Communism had a great many failings, but they did allocate a lot of money to infrastructure and science.
But what real communism did isn't even relevant here, I'm pretty sure GP is talking about imaginary communism in the sense that anything that is good for the general population is somehow called communism in US politics.
In any economic system political aspects have a tendency to reduce the information available to consumers and producers. This is often done with laudable intent leading to terrible outcomes. In Soviet Communism the information feedback loop was so disconnected it resembled the theory of an AI "paperclip apocalypse"[1].
From 0:
The Soviet whalers, Berzin wrote, had been sent forth to kill whales for little reason other than to say they had killed them. They were motivated by an obligation to satisfy obscure line items in the five-year plans that drove the Soviet economy, which had been set with little regard for the Soviet Union’s actual demand for whale products.
Whaling, like every other industry in the Soviet Union, was governed by the dictates of the State Planning Committee of the Council of Ministers, a government organ tasked with meting out production targets. In the grand calculus of the country’s planned economy, whaling was considered a satellite of the fishing industry. This meant that the progress of the whaling fleets was measured by the same metric as the fishing fleets: gross product, principally the sheer mass of whales killed.
The real solution involves a hybrid system where the government supports a baseline of services. Mostly food, water, shelter, electricity, roads, etc. The private sector's responsibility is to provide superior service above and beyond what the government is doing.
Pure communists think that the government baseline should be enough for everyone, even if it means inferior service.
Pure capitalists think that superior service should be enough for everyone, even if it is unaffordable.
The obvious answer is to find the middle ground and reap the benefits of both.
I personally don't think that the F-35 is falling into that. A jobs program fighter jet doesn't really make sense since it is not a long term investment with a direct return. It's more of an insurance policy against an imaginary foe. Yes, you have jets but unless you use them to conquer land or defend yourself there is no direct return on investment.
>real solution involves a hybrid system where the government supports a baseline of services
As Inread that I think: basic services are too important to miss the feedback loop and become the equivalent of universal low grade government cheese. At the same time, maybe the poor quality of government provided baseline goods and services would incentivize people to attain better, which is an improvement over direct subsidies which act like high marginal taxes when they are reduced in response to income growth. Unfortunately a significant number of basic needs are commodities, such as cheese, and are subject to mismeasure and goal seeking instead of value seeking, similar to the Soviet whaling industry of the 1960s/70s.
The F-35: similar to SLS and Soviet whalers, political considerations are weighted higher than value ones. The F-35 also has the challenge of being developed at a transitional period, in the late morning of a period that will be marked by low observability, human optionality, and high speed and precision impact. The F-35s story isn’t over yet and like other troubled weapons systems there is a lower than likely chance it may blossom like the M-16. It has already passed the Sgt York stage and is in the a state where like the BFV it will find its place within doctrine and eventually battle, or not. I think it is too soon to tell.
Walls and bullets too, don't forget that. Communists were not shy to kill their own people looking to escape the "wonders" of their system.
Barbed wire on the borders, bullets shot without warning at swimmers trying to cross freezing rivers, then families held hostage and tortured to punish and warn escapees - oh Communism was such an awesome experience, I can only wish it from the bottom of my heart to all its apologists.
Some years back a socialist told me that the Berlin Wall was to keep westerners out of East Berlin. I told him that I'd visited the Wall in 1969, passed through it and had a tour of East Berlin, seen the Wall museum, been on the platforms overlooking the wall, had East German guards wave at me, etc.
In a sense it is both good and bad that the Wall has been erased, people forget what it was like. Nobody should forget.
Nice propaganda there, most post soviet countries still havent recovered. Hell i aint a communist but most of these countries did better under communism if only because the US wasnt there to leech off them
> had higher standards of living while they didn’t
That’s debatable. Might be true in 1910-1920, but by the end of the last century all communist states with planned economy have failed their economies, catastrophically so, with direct consequences on standards of living. China’s the only exception, were lucky to have smart enough people in power to pivot towards market economy, and execute it relatively well.
I presume the parent poster is referring to things like housing cost assistance (called Section 8 in the US), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), social security, Medicare/Medicaid government assisted health coverage programs, disability financial assistance programs and other socioeconomic-hardship assistance programs.
Not to mention funding schools, universities, or government research grants.
That's among the things that get called communism or socialism here in the US.
The entire point of a government is to provide services; including but not limited to transport infrastructure, contract dispute settlement (civil courts), protection of life and property (police, criminal justice system, sewers, firefighting, public health, etc.) and education. If all of that is socialism then I don't know a country that isn't socialist. Maybe Somalia in the 90s. Of course words can mean whatever we want, but that definition doesn't sound useful.
> The entire point of a government is to provide services
Of course. That doesn't mean the services it provides aren't socialism. For a country on balance to be socialist, more than have of its goods and services would need to be provided by the government.
> that definition doesn't sound useful.
It's exactly what socialism is:
"a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
The first definition when googling "definition of socialism". Government is the means by which the community effects socialism.
