Hacker News Reader

To extend on this with an anecdote; A buddy of mine lived and worked in Cuba for many years, and has very positive things to say about life there. He lives in Canada, and enjoys life in Cuba as much as he does in Canada, which I think says a lot.

Every single person has healthcare, food and shelter. Every single person has a job, and their kids go to a good school. Because everyone is paid the same, work is not the focus of life, social interactions are (which echos my experience during 2 years in Latin America) There is no point working harder or longer, it doesn't get you anything, so you go home to your family.

When you see a friend or distant acquaintance on the street, you stop and talk for 20 minutes. You prioritize family and spending time with them, rather than prioritizing work.

Obviously it's not perfect, but it's very far from the disaster it's made out to be.

Your buddy is whitewashing to an absurd extent. The Cuban government regularly engages in censorship[1], religious persecution, stifling of free speech, indoctrination of children, and imprisonment of political dissidents.[2] It's getting better, but it's still really bad.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Cuba

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contempor...

You've just done exactly what the parent comment said happens anytime there is a discussion of the merits of the communist system:

> The problem with discussing any of this is that the anti-socialism and communism feelings run so deep that people can't have a neutral discussion of the merits and flaws of socialism and communism. Anything positive can so easily be dismissed by the utter tyranny and inhumanity practiced by Stalin.

I made it clear the Cuban system is not perfect, but that it clearly has some merits that are worth thinking about.

It's quite possible to go there and only see the whitewashing. I'm always curious where the reality is for a country that has so many wealthy and powerful enemies. Given all the evidence we have of agencies managing public opinion through money or speech, I'm always a bit skeptical.

One of the key critics of Cuba in our links was Reporters Without Borders. I'm actually quite surprised to find the following still visible on their own page:

"An article by John Cherian in the Indian magazine Frontline alleged that RWB "is reputed to have strong links with Western intelligence agencies" and "Cuba has accused Robert Meynard [sic] the head of the group, of having CIA links".[79]

RWB has denied that its campaigning on Cuba are related to payments it has received from anti-Castro organisations.[80] In 2004, it received $50,000 from the Miami-based exile group, the Center for a Free Cuba, which was personally signed by the US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich.[75] RWB has also received extensive funding from other institutions long critical of Fidel Castro's government, including the International Republican Institute.[81]

Journalist Salim Lamrani has accused Reporters Without Borders with making unsupported and contradictory statements regarding Internet connectivity in Cuba.[82]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders#Cuba

I find it very ironic that someone would mention Cuba in this post. Cuba is the epitome of income inequality where the ruling party (Castro and friends) controls all the capital, while the 99.9% hold virtually nothing.

You may argue there are benefits and people can be happy under a communist regime, but you cannot deny that income inequality is extremely high. If anything, your argument actually corroborates PG's statement that income inequality is not inherently bad.

It's not as astonishing as you describe it. It's basic intuition that the relative growth of something will be greater in real terms the lower your starting point is. Robinson Crusoe finding a second stick to pluck berries with has doubled his capital structure and his output, but that's not particularly impressive. Starting from nothing, you can afford to just pump resources and treat the economy like it's a hydraulic system. It's what you do once you're up to parity that matters.

By all means, planning was inefficient. You had chronic surpluses and shortages. The attempt to replace profits and losses with "socialist competition" resulted in a disincentive to create surpluses, because it would quickly be integrated as a benchmark in the next Five Year Plan. This then resulted in the phenomenon of shturmovshchina where laborers would mostly idle and then expend massive crunches of labor during the final quarters.

The first seven years of Soviet rule were marked by massive hyperinflation. Wages were determined on a purely piece-rate basis, leading to workers toiling and factory managers manipulating quotas for greater wage returns. Attempted reforms under Khrushchev based on bonuses then only encouraged more homogeneity of production and made wage rates more volatile.

The reason Soviet planners could even calculate in a system of purely vertical transfers of resources was because of the establishment of the Comecon in 1949, piggybacking on Western price indexes. Kosygin introduced a reform in 1965 allowing some measure of profitability and sales, resulting in some growth but no movement in aggregate productivity because of the underlying Five Year Plan incentives. More radical reforms involving decentralization and minimization of bureaucracy in 1973 and 1979 were both rejected.

The Brezhnev era was marked by a large stagnation. Couple that with oil shocks affecting the key USSR exports, perestroika opening up the flood gates and the failed coup in 1991, the USSR was doomed to its failure.

It had nothing to do with Ronald Reagan or anyone "ending communism". It ended itself.

The Soviet system was a disaster and I can't imagine how anyone could say otherwise.

It is astonishing because if you look around the world at other countries you will find many many countries in the developing world which were not fully socialist like the USSR, which yet failed to ever develop even remotely at the level Soviet did. You could pick India as an example. While they did have a lot of state intervention they non the less had a market with market prices. People could start their own private companies and they did. Yet India did not see the kind of development that the USSR experienced. And if you look beyond mere economic factors and look at health care, education, literacy etc, they were completely outperformed by the USSR which had a very highly regarded educational system and health care.

You have to add to this story as well that the USSR was devastated from WWII and received no marshal help, and yet managed to recover surprisingly quickly.

You should read about the amount of slave labour and deaths by purges that was required for these "astonishing" results.

Also "space travelling" means nothing when more than half of your citizens don't have access to toilet paper and use newspapers for wiping until 90s. (Sorry, no sources on this but I'm Russian born in 80s.)

>Still both the Soviet Union and China have turned into far more humane societies during socialism than they were at any earlier times

What do you mean be this? Surely modern != humane

I am comparing to Imperial China and Czar Russia which were rather inhumane societies. Russia had serfdom and peasants were treated terribly e.g. 1980s Russia was a lot more humane society.