Monday, October 31, 2005

Why communism will never work

Tonight I sat on my front porch with a large bowl full of candy. When kids came, I extended the bowl and they usually took one, maybe two pieces. Then, before we sat down for dinner, I filled the bowl to the top and placed a sign: "take one." Midway through dinner, the bowl was empty; this was repeated ten minutes later. Basically more candy was taken in 20 minutes than in the previous (supervised) two hours.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool experiment, and different than the one I ran at my house: I didn't hand out any candy.

It was a fascist, totalitarian Halloween here at my pad.

Anonymous said...

A Snickers is haunting Europe.

Anonymous said...

Communism could still work, if you first slaughtered all of the bad people.

Anonymous said...

Well, duh!
We're talking about kids and an unsupervised candy bowl. What did you expect??? Didn't you try to pull something when you were that age and you were pretty sure you would not get caught?
The connection to communism is only tangential. Under communism (and other kleptocratic govts - see also Africa), the thugs in charge steal everything they can too, but then they shoot the others for being unpatriotic. I doubt there were any murders over the candy last night.

Anonymous said...

Did you ever buy something for your kids even though they provided no goods or labor in return? Well, have you, COMRADE?

Anonymous said...

So, when Mommy and Daddy gave me dinner every night, that was communism...? I love communism!

Anonymous said...

Your family's dishwasher was the machinery of the state! Rise up, youngster! You have nothing to lose but your plates!

Anonymous said...

"From each according to his ability and to each according to his need"

Just one of many utopian assumptions which makes commmunism a failure. The assumption here is that the kids will only take what candy they need, not what they want (what kid needs candy, anyway?). Posters like jl demonstrate that they don't know much about economic theory if they can't see how this example relates to communism, particularly to the idea of property rights. The candy was not 'stolen' from anybody, as it was provided by Eric to be distributed to everybody. Communism's fatal flaw is the assumption that people would voluntarily choose to take only what they need when they could just as easily take what they want. In other words, equitable distribution of goods will happen by itself. The fact that the first kid takes all the candy doesn't mean that he stole it from the next kid who only found an empty dish. Kind of explains why socialist systems require rationing of goods and services, and lines and waiting lists to get them. Witness Canada's so-called 'free' health care system.