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Notes -
This is a real shower thought, but doesn’t the fact that the USSR was rival superpower to America prove without a doubt that communism actually does work? In fact, it works really well?
Thinking about it, it makes no sense to ever retort “well did it work for the USSR?” when someone brings up the prospect of communism. It worked so well that the communist USSR rivaled America and launched the first satellite. If it didn’t work well, the USSR could never have been a competitor to America. One could even argue that America cultural capital is what really led to American dominance later on, which is independent of political system and relies on America’s unique position as cultural crossroads, but that is beside the question.
The eternal question is 'compared to WHAT?'
Feudalism 'works.'
Slavery 'works.' We had it in place for eons of human history. Rome was built on slavery, and Rome outlasted the USSR in pure duration.
And perhaps the oldest 'economic' system of all: invading the neighboring tribe, killing them, and taking their shit 'works.' It still gets some use in the current age.
But if there's a system that is completely outperformed along all the metrics that actually matter, and the alternative system survives over the long term, 'working' is not a sufficiently convincing qualifier.
Capitalism (admitting that the definition is somewhat ambiguous) solves virtually any economic 'problem' you throw at it, and it does so more effectively than any other system we've devised or evolved so far. I don't think there's ever been ANY country that collapses due to being "Too capitalistic."
So I don't hold my breath than any of the current contenders are going to replace it.
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