The economy would be a lot better under a regulated capitalism than communism; as true communism can never work as it requires:
A). Humanity to get away from it's delusional greed and other inherently self-centered parts of our nature. Thus, it is against human nature and would either require complete authoritarian rule, of which, is against Marxist ideals and would still lead to an upper-class.
B). A society full of makers in an economic system that creates takers. Why get a job when I can let those idiots pay for my money with redistribution?
C). Forced instillation of Communism into the youth by indoctrination and assimilation, of which assimilation cannot work without consequence. Indoctrination can deal with point A, but it will never be true Communism because it would require authoritarian rule, of which is again, against a the stateless and classless society Communism wants.
While yes, the wealth does go to who gets to the resources first, they will need people to dig it out of the ground and they will do it for money. Seeing as mining is a dangerous job, I can see the miners getting a hefty pay. However, Democratic Socialism could work if you were hinting to Socialism, but if our society becomes that of mainly takers, we could see a fall in stability. I could see your point if you want Democratic Socialism, however.
I never said that the system should be communism, I only said that certain natural resources be publicly owned. They're not the same thing.
What's wrong about having certain natural resources as a state-run industry? Norway does it for their oil, and they can fund a lot of their education as well as other government programs. And besides, if we have a democratic system, then these state-run industries will be under democratic oversight. The business can be audited at any time by a governmental agency, the profits of the business have to be regularly reported for every budget (since the profits help fund the state in a state-run industry), the pay of the workers and managers can be regulated and negotiated by a democratically elected body (and so you avoid excessive executive compensation), and since they're at arm's length from the government, it'll be harder for them to get away with disregarding environmental protection regulations. That sounds like a good system to me.
And it's not even like there should be no competition in those resource industries at all - far from it. We can allow competition to keep such a large company on its toes. Furthermore, shares of the business can be freely sold as long as the government has the majority stake. These are all measures to allow the natural resources of the land to benefit the public in an efficient way.
I just displayed how welfare, which is part of socialism makes poverty worse!
Exactly how do those links display how welfare makes poverty worse? How do you rule out the case that poverty has been steadily becoming more severe in these past decades, and would have been even worse if not for those welfare programs? It's said all too often and I shouldn't be repeating this, but correlation does not equal causation.
Not wanting your money stolen by the government is not greed. So if I rob your house, and you try to stop me, you are the greedy one?
You get a lot out of taxation. For one, the government enforces law, security, and contracts. Have fun living in a state where people can rip you off whenever they like, where your liberties are infringed with no authority to petition to, where roads are paved with your own blood and sweat, where unregulated food and drink poisons you and unregulated products hurt you, and so on and so forth. You criticize people who want stuff for free, so I hope you recognize that it would be very difficult to obtain those benefits and others still if the government stopped "stealing" from you.
Okay just speaking broadly now: I don't know if it's just an American thing, but y'all need to stop getting your bonnets rustled whenever the slightest suggestion of collective ownership or redistribution is mentioned. It's like you're all still in the Cold War with Domino Theory, and instead of fearing the fall of Vietnam to communism you think that one socialist policy is going take us all the way to Stalin mode. We do not have to go Chicken Little at the mere consideration of socialism.
So let's consider each policy on whether it's beneficial to society or not, instead of just saying "oh it's freedom let's take that, that's always good" or "oh that's socialism we can't have that, that's always bad". If we define policies as good or bad just because of the political label we give them, that's cooking up a recipe for disaster.
