7 ms·

> On the other hand, life was secure. There were no bank loans, therefore there were no bank fees or percents. There was no real worry over one’s job or workpla

> On the other hand, life was secure. There were no bank loans, therefore there were no bank fees or percents. There was no real worry over one’s job or workplace; one was available for everyone. Wages were low, but fear of losing one’s job was almost nonexistent. A person pretended to work; the state pretended to pay him. Living accommodations were crowded and faint hope existed to find a better apartment, but all had a roof over their heads.There had to be, since homelessness was forbidden by law. > Nowadays, there exist people who yearn for that mollusk-like life. This isn't an inaccurate description, and yes, it's not exactly a utopian state to find yourself in. But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this; I bet there are quite a few people in the United States alone who would love to have this life, who would love to have a guaranteed job, a guaranteed roof over their heads, and the heads of their children.

username332211 1y ago
The really funny part is that this is probably fairly easy to achieve in the United States. The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Currently people all over the world are free to move to New York, which makes the city unaffordable. If you forbade anyone not born within it from moving there, Manhattan would be fairly affordable and homelessness would be much reduced. All you need to do is to free yourself from that bourgeois delusion that a man from Mexico (or worse, West Virginia) has any right to live in that city.
- vintagedave 1y ago
  > The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Ouch: straight to being against others. No, the part you'd need to implement to get socialised housing is socialised housing. Similarly, there are modern equivalents to guaranteed jobs. Communism believed everyone had to work: today we have different ideas of purpose than Marx had, plus are more aware of those who cannot work, or the value of non-work social contributions, and tech folks like us might believe in or hope for an upcoming post-scarcity society, with a transition period of UBI. I expect you want to control migration and residency in order to avoid freeloaders. Freeloaders are remarkably rare, most people have self-respect and enjoy being productive, and interestingly systems that exterminate freeloaders entirely tend to be less efficient.[1] Plus, if you have a wonderful system, the best way to handle other people wanting it is to help it grow, not limit it to yourself. A better policy would be one encouraging its growth elsewhere in other countries where all those folk who are coming to your shores are coming from. The US has a long (mixed) history of that approach re democracy. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
  - username332211 1y ago
    What freeloaders are you talking about? This is complete nonsense. Residency controls exist to solve the Economic Problem. The amount of people that want to live in global cities is endless. Even if you socialize all the housing in New York, there will be people that want to live in the city but won't be able to. It is the job of the economic system to determine who gets in and who doesn't. That's why socialized housing requires residency controls, but if those were implemented in the United States, the country could reap the specified benefits of of the Soviet system. Finally, you speak of encouraging growth elsewhere, but what can be more productive for the growth of West Virginia, than to tell every man born in that state that he shall also die in that state. What can be better for industrial development, but a labor force that can't move away? It's so sad to see communists cling to capitalist concepts like that. Communism has no future so long as it's supporters refuse to understand that Marx's magnificent philosophical and political system rejects borgeous human rights.
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      That's not true and the City of Vienna proved that thesis wrong a century ago. [0]. Even today, two-thirds of Viennese residents live in public housing, the city is Europe's largest landlord and as a result, housing is extremely affordable for a world-class city. It's not without reason that Vienna tends to top worldwide quality of life rankings - it's the achievements of Red Vienna. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...
      - username332211 1y ago
