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I came from Soviet Union. I don't have any illusions about socialist ideas. Lots of young people here might have illusions. But I don't.

by mudil 11y ago

givinguflac 11y ago
There's a huge difference between Socialism and Democratic Socialism, surprised you wouldn't know that.
- matthewbauer 11y ago
  Well the Soviets would have considered themselves Democratic Socialists. It's not like anyone ever advertises themselves as undemocratic in an official way like that. I really think Bernie is best penned down as a "social democrat". I don't understand why he calls himself a socialist?
  - givinguflac 11y ago
    I'd recommend you actually read about the differences; one of them still has Capitalism, the other doesn't. It's a massive difference.
- jeremyt 11y ago
  Perhaps you could explain the difference, because I don't see it.
  - keehun 11y ago
    "Democratic Socialism" the best I understand it seeks to further Democracy by putting the power back into the social class, not the oligarchy as the US (in my eyes) become. I think it's putting the "we the people" back into power. Look at Bernie's top-priority messages. Get rid of Citizens United (money in elections) and get rid of big banks. If those two things are accomplished, "we the people" would have more power and held less at-hostage by the oligarchies at power... But just my thought. This video does a decent job: https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/575403562607686/?pnref=story https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/57540356...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Mikeb85 11y ago
Western and Northern Europe seem to be doing fine with their socialist schemes.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  The US is substantially wealthier than almost all of those countries, except Norway with its oil riches. They have massive youth unemployment, disincentives to investment and entrepreneurship, and the lack of innovation to prove it.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    They actually have decent amounts of entrepreneurship relative to their populations, a higher average living standard than the US, longer life expectancy, far less crime, all despite having nearly no resources. Oh, and more equality. But GDP/total wealth is all that matters, right? And a little note on HDI (used to measure quality of life/human development) - its skewed in favour of the US because it measures average income, not taking into account the fact Americans pay extra for health care while Europeans include it in taxes/exclude it from income calculations. Even then several Euro states beat the US.
- jeremyt 11y ago
  How many startups have you seen come out of Finland or Norway lately?
  - jonathankoren 11y ago
    Supercell, Cfengine, Meltwater, SnapTV, ... Even Opera and Nokia are/were based out there. There's actually a lot from there. Finland: http://startup100.net/ http://startup100.net/ Norway: http://torgronsund.com/norwegianstartups/ http://torgronsund.com/norwegianstartups/
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    Finland has actually done OK when it comes to startups (Supercell, Rovio, Nokia and now offshoots, etc...). Norway, not sure, but they're a petro state with a tiny population. Plus, even if there were hundreds of hot Finnish startups (there is a site that measures them actually, but I'm not Finnish so I know little about their scene) they wouldn't have exposure in the US since the US is so US-centric. Hell I'm not American so all I know of startups in the US is what I see here.
temp 11y ago
Did that actually sound good to you before you posted it?
- dang 11y ago
  You've posted several rude comments to Hacker News in political threads. That's against the site guidelines. Please (re)read them, and post civilly and substantively (or not at all) from now on. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
marcoperaza 11y ago
I have a similar perspective. My mother's and father's families fled from Cuba with the clothes on their back after the Revolution. The rise of communism in their country is no-doubt the defining tragedy of my grandparents' lives. When I hear an American politician talking up socialism, the alarm bells start to go off. I'm very worried.
monocasa 11y ago
How well is the opposite working for Russia currently?
- pc86 11y ago
  Serious question, what is the opposite of communism? My understanding is Russia is some sort of quasi-democratic-in-name-only oligarchy led by politicians and mobsters.
  - monocasa 11y ago
    > some sort of quasi-democratic-in-name-only oligarchy led by politicians and mobsters. That's exactly how I'd describe it. At least under communism the leader wasn't most likely the richest man in the world.
    - pc86 11y ago
      The state owns everything in communism, so that makes the leader of the country the de facto owner of everything. See the comments between Forbes and Fidel Castro in the mid 2000's.
      - monocasa 11y ago
        Does the CEO of HP own all of HP? No, of course not, and likewise it doesn't imply that the leader of a country would own everything. Now compare to Putin who by some accounts has ~$200B in his name.
hackuser 11y ago
Have you been to Sweden or other Nordic countries, which Sanders openly claims as his models for many of his social-democratic (not socialist) ideas? They are free countries and at the top of most measures of human welfare. Most of Western Europe embraces more social democratic concepts than the U.S., and their standards of living are at least as high as America's. The USSR said it was implementing communism (not socialism), but really implemented a brutal totalitarian dicatorship.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>The USSR said it was implementing communism (not socialism), but really implemented a brutal totalitarian dicatorship. Its not really possible to be implement communism without dictatorship of some kind. The moment you seize power, the very first thing you will realize is you need money to run your schemes. But there is only that much available, and that pool too is dwindling over time. Anybody good is taxed beyond their share, so they are always moving out to greener pastures, reducing your spending pool further. Pretty much everyone else thinks, its everybody else's job to work and make for them. So no one's contributing, but expecting the party to continue. Its basically a giant negative feedback loop in a system that's amplifying what's coming in. And that is playing out at the scale of a country's economy. Now to control it all, you need to prevent people moving out(defectors), you need to continuously control what sort of information is fed to your masses, you need to control nearly everything there is to control because any deviation means people will stray away to create their own merit based islands. And if those islands get powerful, they can pull down the regime.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Interesting theoretically, but is there an event in reality that it describes (i.e., is there some empirical data)? I'm pretty sure it doesn't describe the history of the USSR or the Bolshevik Revolution; that was a brutal dictatorship from the start. I read in one history how Lenin controlled regions by keeping them on the precipice of starvation - anger him and rations would be reduced further. Taxes don't seem like they would be much of an issue to those people. I've never heard taxes discussed in regard to the USSR; when the government owns everything and provides all goods and income (or close to it) I'm not sure what would be taxed.
Spivak 11y ago
Just as a counterpoint since this type of comment serves to only shut down what should be rational and unemotional discussions on political ideas and potential policy decisions. > As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the ‘socialist’ dungeon. > The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period. Source: https://chomsky.info/1986____/ https://chomsky.info/1986____/ I don't necessarily agree with Chomsky but "I was there mannnn" and "if you disagree with me you're young and naive" is not the standard of discussion we should hold ourselves to.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  > As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions A lot of historians would strongly disagree with Chomsky here. The leaders of the Soviet Union were true believers who acted as they did to bring about communism. Here's a good interview with one such historian, a professor a Princeton: http://www.hoover.org/research/hoover-fellow-stephen-kotkin-discusses-stalins-rise-power http://www.hoover.org/research/hoover-fellow-stephen-kotkin-... . I believe the relevant bits are in part 2. Chomsky is a great linguist, but when it comes to politics, I don't give his views much weight. You only need to look at what his buddy Chavez was doing in Venezuela, while Chomsky was singing his praises among leftist intelligentsia.

