The world wasn't (and still isn't) ready for communism. Any attempt to establish communism before the means of production can support it is doomed to spectacular failure.

All of the people displaced by automation now have jobs in the "service" industry, but that can't continue indefinitely, especially as automation begins to creep into that field as well,

You can't find it anywhere (other than in a book), because it requires mechanization beyond what is currently possible.

Then there is a rising need for communism.

True, there is no such thing as real communism yet.

That's a pretty bold statement, especially considering that the industrial revolution (the thing that originally inspired the invention of communism) hasn't actually ended yet.

It's impossible to increase efficiency indefinitely without causing rampant unemployment at some point. Communism is a solution for a problem that hasn't quite happened yet (but it's silly to think it won't happen eventually).

Basic income means that everyone lives at the same economic level, retirement accounts allow you to live at a higher economic level than everyone else, depending on how much you save.

Some people just aren't happy unless they are better-off than everyone else, no matter how comfortable the "average" might be.

"Fatally bad" not "fairly bad"

It works quite well, only because you happen to be on the winning end.

Social Darwinism is unnecessary in an age where we can literally afford to burn corn to power our cars.

Why?

Since when is work the only way to distinguish yourself from other?

Be a better painter, be a better musician, be a better flower arranger. Distinguish yourself by being better what YOU want to do, not what someone else wants you to do. There is more to life than being a "hard worker"

They don't need to produce.

Would the world starve if mcdonalds or starbucks suddenly went away? Are the workers there actually producing anything? If nothing of value is produced though a person's labor, then nothing of value is lost when that person stops laboring.

As long as the machines are feeding the people, why would it matter if the work you do is productive?

In Marx's vision of the world, he expected everyone to sit around and write poetry, while the machines did all the work.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But unless there is some serious decline in technological progress, it's more likely that it WILL happen eventually, even if it doesn't happen in our lifetime.

This is the idea that drove Marx to come up with communism. He was there at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and he could see where mechanization would eventually lead. It just took a LOT longer than he was expecting, mostly because he didn't predict the invention of fast-food and starbucks which is the only thing that is currently keeping unemployment under control in the US.

That was a dictatorship wearing a thin veil of communism. Don't confuse Leninism with Marxism

Give it another 50 years or so, things will be different then.