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Comment by freemint | Hacker News Reader

Commies are really, really rare in Germany. I find it personally doubtful that so many are involved in that research area.

Also try to assume that they are acting in good faith.

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Commies are not rare in Germany, they just don't call themselved commies.

What's wrong with commies?

Taking something from someone else is wrong. Doing it for the good of others doesn't correct this theft. The degree that this happens in a society represents the level to which civilisation is broken and corrupted.

Open source examples aren't communism, there's no threat of force. It relies on decentralized collaboration and natural willingness to create and share. There's a solid legal framework in place that promotes use, improvement and extension with low cost to all parties.

So would you say all things funded through taxation are wrong ? Not trying to be snarky, just wondering if that's the logical conclusion to that axiom.

No. I would argue that less taxation would be needed if anti competition and regulatory structures were better enforced and supported.

well that's one way to see it. however, in germany, we don't want to have homeless and extremely poor people, so we solve it by taking money away from the rich and middle class. for some people it might be called communism, for germans and in general europeans however that's just the baseline they expect from a functioning state.

So I guess Nestle is communist? People who took land from natives are communists as well. In a way, every capitalist corp which takes resources from other countries is communist.

If you think communism = taking away things from people, I guess you don't know political ideologies that well :)

We have communist parties in Germany such as the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany or the German Communist Party. However they have no almost support. Communism is about the ownership of the means of production as in people are not allowed to own factories. You will find almost no German who supports that. Not even the Linke supports that and instead hides behind a nebulous "overcoming capitalism".

Are they that rare? 5 percent of the vote goes to Die Linke, 1 in 20 isn't exactly non existent.

Die Linke is not a communist party. German communists are called DKP (15K votes in the last election) and MLPD (23K votes).

There are certainly many communists in Die Linke, even if they are a "big tent" left party.

If you count trotskyists among communists there might be some, but nowhere near the majority

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