JazzAnnNonMouse
True communism has never actually been tried though - it's always been corrupt in some way as some people are more equal than others.
That is why 'true' communism can't succeed. It's a perfect system except when it's applied to the real world, which makes it a fricking disaster which kills millions.
I wasn't really thinking about it in a communist way actually although that's ideologically what I'd like.
If someone wrote "I'd think the Nazis were great" everyone would be furious, but for some bizarre reason it's 'acceptable' to some people to say that they'd like to live under a communist system. Why is that? What is it about brutal, totalitarian, oppressive murdering communism that so appeals to you?
^You could still decorate how you want, put your own kitchen in etc and aspire to have nicer stuff If that's what you want...
Just thinking about over crowding, homelessness etc.^
What about then if you could own property and people could rent out their properties but rent charge was was the same as ha/council rent? Everyone's rent is the same based on space. So a 2 bed house is always £ PCM so everyone's in a fair rent situation?
Imagine two houses, one close to a main line station, one not. The main line station allows easy access to the nearest major city and lots of jobs.
The value of these two houses is different because of their location, so why should the rents be identical? House A has easy access to jobs, house B doesn't.
The thing that could allow it to work is that everyone would be in the same boat including the government.
So if things were shit for you then they'd be shit for them too and maybe things would improve.
If things were good for those in power then it would mean things would be good for everyone as no one is above anyone else in that respect at least.
But that's not how it works in the real world. In the real world, government votes itself privileges that the rest of us can only dream of.
Look, when you look back in history, what do you see? You see power clawed away from the King and the aristocracy, and who is it clawed away by? Historically, wealthy merchants, and a burgeoning, property-owning middle class who gradually come in to power. And it's that independence of wealth, and the property that goes with it, which is a bastion against the tyranny of a dictatorship.
Yet you're proposing that we strip everyone of their property, and by extension their power and their ability to challenge a dictator.
Your solution to inequality is to make everyone equally unequal, except for the politicians and the civil servants who allocate housing.
Can you imagine the scale of the bribes that those civil servants who allocate housing will receive? They'll allocate themselves the best housing, take bribes from people for the second best and everyone who can't buy privilege will suffer.
Communism doesn't work. It never works. It doesn't work because it simply doesn't take account of basic human drives which have been programmed in to us for hundreds of thousands of years. The only way it can possibly work is in a system of unlimited resources, but as a tool for allocating scarce resources it is a disaster.
Dawndonna
I find the knee jerk reactions to this question a little strange.
I find your classification of these reactions as 'knee jerk' a little strange. They are the healthy reaction of people opposed to an evil totalitarian dictatorship.
It does not necessarily mean communism.
That's exactly what it means.
People a very frightened of thinking in a slightly different way.
"Slightly different"?? Government controlling all land and housing is 'slightly different' to what we have now?
Just because all housing would be government owned, doesn't mean state sanctioned living. That's a logical fallacy presuming that one thing would automatically lead to another.
Well perhaps you'd like to give us some examples of a country where the government owns all land and property, and it isn't an oppressive, brutal dictatorship? I can't think of any.