Capitalism vs. Communism, part 2

(Continued from Capitalism vs. Communism, part 1, picture found on The Public Choice Capitalist)

Last week, I began this discussion by talking about how both communist and capitalist societies deal with resource scarcity.  Today, I want to talk about power: specifically, who holds it?  In communist societies, the ideal is that nobody holds the power.  Everyone does their job, and provides the fruits of their labor willingly to whoever needs it.  Likewise, everyone takes whatever they need from whoever produces it.  However, on a scale larger than a small town, this becomes very difficult: how to you organize the transportation of food from the country to the city, for instance?  How do you determine how much of every resource is needed to keep everyone supplied with their necessities?  How do you deal with thieves, murderers, or people who refuse to give their product or service to one or more individuals?  Enter the government: a body of officials whose job it is to organize the efforts of the populace into a cohesive, functioning machine.

As we have seen in pretty much every communist society to date, the government holds a great deal of power.  It controls the production and distribution of products.  It makes and enforces the laws.  It handles foreign relations.  It handles education.  What doesn't it do?  This is starting to sound like a bad infomercial: buy yours today!  Question is, does the government need to handle these things?  I would argue that it does: at least, a central organizing body is necessary for production and distribution.  A central organizing body is necessary for law and order.  A central organizing body is necessary for education, and ensuring that all necessary jobs are filled (tying into production and distribution).  Who better than the government?

Capitalism vs. Communism, part 1

The range of possible things I could say on this topic is nigh endless, and both your time and mine is valuable.  So, I will begin at the beginning, and end at a reasonable place, and save whatever remainder for another day.

At the fundamental core of this debate is the question of human nature.  How do we behave?  How dependent is our behavior upon our upbringing or our genetics?  These are, admittedly, questions to which I do not have the answer.  Well, noboby does: if someone knew the answer to the nature/nurture debate, a substantial number of psychologists would be out of a job.  However, I have an idea of what the answer might be, at least for the purposes of this debate.

I think that people are greedy by nature.  This is seen in children, who need to be taught not to snatch, to share, that all they see is not theirs...very basic stuff.  If we look at other primate societies, there is a well established pecking order in which the top monkey has first pick of whatever there is to be picked.  From a genetics perspective, this makes sense: our "prime directive" so to speak is to pass on our DNA.  Long story short, this leads to a slew of competitive behaviors even in fundamentally cooperative societies.  Ok, you don't buy the genetics argument: imagine a company has one position and one hundred people applying for it.  Imagine a ballet troupe has one position and one hundred people vying for it.  Imagine an auction house has one (particular) painting and one hundred people bidding on it.  I could go on.  The point is, where ever there is scarcity there will be competition.  And there will always be scarcity.