DanSC DanSC:
Every time someone tells me we (USA or Canada) should have a strictly-enforced command economy, I ask them where a command economy has actually worked without making the working class a serf class with absolutely no escape. Their reply has always been, "Just because it hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it won't work eventually!" And yes, they usually shout this sentiment.
'It didn't work because the right people were not in charge!'
That seems to be the most popular theme.
The problem with communism is that it simultaneously requires and excuses the use of deadly force to compel people to participate in it. It also requires the forcible indoctrination of a population to convince them that communism is the best system ever.
In the West it has been the case that 'creeping socialism' has been laying the groundwork for the next step which is full-blown socialism followed by eventual communism.
Right now in the USA a socialist named Obama (he was a registered Socialist until 1991 when he registered Democrat) is battling the US Supreme Court not so much over health care but over the notion that the government can force people to buy something and the legal question that even some liberal justices have posed is: 'If the government can do this then what can't it do?'
Lots of us are hoping that the Court will say no to this precedent setting seizure of power.
Because if they reverse what's called the
Wilkins decision (which is what is partly at stake here) then the last seventy years of government expansion of power will be reversed in one fell swoop.
The Federal government in the USA in just a few months may lose its power to regulate: education, transportation, the environment, the broadcast spectrum, energy, intrastate commerce, and etc.
All of these powers would revert to the states and in many states they'd revert to the people.
It's no coincidence that as the government has taken more power in the USA that the USA itself has become less powerful in the world. China today is in the news saying that the USA is a power that is in decline. If we were to move back to the foundational understandings that made us great in the first place then it is conceivable that China could be proved wrong.
One can hope.