4 ms·

Still living in Russia? Moved to the USA as a child. I highly recommend exploring outside of one's ideological echo-chamber (all of us sit inside such chamber

Still living in Russia? Moved to the USA as a child. I highly recommend exploring outside of one's ideological echo-chamber (all of us sit inside such chambers.) You will learn many interesting things! Many of my own political bits have flipped as a result of such exploration.

woobar 15y ago
>Moved to the USA as a child. Then you have no idea what you are talking about...
- asciilifeform 15y ago
  So you won't read Gibbon, because he never even set foot in ancient Rome? That impostor. Most of what any thinking person reliably knows about the world comes from the printed word.
  - woobar 15y ago
    I agree. Unfortunately you did not back any of your outrages statements with anything but you being born in USSR. All I wanted to point out is that it is not enough.
    - asciilifeform 15y ago
      Out of curiosity, what would be "enough"? Can you even imagine yourself being convinced of the positions I brought up? (Are we dealing with a "religious" difference of opinions here?) And what kind of biography would the person doing the convincing need to have? (I only brought up my birthplace because someone specifically asked. I fully agree that it is irrelevant. However, there is the added caveat that much of the relevant material on the implicit question of "was the USSR irredeemably Satanic, and are its destroyers automatically saints?" - the material which collectively forms Soviet culture - will never be translated into English.)
- iwwr 15y ago
  He may not necessarily say that owning former state assets is good or evil, but that the perception of entrepreneurs has been tainted by the mafia that took over right after the Soviet collapse. So, stories like these don't evoke the empathy and outrage that are required.
  - woobar 15y ago
    This is perfect point which I agree with completely. What I don't agree with is OP's blanket statements like 'privatization is theft'. So far the only argument to support his views were his childhood memories.
    - asciilifeform 15y ago
      I could cite a wealth of literature describing what Soviet life was actually like for people other than dissident whiners. But it would be a waste of time, because 1) it would persuade no one - everyone here appears to have read-only minds on the subject and 2) most of it has never and will never be translated to English.
      - woobar 15y ago
        Please, share your best sources. Russian is my native language. I lived in USSR (Central Russia and Far East, Ukraine, Georgia). My children were born in Russia. Don't mind if I take your literature with a grain of salt though. PS: And I know for a fact that it was not possible to "get high-quality milk and cheese into peoples' stomachs without American notions of "profit"" in USSR for any reasonable period of time.
    - pbz 15y ago
      Privatization in theory is not theft, the same way communism sounds great on paper. In practice, however, when you're dealing with the level of corruption that was / is present in former communist countries, you can pretty much assume that every privatization involved theft. For somebody who lived through the process is as obvious as saying the US government is influenced by corporations.
  - 15y ago
- sovande 15y ago
  I think it is the other way around; You have no idea what you are talking about. How can you draw that conclusion from such a premise?
SwellJoe 15y ago
Since you enjoy exploring and learning, I suggest an afternoon of reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_repression_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_repression_i... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_... (Wherein we learn how it came to be that "the people" owned the dairies that were later sold to the subject of this article.)
- asciilifeform 15y ago
  If we're going to play "morality via contest of body counts"... A foolish game to play, but hey, why not. Good sportsmanship and all. So: The history of the New World. Had enough? Is the "winner" of the murder-Olympics still so clear to you? How about after adjusting the slaughter-count logarithmically to account for world population growth? (You can't kill people who have never lived yet.) I hope that we both live long enough to read post-USA texts on American history. I'm sure they will make for at least as exciting an afternoon of reading as the now dime-a-dozen works on Russian atrocities.
  - guygurari 15y ago
    You went after his first link but ignored the second one on collectivization which I think is more pertinent. At least with privatization the government, which represents the interests of the people, acts within its mandate: It sells assets that belong to the people. With collectivism the government is coercing citizens to give up property against their will. If anything, collectivism is theft.
    - asciilifeform 15y ago
      With collectivization, the government, assuming that it represents the interests of its people, is also acting within its mandate. Our difference of opinion appears to be that you believe a government which collectivizes property to be automatically illegitimate, and one which privatizes formerly collectivized property to be automatically legitimate. You define the act of nationalizing property to be one which leads to loss of legitimacy. There are excellent reasons to believe that most Soviet citizens opposed privatization. In that case, the Western "democracies" lie through their teeth when they claim that "the will of the people was done."