I came from Soviet Union. I don't have any illusions about socialist ideas. Lots of young people here might have illusions. But I don't.

by mudil 11y ago

I came from Soviet Union. I don't have any illusions about socialist ideas. Lots of young people here might have illusions. But I don't.

givinguflac 11y ago

There's a huge difference between Socialism and Democratic Socialism, surprised you wouldn't know that.

matthewbauer 11y ago
Well the Soviets would have considered themselves Democratic Socialists. It's not like anyone ever advertises themselves as undemocratic in an official way like that. I really think Bernie is best penned down as a "social democrat". I don't understand why he calls himself a socialist?
- givinguflac 11y ago
  I'd recommend you actually read about the differences; one of them still has Capitalism, the other doesn't. It's a massive difference.
jeremyt 11y ago
Perhaps you could explain the difference, because I don't see it.
- keehun 11y ago
  "Democratic Socialism" the best I understand it seeks to further Democracy by putting the power back into the social class, not the oligarchy as the US (in my eyes) become. I think it's putting the "we the people" back into power. Look at Bernie's top-priority messages. Get rid of Citizens United (money in elections) and get rid of big banks. If those two things are accomplished, "we the people" would have more power and held less at-hostage by the oligarchies at power... But just my thought. This video does a decent job: https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/575403562607686/?pnref=story https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/57540356...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Mikeb85 11y ago

Western and Northern Europe seem to be doing fine with their socialist schemes.

marcoperaza 11y ago
The US is substantially wealthier than almost all of those countries, except Norway with its oil riches. They have massive youth unemployment, disincentives to investment and entrepreneurship, and the lack of innovation to prove it.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  They actually have decent amounts of entrepreneurship relative to their populations, a higher average living standard than the US, longer life expectancy, far less crime, all despite having nearly no resources. Oh, and more equality. But GDP/total wealth is all that matters, right? And a little note on HDI (used to measure quality of life/human development) - its skewed in favour of the US because it measures average income, not taking into account the fact Americans pay extra for health care while Europeans include it in taxes/exclude it from income calculations. Even then several Euro states beat the US.
jeremyt 11y ago
How many startups have you seen come out of Finland or Norway lately?
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  Supercell, Cfengine, Meltwater, SnapTV, ... Even Opera and Nokia are/were based out there. There's actually a lot from there. Finland: http://startup100.net/ http://startup100.net/ Norway: http://torgronsund.com/norwegianstartups/ http://torgronsund.com/norwegianstartups/
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Finland has actually done OK when it comes to startups (Supercell, Rovio, Nokia and now offshoots, etc...). Norway, not sure, but they're a petro state with a tiny population. Plus, even if there were hundreds of hot Finnish startups (there is a site that measures them actually, but I'm not Finnish so I know little about their scene) they wouldn't have exposure in the US since the US is so US-centric. Hell I'm not American so all I know of startups in the US is what I see here.

