12 ms·

Yeah, this is it. I've lived under governments of a variety of different stripes in some very different parts of the world, I've lived in war zones. Day to day

Yeah, this is it. I've lived under governments of a variety of different stripes in some very different parts of the world, I've lived in war zones. Day to day life has been more or less the same across all of them. You go shopping, go to work, see friends, have a few beers or maybe a smoke, eat out, go to weddings, birthdays and funerals, play sports. People run businesses, post memes. The way non-OECD, "non-democratic" countries are portrayed in the West gives us a very false sense of superiority. We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption. I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum. There's just more similarities between countries than differences, in my experience. The things that often distinguish are more cultural and geographical than political.

slightwinder 1y ago
> I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum. That's the point. You have the same type of problems everywhere, but not the same quantity and quality. But people seem to not care or understand those differences, and weaponize the concepts, instead of looking at the outcome.
- whoisthemachine 1y ago
  > But people seem to not care or understand those differences, and weaponize the concepts, instead of looking at the outcome. This is politics.
  - mihaic 1y ago
    [flagged]
metalman 1y ago
right. and if we wanted to give ANY society a geometric representation it would have a point at the very top that would represent the most powerfull person, and would then widen out to represent the average and then taper down to another singal point, that would represent the single person in that society whoes life was composed of nothing but horror not of thier own fault and who will die with no chance of any help or redress. We can name those living at the top, but pretend that the wieght of society is not carried by a succesion of nameless inocents , comunist, socialist, religious and other societies give lip service to this, but all fall short of declaring a policy that no one will ever be ignored, forgotten and abandoned, but each and everyone of these systems has an elaborote way of doing reputation management or credit score, merit, titles,etc to signal virtue/worth, that can be gamed, so it is. And here we are, and my time/attention must now, be diverted back to the game, lest I loose more than the few points of carma it costs me to speak out here.
jajko 1y ago
> I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum Why such drama with many words, when all can be summed up with that. Yet somehow, people consider life much better on one side of the spectrum, while other side is considered utter shit. So much that many people are risking their lives, and some are dying just to 'move across spectrum'. It may be a hard concept to grok for typical western kids who often struggle with finding noble worthy hard-to-achieve goals in their lives, who got good life served at literal plate without moving a finger, but trust me its damn real. I've grown up during communism, in country heavily oppressed by soviet russia and littered with many of their military bases, ready for that WWIII battles that never came. Not 'spent some time someplace so I am an expert', my whole identity was only that and nothing else. Yes we all need to go shopping, its just that my parents couldn't buy any fresh vegetables nor fruits for their son, who suffered mild malnutrition due to that. And sometimes the shelves were empty or full of one type of canned sardines (I mean whole supermarket, nothing else, beauty of constantly failing central planning, unless you were part of regime/communist party). Yes we all went to some form of school, but I was being brainwashed to be obedient future soldier for absolutely rubbish ideologies. If I would say something bad about regime even with utmost innocence of a small kid, my parents could easily end up in jail, lives ruined, even distant family torn apart for good. Yes we all could travel, its just that I could not travel even within different communist countries, not without regime's special approval stamp in passport. Neutral, or god forbid proper western countries were off limits, unreachable, you would be shot on sight on the border, or torn apart by dogs. And so on and on. Yeah, its just a spectrum, what a joke.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Well here in the West we were also sent to some kind of school to be brainwashed to be obedient soldiers for rubbish ideologies, so we have that in common
- egman_ekki 1y ago
  yet, many people claim they were happier back then. At least in the country where I’m from. No options in life, no hard decisions or responsibility for their lives. Our current PM said he didn’t notice the fall of communism. shrug
- 1y ago
FollowingTheDao 1y ago
The only difference in the United States is that you have a better chance of being the head authoritarian, and by that I mean a business owner. We have had a pretend democracy in the US for the last 60 years.
- eth0up 1y ago
  "pretend democracy" I rarely offer an opinion here, expecting in advance it will gray into oblivion, however politely or sincerely it's presented. I see it happen to others often enough to remember. In most cases I see the word democracy used, I have the exact thought, "pretend democracy". I don't deliberately try to be a morose cynic. I've just become incapable of thinking the very word without the subjunction "pretend". The corporatism burgeoning here makes this seem undeniable to me. Am I that delusional? Is it really not that bad? Do the so called people really have a level of influence over their society befitting of the word? I don't see it. I just see words.
  - I-M-S 1y ago
    Democracy is the opium for the masses.
    - eth0up 1y ago
