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Comment by haywirez | Hacker News Reader

I wrote this upon realizing that two more or less random historical events ended up determining the entirety of my life’s course so far — the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rise of the Internet. These two have their hand in everything that’s dear to me, from the music I love, the relationships I have and the things that enabled me to do what I do. It all makes sense, but I’m still puzzled and in awe.

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A fascinating read. Thank you for sharing. What gave me a stop-and-think moment was the bit about a country being younger than you.

While Canada is by most measures a very young country, I take for granted it being older than the furthest relatives I know of. It gives it a sort of static nature. "Well of course Canada will be here tomorrow. It's been here over 150 years." That's a comforting fact.

The discomfort is in the realization that it's simply not true.

When your country is younger than you are, there's no misunderstanding to be had: everything is fleeting.

Fascinating read. I lived in Bratislava in 1993-94 but I didn't have the sense of it being all that crime ridden - perhaps there was more organized crime and less street crime? I can say that after first visiting in 1990, the relatively recent change to a completely open border was striking. We drove from VIE, got to the border, and nothing but a sign - welcome to Slovakia.

Sure, one could avoid getting pickpocketed or mugged if lucky or took care.

The removal of barriers favors those who can take advantage of the newly acquired access and information.

Your life reflects this capacity as much as the environment that let it manifest itself:)

> The removal of barriers favors those who can take advantage of the newly acquired access and information.

No. The removal of barriers favors only those that take advantage of the lawless system. For all the others it is just a relatively free ( as in freedom of speech) period between two totalitarian systems. Then everything starts again. The new masters are the old " nomenclature". Pigs will always be pigs and dogs will always be dogs.

In Eastern Europe and Russia the oligarchs had nothing more than others nearly 30 years ago, they were as rich or poor as the other citizens plus or minus a VCR, a car or some cool trinket. But they indeed took advantage of lawlessness and confusion and the current situation is far from fair, looked at in a certain light is worse than before the curtain. And of course looked from another angle is better. And lots of psychopaths, lots of psychopaths raised to the top. They recognized the game right from the start and got good at it while the rest of us naively hoped in miracles.

Didn’t they also have the right family connections to people in certain offices?

Ofc, they operate in packs

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