[staytrue]

Small scale communism has always been possible. Get a small group together for some meeting on something and everyone is treated as equals. You are usually willing to share with someone you can look in the eye and get an idea of his/her character. Large scale communism has always failed. Who is willing to share with the drug user living in a different state, 400 miles away.

[staytrue]

Black conservative columnist Thomas Sowell also wrote a piece about small scale communism thriving, but always failing at a large scale.

My best example is suppose a shoemaker decides he wants more money so he works twice as hard and makes twice as many shoes. That works. But if every shoemaker decides the same, there will be too many shoes, and everyone will go bankrupt. Scale matters. Microeconomics is not the same as Macroeconomics. Communism fails at large scales.

[walden]

Very, very strange perspective. Not saying you're wrong, just that I've never thought about it before. ;)

[viaveritasvita]

At the Oak Lane Colony in South Dakota, Robert Wipf is the assistant swine manager.

Now there's a hell of a job title. I'm sure the DNC has an opening for assistant swine manager!

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[Graybeard58]

"rebuilt it in about three days. They are, apparently, not union workers"

Interesting, too bad you couldn't resist the gratuitous shot at unions though.

[Graybeard58]

"rebuilt it in about three days. They are, apparently, not union workers"

Interesting, too bad you couldn't resist the gratuitous shot at unions though.

[Taiwan Bocks]

Communists have many victories, damn them.

It's like when the PLO in 1974 declared the "phases" strategy to wipe out Israel.

Commies have changed their names whenever anybodies sensitivities were irritated.

Dialectic and marginalizing morality are settled for now, knowing that piece by piece the world will fall to them.

Basturds.

[Lurker]

Washington, DC.

L

[Held_to_Ransom]

WHy not point out that the successful American communes predominantly religious based, and that Communism eschews Christianity as well as Judasm.

This of course raises the logical question as to whether a Christian nation would be better off than a atheist one, and the answer from American history is absolutely yes. We don't, of course, count the old south as Christian. They felt they were, but the dependence of 5 million of 4 million slaves doesn't set a particularly good Christian example.

[Held_to_Ransom]

The Amish don't believe in health insurance but doctors love them because they always pay in cash. How do they do this when they have a family income of about $12,000?

This is hard to peg. The IRS has trouble accurately accounting for barter arrangements when both parties to the barter don't report it. For instance, I know one Amish family that builds and installs 40,000 kitchens. I doubt they only make 12,000 a year at it, particularly as they are alwasy busy, and as they run a furniture store and factory to help cover the overhead...

[Joe Hadenuf]

But bring up illegal immigration and there's always some pinhead who says something like, "But who's going to pick the crops. You'll pay five bucks for a head of lettuce?".

Or, they will immediately scream, "racist".

[JerseyHighlander]

So we pass a law allowing the sale of this land as farm land under covenant agreement such so that no motorized vehicles can be used. Ever see a Amish farm, they have Deere tractors, but the non-Amish farm hands operate and repair them.

Your piece has very disturbing racialist undertones. Mostly by a poor choice of words, using the word "spawn" to describe family growth, etc.

You are, and most Americans are, confused between the ideologies of Communitarianism and Communism. Communitarianism comes from the groups you described, and Quakers, Shakers, and more recently Catholic Liberacion clergy in South America. Many of those illegal aliens you (and many, including myself to some degree) fret over, were raised in Mexico and Gautemala by Liberacion ideology, which is the leader in the Communitarian ideology as far as increasing numbers of believers/followers. As far as opening up the national lands, I'm all for it, but the East Asians gevernments might not wnt anyone to disturb their Federal reserve debt collateral.

[Fledermaus]

But these Amish communities trade, do integrate with modern society, pay taxes, own private property and are very religious.

Almost everything communism wasn't, especially the religious and moral aspect.