has that reputation because only extremely poor countries have changed to this economic system. So when people think of communist countries, poor countries where poor people had to wait on line for goods and services come to mind.

I can tell from posts in this forum that very few (if any) of you have read Karl Marx. Communism is not meant to grow an economy. It is only meant to spread the wealth evenly among the population. If there is very little wealth, then everyone will be equally poor.

Marx meant for Communism to be the next natural progression AFTER Capitalism. As we are seeing in the world today, Capitalism implodes after a while. There are no new markets to expand to, so the result becomes infighting and corruption and an eventual progression towards Fascism.

Competition is both good and bad. The good part is that it motivates people. The bad part is that time is wasted competing instead of being productive. For example, a company like BMW will spend a certain percentage of their resources on building good cars, and a certain percentage on advertising and promotion. If their goal was not to make money, but instead only to produce good vehicles, then they could spend 100% of their resources on building good cars and thus we would have a better product, but for the same cost to the consumer.

When there are constant new markets to expand to, most resources are spent on product development and distribution and only a much smaller amount on advertising and promotion. But when there are no new markets to expand to, then the only way to increase business is to take market share from another company, and you do this through advertising and promotion.

If you look at economics of major industries over the last 30 years, you will find an increasing percentage of resources being spent on advertising and a decreasing percentage spent on product development. This part that is being spent on advertising is wasteful and amounts to "infighting" rather than true productivity. Nothing useful is being produced by advertising, and thus the productivity factor is zero. You might as well have the entire advertising industry spend their days digging holes and filling them in. The total size of our economy would not change any if you did this. Stop thinking about productivity in terms of dollars and cents, and instead think of productivity in terms of what is being actually produced or accomplished. That is true productivity.

By changing to a Communist system, you become more productive in that all of your resources are spent on true productivity, and not on infighting. You work together, instead of competing against eachother.

And if the total wealth of the country is like what we have in the United States today, then everyone would not be "equally poor" but instead "equally rich".

With the wealth and resources we have in the United States, everyone could have practially everything they wanted, and there would still be extra resources to spare.

Stop thinking on a level of dollars and cents and start thinking on a level of goods and services. Would you want your BMW any more or less if it costed $5,000 instead of $50,000? It would still be the same car. Would you want to live in a big house if it didn't cost any more than a small one? Is your only drive in life to be better than someone else, or do you want to succeed for you (and your family) only? What defines "success"?

Regarding my business, I do enjoy what I do today. And I would enjoy it just as much even if I didn't own the company, but instead just managed it. I take pride in my work and would not put in any less effort. And if I didn't have to worry about making profit, the product I would produce could be a lot better as well.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...