Thank you @PaulL, the Baconian! I had just hit my fill of this thread, when i got to your post. I noticed i wasnt even halfway through it when I decided everyone was missing the point about all of these ism’s. They can all work. They will all mostly fail at some point. The common factor of failure is the same. Its being run by humans. Mankind is notoriously famous for screwing things up. Not always intentionally, but non the less.
In one extreme we have communism. The philosophy of choice by dictators. In itself, it isnt a bad idea. But get humans involved in running it and you get self appointed dictator’s with absolute power. And if Q taught us nothing else, absolute power corrupts absolutely. In a communistic society it is illegal to say anything against the government. A prisonable offensive. Try to leave the country and you will most likely be shot on the way out. And then the rest of your family targetted for execution.
Freedom is an illusion under that system. You are free to do what you want as long as it fits within this very narrow field of whats allowable. Not to mention, you will be what the society needs. Be it Doctor, lawyer, janitor, or ass kisser. My apologies for lumping janitors in with the lawyers, i meant no offense to the janitors.
The direct opposite of this, which I dont think actually exsists, yet, is bound to be just as bad. Would most likely set itself up as some sort of utopial society, where everyone is equal (which we are not. We are mearly born equal, after that its up to you to improve yourself) the society then decides what you can do or cant do based upon what society needs… and down a slippery slope to dictators again. Big difference here isnprobably corporations running the show instead of governments. A lot of sci-fi likes to run with this. The Aliens Universe, as well as tv show, Dark Matter, have corporatations running everything, even at war with one another.
All fantasy aside, we need to deal with the greatest weakness in all of these ism’s. It he human compnent. Basically only two ways to handle this. Overbearing Iron Fist, or to hold leaders accountable, as in a Representative Republic, such as we have now. No matter the political leaning, only so much can be done to upset it.
Looking at several things that have happened in the world lately, we have a Dictatorship overthrown in South America (which seem to be somewhat common there), we have riots in France that have lasted months now over government increasing taxes to pay for “green” agendas, and the Brexit, where the government leaders lied to the people as said “we will do what you decise, if you want out of the EU we will exit the EU.” Overwhelmingly the people voted to leave the EU. Only to have the government say, “we think we need to take that vote again, we cant beleive anyone wants to really leave the EU” (paraphrasing there).
What do those three examples have in common? That fact the few people are in charge of how things get done, and the agenda of the few, the elites, get what they want, screw the people. “We know better than they do”.
At the best, overall those resources persist despite human action. Cutting down forests is often for growing crops or animals, but it’s also often not as simple as that - there are a mixture of causes that in the end all go to population pressure.
