First off my totality of my point was exactly what I said, "your last sentence is a bit hyperbolic." Full stop. As I demonstrated with a handful of counterexamples, most of which actually didn't include "robbing Peter to pay Paul" given that workers in to Soviet Union and the Ottoman empire and modern day China did end up with higher standards of living under non-capitalist systems while the overall economies in those countries also undeniably grew. Why you chose to fly off the handle at that is something only you know the answer to. As I also said, "I'm no apologist for communism", heck I'm an entrepreneur and capitalist of the purest form and when I joined the military back in the 90's we were still fighting communism. But I understand that to combat the idea you have to be intellectually honest about the fact that in some cases is actually has been better for both the actual worker and the country as a whole than capitalism was. That's important in the war of ideas we fight in the world because it turns out capitalism by itself isn't actually a panacea. Capitalism without representative government, rule of law, and the absence of huge wealth and opportunity inequalities, has pretty universally been better than communism. However unfortunately we in the U.S. don't put nearly as much emphasis on the last 3 pieces which has led to to failed capitalist states all over the world. Places which then become attracted to the allure of communism. So if you really want to win the war of ideas against communism, you have to admit that it has been better than the capitalist alternative in some instances in the past before you can convince folks why they shouldn't give it a try going forward. Pretending an alternate reality only works for cult members who've already been convinced of something, it's not terribly convincing for those outside the group. None of this is pedantic, as you appear to think, it's actually a crucial point that we in the U.S. have missed since Vietnam where we killed more than 3 million Vietnamese and nearly 50,000 Americans just to end up with a Vietnam today that's economically in pretty much exactly the same place it would be if we'd been OK with them deciding that communism was better than the crappy version of capitalism they had at the time. I happen to think it's not effective for us to try to simplify the world into the black and white, "the only system.." terms when it comes to trying to convince people outside the U.S. I don't think that's pedantic or unreasonable and certainly not something warranting your response.
I really don't want to spend much more time on this - I don't think there's anything productive to be had here - but your opinions are based on some textbook you read, while mine comes from actually living under these "higher standards". I was born and grew up in Russia in the 1960s and early 70s, and you really, really have not the slightest clue of what the hell you're talking about. Communism requires coercion to exist at any sort of scale. That means murder, torture, violence, imprisonment, and the constant threat of those things to enforce it. Your "higher standards" unavoidably and directly meant the deaths and enslavement of my relatives and millions of others. I lived with that. I also served in the US military after emigrating, and was ready to give my life to fight those "higher standards". Normally, I would agree with you on that general point; the world is indeed an infinitely-complex palette of shades and colors of meaning and context. But your "higher standards" are a black-and-white case of defending evil. I'm willing to believe that it's purely due to ignorance, but I'm not willing to concede even a millionth part of that point. Pax. I'm out of this conversation.
Not sure how many times one has to say they don't support communism before you would believe they don't support communism! Obviously none of us lived in pre-1917 Russia or the states that became the USSR, we all have to learn about it from textbooks or even better first hand accounts. By all accounts, however, if you had lived there you would have found all the evil that you experienced plus a grinding poverty that was far worse than under the communists. That isn't really disputed by anyone, and that is, again, the only point I'm making. Do you dispute it? Everything you described about the Soviet Union that was horrible also existed also existed in capitalist societies at the time and exists in a large number of them today. Again I'm not sure how much more violently I need to agree with you for you to settle down and listen, you really are repeatedly projecting strawman arguments I'm most definitely not making here. If you have representative government, rule of law, absence of huge wealth disparities (all things missing in your experience in the Soviet Union by your description) AND capitalism you're almost certainly going to be better off than under communism. Just capitalism though, maybe, maybe not. Maybe that's too nuanced for this conversation, but ignoring that nuance is the source of much of what's wrong with much of the world.