http://puu.sh/v0eBm/e8e06537d5.jpg

This kid needs a helicopter ride.

food insecurity, preventable/treatable disease, lack of clean drinking water, wars for profit/using arms purchased from major powers, industrial labor accidents, natural disasters disproportionately hurting the poor (not to mention how much global warming influences many of them, which is tied to capitalism)

and that's not including all of those killed or imprisoned in authoritarian capitalist regimes where we blame the authoritarian part and not the capitalist part, while the same actions by authoritarian communist regimes are blamed on communism

When a communist nation can exist without prison camps for political dissidents and without a crippled economy that cannot compete with capitalist nations equally, then I will consider it a valid form of government. Until then it is nothing more than a failed ideology that only appeals to the ignorant and lazy.

The USA's incarceration rate is presently higher than the USSR at the height of the GULAG system - so it's nothing peculiar to Communism. Nations which utilize prison labor extensively will continue to do so no matter what sort of government they're using - hence why Russia still has prison labor complexes. .

Also in the US we utilize prison labor heavily and have since time immemorial - as do many other "capitalist" nations :/ At my job I have the power to call in trustees from the jail to provide menial labor at any time (they will be paid 50 cents an hour). I refuse to do this and as such have gotten some pretty good workouts in lol.

"Competing equally" with capitalist nations is a tall order - since most Communist nations start out *way* behind the curve. Despite their economy (GDP) growing over 1,4000% in the first 20 years of the the Soviet Union, their GDP was still only 1/2 that of the USA's for example. Not to mention the state of things in Russia now (they're 12th - Mexico is about to catch them) lol. Russia, and the USSR's deep dark secret was that they were essentially a petro-state, their economic wellbeing was, and still is, entirely dependent upon oil prices.

Russia was semi-fuedal, China was a complete disaster - most of their industrial regions were destroyed by the Japanese in WW2, and then what was left in the following civil war, Vietnam endured over 20 years of war, and North Korea had more bombs dropped on it than all the ordinance dropped in WW2 by all belligerents combined - no building over 2 stories was left standing, Cuba was a US export and tourism based economy, and the embargo completely cut them off from that, they've spent the last 50 years trying to scrape enough money together to do anything at all - and made some pretty good progress in some areas lol. So they've all had a pretty big hill to climb.

you seem to be operating under a premise that communism some how solves these issues
and you can't blame capitalism for global warming without in the same way showing how much its improved our lives

communist countries must inherently be authoritarian that's why communism is blamed not just the authoritarian part

Communism as described by wikipedia:

If communism were to be applied as it was supposed to be, there would be no state to be authoritarian. Unfortunately, this will never happen practically because people like power.

how are u going to enforce communism without an authoritarian state?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Helicopter+Ride
What the fuck is wrong with you man?

And now we arrive at one of the glaring problems with communism.

It's hardly a "glaring" problem of a communist economic system - *all* economic systems erect a state edifice to ensure the continuity of that particular system. Try to violate a contract sometime, or sell stuff out of your trunk in a wal-mart parking lot, or produce something that has a patent on it - just to name a few. However, these sorts of laws are treated as natural courses of affairs and so their authoritarian character is ignored.

Unless there is a strong way to enforce Communism, much like Stalin's gulags, there is no assurance that people will follow the main idea of no personal possessions. There will still be crime and what not, but unless there is a strong way to enforce these laws, greed and vanity will ensure.

Unless Communism is attempted on a small country with an abundance of already existing wealth, i don't think a true Communistic style of rule could ever be achieved.

I mean i could be wrong, I'm no expert, but that's how i see it.

I'm not talking about incarceration rates, I'm talking about imprisoning political dissidents. Every communist nation does this. It is against the law to imprisoning someone in the US for their political opinions.

Are you saying that being fined for selling something without a permit is the same as living under a dictatorship?
If not, then your comparison is pointless.

You enter into a contract voluntarily, not being able to produce a patented product is to protect someones intellectual property I don't see whats wrong with that and being required a permit to sell things is to protect the consumer (also the example you gave is selling stuff on someone elses property) it would be great if everyone could just sell what they want, but without regulations you'd end up like china where you get things like rat meat passed off as mutton, dumplings filled with cardboard, fake rice made from plastic just to name a few questionable products regulations help protect us from.

better dead than red

threads like these are the tftv equivalent of car crashes

it's like i'm watchin ya fly through a windshield

i cant wait for the bernie sanders firing squads and political enemy prison camps in 2020

So you're saying the US has never imprisoned a political dissident? It's rare but it does happen - capitalist nations throughout the world still do and have regularly done so. As an American, this is a rather unique and strange thing we do here to not imprison political dissidents on the regular. We have a very strong tradition of not doing so - and likely never would unless society just completely collapsed and something very ugly came out of it. Whereas in say, Russia, where political arrests were the norm, and still are, they really don't think of it as a big deal. It has a lot more to do with the political traditions in a society - and what is acceptable to them - and a lot less to do with ideology outside of that fact.