        The city of Vienna has a fairly unique history. It used to be the capital of a massive empire that's now gone, and thus suffered a period of fairly prolonged decline. It's population declined from 2.4 million in 1914[1] to 1.5 million in the 1980s[2]. The only reason why it's currently considered even close to a world-class city is that after the fall of the Berlin wall it was the natural financial hub for oligarchic capital. I think we can all agree not many great and global cities have tons of free housing emptied by a prolonged period of decline. And that we can't really evaluate if the city is solving the economic problem well or badly, as right now it's simply less acute for historical reasons that have nothing to do with it's housing policy. [1] https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-eve-first-world-wa https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-e... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vienna/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vien...
sedawkgrep 1y ago
> I bet there are quite a few people in the United States alone who would love to have this life, who would love to have a guaranteed job, a guaranteed roof over their heads, and the heads of their children. I'd almost venture to say the majority of people, and definitely those who suffer from a disability of some sort; especially mental health, where one may not mentally function well enough from one day to the next to be able to reliably hold a job.
- spwa4 1y ago
  At the cost that the Soviet union imposed? I doubt there's even 100. There is nothing stopping people from living like communists in the US. There have been many communist communes here and in other countries, like famously Israel and Columbia. All but single digits have been abandoned or sold by their inhabitants. So we've got plenty of historical evidence whether people would choose to have this life. All but a few dozen, out of hundreds of million, choose against it. Including all socialists, everyone in those demonstrations, ... demonstrating extremely clearly: without constant terror, socialism cannot exist.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    > There is nothing stopping people from living like communists in the US. Capitalism stops them. The state has expectations of everyone. They will have to deal with things from outside that will force them into some level of capitalistic thinking which will ultimately eat the project from within. > All but single digits have been abandoned or sold by their inhabitants. The fact that the death of these experiments comes with a sale is illustrative of the point above > without constant terror, socialism cannot exist. Is that so? It sounds like red scare propaganda honestly, and I don't think you could reasonably make an argument for this without conceding that the same is true of capitalism.
    - spwa4 1y ago
      > Capitalism stops them. The state has expectations of everyone. They will have to deal with things from outside that will force them into some level of capitalistic thinking which will ultimately eat the project from within. This is not a difference between capitalism and communism, and so not a valid complaint. You will pay taxes in a communist system. You will have to deal with all sorts of external influences in a communist system. > The fact that the death of these experiments comes with a sale is illustrative of the point above No it isn't. These were voluntary sales (especially since most were abandoned, not sold. There was no profit in leaving, except in some cases). It is illustrative of the simple fact that given the choice, all but a rare exception chooses against communism. Or to put it another way: people REALLY don't want communism, and after trying it, that becomes worse. In many cases abandoning these communes required a large-ish group of people taking the decision together. In other words: they organized themselves to destroy their little patch of communism. Which illustrates the next point: > > without constant terror, socialism cannot exist. > Is that so? It sounds like red scare propaganda honestly, and I don't think you could reasonably make an argument for this without conceding that the same is true of capitalism. You just made an argument in favor of this. Your argument is that people cannot be allowed to have access to the external world, or they will abandon communism. That must be prevented, in your argument. HOW will you prevent it? State terror.
kachurovskiy 1y ago
Just so that you understand, what that inevitably brings is alcoholism, domestic violence and other depressive deformities. My grandpa died from daily drinking with his factory pals and my grand-grandma has axe damage on her wooden furniture and it was normal.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  We have more options for hobbies these days.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  I'm sorry about your family history, but I have American friends who've grown up here for generations with identical family histories - alcoholism, domestic violence, depressive deformities and all.
