4 ms·

> Here in Europe, I have the feeling the vast majority of people consider it unnecessary. The vibe I get is "The system works, so why not let the government han

> Here in Europe, I have the feeling the vast majority of people consider it unnecessary. The vibe I get is "The system works, so why not let the government handle and control everything.". > I wouldn't be surprised if that is a golbal phenomena and holds steady throughout time. Come to the east of EU/Europe and you'll see a completely opposite vibe. No wonder, people in their 40s still remember communism. And the older people sometimes think communism was still better - however bad it was - than whatever we have now.

TekMol 3y ago
Which country for example?
- pdq 3y ago
  I'd suggest watching the 1420 channel, where they interview Russians on the street. Many of the older generation have a nostalgia of life under communism, whereas the younger generation is more skeptical. Here's one of the interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjI8jwn0Upo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjI8jwn0Upo
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    > the younger generation is more skeptical i.e., the first generations never to experience it, and the least knowledgeable.
- throwaway60707 3y ago
  Any country that used to be part of the Eastern Bloc or the Soviet Union itself.
TrainedMonkey 3y ago
I've seen that vibe. In my experience, communism-was-better generally crystalizes out to two things: * Good old times / not remembering the bad parts. * Having your path in life mapped out, i.e. not dealing with uncertainty.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Good old times / not remembering the bad parts. Probably because the "bad parts" never applied to them since they had the right socio-economic background (connections to the party), and they knew how to game the system so that it worked in their favor (did no actual work but were reaping the rewards). >Having your path in life mapped out, i.e. not dealing with uncertainty. Because after the fall of communism a huge portion of the population was financially illiterate since you grew up and were taught that the state will take care of everything, and suddenly you wake up in an economy that's 180 degress different to what you were taught and were used to your whole life, making people completely clueless to the new world of unregulated capitalism and an easy pray to all the scammers and wise-guy opportunists at every step, so inflation, poverty and unemployment was rampant, as well a huge amount of people fell victims to various Ponzi/pyramid/get-rich-quick schemes that were common in the west 100 years earlier but were new here.
  - seadan83 3y ago
    In short, the post-fall countries transitioned to Kleptocracies more than anything else. The transition to capitalism was very spotty and state run businesses existed for a long time after the fall (and in many cases many businesses are still state run and have yet to transition). Out of the 200M+ [1] people in the USSR, what percentage would you say had connections to the party? My impression is that 99% (all but 2M) likely did not. Hence, the "bad" parts did apply to plenty of people and those are the people we are talking about. My experience is from living half a decade in a post-fall country from 1995 to 2000. The people I talked to that missed communism often now had it bad and were left behind. In essence the average quality of life was worse under the USSR but the extremes in quality of life were less - nobody was fully left behind as they are now. There was a very certain social net that was there. On the flip side, with less extremes, there was very little opportunity for advancement, so you wind up with a relatively homogeneously poor but not impoverished society. Post-fall, poverty rates jumped (from extremely low to very high), the homogeneously poor society was still poor and the safety net was completely removed (without any of the upsides of non-communism yet to be felt; it's a decades long process to change an economy from the USSR system). > unregulated capitalism The only unregulated capitalism's out there are black markets. The capitalism of countries in transition post-fall were largely capitalism in name only. Kleptocracy is AFAIK far more accurate of how to describe those transitional governments that still