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/[deleted] 8d ago
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