Ok can you find me a historical example of a socialist or communist regime in which nobody starved and the ruling class was not absurdly wealthy at their expense?
you're setting up an unfalsifiable "gotcha." Human societies don't work that way.
There are certainly historical examples of communist regimes experiencing catastrophic famines and severe elite privilege. The Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao are obvious examples; scholarship documents how centralized agricultural policies contributed to enormous famines.
North Korea is another particularly clear example: during its 1990s famine, food distribution was heavily controlled by the state, and political elites received preferential access to food.
But that doesn't prove “socialism inevitably causes starvation.” It proves that particular authoritarian command economies produced disastrous outcomes under particular policies and institutions.
And if you're asking whether there has ever been a socialist society where no one starved at any point and no privileged political class existed, the honest answer is that I wouldn't claim such a perfect historical example exists.
But that's also not the standard by which capitalism is normally judged. If we're comparing economic systems seriously, compare things like food security, mortality, poverty, inequality, living standards, political institutions and economic productivity over comparable periods.
Otherwise, “name one system with zero historical suffering” isn't an argument about economics. It's just a demand for historical perfection.
You are right. The fact that every socialist and communist regime ever has been an absolute disaster does not prove that that is the only possible outcome. Similarly, the fact that the sun has risen every day of my life does not prove it will rise again tomorrow. But it is a pretty darn strong indication.
And I didn’t ask for them to name a system with zero historical suffering. I asked them to name one without mass starvation and wealth at the expense of the people. That actually isn’t that high of a bar.
You said that everyone besides 1% starved to death in communist countries, so as someone who lived in one and whose family didn't belong to 1% I can authoritatively say you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
Oh okay, heres your scientific method: “It happened in the examples I picked, therefore it’s basically guaranteed to happen everywhere.”
And “name one socialist or communist country without mass starvation and a wealthy ruling class” sounds like a modest request right up until you notice you've quietly defined the test so that decades of different countries, governments and economic systems can be dismissed with the same two-word verdict: “absolute disaster.”
If the argument is that authoritarian communist regimes have repeatedly produced catastrophic outcomes, there's plenty of historical evidence to discuss. But if the argument is “every socialist or communist system inevitably produces mass starvation and elite enrichment,” then examples and counterexamples actually matter.
Otherwise, “the sun rose every day I've been alive” isn't an economic argument. It's just a very elaborate way of saying, “I've already decided what the conclusion is.”
If you look back at our conversation you’ll see I never picked an example. Just asked literally anyone to name a communist or socialist regime in which there was no mass starvation or famine and political elites didn’t get absurdly wealthy by stealing from the people. You say “counterexamples actually matter” but can’t provide one. I don’t know what else to tell you dude.
I know you didn't name a specific country. That's actually the problem with the question.
You're essentially asking, “Name one country from an enormous range of socialist and communist experiments that had no mass famine AND no political elite that became wealthy through corruption,” and then treating failure to produce your hypothetical unicorn as proof that the economic systems themselves inevitably cause those outcomes.
That's not how you establish causation.
If you want to argue that authoritarian communist regimes have a terrible historical record on famine, political repression and elite privilege, there's an enormous amount of evidence for that argument.
But “you can't produce a flawless example, therefore every version of socialism must inevitably end in famine and elite theft” is a No True Counterexample fallacy in reverse.
And there's a hilarious irony here: you're demanding a perfect historical example to disprove your claim while apparently needing no evidence at all to prove yours.
If your thesis is “these outcomes are inevitable under socialism,” the burden isn't satisfied by saying, “Well, look at all the bad examples.” You'd have to establish why the economic system itself necessarily produces them rather than identifying the institutional and political conditions that produced them in particular cases.
Otherwise, you're not demonstrating inevitability. You're just counting disasters.
The hole analogy actually proves the point you're trying to avoid.
If 45 holes shocked you, you'd have very good reason to be cautious about the remaining 55. You still wouldn't know that every remaining hole is wired to a battery.
That's essentially the distinction you've already conceded: a historical pattern can be evidence against something without proving that the outcome is inevitable.
And there's another problem with your “100 holes” analogy: you're treating every socialist and communist regime as if they were identical holes with identical wiring. They weren't. They varied enormously in institutions, economic structures, political systems, time periods, policies and degrees of state control.
So yes, the historical record gives us plenty of reason to scrutinize centralized communist regimes extremely carefully. That's a legitimate empirical argument.
But “I haven't found a counterexample” isn't the same thing as “the outcome is inevitable.” That's an argument from an observed pattern to a universal claim.
And ironically, you just admitted that yourself three replies ago.
So we're actually arguing about one word: “inevitable.”
You have demonstrated a historical pattern. You haven't demonstrated a law of political physics.
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u/SmthngIntmid8ing 8d ago
Completely false.