5 ms·

Why is everybody talking as if the communist experiment wasn't already tried? If you forcibly remove "freedom" to keep the fruit of your labor, you'll get gene

by lucio 10y ago

Why is everybody talking as if the communist experiment wasn't already tried? If you forcibly remove "freedom" to keep the fruit of your labor, you'll get general misery and poverty. It's false that "things will be done but slowly", the reality is that things will not get done at all, meaning lack of everything and the distribution of misery. For real examples look into any communist country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIcmoY3_lE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...

petra 10y ago
Nordic countries have very high taxes("taking away one's fruits of labor"), and manage to do well.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  Shut the fuck up! The hivemind is speaking. Non-neoliberal perspectives are terrible and advocacy for them will be punished by context-free links and downvotes.
  - StevePerkins 10y ago
    There is a very vigorous balance between liberal and libertarian views on HN, and both sides tend to (mostly) strive toward thoughtful discussion. Please take this sort of thing to Reddit where it belongs.
    - justratsinacoat 10y ago
      Oh please. "DAE COMMUNISM EEEVVIIILL?! (oh I brought links to PROVE it; here's Robin Williams and a wiki about a book)" is thoughtful discussion, eh? It's the same kind of mindless upvotery as your appeal to HN's ostensibly high standard.
- s_q_b 10y ago
  Nordic countries have an ace up their sleeve that the United States does not: ethnic homogeneity. To acknowledge the elephant in the room, political discussion of government support policies always comes with a racial dog whistle. The subtext is that the government wants to take your money and give it to those people. It sometimes bubbles to the surface, such as with Reagan's welfare queen in a Cadillac comments, but it is almost never mentioned explicitly. Before the United States can implement serious welfare reform, including U.B.I., we must solve this nation's racial integration problem.
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
    Though I think UBI can be implemented before or in tandem with fixing our racial issues, here's a quote to expound on this. The Southern Strategy utilized this tactic significantly. From an interview with Lee Atwater[0]: > All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 . . . and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster... > You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----." By 1968 you can't say "n-----" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_.281970s_and_1980s.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_.2...
  - hiram112 10y ago
    The most interesting thing about many naive Americans' view of the Nordic 'paradise' is the lack of understanding as to how it is able to exist: a small population of homogenous people of similar ethnicity, shared culture, and history that has high GDP per capita and low levels of corruption. These same people tend to be on the side of unrestricted immigration and mixing of cultures and ethnicity. What they don't understand is that the average person will not want socialism if it means taking from one group and giving disproportionately to another. This is why America will never successfully have Nordic like social systems, and why some of the Nordic countries themselves (Sweden) are already beginning to show signs that the system will not work if is abused by some groups in ways it wasn't before.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  They are social democracies with a relatively high degree of market freedom. If communism is to have any sort of meaning, it doesn't apply to them.
gnaritas 10y ago
Why do people like you seem to think socialism and communism are the same thing?

by lucio 10y ago

petra 10y ago

Nordic countries have very high taxes("taking away one's fruits of labor"), and manage to do well.

justratsinacoat 10y ago
Shut the fuck up! The hivemind is speaking. Non-neoliberal perspectives are terrible and advocacy for them will be punished by context-free links and downvotes.
- StevePerkins 10y ago
  There is a very vigorous balance between liberal and libertarian views on HN, and both sides tend to (mostly) strive toward thoughtful discussion. Please take this sort of thing to Reddit where it belongs.
  - justratsinacoat 10y ago
    Oh please. "DAE COMMUNISM EEEVVIIILL?! (oh I brought links to PROVE it; here's Robin Williams and a wiki about a book)" is thoughtful discussion, eh? It's the same kind of mindless upvotery as your appeal to HN's ostensibly high standard.
s_q_b 10y ago
Nordic countries have an ace up their sleeve that the United States does not: ethnic homogeneity. To acknowledge the elephant in the room, political discussion of government support policies always comes with a racial dog whistle. The subtext is that the government wants to take your money and give it to those people. It sometimes bubbles to the surface, such as with Reagan's welfare queen in a Cadillac comments, but it is almost never mentioned explicitly. Before the United States can implement serious welfare reform, including U.B.I., we must solve this nation's racial integration problem.
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  Though I think UBI can be implemented before or in tandem with fixing our racial issues, here's a quote to expound on this. The Southern Strategy utilized this tactic significantly. From an interview with Lee Atwater[0]: > All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 . . . and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster... > You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----." By 1968 you can't say "n-----" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_.281970s_and_1980s.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_.2...
- hiram112 10y ago
  The most interesting thing about many naive Americans' view of the Nordic 'paradise' is the lack of understanding as to how it is able to exist: a small population of homogenous people of similar ethnicity, shared culture, and history that has high GDP per capita and low levels of corruption. These same people tend to be on the side of unrestricted immigration and mixing of cultures and ethnicity. What they don't understand is that the average person will not want socialism if it means taking from one group and giving disproportionately to another. This is why America will never successfully have Nordic like social systems, and why some of the Nordic countries themselves (Sweden) are already beginning to show signs that the system will not work if is abused by some groups in ways it wasn't before.
maxerickson 10y ago
They are social democracies with a relatively high degree of market freedom. If communism is to have any sort of meaning, it doesn't apply to them.

gnaritas 10y ago

Why do people like you seem to think socialism and communism are the same thing?