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Comment by kork__ | Hacker News Reader

Socialism has only been tried in third world hell holes like Russia and succeeded so far beyond expectations it ended up being called the second world.

A first world country going socialist would be the equivalent of increasing GDP by between 50 to 500%.

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By up to 500%? Surely you can provide some external sources of information to corroborate that claim?

I don't know what they have in mind, but that sounds like something you could do by improving income inequality. The top decile gets half the income. If you redistribute half of that, you can double the income of the bottom 60%. If you allocate that new money on a flat per-household basis, the high end gets something like a 50% boost, and at the low end you have millions of people in deep poverty getting more than a 500% boost.

Obviously that exact distribution is flawed, but I think it gets the point across.

The very definition of second and third world were created and based off of the cold war.

1st world = USA/Western Europe + allies 2nd world = USSR/China + allies 3rd world = Everyone else.

By definition Russia started as a 2nd world country.

Now your point about Russia not being on the level of western Europe pre-1917, is a very good point. They were year behind in industrialising (for a variety of reasons, including not being capitalist and competitive).

However other countries have tried, such as Eastern Germany. Eastern Germany and Western Germany, whilst not identical (with Western being a bit richer) were not "third world hell holes" except straight after WW2. They then diverged as the capitalist west grew and improved, and the east stagnated under a terrible regime.

Other examples could include North and South Korea, Mao-China, and Deng xiaoping- China.

Socialism does not work. It does not work in the real world.

It's actually a bit funny...

* East Germany was practicing State Capitalism with Communism as the ultimate goal.

* West Germany was practicing Social Democracy, aiming at capitalist growth.

Which of the two was actually (more) socialist (in the sense of reaching socialist aims) ? O:-)

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