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No, I don't think it is loaded, or at least not unnecessarily. The communist background of the glass is an important element in the video. Especially when they

No, I don't think it is loaded, or at least not unnecessarily. The communist background of the glass is an important element in the video. Especially when they discuss the fact they couldn't sell it in the west, due to (tendencies of) capitalism.

jajko 2y ago
You dont understand communism then, and didnt grow up under such regime. Most people involved in such projects were far from what you can call communists, not involved with regine, not members of the party (or if they were it was just to be allowed certain positions in the system, literal ticking checkbox on the requirements list), some even secretly hating it and conspiring against it. This reductionism is unnecessary and outright incorrect. One can claim it was invented in communist East Germany (although the official name was literally German democratic republic), and thats about it. You also slap 'invented by american capitalists' onto every single invention coming out of US of past 250 years?
- mfru 2y ago
  it is wild how often people will respond with red scare rhetoric once the scary c-word drops.
  - tomohawk 2y ago
    Mass killings by communist governments are a thing. And that's just one of the bad things about communism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
    - olddustytrail 2y ago
      Mass killings by capitalist governments are also a thing. Why are you ignoring those?
      - snowpid 2y ago
        Please tell me more about capitalist gulags.
        butterknife 2y ago
        If you insist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Ameri...
        snowpid 2y ago
        Soviet gulag had just 18x more prisoners. Most of them weren't related to enemy country.
        jijijijij 2y ago
        You are shifting the goal post.
        olddustytrail 2y ago
        You've had another response but why would you restrict it to gulags? The genocide of the native American peoples seems a more obvious example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_...
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - flohofwoe 2y ago
      > is evidenced by their using the term as a synonym for authoritarianism. You can't deny the fact though that all socialist (or what people from beyond the pond like to call "communist") countries turned towards authoritarianism on their "journey" of eventually achieving communism (even if some of those countries might have started off with the best intentions to actually improve things). And it happened with such regularity that it cannot be explained away with "no true scotsman (pardon: communist)" arguments.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        Oh if anything I think you're being too timid with your critique here so let's say the quiet parts out loud. The movement was coopted by sociopaths and used as cover to promote naked authoritarianism. This doesn't excuse failure to grasp the original stated goals or (worse) trying to utilize red scare propaganda to handwave past capitalism's obvious flaws.
  - takeda 2y ago
    Communism problem is that it goes together with authoritarianism and corruption. Yes, you can get both of those things with capitalism, just look at Russia, but looks like they are more likely to happen with communism. Authoritarianism is responsible for many people's deaths, while corruption is why things were so bad that it pushed for invention of this. The reason why the glass is not popular right now is because we as consumers are perfectly fine with this. We let companies get away with it instead of voting with our wallets. Nearly all of us are guilty purchasing smart phones that won't last longer than 2 years, pre-paying for games when companies frequently stiffed us that way. Almost no one puts time to research which companies produce quality product so such manufacturers frequently go out of business.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    It isn't that wild, really, that people who have even the most basic awareness of history are concerned about the spread of the single most destructive ideology in all of history.
- p_l 2y ago
  > You also slap 'invented by american capitalists' onto every single invention coming out of US of past 250 years Try criticising capitalism and you'll soon encounter exactly that rhetoric, even for things that exist only thanks to government direct action (the most socialist org in USA, the Department of Defense, is directly and indirectly responsible for huge part of innovation that people assign to "capitalism" despite it having little to do with it)
_19qg 2y ago
> The communist background of the glass is an important element in the video. Especially when they discuss the fact they couldn't sell it in the west, due to (tendencies of) capitalism. And that's nonsense. The real problem was the reunification and the collapse of the East German economy. The East Germans got rid of their government, peacefully and the result was the unification of a protected plan economy to an open social market system (West Germany did not and still does not have US style capitalism -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy ). The East German market was not having access to current technologies and raw materials (for example due to the lack of money to buy on the world market). The companies in the east were not competitive and they lost their protecting system. There were LOTS of glass manufacturers, both in West Germany and in the surrounding countries. Those were eager to take the market and a small and expensive glass production was an easy victim. There are lots of examples where GDR products were replaced by Western products, which were much more efficient in production and distribution. It has very little to do with "capitalism", just that there was a much larger and more efficient market around, eager to take over. The "communist" economy wasn't communist and it was behind a self-built "protective" wall. When the wall collapsed and the system which protected the wall collapsed (-> the whole eastern Europe incl. the former Soviet Union largely collapsed), then during reunification of East and West Germany, the East German economy also collapsed (products were no longer competitive, lost their markets, etc.). The West German companies did not have the time to protect small scale producers, their problem was to deliver on the expectations of the East Germans: create same living standards, provide access to the larger market without scarce products. For the East German population it was mostly clear, they wanted to buy western products, which for a long time were either not available or far too expensive or both. East German brands were out of fashion. The attraction of the West German economy and political system, together with the failure of the East German system (and its soviet-influenced model), caused the collapse of the political and economic system of the GDR. Later the "Ostalgie" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie ) made people aware that there was also a loss: familiar brands were gone, familiar products were gone, jobs were gone, people were gone, (-> many went to West Germany to work there) western products were not always better, ... TLDR; -> the company was a victim of the turmoil of the reunification and introduction of a larger&open economy. Side note: that East Germans needed to take care of scarce products (see the cars which had long waiting lists) did not mean that the East German production was environmentally friendly. Just the opposite, East German production was as environmentally unfriendly or even more, as in the West. An environmental movement (like the Greens in West Germany) was not possible in the one-party-rules system of the GDR dictatorship. Later, a lot of production got closed(& sometimes replaced) because of old and dirty factories and production processes. Side note 2: Germany now has a large scale "Mehrweg- und Pfandsystem" for bottles. This means that in any super market one can buy bottles of, say, beer and one pays a higher price. The markets are required to take back the empty bottles and pay the consumer the "Flaschenpfand" (bottle deposit). Bottles get reused a lot (50 times) and this system has 43% market share. One can imagine that lighter/more durable glass bottles might have an advantage in such a system. Currently we see either heavy glass bottles or lighter plastic bottles (reused 25 times).
takeda 2y ago
More accurate title would be "How Germans invented unbreakable glass due to shortages caused by Communism"
squishysquid 2y ago
That they made it in east germany and made up an excuse for being bad at sales? corning the guys they bring up at the very end is also the company that did pyrex. they spun that business off in the 90s. They don't mention that because you'd recognize it and go "wait my cabinet's been full of that my whole life"

