I wonder what the original purpose of this thread might have been 

u sure about that? :mastermind: :emotes that are on discord but not the forum:

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Attachment to material things under socialism takes on a different form. Obviously there is a great emphasis on the equal distribution of real-world things--food, housing, medical care, etc--and, contrary to popular myth, there's nothing necessarily spartan or austere about socialism, since a majority of socialist projects have set a rich cultural and social life for the people as a goal and achieved such in many ways. I think the difference here that is relevant for the discussion is that these are no longer personal possessions--food and housing are simply things you get for being part of a society, and no longer need to be scrounged for or worried over. And while equal proliferation of material goods is still part of society's economic lifeblood, there's less of an emphasis on luxury and waste (since accelerating the rate of profit naturally demands the perpetual expansion of wasteful goods, whereas creating durable goods and encouraging thrift helps achieve a point of "market saturation" that is actually desirable under socialism.)

This is a really interesting point, and I think super important, because there is such a vision (at least from what I have seen and people I have talked to) of socialist societies having problems with resource allocation. For example, I took a microeconomics class this spring--interestingly from a professor who is increasingly disillusioned with the current capitalist system, although he has had a healthy distrust of capitalism for a while, from what I can tell--and he mentioned in one lecture the problems that the Soviet Union under Stalin encountered with food distribution. Namely that while food was cheap, it was so scarce that there were incredibly long lines to get it, and most people didn't get enough. I haven't studied this situation much, but it makes sense from what I do know about the production and distribution of goods.

However, considering Stalin's priorities, I think this may be due to a misallocation of resources--not enough spent on provide quality of life, and too much on war and Stalin's purges, etc. This is already similar to the problem facing capitalism: resources are allocated not by what is needed to provide the best quality of life to the most people (or to use Brand's words, minimizing suffering), but to increase the wealth of the elites.

So this brings up another problem. Someone has to be in charge, or at least a group of people. There's no way an entire populace can really govern themselves when they are in such large groups. A system of government like the United States' makes sense to me for this reason, at least as far as electing legislators goes. But I think even if we didn't have issues like gerrymandering, corporate donors, etc. we would still face the issue of individuals being fallible. People like to be comfortable, and when they find a way to help themselves, they will often take advantage of it. I don't mean to say that everyone will fall victim to this, but it happens often enough to seem like an unavoidable occurrence to some extent. And the individuals who do take this advantage seem to be quite capable of manipulating others into helping them without realizing that they are doing themselves a disservice. So I'm not sure how there could be a system in which socialism is truly effective at minimizing suffering.

PS This is a good thread, thanks for posting it!

Yeah I never posted anything but if that happens I am definitely in. This program has the significant advantage of... not requiring a Wii U.

I pretty much agree with what people have said so far. Strike and Exalted would be my first choices, in that order.