woobar 15y ago

>Moved to the USA as a child. Then you have no idea what you are talking about...

asciilifeform 15y ago
So you won't read Gibbon, because he never even set foot in ancient Rome? That impostor. Most of what any thinking person reliably knows about the world comes from the printed word.
- woobar 15y ago
  I agree. Unfortunately you did not back any of your outrages statements with anything but you being born in USSR. All I wanted to point out is that it is not enough.
  - asciilifeform 15y ago
    Out of curiosity, what would be "enough"? Can you even imagine yourself being convinced of the positions I brought up? (Are we dealing with a "religious" difference of opinions here?) And what kind of biography would the person doing the convincing need to have? (I only brought up my birthplace because someone specifically asked. I fully agree that it is irrelevant. However, there is the added caveat that much of the relevant material on the implicit question of "was the USSR irredeemably Satanic, and are its destroyers automatically saints?" - the material which collectively forms Soviet culture - will never be translated into English.)
iwwr 15y ago
He may not necessarily say that owning former state assets is good or evil, but that the perception of entrepreneurs has been tainted by the mafia that took over right after the Soviet collapse. So, stories like these don't evoke the empathy and outrage that are required.
- woobar 15y ago
  This is perfect point which I agree with completely. What I don't agree with is OP's blanket statements like 'privatization is theft'. So far the only argument to support his views were his childhood memories.
  - asciilifeform 15y ago
    I could cite a wealth of literature describing what Soviet life was actually like for people other than dissident whiners. But it would be a waste of time, because 1) it would persuade no one - everyone here appears to have read-only minds on the subject and 2) most of it has never and will never be translated to English.
    - woobar 15y ago
      Please, share your best sources. Russian is my native language. I lived in USSR (Central Russia and Far East, Ukraine, Georgia). My children were born in Russia. Don't mind if I take your literature with a grain of salt though. PS: And I know for a fact that it was not possible to "get high-quality milk and cheese into peoples' stomachs without American notions of "profit"" in USSR for any reasonable period of time.
  - pbz 15y ago
    Privatization in theory is not theft, the same way communism sounds great on paper. In practice, however, when you're dealing with the level of corruption that was / is present in former communist countries, you can pretty much assume that every privatization involved theft. For somebody who lived through the process is as obvious as saying the US government is influenced by corporations.
- 15y ago
sovande 15y ago
I think it is the other way around; You have no idea what you are talking about. How can you draw that conclusion from such a premise?

SwellJoe 15y ago

Since you enjoy exploring and learning, I suggest an afternoon of reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_repression_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_repression_i... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_... (Wherein we learn how it came to be that "the people" owned the dairies that were later sold to the subject of this article.)

asciilifeform 15y ago
If we're going to play "morality via contest of body counts"... A foolish game to play, but hey, why not. Good sportsmanship and all. So: The history of the New World. Had enough? Is the "winner" of the murder-Olympics still so clear to you? How about after adjusting the slaughter-count logarithmically to account for world population growth? (You can't kill people who have never lived yet.) I hope that we both live long enough to read post-USA texts on American history. I'm sure they will make for at least as exciting an afternoon of reading as the now dime-a-dozen works on Russian atrocities.
- guygurari 15y ago
  You went after his first link but ignored the second one on collectivization which I think is more pertinent. At least with privatization the government, which represents the interests of the people, acts within its mandate: It sells assets that belong to the people. With collectivism the government is coercing citizens to give up property against their will. If anything, collectivism is theft.
  - asciilifeform 15y ago
    With collectivization, the government, assuming that it represents the interests of its people, is also acting within its mandate. Our difference of opinion appears to be that you believe a government which collectivizes property to be automatically illegitimate, and one which privatizes formerly collectivized property to be automatically legitimate. You define the act of nationalizing property to be one which leads to loss of legitimacy. There are excellent reasons to believe that most Soviet citizens opposed privatization. In that case, the Western "democracies" lie through their teeth when they claim that "the will of the people was done."