jajko 2y ago

You dont understand communism then, and didnt grow up under such regime. Most people involved in such projects were far from what you can call communists, not involved with regine, not members of the party (or if they were it was just to be allowed certain positions in the system, literal ticking checkbox on the requirements list), some even secretly hating it and conspiring against it. This reductionism is unnecessary and outright incorrect. One can claim it was invented in communist East Germany (although the official name was literally German democratic republic), and thats about it. You also slap 'invented by american capitalists' onto every single invention coming out of US of past 250 years?

mfru 2y ago
it is wild how often people will respond with red scare rhetoric once the scary c-word drops.
- tomohawk 2y ago
  Mass killings by communist governments are a thing. And that's just one of the bad things about communism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
  - olddustytrail 2y ago
    Mass killings by capitalist governments are also a thing. Why are you ignoring those?
    - snowpid 2y ago
      Please tell me more about capitalist gulags.
      - butterknife 2y ago
        If you insist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Ameri...
        snowpid 2y ago
        Soviet gulag had just 18x more prisoners. Most of them weren't related to enemy country.
        jijijijij 2y ago
        You are shifting the goal post.
      - olddustytrail 2y ago
        You've had another response but why would you restrict it to gulags? The genocide of the native American peoples seems a more obvious example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_...
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    > is evidenced by their using the term as a synonym for authoritarianism. You can't deny the fact though that all socialist (or what people from beyond the pond like to call "communist") countries turned towards authoritarianism on their "journey" of eventually achieving communism (even if some of those countries might have started off with the best intentions to actually improve things). And it happened with such regularity that it cannot be explained away with "no true scotsman (pardon: communist)" arguments.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      Oh if anything I think you're being too timid with your critique here so let's say the quiet parts out loud. The movement was coopted by sociopaths and used as cover to promote naked authoritarianism. This doesn't excuse failure to grasp the original stated goals or (worse) trying to utilize red scare propaganda to handwave past capitalism's obvious flaws.
- takeda 2y ago
  Communism problem is that it goes together with authoritarianism and corruption. Yes, you can get both of those things with capitalism, just look at Russia, but looks like they are more likely to happen with communism. Authoritarianism is responsible for many people's deaths, while corruption is why things were so bad that it pushed for invention of this. The reason why the glass is not popular right now is because we as consumers are perfectly fine with this. We let companies get away with it instead of voting with our wallets. Nearly all of us are guilty purchasing smart phones that won't last longer than 2 years, pre-paying for games when companies frequently stiffed us that way. Almost no one puts time to research which companies produce quality product so such manufacturers frequently go out of business.
- throw10920 2y ago
  It isn't that wild, really, that people who have even the most basic awareness of history are concerned about the spread of the single most destructive ideology in all of history.
p_l 2y ago
> You also slap 'invented by american capitalists' onto every single invention coming out of US of past 250 years Try criticising capitalism and you'll soon encounter exactly that rhetoric, even for things that exist only thanks to government direct action (the most socialist org in USA, the Department of Defense, is directly and indirectly responsible for huge part of innovation that people assign to "capitalism" despite it having little to do with it)