  - watwut 1y ago
    America had overall lower rates of alcoholism and lower rates of domestic violence then former eastern block.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      Probably due to all the people with spanish culture living in the more southern areas lowering the average.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  And farmers under the tzar had it better in your opinion?
saubeidl 1y ago
The descriptor "mollusk-like" for people that have different political or social preferences from the author is really dehumanizing and not okay.
- logical_proof 1y ago
  I think you missed the metaphors target. He was describing the lifestyle of just subsisting. Like a mollusk. This was objectively the majority of experiences under the Soviet system, not a comment on anyone’s political views.
  - justsomejew 1y ago
    And I think you missed something as well
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  > really dehumanizing Yes. That was the author's point.
SoftTalker 1y ago
Not if that guarantee came with some miserable factory job that was mandatory.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  Most parents would.
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    Yeah. I've had friends who went unemployed for a long time because they considered themselves to be above certain jobs. Me? If my kid needs food, the burger at the local McDonald's is gonna look very flippable real quick.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      And if you’re halfway serious and reliable you’ll get promoted into management pretty quickly and that gets you benefits.
- gambiting 1y ago
  My understanding is that most of these jobs you could just slack off at and nothing would happen. They couldn't really fire you anyway.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > They couldn't really fire you anyway They could do much worse, they could send you to prison camp.
    - watwut 1y ago
      That was not a threat if you slacked off. Slacking off was basically completely normalized. That was a treat if you was political inconvenient. Or if someone seen you as a threat in his career ascent and denounced you (falsely or truthfully). Which, in a roundabout way caused more of that slacking culture. It was literally safer to NOT look like the best worker with initiative.
matheusmoreira 1y ago
> But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this We should. What communists really want is to have their every need and desire magically provided for, as if they were fundamental rights. In other words, what they truly want is called post-scarcity: the absence of an economy. Communism and socialism are economic models. There exists scarcity of goods and resources and therefore they must be economized. There's a system that chooses who gets access to said scarce resources. Socialism is sold to people as though it was post-scarcity. People think they'd be living comfortable "secure" lives where everything is guaranteed and provided for. Ah yes, the fabled memetic fully automated luxury space communism. People who buy into this will probably end up doing forced hard labor in a field somewhere should communists actually come to power. They will not get to do what they want, they will work wherever the state puts them to work under penalty of death by firing squad. The state has no choice, anything else means mass starvation and millions of deaths. Pity is far too lenient a reaction towards such reality distorting naïveté. If left unchecked, they will win elections and actually install socialism in your country. We have a better chance of achieving post scarcity by collapsing capitalism with relentless automation.
- only-one1701 1y ago
  Idk the Nordics seem to be doing ok
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    They're not socialist by the classical definition. They're capitalist countries with social benefits.
    - animal_spirits 1y ago
      And then, these strong social safety nets seem to only work well in countries that have highly homogenous populations.
  - matheusmoreira 1y ago
    Nordic countries are not socialist regimes. They are free economies with welfare states. Socialism implies state control of the economy, industry and the means of production.
ponector 1y ago
>> This isn't an inaccurate description, That is quite inaccurate. Or partially accurate. Accurate for white russian people. For others it was quite easy to loose a job and get a forced psychiatric treatment or gulag trip (depends on the year).
- riehwvfbk 1y ago
