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"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
Capitalism is what is starting to drive some people back into eastern Europe now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...
While some of Belgium population did profit from it, the argument that all of Belgium current wealth is whole depend on the Congo is complete nonsense.
> same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance > lazy advocacy
This characterization you're making is what's wrong. It's definitely arguable that Belgium enjoys the prosperity it does today because of centuries of economic exploitation of other countries.
You may disagree, but the behavior of HN both in its programming and users to erase valid opinions like this is ridiculous.
> HN is exceptionally left-leaning
You're criticizing GP as making blanket statements (his statement was accurate) while making a blanket statement that's inaccurate. There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place.
That’s because politics has two axises. HN is definitely left-leaning, but in support of social democracy. Hacker News is first and foremost populated by /hackers/ and we don’t go for authoritarianism. We know that as left-leaning as we are, the only good tankie is a dead tankie.
Some ideas are well worth discussing but never implementing, authleft schools of thought definitely fall in that bucket.
As I was saying, defining "left" is problematic, different people mean different things by that term. To me, left means anti-establishment, anti-censorship, pro free speech, anti war. I see tons of people on here defending censorship of social media ("they're private corporations"), pro Ukraine war. I see much less defense of the women's rights movement on HN than I traditionally associate with the left. I mean the comment I just responded to is a perfect example -- the guy is tearing someone down for pointing out imperialism from the Belgian government. "HN leans left" isn't something you can substantiate in my view.
Left/Right is split on economics, almost entirely, and specifically on the topic of private property vs public property and where the line is drawn, inclusive of many things besides real estate that count as “property”. Philosophically it is a split between Collectivism and Individualism, and almost all conflicts revolve around duty to self vs duty to society.
There are very left-wing political movements in history, including arguably the most “successful” and powerful that were pro-censorship, against free speech, and explicitly warmongering. “Anti-establishment” is a meaningless term, whoever is currently in power is the “establishment”, regardless of anything else.
HN is far more left than the typical viewpoint in the US, which is the country that dominates discussion here. The US has no true left-wing major party, but the closest thing we have (neoliberal globalists with collectivist views on social responsibility) is not only the party currently in power, but arguably put there by significant financial support from individuals and companies in tech.
You can take that or interpret that however you want, I’m agreeing with the GP to my original comment.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong, the issues are not that simple. The parties have huge internal divisions and so many Americans don’t vote precisely because that’s not true. The issues are based on philosophies, you’re drawing a distinction that has no significance to the point.
> Collectivism and Individualism
No that is not the only way all major issues are divided. And even where they are, there are policy nuances that may align with both and be rolled into a single solution.
I already explained how HN is on major issues not left. I’m not going to repeat it. To say “those are just issues” doesn’t make HN left when it’s advocating positions from the right.
> I’m sorry but this is just wrong, the issues are not that simple.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I wrote. I am very clearly acknowledging the complexity of political philosophy, which is why there are two axes, not a single line. There is not just Left/Right, but the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. Political philosophies can be identified as a coordinate on a two-dimensional plane in relation to one another. https://www.politicalcompass.org/ is one attempt to do so (however not necessarily conclusively correct).
> > Collectivism and Individualism
> No that is not the only way all major issues are divided.
All political philosophies fundamentally reduce to whether they derive primacy for the individual or for society. Of course, all strike some balance between the two, and there are significant nuances, but if you do not recognize this, I would argue you do not have the necessary base knowledge of political philosophy to engage in this conversation, certainly not to assert that I am incorrect.
https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030....
To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the soviet union has been a generational catastrophe for russia. A funk they seem unable to get out of demographically, economically, politically, etc.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population
In the US, our population has grown 50% since 1990 ( almost 150 more people ). The russian population has dropped 5% since 1990. After ww2, russia had major population growth like the US. After germany and japan lost ww2, their population, economy, etc improved drastically. For some reason, losing a hot war ( japan, germany ) turned out to be much better than losing a cold war ( russia ).