_19qg 2y ago

> The communist background of the glass is an important element in the video. Especially when they discuss the fact they couldn't sell it in the west, due to (tendencies of) capitalism. And that's nonsense. The real problem was the reunification and the collapse of the East German economy. The East Germans got rid of their government, peacefully and the result was the unification of a protected plan economy to an open social market system (West Germany did not and still does not have US style capitalism -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy ). The East German market was not having access to current technologies and raw materials (for example due to the lack of money to buy on the world market). The companies in the east were not competitive and they lost their protecting system. There were LOTS of glass manufacturers, both in West Germany and in the surrounding countries. Those were eager to take the market and a small and expensive glass production was an easy victim. There are lots of examples where GDR products were replaced by Western products, which were much more efficient in production and distribution. It has very little to do with "capitalism", just that there was a much larger and more efficient market around, eager to take over. The "communist" economy wasn't communist and it was behind a self-built "protective" wall. When the wall collapsed and the system which protected the wall collapsed (-> the whole eastern Europe incl. the former Soviet Union largely collapsed), then during reunification of East and West Germany, the East German economy also collapsed (products were no longer competitive, lost their markets, etc.). The West German companies did not have the time to protect small scale producers, their problem was to deliver on the expectations of the East Germans: create same living standards, provide access to the larger market without scarce products. For the East German population it was mostly clear, they wanted to buy western products, which for a long time were either not available or far too expensive or both. East German brands were out of fashion. The attraction of the West German economy and political system, together with the failure of the East German system (and its soviet-influenced model), caused the collapse of the political and economic system of the GDR. Later the "Ostalgie" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie ) made people aware that there was also a loss: familiar brands were gone, familiar products were gone, jobs were gone, people were gone, (-> many went to West Germany to work there) western products were not always better, ... TLDR; -> the company was a victim of the turmoil of the reunification and introduction of a larger&open economy. Side note: that East Germans needed to take care of scarce products (see the cars which had long waiting lists) did not mean that the East German production was environmentally friendly. Just the opposite, East German production was as environmentally unfriendly or even more, as in the West. An environmental movement (like the Greens in West Germany) was not possible in the one-party-rules system of the GDR dictatorship. Later, a lot of production got closed(& sometimes replaced) because of old and dirty factories and production processes. Side note 2: Germany now has a large scale "Mehrweg- und Pfandsystem" for bottles. This means that in any super market one can buy bottles of, say, beer and one pays a higher price. The markets are required to take back the empty bottles and pay the consumer the "Flaschenpfand" (bottle deposit). Bottles get reused a lot (50 times) and this system has 43% market share. One can imagine that lighter/more durable glass bottles might have an advantage in such a system. Currently we see either heavy glass bottles or lighter plastic bottles (reused 25 times).

takeda 2y ago

More accurate title would be "How Germans invented unbreakable glass due to shortages caused by Communism"

squishysquid 2y ago

That they made it in east germany and made up an excuse for being bad at sales? corning the guys they bring up at the very end is also the company that did pyrex. they spun that business off in the 90s. They don't mention that because you'd recognize it and go "wait my cabinet's been full of that my whole life"