  The matters of race occupy a much smaller percentage of the brains of people outside of the USA. I say this completely without malice. It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. The rest of your statement doesn't make any sense. One went to a gulag for opposing the Soviet government, not for having a particular ethnicity. Stalin was ethnically Georgian. Many prominent members of the politburo were Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or Jews. In the later Soviet Union there were many politicians from the "ethnic" republics who had high-powered careers. In fact, look at the list of Russian politicians who are currently under international sanctions and tell me with a straight face that they are all white and Russian. Well, they are Russian of course, but not in the way you meant.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. It feels more calculated than that -- there are people trying to keep it alive for use as a partisan wedge issue. Replace first past the post voting (and therefore the two-party system) with score voting and see what happens to the issue.
    - esseph 1y ago
      There have been a ton of states passing laws, starting in 2022 but really hitting stride in 2024/2025, where the Republican party has pushed laws or changes to state constitutions to prevent Ranked Choice Voting. Example, in Missouri there was a ballot initiative called Amendment 7. The first part of the Amendment was to enshrine banning non-citizens from voting. I want to be clear, this was already against state law. This didn't change anything. The second part of Amendment 7 was to ban ranked choice voting and require a plurality. That was the REAL intent of the Amendment. People got duped, badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...
justsomejew 1y ago
I dont know how your life is, but my own impression is that life of many americans is worse than the life which was in the Soviet Union at least until the 80s (after Stalin). Maybe not in the sense of the capacity to buy junkfood and other junk, but as to sense of living and human relations. "Mollusk" sounds as the usual american antirussian propaganda.
- throwaway3060 1y ago
  Unless you are limiting your comparison to just the homeless in America, this is just not true. Most people don't know much about life in the Soviet Union in the first place, but even what people do know is typically limited only to life in Moscow and Leningrad. Dismissing the conditions as "capacity to buy junkfood" is uncalled for.
  - justsomejew 1y ago
    "Most people do not know much about the life in Soviet Union" Well, I was born there, and I think that limiting the comparison to your homeless people is maybe comforting for an american, but is a distorted view.
    - throwaway3060 1y ago
      I don't know where in the Soviet Union you were born. But, the stories I've heard of life outside the cities are completely unrecognizable to the modern American experience outside of the most extreme rural and isolated environments available.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago
  Have to compare extremes in that case. Probably everyone in the gulag had a worse life than every American complaining.
search_facility 1y ago
They definitely does not aware of soviet reality that “roof over head” usually is not in the place where human want to live, same with job. if student after university decided (not by student, by state distributing workforce) to go work at city on polar circle - that means that student will go live and work here, without sunlight for the rest of his life! not joking, personal story with soviet collapse as happy ending (moved to normal place after that)
- vntok 1y ago
  Relevant nickname then? ;)
martindbp 1y ago
I think that lifestyle is easily achieved by basically anyone, you don't need much money to live that kind of life. The problem is that life is only enjoyable if everyone lives the same life. You could save a ton of money and not have to work much if you lived a 70s lifestyle. Many even long for that lifestyle, but it only works if everyone lives it. If you're the only one living in the 70s and everyone else lives in the 2020s, most people would not be happy. Somehow, enduring things is much easier as a group. I remember talking to a Chinese person who said for most of their youth they spent their days studying until 11pm with breaks for lunch and dinner. That would be hell for most western kids, but apparently they didn't suffer too much because they were studying together with their friends who all had to endure the same schedule.
tliltocatl 1y ago
This is averaging across ~40 years of history (none of this applied until mid-50s and certainly not before WWII) and comparing "middle class" with low income. The "guaranteed, if low-paying, job and roof over head" was the norm, but it certainly didn't apply to everyone, the modern Russian word for a homeless person is of soviet origin. I. e. a criminal convict would lose their home automatically.

