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Comment by donw | Hacker News Reader

Looking at history, Socialist economies have a lot of other characteristics, though:

- Starting a business is illegal.

- You are required to work. Not working is illegal.

- Growing and eating your own food is illegal.

Illegal meaning you either go to a forced-labor camp, and are later killed after the State has extracted every last ounce of value, or the State executes you outright to send a message.

I am not proposing full employment. Consent and choice matter. If you don't want to work, don't work. Or start a business. Or be homeless. Your call.

But if you want to work, and can't find a job... let's fix that problem, and in doing so rebuild our infrastructure.

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I grew up in socialism and can tell you that things weren't half as bad as you describe them. Sure, everybody had a job (it was the state's responsibility to provide you with one) and people found themselves demotivated because there was little incentive to do a better job. There was a saying "They cannot pay me as little than the little work I can do" (I hope I translated this correctly :) ).

But, being killed for not working? Never. Start your own business? Sure, just pay the taxes and observe worker's rights. Growing your own food? Every rural household had a garden and some had decent sized fields.

I guess you meant communist Russia at some (signifacant but not large) window of history?

> Start your own business? Sure, just pay the taxes and observe worker's rights.

Depends on country. I grew up in socialist Czechoslovakia and private businesses were almost unheard of (there were about several hundreds of small private businesses in country of 15M people). Most private tradesmen offered they services unofficially/illegally (in addition to their regular daily job).

From what i heard, regimes in Poland and Hungary were more lenient in this regard.

> But, being killed for not working? Never.

Killed in work camps? At most in 1950s. But regular prison sentences for not having a work still happened in 1970s and 1980s.

Maybe I misunderstood the statement I was responding to. I thought they said you were sent to work camps for not working :)

Sure political prisoners were sent to work camps. As long you did not speak against the regime you were safe, though.

Really depends on the country. And in a country could friend on the city. For example, in the Soviet Union, Moscow was off limits to the people who did not have a permanent place to live (as registered in the internal passport). They were forced out but not necessarily imprisoned, just moved to "the 101st kilometer" (outside the 100 kilometer zone, that is). I think Leningrad was like that too. Even in the USSR it was uneven: Russian and I think Ukraine were like that, the Baltic republics were not, not sure about Central Asia.

These are all historical anecdotes, nothing more. No claim about it being or not being intrinsic to the socialist society etc.

> I grew up in socialism

Where and when, if I may ask?

> I guess you meant communist Russia at some (signifacant but not large) window of history?

In terms of "no private businesses" and "from each according to his ability" -- e.g. not working was considered stealing from the state, and thus illegal?

Russia from around 1920-1980, East Germany from about 1949-1980... really, you can look at all of the Eastern Bloc: Poland, Romania, etc. China from 1949-1976, North Korea along the same timeframe, Cambodia under Pol Pot...

To be fair, the executions ramped down a bit after the first 40 years or so, and you'd just be fined and/or imprisoned.

I grew up in Yugoslavia.

Again, not half as bad as your statements suggest. I have never heard people being coerced to work en masse. Everybody had a job and there were plenty who did very little, as I said in my previous post. In some sense, I guess it was considered bad if you lived in the city and didn't work but plenty of people lived in countryside where they just lived off the land. As far as I know, nobody cared if you had a job or not.

I am not saying it was good. Free political thought was not allowed, speaking against the regime got you into nasty prisons, where, yes, you were coerced to work like a slave. I knew a few people who went through that and that really was bad :( What I am saying is that most people still led relatively normal lives.

Interesting! I did some reading, and it looks like Yugoslavia managed to escape the work camps and genocide thanks to Tito, who split with Stalin early on, and was able to maintain power in Yugoslavia (which was then excluded from the Warsaw Pact).

Also looks like there was US aid involved as well. Interesting. Not sure why the Soviets didn't push for military action, though.

>Starting a business is illegal.

No, it wasn't. Артели and кооперативы (look them up) in USSR were quite popular up to middle of 1950-s and after about 1985. They were supported by government and given preferential treatment.

My Russian is super-weak, but for people here, those are "Artisanal Collectives" and "Cooperatives", respectively (yes?)

Reading through [1] and [2] seems to indicate that you could form state-sponsored groups and engage in labor, but not for profit... which is the point of starting a business.

What am I missing?

[1] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кооперативы_в_СССР [2] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Артель

Артель (artisanal collective) is exactly about getting profit shared with members.

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