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As someone who lived through communism… you have no idea what it means to not have nice things.
by kolinko 2y ago
As someone who lived through communism… you have no idea what it means to not have nice things.
- Etheryte 2y agoSimply not have things period would be a better description imo. It was common that you would have money/tokens/vouchers to buy soap or shoes or any commodity really, and there just wouldn't be any at the shop.
- kolinko 2y agoExactly
- StefanBatory 2y agoHey, you could buy all the vinegar you wanted... Hope you don't need anything else, though.
- jajko 2y agoOr heaps of same tuna cans if stars aligned. You want what? Bananas for your kids? Lol come next week, stand in the queue in freezing cold for 3 hours on sunday early morning, and maybe you will get lucky. Lemons are only available via family or communist party contacts. Or waiting 5 years for the option to buy a car (of course no say in the color or equipment, take it or leave). Or 2 years for sofa FFS, who cares you don't like the shape, color or material. If you think this is funny, I gave examples from my own childhood, and could go on for a very long time. Centrally planned economies really don't work well. On top of clusterfuck that communism consistently was by itself.
- denton-scratch 2y ago> the option to buy a car (of course no say in the color or equipment, take it or leave). For some reason that reminds me of that arch-capitalist, Henry Ford.
- pxmpxm 2y agoNo watermellons, or ketchup this summer, soz. My entire family to this day is compelled to load up on whatever discounted-because-of-oversupply items when shopping, on the premise that they will not be available in the future due to asinine production planning.
- kolinko 2y agoWhat country was that?
- StefanBatory 2y agoMy mom still remembers how she was able to see an tangerine for Christmas. Once.
- chihuahua 2y agoI can only imagine how bizarre you must find those comments where someone has convinced themselves that "capitalism doesn't let us have nice things." I remember in which direction people were trying to escape across the iron curtain.
- manoDev 2y agoI love how any criticism of capitalism automatically invites the “but things sucked more at a particular place in a particular period” argument. I grew up in a capitalist country. Being poor doesn’t give you access to things just the same.
- otherme123 2y agoBeing poor is the natural state of humans. We have been poor for thousands of years, with regular famines eveywhere. Even in the richer parts of the world, there where deaths due to starvation if the year was bad. Then it came capitalism. For the first time in history, a country eliminated famines just by adopting the new of organizing production. They were still poor people who lacked things, but they lived in the only part of the world where at least they could count on not starving to death. Then some countries organized as socialism, and they caused huge famines, that in a rare historical event, were not caused by climate or a natural catastrophe, but by wrong resource allocation. You can criticize capitalism, but not on terms of producing what people want. In that field we don't know any other system that does it better. Capitalism is bad at distributing the wealth equally to everyone, causing that some people cannot have some things, but also we don't know a better model that does it while keeping poverty away. If people today doesn't have unbreakable glassware (it exists!) is just because they prefer cheaper and fancier glasses from Ikea. When I need a truly unbreakable "glass" I buy a titanium made camping glass. In general we don't want all products to last a long time: we want to change our car to get the newest fancy things, we want a bigger and faster phone. We don't want a single pair of shoes that last forever, but lots of shoes to match with lots of clothes. There are long lasting shoes, but they don't sell well (i.e. people don't want them, even if they say so).
- 2y ago
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- rkachowski 2y agoIt's very cool and awesome how any criticism of capitalism results in an anti communist comment. As if there are only two possible economic systems and dislike of planned obsolescence + inequality means you want to die in a gulag.
- franciscop 2y agoConsidering the article is literally about the communist period and it mentions capitalism, this _seems_ appropriate and on-point in this case.
- pxmpxm 2y agoSame formative experience here and exact same sentiment. It's always rich kids that benefited from capitalism their entire life that seem to fetishize communism the way that video does.