exist today (Belorussia, Russia, Georgia, the central Asian republics are all examples that exist today) > as well a huge amount of people fell victims to various Ponzi/pyramid/get-rich-quick schemes that were common in the west 100 years earlier but were new here Is there somewhere I can read more about this? My impression is the governments switched to democracies in name only. Huge portions of government were there to siphon as much as they could for their own personal gain. Want a drivers license? Pay a bribe. Want a building permit? Pay ten bribes? Want to move your grain to a port terminal? Pay a bribe at every city you pass through. (The very latter is a real example, I was very loosely involved with a post-fall USDA project that looked at that problem. Notably identifying, "Hey, here is your problem - the bribes. By the time a farmer has gotten their grain to port they've payed more in bribes than their base cost - this will not work!" [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_former_USSR.PNG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_former...
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
This dichotomy was made extremely apparent to me during the pandemic. In the US, not saying all opinions were homogenous but most of my liberal friends supported government actions during the pandemic (e.g. closures originally, then mask mandates, vaccine mandates, etc.) I'm friends with a number of folks from Eastern Europe, a couple of whom spent their early childhood under Ceausescu, and the difference couldn't have been more stark. While these friends generally agree with things like union support, worker protections, environmental action, LGBT rights, etc., their opinions were pretty much lockstep with the US right in terms of the pandemic, and it was clear this was due to ingrained government distrust. The sad thing to me is that while I could clearly understand and wholeheartedly agree with some of their positions, it got to the point where it often veered off into "crazytown" in my opinion ("You're not going to inject Bill Gates' mind control poison, are you?")
- Swizec 3y ago
  > their opinions were pretty much lockstep with the US right in terms of the pandemic, and it was clear this was due to ingrained government distrust As a person born in communism but too young to remember, now living in USA, my attitude during pandemy was best described as: The mandates are more like guidelines than actual rules. They were definitely a good thing. We needed people not to congregate en masse in poorly ventilated spaces. But joke’s on you if you think that means I won’t go running without a mask, not like I’m breathing in peoples’ face for extended periods.
- digging 3y ago
  What really sucks is that I can't say anybody is wrong for being skeptical of a government, insofar as any large organization with power over individuals is dangerous. But the critical mistake they are making is that this doesn't mean a government action can't be good. Coordinating public health responses is probably one of the most good government actions possible, and it was vilified for political power. In my mind, it's analogous to a starving rural person saying they should have their hunting rifle melted down (condemning them to likely death) because lots of people have been unjustly murdered by assault rifles. Yes, guns are dangerous - they're powerful, and power is dangerous. So we recognize that there can be abuses of the power of guns (and governments), and we already have guardrails against some of the most egregious abuses - very few people argue citizens should have free access to heavy machine guns and missile launchers. What we argue about is where we should draw the line between usefulness vs risk of abuse of abuse. And in this analogy, there are some people so scared of guns that they're saying we shouldn't even have them available as a simple hunting tool. Bringing it back to government, people are so traumatized by government abuses, regardless of whether those abuses happened to them or even happened at all, that they're sort of arguing for the melting down of the government even when it is genuinely acting in their best interest. Except it's worse, because the anti-mask movement is not trying to actually abolish government at all, just weaponize their own fear for targeted harm.
Makhini 3y ago