The only reason we're not eating copious amounts of rat feces is because our society has already *gone* through that - read up on the Spanish American war sometime, or Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" - while it's melodramatic, it does give you a pretty good idea of what Americans were eating at one time. China is still a developing economy, and *most* developing economies will encounter this problem. Whereas, for example, in Russia, the health standards for food are actually far higher than they are in the US - this is also the case throughout Europe. It's got a lot less to do with Communism and a lot more to do with the economic development of the country itself and how limited public resources are allocated.

I'm pointing out, that capitalism utilizes corporal state power to reproduce itself - this is the norm. Just as in feudal societies the rights and privileges of every "estate" were limited so as to ensure the nobility maintained their hold on economic power, so too is our society constructed to ensure that capitalists are not bothered - and they use force to do so. So, it's not something abnormal if a socialist state uses force to protect its interests in the same vein - it just looks different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/king/aa_king_jail_1.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

If you seriously think the US has never imprisoned peaceful political dissidents you're sorely mistaken. Their's literally thousands of people who were put in prison for protesting wars, dodging drafts, and thousands more imprisoned during the civil rights movement.

hell the USA even committed genocide against native groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples#United_States_colonization_and_westward_expansion

-edit-
would like to add it's a pain to find current political prisoners, due to most of them being marked as Terrorists and due to the Freedom of information act not applying to them, but a key thing here is just to think what would happen to Snowden if he came back the US? What would happen to Julian Assange?

I don't think you can label the internment of Japanese Americans as being "political dissidents".
They weren't protesting or saying anything negative about the US government, they were just straight up imprisoned because it was war and we couldn't trust them for fear of another back stab (Pearl Harbor) on our home soil.

Kinda goes hand in hand with political prisoners, these people were imprisoned based off the belief that the Japanese American were traitors, even with no proof.

I disagree but I understand where you are coming from.
IMO you need look at the context of the situation instead of just viewing it as "black and white" on paper. This wasn't like the US Government decided out of thin air to put people in camps. There was proof and 2403 reasons to push this plan ahead.

I'm not saying our government doesn't do shady shit but this wasn't one of them.

Weird cause according to our own government in the 1980s we had 0 reason beyond racism.
"In 1980, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American Citizens League and redress organizations,[22] President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into internment camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The Commission's report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and concluded that the incarceration had been the product of racism. It recommended that the government pay reparations to the survivors. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government and authorized a payment of $20,000 (equivalent to $41,000 in 2016) to each camp survivor. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[23] The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to $3,240,000,000 in 2016) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.[22][24]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

Its not "weird" at all. I knew all about this commission and its findings in the 80's. Once again, it needs to be taken into context. The findings shelled out reparations and that is all fine and dandy. My point is that at the time this situation happened, there was nothing wrong with taking proactive measures during a war situation when we were just sneak attacked.

There is a clear difference between looking at this on paper or in a textbook and trying to view the situation as it was unfolding back in the 40's. If you want to call it "racism" against the Japanese now that we looked at and know all the facts involved some 40 years later, I am not disputing that. I am saying that in the 1940's, after we were attacked, there was no reason at all not to suspect more from the people we were fighting.

The country was literally at risk, we could not take the chance of sitting back and waiting to see who would be loyal and who would not be loyal. Our military in the Pacific wasn't going to take a chance on sabotage at home when we needed every single resource we could find after Pearl Harbor.

Something is wrong with one or both of these underlined statements even in your logic.

Also just going to point this STILL meets the definition of a political prisoner. It makes NO difference if their was some BS reason or not or whether the US or USSR or anyone else did this. This is still fucked up.

I am not saying in any way it is not wrong or was not wrong. In this instance, we have the luxury of hindsight into these events so we can cast our judgement. If you view this in black and white, then that is all you are ever going to see.

In the 40's, the situation we are talking about was way more complex than how you are portraying it. There was a lot more on the line at the time and way more pressing issues.

This was war, and the greatest war this planet has yet seen. All bets were off and IMO they did the best thing possible at the time with the choices available.

A decision needed to be made right then. I can underline shit too.
You tell me what other options there were at the time?

I'll tell you one option that wasn't on the table. The US Military was not going to sit back and wait for someone to hit us from behind again and for damn sure it wasn't going to be on our own soil.

This is incorrect, what is your source for this?

Perhaps you meant the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than they had dropped in the entire Pacific Theatre of operations in WW2?

Fact #11 unless you want to read them all.
or
Near the top of this article

Idk maybe treat the same way we treated Germans during WW1, perhaps the same way we treated the Vietnamese Americans during the Vietnam War, maybe the same way we treated muslims/iraqi americans during desert storm.

Hell just flat out comparing the Japanese internment vs German/Italian internment during WW2. Less than 1% of Germans and Less than 1% of Italians that met the criteria for of being "at risk" were actually interred. While the Japanese saw interment rates of nearly 20% and nearly all mainland Japanese Americans were forced to move. (if you count temporary interment that number reaches nearly 90%)

Hell even the criteria for being an Japanese American was fucked up especially when compared to German and Italian counterparts. The Criteria for Germans and Italians being at risk was within 3 generations of immigration, Japanese you could be as little as 1/16 Japanese i.e. a Great Great Grandparent being Japanese. to be interred.