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Comment by xrisk | Hacker News Reader

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Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're tedious and predictable—people always say the same things, and it usually turns nasty.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

See general state of development/corruption for all ex-soviet countries versus the rest of the developed world.

> See general state of development/corruption for all ex-soviet countries versus the rest of the developed world.

Also, rights and stuff

You wouldn't call a president that by all means takes from the poor, and gives it to the rich, to himself, and to children as corrupt? How about many, many senators who are doing the exact same thing? How about a prime minister that does the same?

There is just as much corruption in the developed world as there is in ex-Soviet countries.

I feel like taking from the poor and giving to cronies is a thing that also happened under communism (and a good chunk of contemporary 'socialist' states, and to a less horrifying extent, gas and water socialisms like Western Europe). This is a generally predictable outcome of state-led socialism, as predicted long before actual implementation of state socialism, by early socialists like Benjamin Tucker and others like Bastiat in the mid 19th century.

I guess my point was that OP was implying capitalism has no or considerably less corruption, when in reality, this is not true.

I'm not sure an ideology necessarily creates corruption. I'm not advocating for communism or capitalism or anything else, but when the UK PM is okay to start a multibillion dollar novelty project (London's Garden Bridge) and give that contract to his buddies, or the US president can literally charge the US taxpayer over $100 million to golf at his own golf course in less than four years, you cannot claim to be the better person. Capitalism sucks. Communism sucks. Instead of bashing one and praising the other despite both of them being immensely flawed, isn't the solution.

Also why my original comment is flagged is beyond me.

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Are they? Russia, for example, is neo-feudalist, not capitalist.

Many western countries had similar strongmen. Some even had a bona fide royalty class, lording over common people, and then their sons, and grandsons lording in turn...

That aside, modern Russia has tons of capitalists... Crony capitalism is still capitalism, and there are tons of proper companies there besides. Not everything is owned by some government-friendly mafioso. But when a regime collapses, like USSR did and there's a power vacuum that's what usually evolves for a while...

> That aside, modern Russia has tons of capitalists

They are the least protected class, who live under constant threat of business extortion by corrupt government clerks. That's pretty much the opposite of "cut-throat capitalism".

>They are the least protected class, who live under constant threat of business extortion by corrupt government clerks.

Not exactly, they are the ones who are friendly with the corrupt government clerks. It's not like government trumps capitalism, it's more like capitalists own friends in high places...

So same as in most countries...

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You confuse cause and effect of the soviet block collapse.

From what I see, corruption in capitalist countries is rampant.

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To be clear I'm Italian, I don't think life in Italy is worse than in many other western countries, I would say it's generally better, especially for the medium-low income segment of the population

PCI (the Italian communist party) obtadined regularly a third of the votes until it was disbanded in 1992

I don't think it ended up in horror or that it made Italy a place in ruins

Corruption was very popular here in those years, but the government have been anti communists for 50 years straight from the end of WW2 until 1998, when the first former communist, Massimo D'Alema, became prime minister.

He has also been a popular meme

https://pietrodn.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dalema-meme.jpg

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Honestly, it's not going great for "the greatest democracy of the world"

What I want to point out is that absolute systems (100% this or 100% that) don't work because masses of people are not 100% something

There's nothing inherently wrong in communism, it's a great idea, it's just not for everybody all the time, just like American hyper liberism is good for some and bad for many (redistribution skewed towards the richest, social injustice, expensive health care and all of that...)

How has the USSR ended up in horror? What about Cuba?

I will give you Vietnam though.

> How has the USSR ended up in horror?

By their own mistakes again and again?

Same way as Maos China until they changed?

> I will give you Vietnam though.

How about this instead, I give you Cuba, that seems like a good example I think, at least I am not aware of any major henocides there and they have been attempted strangled for a number of years so not only their fault.

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Compared to the US it doesn't sound too bad.

> By enslaving other countries for half of the century?

United States involvement in regime change in Latin America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

United States foreign policy in the Middle East

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_policy_i...

