Australia a communist State, page-232

There are some assumptions in there I think. I am not a communist. Nor do I support communism. though I think some of the concepts might be nice to see.

I could ask you why you support capitalism when you are equally able to identify that it too can have problems and probably for the same reasons as I think it’s flawed

in my view no political or economic system can work without controls. A benevolent monarchy could work as well but usually can’t.

the problem doesn’t necessarily lie in the political/economic system itself but in society itself and in the level of self and government regulation that structures social values and the way people treat each other

when you have a society that values wealth and power as the make of a man (and usually is a man) you will get distortions in the way capitalism works so that it loses the beneficial impact it could have. The problem
in any of the systems is the fact that wealth gives power in many ways. If you can create and acquire wealth by foul means rather then fair then the mindset that generates that wealth corrupts. It is to me as simple as that

do I see an answer to it. Not easily. Except by social engineering after all that is what created a society such as America has become, or France or Switzerland . Every country has a slightly different relationship with power, class, status and social obligation. So there is nothing inherently “given” about that. Nothing that is not able to be altered

It’s possible you will not like the use of the term social engineering - but it is always there and often it is quite intentional - though not always obviously so

laws, regulations, tax systems, housing/welfare and other policies are all sociaL engineering. But because we label some policies communist and others capitalist, and have lost the ability to debate without emotion or assumptions what type of society we want, we cannot look at these policies as part of a social and economic system - and explore how they might work together in a global environment to produce a society that functions well and keeps people safe. And of course because society is fractured the greater the level of individualism that runs through a society that less likely one is to get agreement on what is “good”

we jump to conclusions that tinkering here or there means we are heading down one or other path rather then consider the possibility that it could be both or neither.

so we stick labels - airbus albo, wackadoodles, peanuts, whatever. The labels are used by people who are rigid in their thinking and whether right or left have the same inability to contemplate complexity as those they despise. That of course is the same thinking that got us the disaster of Russia, maos cultural revolution and the likes of narcissistic multibillionaires. Ultimately none of these selfish, self absorbed people are good for society