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The article mentions “Red Vienna” in only one sentence. But the last 80 years of progressive politics in Vienna was a huge success. Social housing, public trans
by holri 10y ago
The article mentions “Red Vienna” in only one sentence. But the last 80 years of progressive politics in Vienna was a huge success. Social housing, public transport, social welfare, security, education etc. and therefore the quality of live are exceptional in that city because of progressive politics.
https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoAs long as you have an influx of other people's money to spend, progressive policies do "exceptional". What the progressive narrative fails to recognise (and actually cares to hide) is that it was a previous huge free market period that allowed to build the pre-conditions that they used.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoThe "pre-condition" for Austria was being on the loosing side of WW2, after that the economy was only 60% of it's pre-war size.
- Avshalom 10y agofree markets also require huge amounts of other people's money while they waste resources in competition before a solution is found.
- hueving 10y agoAnd centrally planned systems don't find a solution to many problems at all (e.g. new low cost innovations). Without competition, there is no incentive to improve the efficiency of anything that meets the bare minimum requirements.
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoPlanned systems are doomed by design. They destroy the information that prices carry and end in self-destruction/collapse. Even communist China knows better than that.
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoYou seem to be confused about the meaning of "other people's money". You see, in a free market, you have voluntary contracts and transactions like in people deciding on how their money is used, put a risk, etc. which is ethically perfect. Progressivists societies, on the contrary, can do nothing without the use of coercion. Then they put their bunch of bureaucrats to vote on how to use the money that they have taken from you at gunpoint.
- holri 10y agoThere is no coercion and no gunpoints because the government in Vienna is elected by the people.
- dmichulke 10y agoSo "elected by 50%+" means absence of coercion?
- holri 10y agoyes that is how democracy works.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoAh, so minority rights don't matter any more? By your standards even Hitler was democratically elected. That doesn't make his actions moral.
- holri 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
- IvarTheHomeless 10y agoHitler was appointed, not elected.
- 10y ago
- holri 10y agoThere is no spending but investing. In schools, public transport, social peace. Those investments of the last 80 years come to fruition today for the advantage of everyone. Before Red Vienna was not huge free market period but a huge lost war, pervasive destruction and a dramatically shrunk country, cut off of his industry (Czech) and agriculture (Hungary).
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoBefore "investing" it got collected by coercion which is immoral. But to follow your hypothesis, can you demonstrate that the output of that "investing" turns out to be ROI positive?
- holri 10y agoTaxing is not coercion, but a democratic decision to distribute wealth. The return on investment in Vienna's commonwealth is the best quality of living in the world (quality of live is a lot more than private money) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoTaxing is not coercion Explain how is not coercion that a majority decide democratically to take all your money, leave you absolutely nothing, in the street, send SWAT to your house if you resist and shoot you if you offer any active resistance? PS: also you didn't demonstrate your previous claim has any chance to be ROI positive. Can you do that?
- holri 10y agoThey do not take all of the circulating money (That would be nonsense because the circle would stop) but in Austria approx. 42%. Since national economy is a circle that money is not lost as an expense but is again invested in the economy and is coming back. ROI is a term of business administration and not national economy and therefore not applicable to the economies of Cities.
- woodpanel 10y agoIt probably doesn't mention the "red vienna", because "the last 80 years of progressive politics" have not much to do with the idea-producing that went on before? "Red vienna" is a byproduct of that cultural climate prior to 1914. After World War 2 there might have been some isolated blurbs of Vienna's former greatness but even those are just the crumbs of what collectivism and anti-semitism started to grind down before Hitler undid it completely (and long lastingly) when he marched into his home country.
- hueving 10y agoSuccessful at making them irrelevant in a global economy perhaps. What major innovations and technology are coming out of Vienna now? The best case seems to be that tourism stays busy enough to keep the taxes flowing in to sustain the entitlement programs.
- riffraff 10y agois there any other country with less than 10M people and no natural resources which is more relevant than Austria in the global economy? Possibly Switzerland, but not by much.
- krrrh 10y agoDenmark?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 1337biz 10y agoHong Kong?
- oblio 10y agoOne could argue that having on of the world's best ports near the world's #2 economy counts as a natural resource :)
- maverick_iceman 10y agoThere are so many obvious counterexamples to your claim as others have pointed out. Mongolia was and is a tiny nation but had one of the largest empires the world has ever seen.
- ohwello 10y agoSo the examples are an ancient empire which is now in poverty, and two states with great port cities?
- 1337biz 10y agoBut didn't 'Red Vienna' lead to a blue(rightwing) Austria? Considering the red wonderland painted here in the comments, the strong shift to the right of the rest of the country suddenly makes sense. We shouldn't forget that an alliance of ALL Austrian parties, including the consevatives, were barely able to defeat the right wing candidate.
- holri 10y agoI see no relation from Red Vienna to right wing. Rising of right wing is a global emergence now. In Vienna the right wing candidate had a massive debacle in the last election.
- pvg 10y agoThe rise of the Austrian right wing predates the 'global emergence' by quite a bit. And you can probably connect it to 'Red Vienna' although not directly as a response to progressive policies.
- muzfuz 10y agoCorrelation is not causation :) The Austrian right is far more popular in the countryside than the cities - which is not a new thing, non-urban areas have historically been more right-leaning. It's the same problem we continue to see in other countries - progressive cities and conservative regions. That said, because progressives have been so successful in Austria, even the right wing is very socialist in some ways. It's just that they want all those benefits for Austrians only.