Downvoting again? Rather than articulate a response?
But yet, if I say this, I will be immediately downvoted because if I suggest that anything other than the established order in the US is the best system, the powers that be as well as the indoctrinated individuals that frequent this place would rather just shut that conversation up than to engage it meaningfully.
What makes you think that? If they had such a wonderful "way to structure and run society in general", why did the USSR and its satellite states have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bl...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schie%C3%9Fbefehl
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_e...
It's possible that the USSR would have been a better system, had the cold war not happened, but that's not the world we live in. If you want to make that argument you have to explain why it's reasonable to excuse how the USSR turned out in reality, and why in your hypothetical world it would have turned out differently.
With respect to space advancement, I suspect the main reason for sustained differences in accomplishments come down primarly to the amount of resources each were able to devote to space. The US was able to sustain a high level of investment for a long time, and the USSR was not.
You go on to state that Russia beat the US into space (which is a non-sequitur), and later expand that "The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general."
When challenged by alentist, who asked "why did the USSR and its satellite states have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?" you countered with "If it was such a bad way of doing things, why did the US actively go out of it's way to sabotage it" which is moving the goalposts, and starts to slide into whattaboutism.
Specifically you claimed that the USSR "could very well have been" a better way to structure a society, and alentist provided strong evidence that it was not - people were murdered when they tried to leave. Instead of trying to prove your point you deflected, and shifted the goalposts from "this could very well have been a good system" to "the US didn't like it therefore it couldn't have been bad".
Still, it would have been better not to restrict emigration. That was not humane, and betrayed an antiquated view of how the world works.
https://capx.co/soviet-communism-was-dependent-on-western-te...
Your question, on the other hand, is silly. Substitute the USSR with Nazi Germany.
If you're saying that slavery is also abhorrent and evil—like the slavery and mass murder that takes place under Communism—then we're in agreement. Now, can you please answer the question?
If the USSR had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder ordinary people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?
Let's try again:
If the USSR had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder ordinary people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?
Don't deflect. Don't evade. Answer.
To our fellow readers on HN: notice how alentist himself cannot answer a question asked back, even though I have given him the answer to his question directly multiple times. It is his attempt to save his narrowly constructed world view that he is right, America has never committed atrocities against its own people and others, and you should accept his point of view matter of factly without questioning! Notice how he acts more like the places he criticizes than I do simply for questioning his assertions?
When all major foreign powers say that they wish for the destruction of your country and would openly prefer you to go back to more suffering, support for monsters like Stalin increases.
Equally, when the threat of invasion is as high as it was for the USSR from Britain and the US, a lot of money and power is invested in the military.
It's very possible that if it wasn't for massive foreign interference neither Stalin nor Trotsky would ever have been able to gain much power (both of them got their power from military conflict mainly, Stalin even moreso), the NKVD never would have gotten nearly as much funding, Lavrentiy Beria would probably have been put against the wall, and so on.
You: Exactly!
Glad you also agree with my comments, then.
>The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general.
thus implying disagreements. Since neither of us have contradicted such a statement, either you've been replying hors-sujet or you were just trying to show agreement, right?
Your comment says otherwise.
The mere presence of the Bolsheviks as a dominant force was due to foreign interference, as the Germans installed him and his friends in an attempt to destabilize the Russian Empire.
Trotsky's growth in authoritarianism, when he was previously a moderating force, started with the opportunistic German attacks at the fleets of the Red Army, and of course his rise to power from a middling figure to a preeminent Bolshevik was only made possible by German incitement of the Bolshevik movement to begin with.
Even Stalin's justification for power was based on (justified) appeals to centrally planned heavy industries, whose main motivation was military power which was necessary to to threats of invasion.
It is clear to anyone that both Stalin and Trotsky would have had much, much less power if they weren't able to justify centralization on the necessity to resist foreign agression, beyond that the consolidation of the Bolsheviks to begin with was a German plot.
You cannot just sweep across decades of internal Russian conflict and paint it with such a broad and quite frankly misinformed brush. Every European nation was involved to some extent, but none had the influence you claim nor did any create any of the central characters in this story.
The phenomena of revolutions turning authoritarian because of an outside enemy attempting to destabilize is in no way unique to the USSR. It's a pattern you see all across the world. It's what gets a movement that was opposed to even the concept of a standing army because of the centralization of power and the risk that brings to the largest standing army.
The Germans didn't create Lenin, but they fundamentally changed the course of the Rebellion against the Tsar by sending him back to Russia at that precise time. They had an intent in doing so that was realized.