In Poland cashless payments thrive, more than in Germany.
- sdsd 3y ago
  From childhood to adolescence I used to go on calls with my dad to fix air conditioners with my dad and we met a Polish couple. By this time I was 14 and communist, having read the motorcycle diaries. Anyway, I asked them about their experience growing up in communist Poland. The wife was absolutely disgusted towards communism. Mind you, this couple lived in a pretty luxurious two story house. She associated communism with lack. The husband on the other hand, well, he wasn't communist, but he told me about how you didn't feel precarious, so to speak. How you knew you'd be able to go to college if you studied hard, how you'd get to go to summer camp, how you'd get an apartment when you got a job, and so on. Like you could kind of feel economically secure about your future in a way that you couldn't in capitalism. I found this really interesting. Perhaps this is gendered because the husband (who worked) is more stressed out by economic precarity than the wife (who didn't), or who knows. Anyway, I think Poland is a bad example here - I think they are not as nostalgic towards communism generally as, say, Russians are. Moldovans seem to even go beyond nostalgia, holding communism to just be a time when life was much better. I don't have opinions on this, just my experiences based on a handful of conversations. In other words, less than anecdotal.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > How you knew you'd be able to go to college if you studied hard, how you'd get to go to summer camp, how you'd get an apartment when you got a job, and so on. Like you could kind of feel economically secure about your future in a way that you couldn't in capitalism. It's sort of like, communism is for conformists. If your goal in life is to be a mid-level bureaucrat who never speaks out of turn then your rent gets paid. But it's exactly that security that makes it fall apart. There is no penalty for mediocrity so it proliferates.
  - throwaway60707 3y ago
    > How you knew you'd be able to go to college if you studied hard, how you'd get to go to summer camp, how you'd get an apartment when you got a job, and so on. Except if you pissed off the communist party, then none of that for you and your children. No way around the state-given requirements - want to work with computers and don't have a diploma for that? Well that's not possible - here's your shovel and get digging already, the state needs you! Want to move to another city and change careers? Well you're going to need good friends at important positions, and gift them dearly (and not just once to get what you want - you needed to build the relationship for a long time before that). My grandfather was beating his children (my father and uncle) because if a child did or said the wrong thing at the wrong time, it was over for the whole family, and he felt like that's the only way to get the children to truly understand it. And even in 2013 - 25 years after the revolution - he was still afraid of the communist secret police. My father was hit by a car when he was 12 and had a very seriously broken leg. My grandfather was taking care of him by himself, because the state's idea of taking care was locking him in a dark room with bars on the windows and using a medieval-like machine to stretch the leg, without any painkillers. My grandfather took him to Yugoslavia to swim in the sea and that actually helped and saved his leg. However since it took months, the communist party decided to label him a parasite - punishable by prison. The local communist party cell voted about it and it didn't go through by one vote... that my grandfather got thanks to a bribe. It was "good" for the people who fell in line - as in, they didn't have any special circumstances. Anything out of the ordinary and your life was way worse. > The wife was absolutely disgusted towards communism. Mind you, this couple lived in a pretty luxurious two story house. She associated communism with lack. Women had to use newspaper instead of menstrual pads. There was only very few styles of clothing/shoes available for women, while men had much more choice. Women didn't get the opportunities to be educated and work like men did, because it was expected they will stay at home and take care of children. It was a system made by men, for men. It's not surprising that a woman hated it.

