I am against democracy, democracy is just a stepping stone to communism.  That's what Lenin was saying there.

Contrary to popular belief, Greece was not a democracy.  The rules of Greek democracy resulted in a republic.

The people vote in a republic, too.

If the CIA has need of something Amazon can do for them, then the CIA will spend a part of their budget on that effort.  Note that would not be the CIA, that would be the NSA.  Like Germany's Abwher, the CIA is the public face of American intelligence who's primary responsibility is to take the blame for the other agencies that actually do almost all of the field work.  That is the CIA spending their own budget in the way they think is best.  If the government attempted to order you to directly give money to Amazon, just because they think they are a good company and like what they do, that would be a violation of the 4th Amendment.  They cannot command you into the slavery (indentured servitude) of a corporation or other private citizen.  If an agency that receives tax dollars to achieve a goal finds a private entity to be useful in their efforts, they can contract that private company to help them.

Just as, with your flu example, if there were a severe epidemic there is nothing wrong with using emergency funds to pay for flu vaccines.  That is government fulfilling their role of protecting the people.  But they can't command you to give the company that makes flu vaccines a percentage of your income for the rest of your life.  Then that company would literally own a percentage of you, and be entitled to "their cut" of your income.  That's a form of slavery, and it's evil.

>>What does the fact that, until very recently in history, slavery existed throughout the world have to do with any of this?

To make the point that it is meaningless to just generically say "we have a Republic" or "we have a Democracy" without asking "Republic for whom?" or "Democracy for whom"? The USA was, as you say, a Republic(and you are right to make the distinction with Democracy) but it was not a Republic for all, was it? It is fine and dandy to say that the Republic's laws "protected one man's rights to his property" until you realize that "property" also meant "another man".

That isn't actually relevant.  A republic is a government formed of elected representatives of the people.  Slavery has nothing to do with it.  This is why Greek "democracy" was actually a republic, and not a democracy.  Only male land owners could vote.  Between all of the male land owners, just about everyone was either employed by one of them, a relative, or a friend.  They would lobby the male land owners and influence their opinions/votes.  It just naturally functioned as a republic, with the male land owners serving as the representatives.

Here in America, fortunately, Dwight Eisenhower and Dr. Martin Luther King put an end to the remnants of slavery in America.  Until very recently slavery was the norm across the world, and was not limited to Africans.  Long, long ago my Kievian Rus  side of my family, Carpathians before the founding of the city of Kiev, were probably slaves.  In America, anyway, slavery has not been an issue for a very long time now but, when it was, it had been the norm across the world for thousands of years.

And it is slavery that you are arguing for here.  The right of government to enslave you to whatever corporation or individual they choose.  To declare that a private individual or corporation is entitled to "their cut" of your earnings for life.  You may not realize it, but you are advocating a form of slavery called "indentured servitude".

Communisim/Democracy/Socialism/Capitalism are only political ideals.

They are not an absolute way to describe a government. The sentence: The US is a democracy, or Russia is no truely Communistic are not very meaningful.

For example: If you have ever visited present day China, you would notice that it is both very socialist and very capitalist in different situations.

If you just change your wording in the conversation I think you will find more to agree on. For example:

• The United States is more Democratic than Russia (If you want to be percise there are plenty of institues which define measure "Democracy")
• Lennin's Russia was more Communist than the united states
  • Stalin's Russia was less communist than Lenin's Russia (not sure about that one :-) 

Etc...

Point being that "Democracy" and "Communism" are philosophical ideals. They are not synonymous with any actual country's government. (They are not even well defined: different people mean different things when they say them) 

Lenin's Soviet Union is the very definition of Communism.  The model.  It doesn't get any more communist than the Soviet Union, or Russia.  Russia is just the Soviet Union without its "colonies".  "Soviet Union" is like saying "United Kingdom".  England is still England, and Russia is still Russia.  Russia did not change at all when the Cold War allegedly ended, Russia simply lost its "colonies".  It is still the same "intelligence state" that it has always been.  From it's inception, Russia has been ruled by its intelligence apparatus.  Russia is the KGB, and the KGB is Russia.

A republic is a form of government, and so is communism.  They are not "philosophical ideals", they are forms of government.  The only other form of government that has ever existed is some type of king.

