Socialism

1. An early-19th century fairy-tale that describes a society where government is able to mobilize various proportions of the economy to work as efficiently motivated by the mystical concept entitled the "public good" as they work in the real world motivated by the evolutionary principle of personal gain. In later versions, various merits and reprimands attempt to bridge the gap, but turn out to cost more than they help as they do not address the gap at the government level.
2. A form of feudalism where bureaucracies and/or cartels providing certain services deemed "essential" receive economic favoritism rather than aristocrats or clergy, reinforced by the faith that they are "irreplaceable”.
3. A form of collectivism where government decides what is to be collectively produced/ distributed. Can occur in liberal democracy, in which case the ineffectiveness of motivation leads to shortages, and the takeover of too many markets can produce complete economic collapse, which is occurring in most of the Western world. Can occur in brutal totalitarianism, in which the shortages are temporarily offset by finding a scapegoat demographic stigmatized as not carrying its weight and forced into slave labor to produce but not consume. Examples are Eugenic Socialism in which scapegoats are chosen based on ethnicity (i.e. Hitler's Germany) and Class Socialism in which they are accused of Capitalist tendencies for opposition to the system (i.e. Stalin's USSR, Mao's China).

Money isn't worth anything because everyone is paid the same no matter what they do and whether or not they work at all. Nothing is produced so there is nothing to buy. Why work?
Because you have faith in Socialism.

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Communism

1. A mid-19th century fairy-tale by author Karl Marx that builds on the earlier fairy-tale of Socialism, and describes a society in which industries are motivated as effectively by the mystical concept entitled the "public good" as they are in the real world by the evolutionary principle of personal gain with no oversight to define the "public good" and no need for merits or reprimands.

2. An extreme form of collectivism in which everything is produced and distributed collectively and no attention is given to the need to decide what should be produced and in what quantities in any effective way, much less to the need to motivate anyone to actually produce it.

None. Communism does not exist. It is impossible. There are no historical examples. "Communist" countries like the USSR and China operate a system of brutal totalitarian Socialism, and openly admit that they "operate a Socialist system that will according to them eventually evolve into Communism". Communes and co-operatives that work within larger systems are NOT examples - these are private companies that are owned by their employees. They have a larger market to respond to in order to know what to produce, are profit-based, and have a system for firing free-loaders.

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Che Guevara

The Osama Bin Laden of the Cold War:

- Born into a rich family in a country economically colonized by the West.
- Disillusioned with the system that made his family - and consequently him, - wealthy; for somewhat legitimate reasons.
- Ostracized by his family for his opposition to this system.
- Turned to a mind-numbing and violent ideology of radical opposition to the system in place, popular with many others at the time due to legitimate flaws and a lack of opportunities for civil opposition, but far more flawed in its own nature.
- Funded by institutionalized proponents of the radical opposition ideology to "spread it," although not always entirely in-line with their specific principles.
- Ran around in the backwoods of desolate countries with poor and uneducated populations, trying to motivate them to join his cause and oppose the system; and mostly succeeding only in de-stabilizing said countries as the people there were wary of both.
- Eventually killed by the military of one such country who were tipped off by the local population that was annoyed with him running around in their backyards. (This has not YET happened to Bin Laden, unfortunately.)

Next time you see someone wearing a "Che Guevara" shirt, imagine how you'd feel in 30 years if someone wore an "Osama Bin Laden" shirt.

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