TekMol 3y ago

Which country for example?

pdq 3y ago
I'd suggest watching the 1420 channel, where they interview Russians on the street. Many of the older generation have a nostalgia of life under communism, whereas the younger generation is more skeptical. Here's one of the interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjI8jwn0Upo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjI8jwn0Upo
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > the younger generation is more skeptical i.e., the first generations never to experience it, and the least knowledgeable.
throwaway60707 3y ago
Any country that used to be part of the Eastern Bloc or the Soviet Union itself.

TrainedMonkey 3y ago

I've seen that vibe. In my experience, communism-was-better generally crystalizes out to two things: * Good old times / not remembering the bad parts. * Having your path in life mapped out, i.e. not dealing with uncertainty.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Good old times / not remembering the bad parts. Probably because the "bad parts" never applied to them since they had the right socio-economic background (connections to the party), and they knew how to game the system so that it worked in their favor (did no actual work but were reaping the rewards). >Having your path in life mapped out, i.e. not dealing with uncertainty. Because after the fall of communism a huge portion of the population was financially illiterate since you grew up and were taught that the state will take care of everything, and suddenly you wake up in an economy that's 180 degress different to what you were taught and were used to your whole life, making people completely clueless to the new world of unregulated capitalism and an easy pray to all the scammers and wise-guy opportunists at every step, so inflation, poverty and unemployment was rampant, as well a huge amount of people fell victims to various Ponzi/pyramid/get-rich-quick schemes that were common in the west 100 years earlier but were new here.
- seadan83 3y ago
  In short, the post-fall countries transitioned to Kleptocracies more than anything else. The transition to capitalism was very spotty and state run businesses existed for a long time after the fall (and in many cases many businesses are still state run and have yet to transition). Out of the 200M+ [1] people in the USSR, what percentage would you say had connections to the party? My impression is that 99% (all but 2M) likely did not. Hence, the "bad" parts did apply to plenty of people and those are the people we are talking about. My experience is from living half a decade in a post-fall country from 1995 to 2000. The people I talked to that missed communism often now had it bad and were left behind. In essence the average quality of life was worse under the USSR but the extremes in quality of life were less - nobody was fully left behind as they are now. There was a very certain social net that was there. On the flip side, with less extremes, there was very little opportunity for advancement, so you wind up with a relatively homogeneously poor but not impoverished society. Post-fall, poverty rates jumped (from extremely low to very high), the homogeneously poor society was still poor and the safety net was completely removed (without any of the upsides of non-communism yet to be felt; it's a decades long process to change an economy from the USSR system). > unregulated capitalism The only unregulated capitalism's out there are black markets. The capitalism of countries in transition post-fall were largely capitalism in name only. Kleptocracy is AFAIK far more accurate of how to describe those transitional governments that still exist today (Belorussia, Russia, Georgia, the central Asian republics are all examples that exist today) > as well a huge amount of people fell victims to various Ponzi/pyramid/get-rich-quick schemes that were common in the west 100 years earlier but were new here Is there somewhere I can read more about this? My impression is the governments switched to democracies in name only. Huge portions of government were there to siphon as much as they could for their own personal gain. Want a drivers license? Pay a bribe. Want a building permit? Pay ten bribes? Want to move your grain to a port terminal? Pay a bribe at every city you pass through. (The very latter is a real example, I was very loosely involved with a post-fall USDA project that looked at that problem. Notably identifying, "Hey, here is your problem - the bribes. By the time a farmer has gotten their grain to port they've payed more in bribes than their base cost - this will not work!" [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_former_USSR.PNG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_former...

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

This dichotomy was made extremely apparent to me during the pandemic. In the US, not saying all opinions were homogenous but most of my liberal friends supported government actions during the pandemic (e.g. closures originally, then mask mandates, vaccine mandates, etc.) I'm friends with a number of folks from Eastern Europe, a couple of whom spent their early childhood under Ceausescu, and the difference couldn't have been more stark. While these friends generally agree with things like union support, worker protections, environmental action, LGBT rights, etc., their opinions were pretty much lockstep with the US right in terms of the pandemic, and it was clear this was due to ingrained government distrust. The sad thing to me is that while I could clearly understand and wholeheartedly agree with some of their positions, it got to the point where it often veered off into "crazytown" in my opinion ("You're not going to inject Bill Gates' mind control poison, are you?")

Swizec 3y ago
> their opinions were pretty much lockstep with the US right in terms of the pandemic, and it was clear this was due to ingrained government distrust As a person born in communism but too young to remember, now living in USA, my attitude during pandemy was best described as: The mandates are more like guidelines than actual rules. They were definitely a good thing. We needed people not to congregate en masse in poorly ventilated spaces. But joke’s on you if you think that means I won’t go running without a mask, not like I’m breathing in peoples’ face for extended periods.
digging 3y ago
What really sucks is that I can't say anybody is wrong for being skeptical of a government, insofar as any large organization with power over individuals is dangerous. But the critical mistake they are making is that this doesn't mean a government action can't be good. Coordinating public health responses is probably one of the most good government actions possible, and it was vilified for political power. In my mind, it's analogous to a starving rural person saying they should have their hunting rifle melted down (condemning them to likely death) because lots of people have been unjustly murdered by assault rifles. Yes, guns are dangerous - they're powerful, and power is dangerous. So we recognize that there can be abuses of the power of guns (and governments), and we already have guardrails against some of the most egregious abuses - very few people argue citizens should have free access to heavy machine guns and missile launchers. What we argue about is where we should draw the line between usefulness vs risk of abuse of abuse. And in this analogy, there are some people so scared of guns that they're saying we shouldn't even have them available as a simple hunting tool. Bringing it back to government, people are so traumatized by government abuses, regardless of whether those abuses happened to them or even happened at all, that they're sort of arguing for the melting down of the government even when it is genuinely acting in their best interest. Except it's worse, because the anti-mask movement is not trying to actually abolish government at all, just weaponize their own fear for targeted harm.