username332211 1y ago

The really funny part is that this is probably fairly easy to achieve in the United States. The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Currently people all over the world are free to move to New York, which makes the city unaffordable. If you forbade anyone not born within it from moving there, Manhattan would be fairly affordable and homelessness would be much reduced. All you need to do is to free yourself from that bourgeois delusion that a man from Mexico (or worse, West Virginia) has any right to live in that city.

vintagedave 1y ago
> The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Ouch: straight to being against others. No, the part you'd need to implement to get socialised housing is socialised housing. Similarly, there are modern equivalents to guaranteed jobs. Communism believed everyone had to work: today we have different ideas of purpose than Marx had, plus are more aware of those who cannot work, or the value of non-work social contributions, and tech folks like us might believe in or hope for an upcoming post-scarcity society, with a transition period of UBI. I expect you want to control migration and residency in order to avoid freeloaders. Freeloaders are remarkably rare, most people have self-respect and enjoy being productive, and interestingly systems that exterminate freeloaders entirely tend to be less efficient.[1] Plus, if you have a wonderful system, the best way to handle other people wanting it is to help it grow, not limit it to yourself. A better policy would be one encouraging its growth elsewhere in other countries where all those folk who are coming to your shores are coming from. The US has a long (mixed) history of that approach re democracy. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
- username332211 1y ago
  What freeloaders are you talking about? This is complete nonsense. Residency controls exist to solve the Economic Problem. The amount of people that want to live in global cities is endless. Even if you socialize all the housing in New York, there will be people that want to live in the city but won't be able to. It is the job of the economic system to determine who gets in and who doesn't. That's why socialized housing requires residency controls, but if those were implemented in the United States, the country could reap the specified benefits of of the Soviet system. Finally, you speak of encouraging growth elsewhere, but what can be more productive for the growth of West Virginia, than to tell every man born in that state that he shall also die in that state. What can be better for industrial development, but a labor force that can't move away? It's so sad to see communists cling to capitalist concepts like that. Communism has no future so long as it's supporters refuse to understand that Marx's magnificent philosophical and political system rejects borgeous human rights.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    That's not true and the City of Vienna proved that thesis wrong a century ago. [0]. Even today, two-thirds of Viennese residents live in public housing, the city is Europe's largest landlord and as a result, housing is extremely affordable for a world-class city. It's not without reason that Vienna tends to top worldwide quality of life rankings - it's the achievements of Red Vienna. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...
    - username332211 1y ago
      The city of Vienna has a fairly unique history. It used to be the capital of a massive empire that's now gone, and thus suffered a period of fairly prolonged decline. It's population declined from 2.4 million in 1914[1] to 1.5 million in the 1980s[2]. The only reason why it's currently considered even close to a world-class city is that after the fall of the Berlin wall it was the natural financial hub for oligarchic capital. I think we can all agree not many great and global cities have tons of free housing emptied by a prolonged period of decline. And that we can't really evaluate if the city is solving the economic problem well or badly, as right now it's simply less acute for historical reasons that have nothing to do with it's housing policy. [1] https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-eve-first-world-wa https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-e... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vienna/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vien...

sedawkgrep 1y ago

> I bet there are quite a few people in the United States alone who would love to have this life, who would love to have a guaranteed job, a guaranteed roof over their heads, and the heads of their children. I'd almost venture to say the majority of people, and definitely those who suffer from a disability of some sort; especially mental health, where one may not mentally function well enough from one day to the next to be able to reliably hold a job.

spwa4 1y ago
At the cost that the Soviet union imposed? I doubt there's even 100. There is nothing stopping people from living like communists in the US. There have been many communist communes here and in other countries, like famously Israel and Columbia. All but single digits have been abandoned or sold by their inhabitants. So we've got plenty of historical evidence whether people would choose to have this life. All but a few dozen, out of hundreds of million, choose against it. Including all socialists, everyone in those demonstrations, ... demonstrating extremely clearly: without constant terror, socialism cannot exist.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  > There is nothing stopping people from living like communists in the US. Capitalism stops them. The state has expectations of everyone. They will have to deal with things from outside that will force them into some level of capitalistic thinking which will ultimately eat the project from within. > All but single digits have been abandoned or sold by their inhabitants. The fact that the death of these experiments comes with a sale is illustrative of the point above > without constant terror, socialism cannot exist. Is that so? It sounds like red scare propaganda honestly, and I don't think you could reasonably make an argument for this without conceding that the same is true of capitalism.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    > Capitalism stops them. The state has expectations of everyone. They will have to deal with things from outside that will force them into some level of capitalistic thinking which will ultimately eat the project from within. This is not a difference between capitalism and communism, and so not a valid complaint. You will pay taxes in a communist system. You will have to deal with all sorts of external influences in a communist system. > The fact that the death of these experiments comes with a sale is illustrative of the point above No it isn't. These were voluntary sales (especially since most were abandoned, not sold. There was no profit in leaving, except in some cases). It is illustrative of the simple fact that given the choice, all but a rare exception chooses against communism. Or to put it another way: people REALLY don't want communism, and after trying it, that becomes worse. In many cases abandoning these communes required a large-ish group of people taking the decision together. In other words: they organized themselves to destroy their little patch of communism. Which illustrates the next point: > > without constant terror, socialism cannot exist. > Is that so? It sounds like red scare propaganda honestly, and I don't think you could reasonably make an argument for this without conceding that the same is true of capitalism. You just made an argument in favor of this. Your argument is that people cannot be allowed to have access to the external world, or they will abandon communism. That must be prevented, in your argument. HOW will you prevent it? State terror.