"The best games are educational." ;-)

@mikeman: you've seriously got some energy to continue in this line of argument. I'm honestly starting to run out of energy.

11 minutes ago, Kavik Kang said:

And it is slavery that you are arguing for here.  The right of government to enslave you to whatever corporation or individual they choose.  To declare that a private individual or corporation is entitled to "their cut" of your earnings for life.  You may not realize it, but you are advocating a form of slavery called "indentured servitude".

Are you talking about the automated resource allocation ideas posited in this thread? How is it slavery? I'm not even saying that people need to work. In fact, most people probably won't be working and earning in the traditional sense mainly because there won't be much to do. Most "work" would be things like research, creative pursuits, and high skill jobs that involve ability that not everyone can possess. Automation would be doing most things involved with manufacturing and farming with minimal to no human assistance. Our AI based allocation system then decides where resources should go based on predictive algorithms, etc. and does so in a way to ensure that a majority of people, if not all, have access to a base standard of living (or to maximize happiness, in other words). I'm not going to reiterate this over and over. How is that slavery? Slavery is defined as: a person who is the legal property of another and forced to obey them. Nowhere here is anyone the legal property of another nor forced to obey. 

@SillyCow is absolutely correct: these are all philosophical ideals. They are ideologies. Forms of government stem from ideologies. You aren't correct here, Kavik Kang.

It's worth noting that Leninism is not the only possible implementation of communism. In fact, there isn't complete agreement over what the "one true communism" actually is; there are "kinds of communisms" and their adherents tend not to be big fans of one another. The Stalinist and Troskyite clubs at my alma mater were renowned for their squabbles even in my parents' day. Claiming that Marxism-Leninism is the only communism or at least the "very model" of it only shows a lack of research and understanding.

"Communism" to me means "an economic system wherein there is communal ownership of the means of production." Communal, not state; the latter would be socialism, not communism. Communist anarchism is entirely conceivable to me. In fact, doesn't a co-op business wherein all the workers own voting stock technically qualify as "communal ownership?" So if you had a market economy in which ownership of each company was communal, would that not be a kind of communism? 

Specifically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

I also seem to recall that as Marx originally conceived it, in a communist society the State would eventually wither away and cease to exist; how can you be enslaved by the state if there is no state? If "communism" means slavery, then who is the slaver here?

Furthermore, just because someone applies an ideological label to oneself, doesn't mean one actually follows that ideology - North Korea calls itself the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", after all, and "Nazi" stands for "National Socialism". Is North Korea democratic? Is it a republic? Most would say not. Most would also not say that Nazi Germany was socialist, especially at the time - in fact, part of the reason the other powers didn't stand up to Nazi aggression earlier was that they saw Hitler as a bulwark against communism, specifically Stalin.

I start to understand where Kavik Kang comes from : His position is that what existed in Soviet Union, and what exists in Russia today, is simply Chekism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism

I won't argue about this particular interpretation of what the Soviet Union really was. He is free, of course, to use the word "communism" in order to mean "an all powerful state intelligence apparatus that acts for its own interests and own interests alone". But by that definition, a society based on communal property of the *means of production*(I can't stress this enough, personal possessions that are not used to generate wealth but meant for your personal consuption - the house you live in, your car, your PC, your furniture - are still your own), but with the absense of such an all-powerful apparatus is not communism.

I'm still not sure if he argues that communal property of the means of production necessarily requires such an all-powerful state apparatus in the first place, and is impossible without it.
 

>>That isn't actually relevant.  A republic is a government formed of elected representatives of the people.  Slavery has nothing to do with it.

It is entirely relevant. If a Republic is a government formed of elected repesentatives of the people, then, by definition, African Americans, for the longest time, lived in the United States of America but did not live in a Republic. Their owners lived in a Republic, but not them.

8 hours ago, mikeman said:

Kavik Kang, out of curiosity, can you shortly explain what the basic characteristics of a communist system are? Like, what makes a system "communist" in your opinion?

Without reading his reply.... I'm going to bet large amounts of money that it's

"well if you read my 50000 pages of argle bargle kersplunk.... "

/checks

Hey, whaddya know.