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I lived through Communist Poland.
Comfortable life for officials meant that they could use stores with stuff from the west (to buy Levi's jeans, Marlboro cigarettes, or perhaps even a walkman - you can google Pewex to read about these stores). Many of them had also homes. Not as in villas, but as in plain homes that you see in american suburbs.
One of the country leaders in 1950s built himself a villa once, but he never got to live in it, because the rest of the leaders make it understandable to him that it will end badly. So he ended in one of the regular homes. (you can google Ochabówka - I've been inside, and again - it's like twice as big as a regular american home, nothing like a villa you would imagine).
You can also google how Gorbachev and other Soviet party leaders were living. It was better than common people but not much.
The main difference in quality of life was that the regular police couldn't just lock you up (secret police could though), and you wouldn't be beaten up by simply showing on a street during work hours, or doing some other crazy stuff like wearing colorful socks or long hair. I mean, no party official would dare to do it anyway, but regular police wouldn't stop them.
So on one hand - yeah, the societal divide was way lower. But it meant nobody was free and everybody was poor - as in no TVs, no meat, and even a toilet paper was a luxury. Nobody I know would want to get back to that.
It requires no talent, only power, to take people's stuff and redistribute it.
It requires talent and effort to create new things that raise the bar for everyone, and just as much to maintain the political environment that allows that to happen.
I don't know if that fits your story; if not apologies, as I didn't mean to hijack it!
I understand this perspective, but I still think inequality is important. Inequality is a measure of how good the low standards are Vs how good they could be.
Also, that's only useful where it's helpful. We don't live in a world where everyone can eat expensive meals every night, because those require work from other people.
What is actually helpful is the rich buying a load of stuff, some of which is crazy, and the useful things are identified by entrepreneurs as being worthy of trying to bring to mass market, and then suddenly (almost) everyone can afford them, and they can even be sold in other countries for a lower price that couldn't make them in the next 500 years. E.g. reading glasses were once for the rich, and now are so prevalent that we don't realise what a privilege being able to access them is.
But none of that requires knowledge of inequality. Simple market forces will do that.
You can feed, clothe, and give iPhones to the very poor but if they are at the bottom of a very deep social hierarchy with no hope to climb out of it, that inequality is still going to cause a lot of problems. People might turn to a life of crime for lack of better options, or participate into a violent machismo culture in an attempt to salvage their masculinity/status as a man.
Of course, the fallacy of every attempt at socialism is that “abolishing class” simply replaces the capitalist social hierarchy with a new hierarchy based on position within the Party or blessed sectors like the military, science, or intelligence, complete with large differences in material living standards. However, a greatly reduced disparity in living standards and material conditions does have positive social effects IMO. Consider that deaths of despair, poverty, and desperation are much higher under the Russian Federation than the USSR. I’m not saying that communism or socialism are good by any means, but I think there are real net benefits to low inequality sometimes even if they come at the expense of overall lower living standards.
It's interesting that the fear of being accused of sympathizing with Communism is so ingrained in the English speaking world that the simplest thought of claiming that inequality is bad and should be reduced must be coached in so many disclaimers of "but I'm not saying I like socialism" and "I'm sure living in that society was terrible".
I don't fault you, mind you. There's good reason to fear this backlash in a world that is rapidly equating Communism to Nazism and all forms of socialism and redistribution to Stalinism.
I know I'm making a mistake in posting this thought so plainly here, for example.
I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but I wish people were willing to consider "capitalism vs socialism" less as a black and white "good vs evil" dichotomy, and more as a vast spectrum or cluster of policies. In reality, those are the kinds of systems we live with. Even if you find yourself firmly on one side of the spectrum, or in favor of policies mostly in one cluster, I think we should be intellectually curious enough to look at the other side and see what kind of ideas they have, because some of them might be good.
I think we're mostly in agreement, and let me clarify I wasn't even trying to disagree with you on anything.
> I wasn't trying to add token disclaimers to pass off praise of socialism/communism
This wasn't what I tried to imply, but evidently I should have expressed myself better: I think you raised valid points, and my observation was regret about the fact you -- like many in forums like this -- must coach every topic like this with disclaimers about not being communist sympathizers. You had to preempt the accusation by making it explicit this is not what you're saying, which to me is a sad state of affairs for online discourse. Like you said, we should be able to examine ideas from all sides "because some of them might be good", but this becomes very difficult if one must fend off accusations of being a commie for even daring to suggest something is positive about socialism.
> I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but I wish people were willing to consider "capitalism vs socialism" less as a black and white "good vs evil" dichotomy, and more as a vast spectrum or cluster of policies. In reality, those are the kinds of systems we live with.
Yes, 10000000% agreed. This is also what I believe. I wish we could discuss the more "socialist" side of policies more openly and without disclaimers.
