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I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America and in the real world peop

I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America and in the real world people are aghast at the unjust laws of the USSR while on the internet everyone is like "but the law". Fuck the law. Law != Justice. Use some critical thinking skills for once. You earned your wealth. It's not the government's.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sofixa 5y ago
I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but to put it bluntly, you can just apply logic applicable to the fucking Soviet Union for any country and law system. > You earned your wealth. It's not the government's A common misconception among libertarians and alike; that's outright false. Pretty much everyone in a regular developed/ing country, especially in a centrally planned economy like the USSR, has wealth because a society and a government enable it. Be it with infrastructure, education, regulations, monetary system, or whatever. For examples how important those are for any wealth generation, look at Venezuela or Turkey.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  Argue with nerds on the internet and someone will always claim a 100% tax is both legal and just.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Who is arguing that a 100% tax is legal and just? Is that some weird slippery slope tuned to a million? A 100% tax can't work, so any tax is bad! Is that it? Taxes are a great way for citizens to give back to the pool used on them, proportionally, and for governments to insentivise and discourage behaviour ( e.g. lower taxes on electric vehicles and raise them on more polluting types). Saying taxation is theft is a great way to out oneself as incredibly naïve and with approximately zero understanding of how anything related to government, politics or economy functions.
- hrhrhrhrhr 5y ago
  People in USSR were kept inside against their will and were used as a forced labor. They absolutely earned their wealth, not the nomenklatura.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Forced labour is pushing it, at least for the general population. They were paid, had vacations and other "benefits", and could change jobs. If those are your criteria for forced labour, wait until you hear of countries with healthcare tied to the employer, and close to zero employee protections. But yes, they were kept inside the country, which is a separate issue.
    - hrhrhrhrhr 5y ago
      My criteria for forced labor is being criminally charged for refusing to work.
      - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
        Arguing with commies on the internet is a waste of time. The goal posts are always changing.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Money is representation of value within a society, but it only has value within that society - and to the extent it can be traded abroad. The value is protected by the legal system, by the army, facilitated by the roads, bridges and infrastructure. Just because you get a "dollar" or "ruble" in exchange for work doesn't intrinsically mean that you are owed anything. That obligation comes from the system in which you, your employer and your fellow countryfolk coexist and cooperate. You cannot divorce one from the other. [edit] (They earned units that they could exchange immediately or at some future time. Whether or not that amounted to wealth is based on what those units could or did turn into at the point of measure within the framework of the society in which they exist.)
    - 5y ago
f6v 5y ago
She got an exit visa to the USA, yet had to smuggle rubbles? Something doesn’t add up.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  At the time all cash found on you would be taken from you at the airport. What is there to add up? It was their way of sticking it to people for "abandoning" the country.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    It's extremely funny that the US kind of does the same thing in a roundabout way - if you're a US citizen, you have to pay taxes to the US government, wherever you live. If you want to abandon your US citizenship, you have to pay an exit tax and pay all the other taxes you owe.
lr1970 5y ago
> I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America... Typically people were smuggling foreign currency (US dollars) out of the Soviet Union rather than rubles. Rubles were of little use in America. But smuggling dollars was in violation of two soviet laws at one -- any operation with foreign currency was illegal (up to death penalty for currency "speculation" at scale); and transporting undeclared valuables across the border was illegal too. People in 1978 were literally risking ending up in a Siberian labor camp while trying to board an Aeroflot plane to Vienna (transit hub for immigration from the soviet union during iron curtain).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sofixa 5y ago

I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but to put it bluntly, you can just apply logic applicable to the fucking Soviet Union for any country and law system. > You earned your wealth. It's not the government's A common misconception among libertarians and alike; that's outright false. Pretty much everyone in a regular developed/ing country, especially in a centrally planned economy like the USSR, has wealth because a society and a government enable it. Be it with infrastructure, education, regulations, monetary system, or whatever. For examples how important those are for any wealth generation, look at Venezuela or Turkey.

0x0nyandesu 5y ago
Argue with nerds on the internet and someone will always claim a 100% tax is both legal and just.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Who is arguing that a 100% tax is legal and just? Is that some weird slippery slope tuned to a million? A 100% tax can't work, so any tax is bad! Is that it? Taxes are a great way for citizens to give back to the pool used on them, proportionally, and for governments to insentivise and discourage behaviour ( e.g. lower taxes on electric vehicles and raise them on more polluting types). Saying taxation is theft is a great way to out oneself as incredibly naïve and with approximately zero understanding of how anything related to government, politics or economy functions.
hrhrhrhrhr 5y ago
People in USSR were kept inside against their will and were used as a forced labor. They absolutely earned their wealth, not the nomenklatura.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Forced labour is pushing it, at least for the general population. They were paid, had vacations and other "benefits", and could change jobs. If those are your criteria for forced labour, wait until you hear of countries with healthcare tied to the employer, and close to zero employee protections. But yes, they were kept inside the country, which is a separate issue.
  - hrhrhrhrhr 5y ago
    My criteria for forced labor is being criminally charged for refusing to work.
    - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
      Arguing with commies on the internet is a waste of time. The goal posts are always changing.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Money is representation of value within a society, but it only has value within that society - and to the extent it can be traded abroad. The value is protected by the legal system, by the army, facilitated by the roads, bridges and infrastructure. Just because you get a "dollar" or "ruble" in exchange for work doesn't intrinsically mean that you are owed anything. That obligation comes from the system in which you, your employer and your fellow countryfolk coexist and cooperate. You cannot divorce one from the other. [edit] (They earned units that they could exchange immediately or at some future time. Whether or not that amounted to wealth is based on what those units could or did turn into at the point of measure within the framework of the society in which they exist.)
  - 5y ago

f6v 5y ago

She got an exit visa to the USA, yet had to smuggle rubbles? Something doesn’t add up.

0x0nyandesu 5y ago
At the time all cash found on you would be taken from you at the airport. What is there to add up? It was their way of sticking it to people for "abandoning" the country.
- sofixa 5y ago
  It's extremely funny that the US kind of does the same thing in a roundabout way - if you're a US citizen, you have to pay taxes to the US government, wherever you live. If you want to abandon your US citizenship, you have to pay an exit tax and pay all the other taxes you owe.

lr1970 5y ago

> I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America... Typically people were smuggling foreign currency (US dollars) out of the Soviet Union rather than rubles. Rubles were of little use in America. But smuggling dollars was in violation of two soviet laws at one -- any operation with foreign currency was illegal (up to death penalty for currency "speculation" at scale); and transporting undeclared valuables across the border was illegal too. People in 1978 were literally risking ending up in a Siberian labor camp while trying to board an Aeroflot plane to Vienna (transit hub for immigration from the soviet union during iron curtain).