temp 11y ago

Did that actually sound good to you before you posted it?

dang 11y ago
You've posted several rude comments to Hacker News in political threads. That's against the site guidelines. Please (re)read them, and post civilly and substantively (or not at all) from now on. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

marcoperaza 11y ago

I have a similar perspective. My mother's and father's families fled from Cuba with the clothes on their back after the Revolution. The rise of communism in their country is no-doubt the defining tragedy of my grandparents' lives. When I hear an American politician talking up socialism, the alarm bells start to go off. I'm very worried.

monocasa 11y ago

How well is the opposite working for Russia currently?

pc86 11y ago
Serious question, what is the opposite of communism? My understanding is Russia is some sort of quasi-democratic-in-name-only oligarchy led by politicians and mobsters.
- monocasa 11y ago
  > some sort of quasi-democratic-in-name-only oligarchy led by politicians and mobsters. That's exactly how I'd describe it. At least under communism the leader wasn't most likely the richest man in the world.
  - pc86 11y ago
    The state owns everything in communism, so that makes the leader of the country the de facto owner of everything. See the comments between Forbes and Fidel Castro in the mid 2000's.
    - monocasa 11y ago
      Does the CEO of HP own all of HP? No, of course not, and likewise it doesn't imply that the leader of a country would own everything. Now compare to Putin who by some accounts has ~$200B in his name.

hackuser 11y ago

Have you been to Sweden or other Nordic countries, which Sanders openly claims as his models for many of his social-democratic (not socialist) ideas? They are free countries and at the top of most measures of human welfare. Most of Western Europe embraces more social democratic concepts than the U.S., and their standards of living are at least as high as America's. The USSR said it was implementing communism (not socialism), but really implemented a brutal totalitarian dicatorship.

kamaal 11y ago
>>The USSR said it was implementing communism (not socialism), but really implemented a brutal totalitarian dicatorship. Its not really possible to be implement communism without dictatorship of some kind. The moment you seize power, the very first thing you will realize is you need money to run your schemes. But there is only that much available, and that pool too is dwindling over time. Anybody good is taxed beyond their share, so they are always moving out to greener pastures, reducing your spending pool further. Pretty much everyone else thinks, its everybody else's job to work and make for them. So no one's contributing, but expecting the party to continue. Its basically a giant negative feedback loop in a system that's amplifying what's coming in. And that is playing out at the scale of a country's economy. Now to control it all, you need to prevent people moving out(defectors), you need to continuously control what sort of information is fed to your masses, you need to control nearly everything there is to control because any deviation means people will stray away to create their own merit based islands. And if those islands get powerful, they can pull down the regime.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Interesting theoretically, but is there an event in reality that it describes (i.e., is there some empirical data)? I'm pretty sure it doesn't describe the history of the USSR or the Bolshevik Revolution; that was a brutal dictatorship from the start. I read in one history how Lenin controlled regions by keeping them on the precipice of starvation - anger him and rations would be reduced further. Taxes don't seem like they would be much of an issue to those people. I've never heard taxes discussed in regard to the USSR; when the government owns everything and provides all goods and income (or close to it) I'm not sure what would be taxed.

Spivak 11y ago

Just as a counterpoint since this type of comment serves to only shut down what should be rational and unemotional discussions on political ideas and potential policy decisions. > As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the ‘socialist’ dungeon. > The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period. Source: https://chomsky.info/1986____/ https://chomsky.info/1986____/ I don't necessarily agree with Chomsky but "I was there mannnn" and "if you disagree with me you're young and naive" is not the standard of discussion we should hold ourselves to.

marcoperaza 11y ago
> As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions A lot of historians would strongly disagree with Chomsky here. The leaders of the Soviet Union were true believers who acted as they did to bring about communism. Here's a good interview with one such historian, a professor a Princeton: http://www.hoover.org/research/hoover-fellow-stephen-kotkin-discusses-stalins-rise-power http://www.hoover.org/research/hoover-fellow-stephen-kotkin-... . I believe the relevant bits are in part 2. Chomsky is a great linguist, but when it comes to politics, I don't give his views much weight. You only need to look at what his buddy Chavez was doing in Venezuela, while Chomsky was singing his praises among leftist intelligentsia.