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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
by 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 agoBy 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 agoYeah 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 agoPlease 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 agoPlease 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.
- watwut 3y agoI reacted to claim that people who opposed state farms were "imbeciles behind the time". That is an actual communist propaganda point person I responded to promoted. If they can say that, I should be allowed to respond. How come calling victims "imbeciles" is ok while my response is not? Also, creation of state farms happened through actual violence. Property was taken away from people and owners were put to jails or forcibly moved. I do not call it stealing as insult, I call it stealing because that is what it was.
- em-bee 3y agoi love that this story is 100 years old. people ask me how it is possible to live in china without speaking chinese, but i literally experienced the same thing in china and any other country that i have been to. heck even on a market where you don't serve yourself, i can point at the items that i want, even if i don't know the names. it was in fact this very experience that made me realize that i can live in other countries without having to learn the local language before going there.
- MichaelRo 3y agoKudos to you for that. I spent most of my adulthood time in Europe talking to non-Roman speaking languages like German, French, Bosnian, Magyar. First thing to realize about non-Roman languages is that non-Roman doesn't equal Latin. It helps but eventually you're gonna need to learn Russian, Magyar, German.
- watwut 3y agoMy response was flagged, but what this person says about creation of farms is just communist propaganda. Sparkled by insults to victims. And no, they were not performing better then western alternatives nor an improvement. These states could make liberal reforms, but choosen to go dictatorship way and people pay the price.