Obviously I'm not the foremost expert on communism. I will, however, answer your questions to the best of my ability.

>People have talked about "greed" and "power" but the real
>issue is dealing with disproportionate allotments of
>resources. Small groups can effectively trade and barter bc
>they're likely more familiar with each other.
>
>But how do you impel people to share with other far flung
>people they have little to no contact with? Even if they were
>aware of others hardships, wouldn't they still be more
>concerned about the possiblity of hardship locally?

Well, there would obviously have to be a worldwide distribution system. People tend to think of communism (at the roots) as people in small villages in huts. While there is some truth to that (we'd have to be less reliant on technology for sure, but nowhere near the "hut" level) it is a misnomer. Food and other goods and resources would have to be shared worldwide. To sustain this, we would need to employ the smae metods we do now, trains, trucks, ships, airplanes, cars. There would also have to bo worldwide communication and orginization for this to take place, obviously.

>It seems there needs to be some way of determining where
>resources would do the most "good". But I noticed someone said
>that communism requires the disollution of government. Without
>some sort of delegation of authority, how are the needs of
>individuals supposed to be met in a massive, communist
>society?

Well, it's not "autority" that is needed, but organization.As far as determining "where" resorces go, I don't have an answer to the specifics of that except that it would be besed as much as possible on need.

>On a simpler note, how do you get people to mine coal? I'm
>sure some people would naturally want to, but most people that
>do it right now onl do it bc they have little choice. Would
>these people still be "oppressed" by the specter of danger to
>their health and well-being, no matter how fairly medical
>attention was distributed? Aren't there some jobs few people
>would do unless they absolutely had to?

One thing that I've heard a lot of talk about is that people wouldn't be forced to pick one job and stick to it the rest of their life. Obviously there would be some persuits where this was fairly nessecary, genetics research and things of that nature. Although, it may not even be nessecary in those fields, because in a communist state, information would (ideally, but of course) be free flowing. So geneticists who make a discovery in canada would immideatly communicate their findings and methods to all geneticists all over the world. There wouldn't be any reason to hide findings (profit) so a scientific community could be much more efficient.

But I digress, as far as jobs are concerned, every one able would be made to do at least some physical labor. Mainly so they know what it is like. So, hopefully, cole mining and other dangerous jobs could be farmed out (at least in part) to people only doing it for 6 months of their life, or something like that. Obiously though, there would be people doing it much longer than that, especially people to train all the new people coming in.

This may not be AS efficient, in fact probably not. But we would no longer need to be as efficient as natural resources like coal would be used so much more sparingly.