      I won't try to evaluate that. For me, as a born eccentric, aspects of the concept terrify me. I tend to favor the principles of a Republic, with unassailable foundations impervious to popular fervors and whims. Ideally with heavy democratic principles fortifying the Republic. I don't see either. I look at recent affairs with FTC for example, and too many things to list. I don't even know what to call what I see. Recipe for nightmares comes to mind, but I know the flaws of emotions well enough. Personally I find myself retreating into a quasi spiritual state, remotely bordering asceticism. Fading into an in but not of it. I'm convinced it's a brutally complicated situation. Evey day, though, I think it could be drastically simplified with kindness, but that's a subject where I'm inclined to go full macabre and will hush now.
      - 1y ago
rafaelmn 1y ago
> Day to day life has been more or less the same across all of them. This is a wild take, unless you mean that in thw sense of wake up, eat, work and sleep kind of way. If I call the prime minister a criminal liar - worst that will happen is I get a defamation lawsuit. In authoritarian countries I go to a prison camp, and the neighbors are the one to report me. Even if I'm not political - if step on toes of people in party I can disappear and the rest will know not to ask questions.
- ashtakeaway 1y ago
  When U.S. neighbors report you to the police because you tell them to stop harassing you, you're in an HOA knowingly but without knowing it's absolutely turning authoritarian.
- californical 1y ago
  I’ve seen a couple Reddit threads recently where someone says something like “my neighbor has been doing [insert major nuisance here], I think they might not be citizens. I’m not in favor of ICE taking people away, but should I report them since it might solve [nuisance]?” The couple I’ve seen, the people aren’t that direct in their comments. And I’ve seen reports of citizens being arrested for a day or two while they’re investigated about whether they’re legal or not, before being released, all without warrants or even probable cause. Sure, not a prison camp, but far from what I’d expect in a free society. But the seeds of disappearing and detaining people without cause are already sprouting in the US among the general population, even if only among a tiny minority of shitty people. And that’s scary.
  - queenkjuul 1y ago
    Oh that's tame, go to Facebook where boomers are falling over themselves tagging ICE in comments with their neighbors' names and addresses
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    OK but that's something that's beginning to happen in the US versus the default of authoritarian regimes - my point is that is not "pretty much the same" as OP put it. You might get physically attacked by some neanderthal if you're openly gay in public in the west, and in some middle eastern countries you get stoned on a public square - but hey we all unwind and have some fun when we can, so it's pretty much the same ?
FeloniousHam 1y ago
The superiority of democracy is not that it will produce the best leadership. It's that bad leaders can be removed by the governed.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  In theory the last 10-15 years show that it might be easier to overthrow a radical regime...
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
It sure is good being a foreigner in an autocratic country. You are most likely there there for business. You don’t really care about anything because you will leave anyway. Most of my coworkers in Singapore were all like that. Who cares about the mass deportation of bus drivers after their strikes for better working condition? Why look at what’s behind the curtain when you can enjoy the pool? I have met people who have fled autocratic countries. Life sure looks ok there from a surface level. Unless of course you are from the extended family of someone who displeased someone better connected. Or you are in the way of someone. Or you happen to have said something which displeased someone. Then life is not ok at all and there is approximately nothing you can do about it. Of course everyone there knows that’s how it works. That’s why everyone there shuts up and lower their head because they don’t want to be the idiot having a run up with the power that be.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  > Then life is not ok at all and there is approximately nothing you can do about it. To return to parent's point, we want to say it applies only in autocratic countries, when we have similar pockets of despair as well. Not everyone can just "fight the man" if they feel prayed upon or abused. Most here can probably solve critical issues with money or even move countries if/when shit hits the fan. But lower social class people aren't in that mindset, and the power local authorities hold on their life is a lot heavier.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    It certainly is. I’m not pretending that liberal democracies are perfect. Ensuring that the one with the least power or at the margin don’t become victims and remain free is a constant struggle but people are fighting it. It can be a dispiriting one when you go through times like the one of the USA are currently traversing It would be a deep mistake however to fall from the traditional defence of illiberal countries and think that the imperfection of liberal democracies somehow make authoritarian countries as legitimate and acceptable. Oppression there is not an imperfection. It is the system working as designed.
anikom15 1y ago
Your day-to-day life may have been the same, but that does not mean everyone's lives would be.
fullshark 1y ago
The huge volume of immigration, both where people leave and where they go to reveals this to be false. The experience may be similar for whatever class you belong to, but the reality is demand to live in western democracies is massive for a reason.
throwaway2037 1y ago
> We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption. Who is "we" here? United States? If not, would Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Norway, (South) Korea, Japan, and Taiwan agree with that sentence? I doubt it. They are all doing very well -- highly functional (democratic) government and very high human development. (To be clear, there are lots of developing countries not yet a part of OECD who are also doing pretty well in those categories.)
bamboozled 1y ago
1.1 million dead Russians would beg to differ.