Think about it, we are nearly 2 generations into the post-soviet world and russia still hasn't recovered their population. After ww2, russia almost doubled their population in 2 generations. Losing the cold war appears to have demoralized the russian elite and people far more than losing ww2 did to germany and japan. Why? Who knows.
There’s also the matter of scoping WW2: I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions. If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Because the soviet union was russia. Russia is the successor state of the soviet union. Which country would you use? Moldova? Estonia?
> If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.
Even russia's life expectancy improved after the initial disastrous decline. My point was that overall population hasn't recovered since the soviet collapse. This is true for ukraine, moldova, russia, estonia, most former ex-soviet nations. The only one to buck the trend are muslim ex-soviet nations.
> I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions.
WW2 didn't affect 'thousands of millions'. The world population in 1940 was around 2 billion. Also we are talking about the effects of the fall of the soviet union. Why I limited it to russia/soviet union.
> If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Maybe it's a language issue. You don't seem to have a solid grasp of the english language. My point was that the fall of the soviet was worse FOR RUSSIA than ww2 was FOR RUSSIA. I'm not saying that the fall of the soviet union was worse overall than ww2. That's another discussion. So no. One person's cancer diagnosis isn't worse than ww2. One person's cancer diagnosis is worse than that person's diagnosis of ankle sprain. You see. You have one person and two bad events. You have one russia and two bad events. You compare the bad events on the one person or one russia.
You are being very disingenious here. I can't for the life of me understand why.
Then, Communism fell... corrupt entities took over many of the countries, only looking to enrich themselves, and as the international solidarity system failed against "cheaper" products there was no hope to keep the often horribly outdated factories alive, and at the same time Western societies hungry for more labor force (and way more attractive currencies) began to "brain drain" the former Communist countries.
Today, the people may have rights on paper, but in practice they're worthless (either due to corruption or because the state is too poor), and society is crumbling apart from decades of looting and corrupt elites on one side and young generations moving abroad because they can't see any way that their country escapes the death spiral. Many people struggle with survival every day. So yes, in conclusion it's warranted to say that the fall of Communism led to a massive drop in quality of life.
TikTok and the "gangsta" life style are just the cherries on the cake.
What locations are you talking about? Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.
Albania's average wage is about 600-700 USD per month depending on whom you ask. Croatia's is a bit higher, around 1100... but the prices even for everyday staple foods are higher than in Germany. It's all shiny and nice in the tourism areas, but outside of them life can suck pretty hard.
Real-socialism/communism failed for good reasons and deservedly. I shed no tears for that period.
My point is that what came after tended to be even worse - the post-downfall period, the breakdown of intra- and inter-block trade, the looting by criminals and corrupt (former) elites and other destruction and the resulting brain drain had consequences that have held or taken the affected countries back in development for decades.
Of course the elites were corrupt. But there was a marked difference in corruption when there still was some sort of government that held them a bit accountable, or when the government essentially vanished and the criminals became the government. Russia is the easiest example (because it's best documented, information on the Balkans is pretty scarce): Your average Russian "elite" back in the USSR era, he maybe had a couple villas and Western cars, that's it. Your average Russian "oligarch" (or to put it better, kleptocrat) today? Buys a soccer club for billions of euros, has multiple luxury yachts and stashed away many billions of dollars more. Hell, the billionaire Russian oligarchs alone have a net worth of over 500 billion dollars [1] despite the war, and that doesn't include the millionaire mini-oligarchs. Imagine where Russia would be, had that wealth remained in the hands of the nation, and its leaders invested it into education, social cohesion and modern industry?!
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-billionaires-...
What's more, how many people did Soviet 'communism' itself crush? What was the life span of a Ukrainian farmer in Soviet Russia? Did that go up after the fall of communism? I can't see any decrease in quality that can be directly and singularly tied to the fall of the USSR, except for perhaps the dictators at the top of the heap. Arguably, those same class of dictators are responsible for repressing quality of life even after the dissolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts
And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed. Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions. Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own and had to become satellites of Russia if they wanted to survive.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In....
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ALB/albania/life-expec...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...
It also doesn't reflect changes in life expectancy during COVID, showing a consistent 0.08% increase every year. Seems less statistics and more projections.