kachurovskiy 1y ago

Just so that you understand, what that inevitably brings is alcoholism, domestic violence and other depressive deformities. My grandpa died from daily drinking with his factory pals and my grand-grandma has axe damage on her wooden furniture and it was normal.

cosmicgadget 1y ago
We have more options for hobbies these days.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
I'm sorry about your family history, but I have American friends who've grown up here for generations with identical family histories - alcoholism, domestic violence, depressive deformities and all.
- watwut 1y ago
  America had overall lower rates of alcoholism and lower rates of domestic violence then former eastern block.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Probably due to all the people with spanish culture living in the more southern areas lowering the average.
LtWorf 1y ago
And farmers under the tzar had it better in your opinion?

saubeidl 1y ago

The descriptor "mollusk-like" for people that have different political or social preferences from the author is really dehumanizing and not okay.

logical_proof 1y ago
I think you missed the metaphors target. He was describing the lifestyle of just subsisting. Like a mollusk. This was objectively the majority of experiences under the Soviet system, not a comment on anyone’s political views.
- justsomejew 1y ago
  And I think you missed something as well
pavel_lishin 1y ago
> really dehumanizing Yes. That was the author's point.

SoftTalker 1y ago

Not if that guarantee came with some miserable factory job that was mandatory.

cosmicgadget 1y ago
Most parents would.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  Yeah. I've had friends who went unemployed for a long time because they considered themselves to be above certain jobs. Me? If my kid needs food, the burger at the local McDonald's is gonna look very flippable real quick.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    And if you’re halfway serious and reliable you’ll get promoted into management pretty quickly and that gets you benefits.
gambiting 1y ago
My understanding is that most of these jobs you could just slack off at and nothing would happen. They couldn't really fire you anyway.
- Jensson 1y ago
  > They couldn't really fire you anyway They could do much worse, they could send you to prison camp.
  - watwut 1y ago
    That was not a threat if you slacked off. Slacking off was basically completely normalized. That was a treat if you was political inconvenient. Or if someone seen you as a threat in his career ascent and denounced you (falsely or truthfully). Which, in a roundabout way caused more of that slacking culture. It was literally safer to NOT look like the best worker with initiative.

matheusmoreira 1y ago

> But I'm not going to chuckle at the hypothetical people we're supposed to pity for wanting this We should. What communists really want is to have their every need and desire magically provided for, as if they were fundamental rights. In other words, what they truly want is called post-scarcity: the absence of an economy. Communism and socialism are economic models. There exists scarcity of goods and resources and therefore they must be economized. There's a system that chooses who gets access to said scarce resources. Socialism is sold to people as though it was post-scarcity. People think they'd be living comfortable "secure" lives where everything is guaranteed and provided for. Ah yes, the fabled memetic fully automated luxury space communism. People who buy into this will probably end up doing forced hard labor in a field somewhere should communists actually come to power. They will not get to do what they want, they will work wherever the state puts them to work under penalty of death by firing squad. The state has no choice, anything else means mass starvation and millions of deaths. Pity is far too lenient a reaction towards such reality distorting naïveté. If left unchecked, they will win elections and actually install socialism in your country. We have a better chance of achieving post scarcity by collapsing capitalism with relentless automation.

only-one1701 1y ago
Idk the Nordics seem to be doing ok
- dismalaf 1y ago
  They're not socialist by the classical definition. They're capitalist countries with social benefits.
  - animal_spirits 1y ago
    And then, these strong social safety nets seem to only work well in countries that have highly homogenous populations.
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  Nordic countries are not socialist regimes. They are free economies with welfare states. Socialism implies state control of the economy, industry and the means of production.

ponector 1y ago

>> This isn't an inaccurate description, That is quite inaccurate. Or partially accurate. Accurate for white russian people. For others it was quite easy to loose a job and get a forced psychiatric treatment or gulag trip (depends on the year).