slightwinder 1y ago

> I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum. That's the point. You have the same type of problems everywhere, but not the same quantity and quality. But people seem to not care or understand those differences, and weaponize the concepts, instead of looking at the outcome.

whoisthemachine 1y ago
> But people seem to not care or understand those differences, and weaponize the concepts, instead of looking at the outcome. This is politics.
- mihaic 1y ago
  [flagged]

metalman 1y ago

right. and if we wanted to give ANY society a geometric representation it would have a point at the very top that would represent the most powerfull person, and would then widen out to represent the average and then taper down to another singal point, that would represent the single person in that society whoes life was composed of nothing but horror not of thier own fault and who will die with no chance of any help or redress. We can name those living at the top, but pretend that the wieght of society is not carried by a succesion of nameless inocents , comunist, socialist, religious and other societies give lip service to this, but all fall short of declaring a policy that no one will ever be ignored, forgotten and abandoned, but each and everyone of these systems has an elaborote way of doing reputation management or credit score, merit, titles,etc to signal virtue/worth, that can be gamed, so it is. And here we are, and my time/attention must now, be diverted back to the game, lest I loose more than the few points of carma it costs me to speak out here.

jajko 1y ago

> I'm not saying everywhere is identical, there's a spectrum Why such drama with many words, when all can be summed up with that. Yet somehow, people consider life much better on one side of the spectrum, while other side is considered utter shit. So much that many people are risking their lives, and some are dying just to 'move across spectrum'. It may be a hard concept to grok for typical western kids who often struggle with finding noble worthy hard-to-achieve goals in their lives, who got good life served at literal plate without moving a finger, but trust me its damn real. I've grown up during communism, in country heavily oppressed by soviet russia and littered with many of their military bases, ready for that WWIII battles that never came. Not 'spent some time someplace so I am an expert', my whole identity was only that and nothing else. Yes we all need to go shopping, its just that my parents couldn't buy any fresh vegetables nor fruits for their son, who suffered mild malnutrition due to that. And sometimes the shelves were empty or full of one type of canned sardines (I mean whole supermarket, nothing else, beauty of constantly failing central planning, unless you were part of regime/communist party). Yes we all went to some form of school, but I was being brainwashed to be obedient future soldier for absolutely rubbish ideologies. If I would say something bad about regime even with utmost innocence of a small kid, my parents could easily end up in jail, lives ruined, even distant family torn apart for good. Yes we all could travel, its just that I could not travel even within different communist countries, not without regime's special approval stamp in passport. Neutral, or god forbid proper western countries were off limits, unreachable, you would be shot on sight on the border, or torn apart by dogs. And so on and on. Yeah, its just a spectrum, what a joke.

queenkjuul 1y ago
Well here in the West we were also sent to some kind of school to be brainwashed to be obedient soldiers for rubbish ideologies, so we have that in common
egman_ekki 1y ago
yet, many people claim they were happier back then. At least in the country where I’m from. No options in life, no hard decisions or responsibility for their lives. Our current PM said he didn’t notice the fall of communism. shrug
1y ago

FollowingTheDao 1y ago

The only difference in the United States is that you have a better chance of being the head authoritarian, and by that I mean a business owner. We have had a pretend democracy in the US for the last 60 years.

eth0up 1y ago
"pretend democracy" I rarely offer an opinion here, expecting in advance it will gray into oblivion, however politely or sincerely it's presented. I see it happen to others often enough to remember. In most cases I see the word democracy used, I have the exact thought, "pretend democracy". I don't deliberately try to be a morose cynic. I've just become incapable of thinking the very word without the subjunction "pretend". The corporatism burgeoning here makes this seem undeniable to me. Am I that delusional? Is it really not that bad? Do the so called people really have a level of influence over their society befitting of the word? I don't see it. I just see words.
- I-M-S 1y ago
  Democracy is the opium for the masses.
  - eth0up 1y ago
    I won't try to evaluate that. For me, as a born eccentric, aspects of the concept terrify me. I tend to favor the principles of a Republic, with unassailable foundations impervious to popular fervors and whims. Ideally with heavy democratic principles fortifying the Republic. I don't see either. I look at recent affairs with FTC for example, and too many things to list. I don't even know what to call what I see. Recipe for nightmares comes to mind, but I know the flaws of emotions well enough. Personally I find myself retreating into a quasi spiritual state, remotely bordering asceticism. Fading into an in but not of it. I'm convinced it's a brutally complicated situation. Evey day, though, I think it could be drastically simplified with kindness, but that's a subject where I'm inclined to go full macabre and will hush now.
    - 1y ago

rafaelmn 1y ago

> Day to day life has been more or less the same across all of them. This is a wild take, unless you mean that in thw sense of wake up, eat, work and sleep kind of way. If I call the prime minister a criminal liar - worst that will happen is I get a defamation lawsuit. In authoritarian countries I go to a prison camp, and the neighbors are the one to report me. Even if I'm not political - if step on toes of people in party I can disappear and the rest will know not to ask questions.

