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Comment by vlovich123 | Hacker News Reader

That is literally the only reason anyone has invested in outer space. Even scientific missions are done with a dual national defense purpose. Think of it like PR whitewashing of the military and geopolitical reasons that motivate funding.

Notice how the US space interest rapidly dried up with the death of the Soviet Union. I’m not sure if China really motivates the same thing because it’s an authoritarian semi-capitalist society - it’s the communist “people owning the means of production” that gets capitalists really worried.

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Not that I have a solution, but isn’t that kind of disappointing? Why don’t we just do it directly, rather than only as a side effect of needless conflicts?

Yea that’s why I said it’s not necessarily about gaining advantage. It shouldn’t be.

> it’s the communist “people owning the means of production” that gets capitalists really worried.

Everyone suffered under people owning the means of production, not just the capitalists.

People suffered under the totalitarian regime and corruption. The central planning was also a problem in terms of making sure that goods production could meet what people needed. China’s semi-capitalist system with the authoritarian government stepping in when the companies don’t cooperate is an attempt to adapt to retaining communism while letting go of central planning. And this system is acceptable by western capitalists. This is a criticism of the West and its adherence to capitalism rather than liberal ideas, not an endorsement of “communism”*

* most people use communism as short hand for central planning which IMHO was the major economic problem that caused economically slow growth and lack of goods. combined with the authoritarian repression that caused a different kind of suffering. But neither of those is required by a communist political movement.

There have been 20,000 voluntary communes in the US. They all failed. Communism doesn't work, whether it is forcible or voluntary. No commune or centrally planned economy has ever managed to feed itself. Hence the suffering.

In Israel about 74/270 are still communal with the rest having privatized, but they’re still communal living arrangements.

It’s important to remember that most movements and experiments fail, same reason countries and companies also fail. A lot of them failed due to mismanagement, idealogical disputes, children not sticking around (ie no new members) etc. building sustainable communities is hard and not a unique problem for communes.

btw these are all the same reasons open source projects fail yet we wouldn’t call open source a failure despite it having all the same problems and looking more like communism than capitalism.

Also you’re overstating the failure rate. Amana Society, Inc is a cooperative structure that evolved from a commune. REI is also a cooperative corporate structure although not quite like a commune. So clearly there’s a path to evolve to that’s sustainable and does work and looks quite a bit different from capitalism. And there’s a difference between communal living and cooperative commercial entity which is good to separate.

The Israeli Kibbutzes communes are subsidized by the state, as they cannot make it on their own.

REI is not a commune at all. Neither is the Amana Society.

Communes have a 100% failure rate.

Not sure where this claim comes from. AFAIK Kibbutzes are financially independent from the state. Are you perhaps confusing the early days when they were getting set up vs the situation today? Or are you talking about the contentious settlements?

Twin Oaks Community in Virginia has been running for 60 years now and does income sharing between the residents.

The Bruderhof Communities have been running for a century now.

And my point regarding REI and Amana is not that they’re communes but that they’re non-capitalist organizations. If those models took any kind of serious hold at a government level, they’d be fought tooth and nail just like communes.

When the Kibbutzim lost their government subsidies, they became capitalists.

The Twin Oaks community has a population of 100 and annual turnover of 20%. That's pretty high. I suspect Twin Oaks' only success is being able to constantly recruit new members and get them to turn over their assets to the commune. Then they get disenchanted with communism and leave.

The Bruderhof communities average around 120 people. I couldn't find any statistics on how long people stay in them.

Congratulations, 2 communes out of 20,000 have survived! It still rounds to a 100% failure rate.

All the sources I’ve found say most became privatized. Can’t find a single source claiming all. Where are you getting this claim? The numbers I’ve found are that 10-15% are still communal.

Your twin oaks assessment is also off. New members don’t turn over their assets - you keep your preexisting assets. You are forbidden from spending those preexisting assets while a member. So I don’t think it’s fair to claim it’s sustained by constantly tricking new members into turning over assets.

So where are these 20,000 communes that are not privatized? Do you think that 100 people in a commune with massive turnover shows that communism works in a country of 350,000,000?

> So I don’t think it’s fair to claim it’s sustained by constantly tricking new members into turning over assets.

Thanks for the correction.

Small business ventures have a 65% failure rate after 10 years. Tech startups and mining are up at around 75%. I wouldn’t say that capitalist companies do all that much better.

NGOs and non-profits have only a 30% failure rate at 10 years supposedly.

So by the mark of survival rate you’re using we should be actually looking to NGOs and non-profits.

Obviously that would be silly and I’m not arguing that communism where everyone earns the same is a workable system at scale. It’s not for obvious reasons.

But the only options aren’t wild extremes. You could imagine a market economy with a strong social safety net. You could imagine strong unions and worker protections. You could imagine the responsibility of the company executives being the employees and customers over the shareholders. You could imagine that businesses over a certain size get government inspectors and ombudsman automatically assigned to check if there’s any malfeasance going on. There could be stricter laws around private market funds entering the political system. You could imagine national wealth funds for tech like Norway has for natural resources. Etc etc etc. our current capitalist system in the US is a choice and there’s no reason it needs to be set up the way it is from a sustainability perspective. Indeed, by every conceivable evidence the country is treating itself apart.

And bringing us back on topic, you could imagine scientists creating the priorities and funding allocations for science projects without having to justify it to the politicians and military industrial complex.

You're trying to compare 2 tiny communes to 36 million businesses.

You could envision all kinds of things. That doesn't mean they'll work.

The free market US has done much better environmentally than socialist countries.

Anyone wanting research funding is going to have to justify it, regardless of the system that is set up. Just imagine you set aside $1 billion and opened it up to anybody with a research idea and no vetting of their ideas. The money will disappear in a moment, and you'll get zero research results.

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