5 ms·

> People today scorn at the idea of state farms but my father comes from a family of rather wealthy peasants from before collectivization and always told me tha

> People today scorn at the idea of state farms but my father comes from a family of rather wealthy peasants from before collectivization and always told me that productivity was shit before modern cultivation methods, mechanization, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides were used. “Modern cultivation methods, mechanization, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides” don’t require the use of state farms. Evidence: farms in other rich countries of the time such as Western Germany and the USA.

MichaelRo 3y ago
I'm not talking about today's Germany. I was referring to post-war Eastern Europe where land property was so fragmented that famines would still happen because individual peasants didn't have enough land to meet MVP (minimum viable produce of anything should anything go awry and it always did). And 1900s Germany doesn't require state farms precisely because commercially viable land was already concentrated enough (though heck knows what sacrifices that we'll never know) to be viable in the hands of capital that has the means to handle it. State farms were a great step forward for humanity, in spite of the terrific occasional human costs it incurred on the imbeciles who couldn't read the times. Capital where it wasn't compared to no capital, that is. Talking about 1900s Germany, that reminds me of a story my grandpa told me. He had a cousin that moved from rural Romania to urban Germany in order to work in a factory, after abandoning his pig trade that my grandma was doing (fattening pigs and selling them in an animal market). The idea was not to immigrate but to make enough hard $$$ as to buy here at home enough land that he couldn't have even dreamed otherwise. An early IT-guy I guess :) Anyhow after he came back, the women of the village asked his wife who was at all times following him. "How did you manage to buy things given you speak no German at all?!". "Well, unlike the backwards shop here where the seller sits behind a counter under the presumption that you'll steal shit and asks you what you want, in Deutschland shops are open space. They provide you with a basket on entry, into which said basket you freely pick stuff from shelves in the store and all you have to do upon exit is show the basket to the clerk store and they will show you the number. You pay that (it's just numbers so you don't have to know any German at all) and off you go". That was 1900s... Very advanced by comparison.
- MichaelRo 3y ago
  By the way, they ("they" as in "companies") probably should have quotas for people like me. The disadvantaged. Born in a village. Although peasants made 60% of the population in Romania in 1990 when revolution happened, and they still make a big chunk today, less than 1% of software developers in Romania originate in a village. And the ones like me who made it this far are met with scornful comments like "well, you wasn't really a peasant because youz family was if not rich at least definitely not poor". "Shoot the Kulaks", right?
- watwut 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jowdones 3y ago
    Yeah well my grandpa wuz a hero. Narrowly escaping being shot on the spot for carrying a firearm (he was a partisan), got 16 years in the Romanian gulag, reckoned after 11 that noone's coming to the rescue as it happened to the West before USSR good a chance to "rescue" them. What you are regurgitating is spoken precisely from the vantage point of a well fed ignoramus.
    - dang 3y ago
      Please don't post ideological flamewar comments or personal attacks, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
  - dang 3y ago
    Please don't post ideological flamewar comments or personal attacks, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

MichaelRo 3y ago

I'm not talking about today's Germany. I was referring to post-war Eastern Europe where land property was so fragmented that famines would still happen because individual peasants didn't have enough land to meet MVP (minimum viable produce of anything should anything go awry and it always did). And 1900s Germany doesn't require state farms precisely because commercially viable land was already concentrated enough (though heck knows what sacrifices that we'll never know) to be viable in the hands of capital that has the means to handle it. State farms were a great step forward for humanity, in spite of the terrific occasional human costs it incurred on the imbeciles who couldn't read the times. Capital where it wasn't compared to no capital, that is. Talking about 1900s Germany, that reminds me of a story my grandpa told me. He had a cousin that moved from rural Romania to urban Germany in order to work in a factory, after abandoning his pig trade that my grandma was doing (fattening pigs and selling them in an animal market). The idea was not to immigrate but to make enough hard $$$ as to buy here at home enough land that he couldn't have even dreamed otherwise. An early IT-guy I guess :) Anyhow after he came back, the women of the village asked his wife who was at all times following him. "How did you manage to buy things given you speak no German at all?!". "Well, unlike the backwards shop here where the seller sits behind a counter under the presumption that you'll steal shit and asks you what you want, in Deutschland shops are open space. They provide you with a basket on entry, into which said basket you freely pick stuff from shelves in the store and all you have to do upon exit is show the basket to the clerk store and they will show you the number. You pay that (it's just numbers so you don't have to know any German at all) and off you go". That was 1900s... Very advanced by comparison.

MichaelRo 3y ago
By the way, they ("they" as in "companies") probably should have quotas for people like me. The disadvantaged. Born in a village. Although peasants made 60% of the population in Romania in 1990 when revolution happened, and they still make a big chunk today, less than 1% of software developers in Romania originate in a village. And the ones like me who made it this far are met with scornful comments like "well, you wasn't really a peasant because youz family was if not rich at least definitely not poor". "Shoot the Kulaks", right?
watwut 3y ago
[flagged]
- jowdones 3y ago
  Yeah well my grandpa wuz a hero. Narrowly escaping being shot on the spot for carrying a firearm (he was a partisan), got 16 years in the Romanian gulag, reckoned after 11 that noone's coming to the rescue as it happened to the West before USSR good a chance to "rescue" them. What you are regurgitating is spoken precisely from the vantage point of a well fed ignoramus.
  - dang 3y ago
    Please don't post ideological flamewar comments or personal attacks, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't post ideological flamewar comments or personal attacks, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.