riehwvfbk 1y ago
The matters of race occupy a much smaller percentage of the brains of people outside of the USA. I say this completely without malice. It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. The rest of your statement doesn't make any sense. One went to a gulag for opposing the Soviet government, not for having a particular ethnicity. Stalin was ethnically Georgian. Many prominent members of the politburo were Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or Jews. In the later Soviet Union there were many politicians from the "ethnic" republics who had high-powered careers. In fact, look at the list of Russian politicians who are currently under international sanctions and tell me with a straight face that they are all white and Russian. Well, they are Russian of course, but not in the way you meant.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. It feels more calculated than that -- there are people trying to keep it alive for use as a partisan wedge issue. Replace first past the post voting (and therefore the two-party system) with score voting and see what happens to the issue.
  - esseph 1y ago
    There have been a ton of states passing laws, starting in 2022 but really hitting stride in 2024/2025, where the Republican party has pushed laws or changes to state constitutions to prevent Ranked Choice Voting. Example, in Missouri there was a ballot initiative called Amendment 7. The first part of the Amendment was to enshrine banning non-citizens from voting. I want to be clear, this was already against state law. This didn't change anything. The second part of Amendment 7 was to ban ranked choice voting and require a plurality. That was the REAL intent of the Amendment. People got duped, badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...

justsomejew 1y ago

I dont know how your life is, but my own impression is that life of many americans is worse than the life which was in the Soviet Union at least until the 80s (after Stalin). Maybe not in the sense of the capacity to buy junkfood and other junk, but as to sense of living and human relations. "Mollusk" sounds as the usual american antirussian propaganda.

throwaway3060 1y ago
Unless you are limiting your comparison to just the homeless in America, this is just not true. Most people don't know much about life in the Soviet Union in the first place, but even what people do know is typically limited only to life in Moscow and Leningrad. Dismissing the conditions as "capacity to buy junkfood" is uncalled for.
- justsomejew 1y ago
  "Most people do not know much about the life in Soviet Union" Well, I was born there, and I think that limiting the comparison to your homeless people is maybe comforting for an american, but is a distorted view.
  - throwaway3060 1y ago
    I don't know where in the Soviet Union you were born. But, the stories I've heard of life outside the cities are completely unrecognizable to the modern American experience outside of the most extreme rural and isolated environments available.
mensetmanusman 1y ago
Have to compare extremes in that case. Probably everyone in the gulag had a worse life than every American complaining.

search_facility 1y ago

They definitely does not aware of soviet reality that “roof over head” usually is not in the place where human want to live, same with job. if student after university decided (not by student, by state distributing workforce) to go work at city on polar circle - that means that student will go live and work here, without sunlight for the rest of his life! not joking, personal story with soviet collapse as happy ending (moved to normal place after that)

vntok 1y ago
Relevant nickname then? ;)

martindbp 1y ago

I think that lifestyle is easily achieved by basically anyone, you don't need much money to live that kind of life. The problem is that life is only enjoyable if everyone lives the same life. You could save a ton of money and not have to work much if you lived a 70s lifestyle. Many even long for that lifestyle, but it only works if everyone lives it. If you're the only one living in the 70s and everyone else lives in the 2020s, most people would not be happy. Somehow, enduring things is much easier as a group. I remember talking to a Chinese person who said for most of their youth they spent their days studying until 11pm with breaks for lunch and dinner. That would be hell for most western kids, but apparently they didn't suffer too much because they were studying together with their friends who all had to endure the same schedule.

tliltocatl 1y ago

This is averaging across ~40 years of history (none of this applied until mid-50s and certainly not before WWII) and comparing "middle class" with low income. The "guaranteed, if low-paying, job and roof over head" was the norm, but it certainly didn't apply to everyone, the modern Russian word for a homeless person is of soviet origin. I. e. a criminal convict would lose their home automatically.