A movie about a relatively undeveloped culture/tribe in Africa.

For years, the society is isolated from the world and they give in a closed society where all share equally and the society is basically communist.

Then, a Coke bottle falls from the sky one day, a gift from the Gods. (Actually, a careless airplane pilot disposes of his empty.)

All heck breaks loose in the tribe. Everyone is doing anything and everything to "get" the bottle. All covet it. Fights break out.

The tribal leader declares, "The Gods Must Be Crazy".

The reason I bring up the story is that communism and sharing work in small/closed societies where everyone shares, where there are relatively few (or no) opportunities for people to make themselves more "important" than others. The Bible speaks of this kind of society in Acts 2 among Christian's after Jesus' ascension into heaven. It worked in the small. But, even in the Christian community, right after Jesus ascended, (by the 4th or 5th Chapter of Acts), even Christians were arguing about the "allocation of food".

My point is this, communism would work if we all were Jesus Christ, with perfect and true motivations. But, we are not perfect people, but selfish people who want the absolute best for us and our kind, and the rest can "get their own".

On the other hand, capitalism works when there are a large number of small merchants, and works as the number of vendors for a single product consolidate. Once the number of vendors for a certain product (the number of substitutes) falls below 5, then capitalism stops working. The number of vendors becomes small enough, that one vendor actually ends up with at least 40% market share. Once a single vendor has above 30-35% market share, then the party's pretty mucn over for capitalism.

My problem with capitalism is that is assumes that everyone knows everything, ie. perfect information and perfect economics from perfect information. However, as the market consolidates below 5 vendors, the vendors begin to "collaborate" (even though they aren't supposed to), and they offer less information to the marketplace, instead of more. They charge more, and begin monopolistic practices.

Thus, neither solution works in the large. People are wicked, inherently, and thus the government needs to be involved in ensuring fair competition in capitalist countries, and in ensuring fair resource distribution in communist countries.

Either solution "could" work if everyone were honest and altruistic in their motivations. But we aren't. We're evil people.

Glen Austin