I should have said "should have...", maybe this was not clear. I am not claiming tha there's a "perfect" country. Some countries come pretty close though, where you have affordable public transportation, affordable housing and affordable health care. For example and Germany and Switzerland (two countries where I have lived for long periods of time), nobody will die because they can't afford health care. Nobody will be homeless because they can't afford an apartment (yes, I know, there is also homelessness in these countries, but for a variety of other reasons).

Doe that mean it's perfect? No, of course not, there is always room for improvement.

The place he described exists only in the mind of avowed leftists, who refuse to accept that it will never be realized but are more than willing to force others to suffer in order to try yet again.

I am not talking about communism. Nobody on today's political left spectrum of is seriously talking about communism. This is about socialism, or social capitalism.

Cool story from an alcoholic traitor

> On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, began a major economic and administrative reform ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of "macroeconomic stabilization", a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization programme, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending.

> In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. The reforms devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare programs.[108] Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50%, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, whilst incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out many people's personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.[109][110]

You know, for all their ills at least the historical communists meant well. Sure, some of them were pretty f-ing brutal but at least they tried to make their societies better, tried to make their countrymen richer and more prosperous.

The comparable people today telling us we have have to live under constant surveillance and be subjugated by all powerful governments and government intertwined institutions and organizations or otherwise losing all our rights and practical autonomy to various collective interests don't even do us the courtesy of pretending that the goal is to everything better and nicer. They just tell us that we'll all gaslight ourselves into liking the bugs or whatever and that despite everything being worse it's somehow better because stonks up and microplastics down, or whatever other metrics they also control.

> It'll be a local max, not a global max.

There really isn’t any way to know this for a fact. The future could hold technology that allows us to expand far beyond the current population, but it also could lead to setbacks that the population never recovers from. It is reasonable to guess it’s a local max.

I do appreciate their citations but the spin is a bit much. I’m still very skeptical about the interpretation of a “return to religiosity” rather than religious immigrants continuing their religious observances in their new home countries.

To show a proper “return to religious observance” (any religion, not just Christianity) means showing a large number of people who attend religious services regularly but whose parents do not.