The Candy Experiment

Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism are three very tricky things.  They spark many political debates, create arguments, and can even start wars.  The terms themselves can be very difficult to explain without an accurate demonstration.  Fortunately, there are many ways to perform such an experiment, one of the easiest being a simple game involving candy.  The authoritative figure known as "The Government" begins the game by handing out candies to each participant, but the amounts of each must be different to demonstrate economic disparity.  The players will then proceed as they see fit.  If they choose, they may play a short decision game like rock-paper-scissors to decide whether or not they gain or lose a candy.  In this way, they are demonstrating trade and economic competition.  Players may also steal, provided they are not caught by the government, and if candies are won they cannot be returned unless their current owner deems it necessary.  This system of competition, trade, and advancement/loss demonstrates capitalism.  Capitalism is generally described as people being born into a certain amount of money, and then through hard work (or lack thereof) they may either advance or retreat on the fields of success.  Capitalism however, requires a lower class to profit from, and if there is no lower class and everyone makes the same no matter what, then there is no competition and Socialism becomes the dominant system.  To demonstrate socialism, the government collects all the candy from all who have it regardless of the amount the currently possess. The government then redistributes the candy in equal amounts to everybody in the room, and because the government is in control, no trading takes place.  From here the game may diverge into one of two paths: it may revert back to Capitalism and participants may try to take candy again and build themselves up, or a non-government form of Socialism will take hold, known as Communism.  If the players decide to stay where they are and be content with the equal amount of candy that they have, then they themselves forbid competition, and as such they regulate their own government of a classless society.  There is one flaw in the game however, and that is that there is no analog for progress, and in a society where everything is guaranteed, there is no incentive to work.  Therefore Communism/Socialism are unreliable long term systems because progress would not take place.

For a better understanding, please consider the following:  In a communist society, three farmers are working in a shared field.  At the end of the harvest, each farmer gets 33% of the crops grown for themselves regardless of work output.  One day after receiving his crops, one of the farmers decides to take a nap in the barn while the other farmers work.  He continues this behavior everyday until harvest time, and then proceeds to take his third of the crops.  After seeing this, one of the other farmers decides that the first farmer is not playing fair, and decides that if he isn't going to work, then neither is she.  The final farmer realizes that he must work to benefit the masses and does all the work while still taking only his 33% share.  Finally, a terrible winter comes and kills the stalwart farmer in the field, and then decimates the crops.  The two farmers in the barn then starve because they do not have the capacity to work in the farm without a third because they are not as hard-working as their deceased comrade, and in the end all the farmers die.  Perhaps the answer does not lie in a purely capitalist ideology either, but rather in a combination of many that will reach a common consensus that will benefit us all.  That is, until a new revolutionary system comes along.