I thought the USA outspending the USSR, forcing resource exhaustion is what broke communism.
No, the problem was that without a market to provide prices, it was impossible to sensibly allocate resources (capital, labour).
It was possibly exacerbated by military competition with the USA, but it was inevitable for sound economic reasons.
Communism is a bad idea in theory as well as in practise.
If you have unlimited renewable energy, self-driving electric vehicles, IBM's watson providing clinical expertise instead of doctors, etc, you could provide socialism without taking from people (because labor no longer has value compared to software and automation).
Leaving aside the aforementioned calculation problem, no, you still have to take from people. Watson, electric vehicles, etc. don't (yet!) build and run themselves autonomously.
It'd be nice to think that you'd have to take less, as time goes on. But that's not proved true either; expenditure on socialist programs has increased over time, even as technology works to decrease the actual cost of providing goods and services.
Again, that's to be expected. If you give people the ability to vote themselves other peoples money, by and large, they'll do it.
No, the problem was that without a market to provide prices, it was impossible to sensibly allocate resources (capital, labour).
It was possibly exacerbated by military competition with the USA, but it was inevitable for sound economic reasons.
Communism is a bad idea in theory as well as in practise.
If you have unlimited renewable energy, self-driving electric vehicles, IBM's watson providing clinical expertise instead of doctors, etc, you could provide socialism without taking from people (because labor no longer has value compared to software and automation).
Leaving aside the aforementioned calculation problem, no, you still have to take from people. Watson, electric vehicles, etc. don't (yet!) build and run themselves autonomously.
It'd be nice to think that you'd have to take less, as time goes on. But that's not proved true either; expenditure on socialist programs has increased over time, even as technology works to decrease the actual cost of providing goods and services.
Again, that's to be expected. If you give people the ability to vote themselves other peoples money, by and large, they'll do it.