@Vree  
Maybe it’s because I’m tired but I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.

@BigMax  
You got your order of events wrong there.  
Every single attempt to create a socialist heaven ended up in capitalist democracy.
 
(eh, what China and N. Korea?)
 
We wanted to try the joys of consumerism for a change and get to enjoy the fruits of our labour ourselves (instead of giving it away to ensure the equality of some guy we didn’t even know or care about).
 
Do not delude yourself into thinking we chose it over socialism for some noble reason. It was because WE, the strong and able, wanted to live better.
 
No, seriously, do not talk about things you do not know anything about. It is comfortable to think you know better, but it may lead to disappointment.

@Vree  
That sill doesn’t change the fact that many tried, all failed.  
Every single attempt to create a socialist heaven ended up in a dictatorship.  
Yeah, it seems you can’t do no good for the people if you don’t shove it down the throat by force.

@Justy  
The part of the story that’s missing there is in the last sentence. “must be workers or farmers only and they must only have finished grade school”
 
During the socialist era, the working classes got privilieged when it came to education and jobs because it was believed that they were unjustly ignored and kept down before (which did had a bit of truth to it and also the core of the whole Leninist/Marxist movement). My grandfather was born into a peasant family but he got a chance to go to high school and to university and to eventually became the headmaster of a school (and a good one). Meanwhile, the upper classes had a lot of their wealth taken and redistributed, but often kept some of their privilieges (some of their wealth but mostly their connections and education) and were made to do the same kind of work. This is how equality and equal opportunity were intended to be enforced.
 
Now you can debate this solution, but it did give a lot of unluckier families opportunities undreamt of at the time.
 
Dictatorships where only those close to the “party” could get anything are a different matter. (Those did exist, though most were overthrown and replaced by socialist systems by the middle of the 20th century.)
 
Do not confuse those. It also doesn’t pay to act smart but not actually know what triggered those political systems, or what they did or did not do. (Many had many many positive goals and effects too, not just flaws, difficult that may be for some to admit.)

My prediction is that AJ will decide she agrees with what the CMC have done and go along with it, because of the whole “She doesn’t feel special” gimmick the comic has been hyping.

Sovietism wasn’t communism. It was tsarism with painted red.

@BigMax
 
It was one of the reasons centralized planning failed so spectacularly.

@Justy  
Yeah, exactly.  
Assigning labor was just another way to control people.  
Of course, that could never be anything good for the economy of the society. A farmer becoming a magistrate? Spare me.

@nyxabuse
 
Except it was. There are piles of evidence from my country alone. Highly qualified but politically unreliable people were only able to get jobs that involved unqualified manual labor. Whereas people who had barely made it through grade school, but had the right background and attitude, used to run factories, teach, work as foremen, officers etc.
 
Case in point:  
(A memo summoning people who, I quote, “would be interested in working as a judge, a professor, a military officer or a national security officer, the applicants must be workers or farmers only and they must only have finished grade school.”)
 

@mathprofbrony  
“Stupidism”?  
No, really, the system can never work and only a kid could think of something like that.  
But I appreciate the principle: those cutie marks look more like a sentence than the sign of some knack.
 
But the most important part is that you should choose what you want to do, not get assigned by some authority. That’s what communism in real life often did, that’s why the comparisons.

Um, guys. This isn’t any sort of -ism. No system in its right mind would assign workers to different jobs every day with a literal chance draw. I think that’s kind of the point of the comic, you know?

By the way, Pea, this is turning out as a veeery enjoyable comic.  
Keep it up!

@Background Pony #41B2  
Dude, you just described Communism.

No, this is neo-liberalism. No structure and everybody but the top dogs are responsible to make society works. You are not assigned a stable function and must accomplish very unrelated new jobs for a very cheap wage, yet you gotta be as competent as if you were very experienced in each. It only free our elite from leading competently: neo-liberalism can’t failed, it can only be failed by the stupid ingrate serfs who don’t get the great freedom and flexibility their very meriting job-creators bestowed upon them. Neo-liberalism is nothing but a new form of feudalism pretending to be a new form of liberalism. It should be known as neo-feudalism, really.

@Justy  
Man there were plenty of problems with Communism-as-practiced, but I don’t think that was one of them, in general.

@MrThumbsup  
>That said, they CMC are literally taking experts for one job, and shoving them elsewhere t do something they are unfamiliar with while someone else does their normal job.
 
So it’s basically communism.  
Or what used to pass for it before ’89.

Another important topic of this comic is WTH kind of skill has to do with flowers on fire.

This system seems specifically tailored to those who are unsatisfied or lacking in a Cutie Mark, as it would be, considering who runs it. That said, they CMC are literally taking experts for one job, and shoving them elsewhere t do something they are unfamiliar with while someone else does their normal job.
 
“Okay, Frank the Plumber, let’s get you started on directing traffic! Bob the Chef, you’ve got a lot of plumbing to do!”

@PonyPon  
Well, it IS the sort of thing the CMCs would come up with.

wait, isn’t this the system they used in petopia in family guy?

For some reason this triggered my OCD into overload and I don’t know why?

This a terrible system.