Role of the United States in the Vietnam War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_the_United_States_in_t...

and many others.

is it so different?

I agreed with some of the interventions (Bosnian war 1992), I didn't with many others, as an Italian seeing the bombing in 1999 in Kosovo from the other side of the Adriatic sea was heartbreaking (you could actually see them at night, the sky became as bright as the day!).

Many of my friends at the time were balkans running away from the previous wars and coming to Italy.

I actively protested against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, against the bombing in Libya, against Guantanamo, against Abu Ghraib tortures, against their policy of using drones that killed a lot of civilians in middle east, testified by wikileaks documents.

You have to remember that they moved the war to our doors in Europe, we lived them, we still suffer the consequences and, more than us, many of our human brothers are still running from them.

Please, try to understand US imperialism is no better than anybody else's.

Also, my entire family was communist in Italy, they fought against the fascist regime in Italy, they went to jail for it, fortunately many of them survived, by sheer luck.

Please, before lecturing us about communism, at least try to learn the many faces of it in history.

Stalin is just the easy winning argument (he died in f*ing 1953, USSR lived almost 40 years after his death!) like pretending US is McCharty, Trump, the KKK and the institutional racism.

Also: US recruited many nazi generals after the war that gave away secrets in exchange for new identities, money and immunity, so, not really a surprise that there are nazis running the US right now

What about Chile, Contras, the KKK ... ?

What about the Videla's coup d'état supported by US that lead to hundreds of thousands of desaparecidos?

One cannot simply point the finger and judge, without taking responsibility for their own wrongdoings

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So you are taking responsibility for your country's wrongdoings?

I am from Rome, a place with quite the history, it's not that bad either.

Hironically the best Major that my city remembers (regardless of the political ideology) is Luigi Petroselli, elected in 1979, in office until the day of his death and a member of the Italian communist party since 1950, when he was 18...

Many here are American, and even when not, they are financially conservative startup / VC / make-it-rich kind of people...

I am anti communist for the things documented in, for example, The Black Book of Communism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_black_book_of_communism

For context, I'm not a McCarthyite, nor a conservative.

It is perfecly fine to be anti-communist, the Churchill quote about communist and conservative is especially apt, but calling out to The Black Book of Communism just dimishes and cheapens your points. Even the co-authors disassociated themselves due to the way the main author framing of the issue - basically turning the book into a simplistic propaganda tool.

Some of us come from countries which have experienced communism first hand. Been there, done that, no thanks, keep me out of it next time. As a Polish(iirc, I could be wrong) saying goes, "Capitalism is a system on the edge of a tall cliff. Communism is one step ahead."

Are your general belief that people supporting Socialism today looks to the USSR as a role model?

Pffff... Beats me to be fair. I consider myself a centrist as far as ideology goes, slightly leaning towards the right. In eastern Europe, the left-wing supporters are largely the elderly. You are very unlikely to find young people supporting the idea, even less so among those who have had experience with it. The support for the left and socialism in these regions then is simply a reflection of what the USSR model was, whether it's blind and fanatical ideology, nostalgia or what is effectively brainwashing (the evil west spies killing babies and all the other conspiracy theories). Truth be told they are incredibly similar to Alex Jones and his views, the only difference I see is the packaging. Looking at the socialists in central and western Europe, as well as across the ocean, I have a hard time figuring out what it is they are aiming for or support. Which is not to say that I don't think that people like Trump or Bojo are not morons. They absolutely are and this is what actually worries me - superpowers that end up choosing between those two options. That terrifies me.

IDK his POV, but in mine, I believe most people supporting Socialism has no role model, in part because there hasn't been any Socalism that worked out, so they end up talking about this mythical socialist unicorn. Some of them believe that Venezuela and Cuba are just fine.

I'm talking about Spain.

In my opinion that's one view, coming from an extreme form of rulership that was established (especially in Poland) after what happened during WW2: nazi occupation, mass deportations, concentration camps etc. etc.

I come from the country with the largest communist party in the West and I believe it helped the people here to get more freedom and social justice that they would have achieved otherwise

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