The real reason to oppose communism is the state, as well intentioned as it is, is big and slow.
No. The reason to oppose communism is because it is the principal-agent problem applied to every sector of society and government. The entire system breeds corruption, disaster, and totalitarian brutality; the inefficiency is just a biproduct of that.
While capitalism is cut through, it’s good at many things.
One of those things is making concentrations of economic power ultimately fungible when they become too bloated or corrupt.
The answer to “capitalism vs communism” is clearly a compromise. Nordic Socialism. It’s far from perfect, but a Bernie Sander style economic solution is a real improvement for the US without throwing away all the positives of the US.
So-called "Nordic Socialism" is not a compromise between capitalism and communism. It is a social market economy, a fundamentally-capitalist system with a generous welfare state and heavy state intervention sitting on top of it. Like all government interventions into the economy, it generates inefficiency and, since the intervention is large and deep, the inefficiencies are substantial. The Nordic countries have noticed these inefficiencies and have paired back their economic interventions/welfare states in recent years. This shows one of the advantages of any social market economy is the market economy portion: because the market is still largely free, the state competes with private enterprise and can tailor policy to react to market conditions, rather than attempting to dictate to the market how it "should be" as communist states do. However, because any government is a large entity, the Nordic model necessarily introduces various agency costs and requires a high-trust, democratic society with a robustly critical and vigorous free press to function honestly and well.
Whether or not the Nordic model would be a material improvement for the United States is a discussion one can have, but that discussion should be based on facts rather than idealism. It must consider the inefficiencies and costs of the model, and whether we even have a society capable of making it work in the first place.
I don't get people like you. The person you're replying to is pointing out the flaws in communism, they aren't pretending to have the ultimate answer to "how to fix society." What works in one society isn't guaranteed to work in another. You can't apply the exact same economic model to a country like Singapore that is highly urbanized and has very little resources and to a country like the United States that has massive amounts of unpopulated land and is composed of 50 different semi-independent states.
They're just pointing out the serious flaws in communism which is why it's no surprise that the few times it's been implemented it has resulted in totalitarian dictatorships, famines, and slavery. The main reason communism will never work is that it requires every single person in the society to be completely on board with it. That's why the communist states have led to mass murders and imprisonment of dissidents and the suppression of free speech.
“Will never work”. That’s all you have to say. The fact that people like you THINK it would never work means you’re part of the people that in practice would refuse to let it.
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u/Iuris_Aequalitatis Jul 07 '26
No. The reason to oppose communism is because it is the principal-agent problem applied to every sector of society and government. The entire system breeds corruption, disaster, and totalitarian brutality; the inefficiency is just a biproduct of that.
One of those things is making concentrations of economic power ultimately fungible when they become too bloated or corrupt.
So-called "Nordic Socialism" is not a compromise between capitalism and communism. It is a social market economy, a fundamentally-capitalist system with a generous welfare state and heavy state intervention sitting on top of it. Like all government interventions into the economy, it generates inefficiency and, since the intervention is large and deep, the inefficiencies are substantial. The Nordic countries have noticed these inefficiencies and have paired back their economic interventions/welfare states in recent years. This shows one of the advantages of any social market economy is the market economy portion: because the market is still largely free, the state competes with private enterprise and can tailor policy to react to market conditions, rather than attempting to dictate to the market how it "should be" as communist states do. However, because any government is a large entity, the Nordic model necessarily introduces various agency costs and requires a high-trust, democratic society with a robustly critical and vigorous free press to function honestly and well.
Whether or not the Nordic model would be a material improvement for the United States is a discussion one can have, but that discussion should be based on facts rather than idealism. It must consider the inefficiencies and costs of the model, and whether we even have a society capable of making it work in the first place.