Comment by drekipus

2 years ago

Sounds like the problems of acrappy economic theory

Not the theory, a crappy economic reality. If the economy were sound the computer researchers should have been able to fund their own research by commercializing it, instead of expecting handouts funded by the working class's hard labor.

  • My understanding of planned economies is that credit, investment, and profits are controlled by the state.

    In any way starting a commercial enterprise would surely mark them as capitalist class traitors, wouldn't it?

The theory might or might not have worked if the leadership wasn't hell-bent on converting the entire world into their ideology by military force.

Which it kind of had to do lest their citizens noticed they live in abject poverty compared to other countries.

  • The article presents a beautiful, self-contained, anecdotal but representative example of why communism never worked, doesn’t work, won’t work, and wouldn’t work in your imaginary parallel spider-man universe scenario.

    • Is there a way to read what I wrote without getting that I'm not a fan of communism at all? There shouldn't be. I have enough family anecdotes of how bad it could be. Also I hope you meant to say "...except in your imaginary..." cause in this one it definitely didn't.

    • It's not really about communism, though.

      You'd have to be blind not to see parallels under capitalism. Employees cannot profit from inventions and improvements, so they don't engage in them. Improving efficiency means budget cuts and animosity from under performers.

      This might not be true for smallest companies, but those don't really drive the economy.

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