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Vietnamese billionaire? I thought Vietnam was a communist country?
by beaconstudios 7y ago
Vietnamese billionaire? I thought Vietnam was a communist country?
- jammygit 7y agoI’m a little curious about how that works
- saagarjha 7y agoI’m sure you can take a look at China for examples.
- freehunter 7y agoReally it comes down to Big-C "Communist" vs little-c "communist". Soviet Russia was little-c "communist" in that you weren't allowed to make much money and if you made a lot you weren't allowed to spend it, so everyone had exactly the same things and quality of things. More modern "communist" countries are Big-C Communist, more correctly titled Capitalist Authoritarianism. You can have as much of anything as you want, as long as you're loyal to the government and agree that the government can take everything you own any time they want. Including your business or your billions of dollars. China has hundreds of billionaires even though they're "Communist" because they're not actually communist, they're Authoritarian Capitalist.
- javagram 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vietnam “Since the mid-1980s, through the Doi Moi reform period Vietnam has made a shift from a highly centralized command economy to a mixed economy that uses both directive and indicative planning through five-year plans.”
- HNLurker2 7y agoJust like Romania? Or Cuba?
- faraday2211 7y agoRomania has moved over from communism to a crime centric country - the culture and everything is dominated by it, so the only “billionaires” are dodgy people with a shady past. Went from communism to kleptocracy, rather than democracy.
- HNLurker2 7y agoWe have a new government, same German president, and most "powerful" politican is in prison
- faraday2211 7y agoI know, i am from the country. Came back after years of living abroad only to find a big fat deception, a culture of crime and corruption, cheap nationalism, conspiracy theories in every aspect of life, pseudo sciences, incompetence at all levels and lame “pride”. Naturally there is a handful of great people but too few to make a difference. I for one cant wait to get out of here. Oh and that german president apparently has a criminal history of buying properties illegally (he apparently lost a case in this regard), but is better than the other candidate.
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- huydotnet 7y agoWell, I'd only say, what you know about communist isn't true anymore in Vietnam and China (I guess, in every communist countries in the world). Vietnam has already shifted out of the communist styl e(goverment-managed-everything) since 1986 https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/vietnams-political-economy-transition-1986-2016 https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/vietnams-political-ec...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tehjoker 7y agoIt's pretty disappointing. The Vietnamese communist party defends the Doi Moi reforms as using capitalism controlled by the people's state as a phase to increase production in the economy. This is something understandable as socialism can't be built on an insufficient industrial base and capitalism provides individual incentives to jump start it and a door for foreign investment from capitalist countries. However, other leftists critique this as revisionist and a failure of existing Marxist-Leninist models* which do not appear to incorporate true worker control of the economy. Once you introduce capitalism without proper checks on the bureaucracy, it takes on a life of its own as the newly created capitalist class begins to advocate for itself at the expense of the people and the bureaucrats begin to see themselves as the rightful heirs of private wealth. This is one analysis I read of what happened in China. I'm not sure who to believe, but introducing elements of capitalism is on its face a dangerous move for the Vietnamese revolution. Honestly, I'm shocked that they've let it go so far they have a billionaire. I hope they have things actually under control because they fought and bled for decades to eject imperial influences from France and America and to ensure the people control their own fate. I'm sure a politically active Vietnamese person would have a different take than me (and certainly a multitude of takes), given they understand their circumstances better than a dabbler foreigner like myself. * I say existing because the Soviet Union briefly attained this, but the leadership shut down the workers councils (which many saw as a betrayal). So this idea isn't necessarily inimical to Marxism-Leninism, but in practice only a sparse number of examples have been realized.
- xmly 7y agoThey just use communism as a disguise. Under the hood, everything is capitalism. So is China. I always view the so-called communism in China and Vietnam is a modernization of Confucianism.