: At any rate, I will be the first to acknoledge there has never been a working socialism, maybe because one can't exist, but I will put skepticsism aside for now. As know the device sitting in front of you required a lot of capital and reasources to make. In a utopian socialism where means of production are owned by "the people" and wealth is somehow distrubuted without currency or government, why would anyone attempt to make such things as computers? Development would go on for years before anything practical would be made. *Voice of Dr. Science -- he knows more than you do* "We are SO OMNISCIENT that we KNOW FOR SURE that a perfect society, such as has NEVER EXISTED before on this Earth, and which may never in fact exist at all throughout the span of time, wouldn't invent anything. How do we know? Well, um, er, uh, we have a time machine -- and a direct line to God. So let's not bother trying to bring such a society into being."
On a more serious note: the process of invention requires imagination, and only the pressures of capitalism, and not human brainpower, will bring that imagination into being? I doubt it. In a world where we were free from the threat of starvation, we would be dull and lazy? No, it's the fact that we ignore the threats of starvation that we aren't dull and lazy.
People are generally more creative, in fact, when the pressures of competition are lifted. Look at ice skaters, for instance, who dance more beautifully in cooperative exhibitions, and who mess up less often, than they do when they are told to compete for Olympic medals. And as for continued production? It is the security of corporate capital, not the pressure of bankruptcy, that keeps it going.
