@DasHiveMind  
Not to imply that China is a capitalistic utopia or that communistic influences are not present in the country’s politics, only that hardline communism eventually degrades and is unsustainable long term – just like a completely hardline unregulated capitalistic model would be.
 
Even so, is the system really any better if it is just government controlled? Because that’s what it all boils down to: if communism is not necessarily a dystopian model, is communism really better than the alternative and if so, why? First world economic model already has some governmental regulation in place and hardly resembles the old model in which Marx based his views upon. There used to be no such concept as the middle class when Marx was alive and his economic theories, while revolutionary and insightful for its time, are dated and unapplicable in anything but the very extremes such as modern cartels.

@Background Pony #CF87
 
@Background Pony #6539  
It should be noted that the Government in China owns all the land (buildings can be owned by the people), alongside there being no private banks, all are once again, owned by the government, domestic media is as well.
 
Also, alongside all localaly government workers within cities and provinces, there are Communist government desk jockies as well sent down from up higher on the chain.
 
The workings of Communism are still in China, Marxism doesn’t dominate the government, but you’d be hard pressed to deny the still existing Communisitic laws/whatever you wanna call the above listed things.

@DasHiveMind  
Naming your bacon “vegetarian” does not make it vegetarian. Naming a party “communist” does not make it communist.
 
Short story from Norman Davies: (google translated with manual corrections)  
“In the ‘80s I travelled to Poland with a group of students from California and the Americans were adequately prepared by the department of political sciences - that they were going to the Soviet type of country, etc. Each student had to write a short essay about the visit and one of the students wanted to prepare the text about the Communist Party and wanted to do some talks with the communists in Poland. After a week she comes to me and says - Mrs. Professor, I can not find any communist, there aren’t any! She went to the Party House, introduced herself, that she’s an American, and he wanted to talk with the Communists. They didn’t want to speak with her (laughs)! It took quite a long time, she could not find anyone, in the end we managed to arrange a meeting with a member of the Politburo, it was probably Ciosek, but I’m not sure. Of course, they paid him in dollars, it was a good opportunity for him, he came and talked with them. And the girl in the end simply could not resist and asked - Mr. Secretary, are you a communist, or not? And he was completely surprised. Never in his life has he heard such a question. After a minute of silence he answered: Ma’am, I’m a pragmatist. So, for a member of the Political Bureau it was unthinkable to say - I’m a communist. It says a lot.”

@DasHiveMind  
There has never been a 100% pure economically liberalist or socialist state in history and there never will be. The one party system prevents the name being changed, but the party is communist only by name, I can assure you.

@Background Pony #CF87  
The Communist Party is in charge of China, just because they don’t fit your stereotype of being a extreme authoritarian totalitarian Communist state does not make them not Communist.

@DasHiveMind  
They have free trade => not communism. Sorry. In communism people were executed for trading e.g. foreign currencies. Private entrepreneurs were enemies of the state.

@Some Jerk  
Search Captain Picard, it gives you slightly more Picard pics…but still less the Janeway.
 
Also Jonathan Archer is worst captain for committing Genocide. :V

@SFSLovenought  
this, all of this!

I think we’re all missing the big picture here.
 
And that is Janeway has 12 images and Picard has ONLY THIS ONE. Why does worst captain beat best captain?

@martianmister  
Tell that to Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of china. :v

@Background Pony #1770  
China is hardly communist anymore.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH  
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH  
THANK YOU!  
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

op is trying to engage shit number one

@dsagent  
Well one of the major tenets of Communism is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” so the whole comparison is flawed in the first place. There were no individual talents in this town that could have benefited the greater good.

Well, the Enterprise hasn’t been that communistic.
 
If they were, they would have handled that Son’a/Ba’ku situation a lot differently.

@martianmister  
China has free enterprise as well.

When the borg showed up the whole point of the episode was that individuality was something worth dying for.
 
 
OP is a bp so I am not even surprised.

@Background Pony Number 17  
Communism is supposedly shared wealth among equal people. It works in some sci-fi stories, but as I said, human nature won’t let it happen and then we end up with crap like russia/ussr, or north korea.

Reminds me of the DS9 episode where Sisko defends the importance of remaining integrated and accepting one another’s differences against an extremist Bajoran preacher who insists certain philosophies cannot coexist without major conflict and strife.
 
“These people know that we are neither the enemy nor the devil. We don’t always agree, we have some damn good fights in fact. But we always come away from them with a little more understanding and appreciation of each other.”
 
Essentially both episodes’ lessons in a nutshell

@Background Pony Number 17  
No, there is identifiable theory in there as a common thread. That’s literally the No True Scotsman argument/logical fallacy I was talking about.

@TheDeinonychus  
No. No it isn’t.

@Background Pony #CF87  
@Background Pony #1770  
@stargrazer  
@Some Jerk  
@MetaKnight145  
@Background Pony #9111  
@DasHiveMind  
@Background Pony #6539  
@cdcdrr
 
There’s no such thing as “real Communism” or “true Communism”. Every Communist movement made their own shit up and declared it to the the real deal.

@Some Jerk  
The Red Khmer are themselves an offshoot of Maoism, which had contained a lot of unnecessary elements that became enforced policy even as it was proven they were neither needed nor helpful. The split between the Soviet Union and China was in part over these ideological differences, and the results don’t lie; the Soviet Union remained powerful and innovative for years, only falling into a slump because of Brezhnev’s inaction and Gorbachov giving away too many liberties for his own security. When Mao croaked and Deng Xiaoping worked his way into power, he threw out all the disasterous elements of Maoism and welcomed American investment, securing wealth for the citizens and power for the People’s Republic. But in the economic zones at least, communism is so dilluted that the ruling party’s name is the only reminder of it. The undemocratic, totalitarian government, once an unfortunate byproduct of communism’s vague standpoints on actual legislative and executive power, is now a self-perpetuating political machine that limits freedom so long as its own power remains unthreatened.
 
The ideological Maoists of the Red Khmer failed because they were more fanatical, and because Pol Pot may have been unopposed as leader whereas Mao could not get rid of Deng Xiaoping before he died himself. Being allowed to carry out their agenda within the country resulted in the sort of bloodbath any sort of fanaticism leads to. Maoist China did not care, as long as they could tilt their noses at the USSR and tell them their communism was spreading faster than theirs. While the Vietnamese didn’t go into Cambodia for entirely selfless reasons, they were Soviet-leaning and didn’t much care for the Chinese, who had been screwing them over on multiple accounts while they were fighting the Americans. China invaded Vietnam after the Vietnamese drove the Red Khmer from power mostly because their ideology was threatened by Soviet communism.  
Appallingly, the United States actually backed the Red Khmer to a degree in their fight against the Vietnamese. Perhaps an unsavoury offshoot of Nixon’s drive to move a wedge between the two premier communist powers, or just a case of sore losership. Fortunately the Vietnamese aren’t harboring too much of a grudge over all the nastiness, since they only dealt with America as an enemy for over one decade, but had to live in China’s shadow much longer. And America seems to realize the two countries can help eachother now against China’s growing influence on the world stage.
 
So, to conclude, Maoism is bad and the suppression of talent and intellectuals by making every civilian a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-nothing seems about the only similarity between Equal Town and Maoist communism.

The problem with most communist countries is that they came about by violent revolt, which tends to bring out the worst ideological extremists to charge, which also usually wrecks the country some what as well, rather then by a more stable shift of power which would not only result in less damage to the nation, but more likely a more level headed leader who doesn’t view their ideology as the only thing that matters in the entire world taking charge.