h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Smug or arrogant or warped?
In my experience it is the people who earn vast sums who knock off early. Wasn't it in banking that they had the 123 principle - borrow at 1% lend at 2% be on the golf course by 3 o'clock.
There are ways to keep people working other than offering them more money y'know.
Did you know that more than 95% of all the money in the world is not used to buy goods or services but is used to buy money!
We use a carrot for the rich and a stick for the poor. What other vegetables or fruit would be appropriate?

You're right about there being more ways to reward people than giving money, but money seems to always be the thing people want most of all... Long, boring meetings and complaints of my co-workers have shown me that!

Communism is a great idea on paper, but it never seems to work out so well in practice, as Rosencrantz pointed out! Anybody got any suggestions as to make it work?

By the way... Are you saying that a stick is a vegetable or a fruit?

As far as I know a stick is an insect.

Well I had always thought a stick was one of those brown twiggy things found on the ends of branches on trees

Now you're just gettings silly...

I think the only effective way to implement communism would be to start small... say one village, and work up from there, ironing out the bugs as they appeared...

It'll probably never happen.

Don't accuse me of being silly for talking about insects when you are clearly mentioning bugs in your message.

An interesting idea, but would it really work, having a different type of government in only one village... Perhaps with a slightly larger area? Say, a large city?

Is it my imagination, or does America (in general) have a fear of communism? And if so, why?

How about we change the 10 commandments?
Take the one about not coveting your neighbours whatnots and the one about not stealing your neighbour's whatnots and replace both with a simple "Thou shalt not own"

See solved

Then your neighbour could be using a carrot, stick, bug or insect and you know that as soon as he's finished with them you can have a go.

Most of our leaders are from the era of the Cold War, and as such still fear communism like the plague.

I think a stick is a mammal. Have you ever looked outside, seen one stick, then looked outside the next day, and seen roughly 10,342,934 sticks? They're most closely related to rabbits, as far as I can deduce.

I think most mom's like the idea of communism but they call it "share things nicely" Y'know like when three little kids are punching each others lights out over who should get to eat what bit of the cake/chocolate bar/worm.

We needed a mom to be in charge of the Soviet Union. Then instead of saying "I think you are plotting against me - to the saltmine, instantly!" or "You are a caplitalist lackey - you will be shot!" they would say, "Enough of that, share things nicely or you'll go to bed with no treats."

you mean proper tea is theft?

You are right about one thing!
You are damn sure getting shot at! No one like people who opress other peoples.
My question for you is like following:
- Who´s mom likes to be the mother of a communist state?
Bite that nerd.

PS i don't eat wo

the last word is supposed to say worms, i don't eat them!!

But kids do. Anyway who wants to put a mum in charge of a communist state. It was figurative. We had a mom in charge a Mrs Thatcher to be precise and look where that got us! Rats I'm arguing against myself!
Dam,dam,dam,dam,dam!

Well,about the communism.

Do is really possible to make to the people to think in something more than money?I think that is better to first make a little of conscience in the society and after try to give they a new society.In my opinion we have to start in the schools

Anyone ever read "The Dispossesed" by Isaac Asimov? It's about such a world, and it's conflict with a traditionally capitalist one... interesting reading... required heavy 'education' of the young to train out of them the concept of ownership (or prevent it from taking root, depending on your perceptive). Best bit - discussion of language - instead of "my mother", the phrase was "the woman who bore me", instead of "my handkerchief" the phrase was "the handkerchief I use". There was no money. Anyway, that was an anarchist/techno/communist world...

Let's see - of major communist countries, we've basically got China and USSR. It's also been tried in a bunch of third world places.

However, capitalist third world countries fall to pieces regularly too - this isn't a disease unique to communism. They also tend towards dictatorship. If the UK or the USA were to implement communism, it would be a lot more successful, I suspect.

USSR crumbled. China hasn't. To be fair to USSR, it did have the weight of the rest of the 'civilised' world doing their utmost to bring it down, by any means necessary - most of which were illegal. Kept going for a long time, though.

Rate of progress is less is communist countries, though. This is only a problem if the rest of the world is non-communist - and hence causes disparities. As long as everyone is on a level playing field, you don't notice the economic downside. Nobody complains that the economy would grow faster if we hadn't abolished slavery.

And yeah - a lot of people in the 70s/80s, esp. in USA, thought communists were the spawn of the devil. Films of the era are particularly amusing...