ashtakeaway 1y ago
When U.S. neighbors report you to the police because you tell them to stop harassing you, you're in an HOA knowingly but without knowing it's absolutely turning authoritarian.
californical 1y ago
I’ve seen a couple Reddit threads recently where someone says something like “my neighbor has been doing [insert major nuisance here], I think they might not be citizens. I’m not in favor of ICE taking people away, but should I report them since it might solve [nuisance]?” The couple I’ve seen, the people aren’t that direct in their comments. And I’ve seen reports of citizens being arrested for a day or two while they’re investigated about whether they’re legal or not, before being released, all without warrants or even probable cause. Sure, not a prison camp, but far from what I’d expect in a free society. But the seeds of disappearing and detaining people without cause are already sprouting in the US among the general population, even if only among a tiny minority of shitty people. And that’s scary.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Oh that's tame, go to Facebook where boomers are falling over themselves tagging ICE in comments with their neighbors' names and addresses
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  OK but that's something that's beginning to happen in the US versus the default of authoritarian regimes - my point is that is not "pretty much the same" as OP put it. You might get physically attacked by some neanderthal if you're openly gay in public in the west, and in some middle eastern countries you get stoned on a public square - but hey we all unwind and have some fun when we can, so it's pretty much the same ?

FeloniousHam 1y ago

The superiority of democracy is not that it will produce the best leadership. It's that bad leaders can be removed by the governed.

BoredPositron 1y ago
In theory the last 10-15 years show that it might be easier to overthrow a radical regime...

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

It sure is good being a foreigner in an autocratic country. You are most likely there there for business. You don’t really care about anything because you will leave anyway. Most of my coworkers in Singapore were all like that. Who cares about the mass deportation of bus drivers after their strikes for better working condition? Why look at what’s behind the curtain when you can enjoy the pool? I have met people who have fled autocratic countries. Life sure looks ok there from a surface level. Unless of course you are from the extended family of someone who displeased someone better connected. Or you are in the way of someone. Or you happen to have said something which displeased someone. Then life is not ok at all and there is approximately nothing you can do about it. Of course everyone there knows that’s how it works. That’s why everyone there shuts up and lower their head because they don’t want to be the idiot having a run up with the power that be.

makeitdouble 1y ago
> Then life is not ok at all and there is approximately nothing you can do about it. To return to parent's point, we want to say it applies only in autocratic countries, when we have similar pockets of despair as well. Not everyone can just "fight the man" if they feel prayed upon or abused. Most here can probably solve critical issues with money or even move countries if/when shit hits the fan. But lower social class people aren't in that mindset, and the power local authorities hold on their life is a lot heavier.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  It certainly is. I’m not pretending that liberal democracies are perfect. Ensuring that the one with the least power or at the margin don’t become victims and remain free is a constant struggle but people are fighting it. It can be a dispiriting one when you go through times like the one of the USA are currently traversing It would be a deep mistake however to fall from the traditional defence of illiberal countries and think that the imperfection of liberal democracies somehow make authoritarian countries as legitimate and acceptable. Oppression there is not an imperfection. It is the system working as designed.

anikom15 1y ago

Your day-to-day life may have been the same, but that does not mean everyone's lives would be.

fullshark 1y ago

The huge volume of immigration, both where people leave and where they go to reveals this to be false. The experience may be similar for whatever class you belong to, but the reality is demand to live in western democracies is massive for a reason.

throwaway2037 1y ago

> We have the same problems: gilded elites, crushing poverty, persecuted minorities, illusory participation in governance, terrifying police, rampant corruption. Who is "we" here? United States? If not, would Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Norway, (South) Korea, Japan, and Taiwan agree with that sentence? I doubt it. They are all doing very well -- highly functional (democratic) government and very high human development. (To be clear, there are lots of developing countries not yet a part of OECD who are also doing pretty well in those categories.)

bamboozled 1y ago

1.1 million dead Russians would beg to differ.