Plato's Republic makes a lot of sense if we take Socrates as being ironic. His own prefered social organisation, by his own admission, is one of bucolic simplicity - The City of Pigs. No one in their right mind would want to live in the Republic, the 'just city state' in which citizens are deprived of art and told 'noble lies' to keep them passive. Socrates is guiding his young acolytes by means of seemingly naive questioning to see that that is where unbridled desire [consumerism] leads. [IMO!]