[quote=@ACPM] If that was such a good first impression for you I'll try the same topic the next time I go to a party... I'd already made an account but apart from that, pretty much. I'm a pedantic arsehole. [@Vilageidiotx] If we're being pure in our examples: Paris Commune 1871 Free Territories of Ukraine 1918-21 Catalonia 1936-39 Rojava 2012-present [/quote] Fair point. I answered with something of a dull knife there. The one thing that can be said about those societies, the same with Lenin and Mao in those early years, is that those were/are societies in crisis (all of them in that case being war). People cooperate fairly well in difficult conditions. I'd agree they prove actual communism is doable, but we've yet to see how it can be extended past a crisis and into everyday. Those were crushed, but Mao and Lenin were allowed to continue, and it didn't a decade for either of them to abandoned communism for state capitalism. [quote] I wouldn't disagree with your analysis but I think when most sane people mean free market economics they refer to the state not being involved in any subsidies/tarrifs rather than simply not enforcing private property which would lead to the destruction of the system. [/quote] Well yeh, the An-Cap dream is pretty poorly thought out too, but I'm even talking about a law-protected capitalism that doesn't have any subsidies or tariffs. Whereas the an-cap world would collapse and revert to right of conquest, a lawful economy that has no government involvement in the economy would see bubbles rising up all the time, popping, and descending into depressions. Capitalism is something like hitching you carriage to tigers I suppose; the less you try to control them the more they'll run amok, because you might want them to drive your [s]economy[/s] carriage, but they don't care about that, they want to run around [s]making quick money from[/s] mauling people. Takes some control by the driver to keep them mauling the least amount of people possible while still moving forward. [quote=@Keyguyperson] Your computer is from capitalism! [/quote] Your computer is from generations of government subsidies for the tech industry during the cold war. Woz and Gates didn't invent the computer, they took things that IBM had developed under government contract and made them publicly merchandizable. The internet pretty much worked out the same way - Pentagon invention that was first offered to universities, and then made public. So when you thank somebody for being able to post in this forum, don't thank capitalism; thank the United States Military.