Makhini 3y ago

In Poland cashless payments thrive, more than in Germany.

sdsd 3y ago
From childhood to adolescence I used to go on calls with my dad to fix air conditioners with my dad and we met a Polish couple. By this time I was 14 and communist, having read the motorcycle diaries. Anyway, I asked them about their experience growing up in communist Poland. The wife was absolutely disgusted towards communism. Mind you, this couple lived in a pretty luxurious two story house. She associated communism with lack. The husband on the other hand, well, he wasn't communist, but he told me about how you didn't feel precarious, so to speak. How you knew you'd be able to go to college if you studied hard, how you'd get to go to summer camp, how you'd get an apartment when you got a job, and so on. Like you could kind of feel economically secure about your future in a way that you couldn't in capitalism. I found this really interesting. Perhaps this is gendered because the husband (who worked) is more stressed out by economic precarity than the wife (who didn't), or who knows. Anyway, I think Poland is a bad example here - I think they are not as nostalgic towards communism generally as, say, Russians are. Moldovans seem to even go beyond nostalgia, holding communism to just be a time when life was much better. I don't have opinions on this, just my experiences based on a handful of conversations. In other words, less than anecdotal.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > How you knew you'd be able to go to college if you studied hard, how you'd get to go to summer camp, how you'd get an apartment when you got a job, and so on. Like you could kind of feel economically secure about your future in a way that you couldn't in capitalism. It's sort of like, communism is for conformists. If your goal in life is to be a mid-level bureaucrat who never speaks out of turn then your rent gets paid. But it's exactly that security that makes it fall apart. There is no penalty for mediocrity so it proliferates.
- throwaway60707 3y ago
  > How you knew you'd be able to go to college if you studied hard, how you'd get to go to summer camp, how you'd get an apartment when you got a job, and so on. Except if you pissed off the communist party, then none of that for you and your children. No way around the state-given requirements - want to work with computers and don't have a diploma for that? Well that's not possible - here's your shovel and get digging already, the state needs you! Want to move to another city and change careers? Well you're going to need good friends at important positions, and gift them dearly (and not just once to get what you want - you needed to build the relationship for a long time before that). My grandfather was beating his children (my father and uncle) because if a child did or said the wrong thing at the wrong time, it was over for the whole family, and he felt like that's the only way to get the children to truly understand it. And even in 2013 - 25 years after the revolution - he was still afraid of the communist secret police. My father was hit by a car when he was 12 and had a very seriously broken leg. My grandfather was taking care of him by himself, because the state's idea of taking care was locking him in a dark room with bars on the windows and using a medieval-like machine to stretch the leg, without any painkillers. My grandfather took him to Yugoslavia to swim in the sea and that actually helped and saved his leg. However since it took months, the communist party decided to label him a parasite - punishable by prison. The local communist party cell voted about it and it didn't go through by one vote... that my grandfather got thanks to a bribe. It was "good" for the people who fell in line - as in, they didn't have any special circumstances. Anything out of the ordinary and your life was way worse. > The wife was absolutely disgusted towards communism. Mind you, this couple lived in a pretty luxurious two story house. She associated communism with lack. Women had to use newspaper instead of menstrual pads. There was only very few styles of clothing/shoes available for women, while men had much more choice. Women didn't get the opportunities to be educated and work like men did, because it was expected they will stay at home and take care of children. It was a system made by men, for men. It's not surprising that a woman hated it.