@NC-Retired
Let's be careful. Socialism and communism and not the same thing.
They're both one and the same. Mott and Bailey.
It's always the same excuse. "Real Socialism has never been tried"! If only we have the right man to lead us into socialist utopia.
Always the same bullshit, each and every time, and it always end up in the death of a lot of people.
Socialism/Communism (same shit and if you try to separate them you're nothing but a communist or an apologist for them) don't work. Period.
Humans are not Ants, nor are they Bees. We're not mindless drones. We're not all the same.
Socialism/Communism is based on "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" idea.
While it sounds wonderful (and it's very seductive to the lazy), it's the biggest piece of destructive bullshit ever foisted on humanity.
The problem with socialism is that people don't expend more effort than they need to live at their minimum acceptable level. Maybe you'd be surprised to learn that over 80% of people would be happy to do nothing as long as their absolute minimum food and basic shelter needs are met.
Humans need status, that's their biggest driver in life. In a communist/socialist system there is no status to being more productive; you can only get status by being in the ruling class.
Why would anybody study for 13 or 14 years to become a brain surgeon if being a brain surgeon will confer them no particular status? Why would they study to be doctors? Why would they work 18 hours to build something if building that something will not benefit them in a substantial way? Would iPhones exist under socialism/communism? Luxury anything? Most of the daily little things you use in your daily life started out as luxuries for the rich and then trickled down to the common man. This advancement process doesn't exist under socialism.
The other big failing of socialism is that they treat everybody as though they are the same.
I can't find the article about it, but I've read in the past that in any business, 10% of employees produce 50% of the value, and within those 10%, 10% produce over 50%. So 1% of employees generally produce at least 25% of a company's value production. For example at a company like Apple, do you think the floor sales people at Apple stores have the same production value as the high IQ engineers building the chips that go into the iPhone? Apple has over 200,000 low skill employees, and I assure you that the group providing all the IP that drives Apple's multi-billion dollar business are less than 500 people in total. Apple has over 600,000 employees. Do you think they all have the same value?
If you apply this to a socialist country, then 10% of the population should be as productive as the other 90%. So you take almost everything from the top 10% (90% of their production) and give it to the other 90%. Does that somehow seem fair? And if you happen to be one of the productive 10% and find that other people benefit more from your productivity than you do, would you be productive for long? Would you be happy if the government had a 90% tax rate for you?
That's the problem with socialism/communism: It takes away the incentive from productive people.
Under capitalism, those 10% end up well off to say the least, and the ultra productive 1% end up wealthy.
You know the 1 percenters despised by socialists? Without them, there is no wealth that the socialists can steal to redistribute to themselves.
And don't fool yourself: Every socialism/communism pusher think of themselves as one of the ruling class in a communist system. They never think of themselves a part of the proletariat. Only the most brutal end up in ruling class, hence all the despotism and by result death of the useful idiots.