Loads of people, especially young people, talk about being communists and socialists and equity and so forth. It's extremely normalised, particularly amongst young people, whose largest percentage experience in life is one of parents giving them things. Those instincts transfer to politics, especially if encouraged to do so by university professors.
> the fear of being accused of sympathizing with Communism is so ingrained in the English speaking world
Most of this is not ingrained in the English speaking world, either. In the UK it's not a big thing compared to remembering Germany. Far fewer people know communism's death (and life) tolls in the 20th century than Nazi Germany's, for example, and how much worse it was even without a world war to bump the numbers up.
> There's good reason to fear this backlash in a world that is rapidly equating Communism to Nazism and all forms of socialism and redistribution to Stalinism.
You've decided the person does like socialism and communism, but is afraid to say so. That is not what they are saying, and while it could be what they mean, you are not able to discern that any more than anyone else is.
Oh no. Here we go again. Sigh. My fault really, I knew what I was getting into.
> You've decided the person does like socialism and communism, but is afraid to say so
No, this isn't what I said. I suggest you go back and read it.
> That is not what they are saying, and while it could be what they mean, you are not able to discern that any more than anyone else is
Thankfully that's not what I'm saying either!
I knew this was a mistake, thanks for confirming.
I've clearly laid out what I thought your response said, and what I think about that. Why reply with zero courtesy and zero content?
Anyone wishing to discuss anything even tangentially related to the aforementioned topics must carefully coach their words with disclaimers like "well, of course socialism doesn't work" and "of course Communism is authoritarian and evil", lest anyone even thinks they are supporting Stalinism or whatever.
Then you get the "history lessons" about death tolls and whatnot, and it's a really tiring topic. Or someone will mention teenagers sometimes go through a phase where they are drawn to communism because they don't understand life, or something trite like that.
So it's best to avoid, in English speaking forums, mention of redistribution, income inequality, or socialism; or if you cannot help yourself, then you must add lots of disclaimers that you are not a socialist and that you know that Communism is evil, or you'll engage in..
... I was going to say "conversations like this one", but this one is pretty mild so far, thankfully.
My final thought is that what I said is very descriptive of how these topics tend to go here on HN; it was just an observation. Not a treatise.
I agree, but for the opposite reason. As soon as I replied to you, you stopped talking about the topic itself and started communicating how tired you were, and how laborious talking about all this is. That's why you can't have a rational discourse on this stuff.
But other people can, and do. And no one stops them.
> You've decided the person does like socialism and communism, but is afraid to say so
Maybe this assertion of yours didn't help? Are you willing to consider this?
edit: but since the OP also misunderstood my observation, I'm willing to concede the point I wasn't clear enough.
I'll consider anything if it's mentioned. If you just said "Ah - I see what happened here. What I actually meant was ..." about 3 comments ago, we'd have had a regular conversation. I honestly don't understand this approach - even here you don't just say what you mean. You ask whether an assertion didn't help as though you aren't sure yourself.
I have much more success just talking plainly. Makes it much more fun and productive to talk about this stuff.
Plainly speaking, your assertion didn't help, since you put in my mouth words (or rather, meaning) I didn't say. That is not conducive to productive conversation.
My suggestion: next time instead of claiming what the other person meant, ask them what they mean. That way I think you will truly have "more success".
Does this sound acceptable to you? If it doesn't, I don't think we can continue having any kind of meaningful conversation.
I do understand that psychologically speaking, at this point it will be hard for you to back down or make any concessions. Note how you didn't even apologize for your mistaken claim, nor even acknowledge when I called you out on it explicitly. Fight this urge to be stubborn.
I'm not saying going full communist is an option but all out everyone-for-themselves capitalism doesn't work either. And really why do people need to be able to have billions? They can never use it up in their lifetime anyway.
I don't think this is an obvious inference. There are many factors that cause crime, and violent crime. E.g. I don't know if this is valid, but as an example to consider: America has countries to its south that are markedly different in prosperity. As people move from those countries into America, wealth disparity goes up without anyone doing anything to make others poorer. If Western Europe doesn't have this same situation, then the disparity won't be constantly increased, and it's easier to optimise over time with taxes.
Or how about this: the US taxpayer pays for the majority of global defence. If you live in a Western European country, you have benefitted from this. You may have only recently joined NATO having suddenly realised it's time to buy some insurance one second before the car crash, and luckily for you the US is willing to be that insurer that accepts you. This means you could spend money on vote-winning policies instead of on national defence for a long time.
As I say, there are many factors. Just saying that raising taxes and increasing welfare are the keys to lowering violent crime is not sufficient, I think.
Guess I should include a "/s" next time lol
1. Extreme anti-Westernism, 2. Extreme anti-Americanism, 3. Extreme contrarianism.
The usual result is you believe that all the sources that agree about how awful life in Russia, China, North Korea and so on are lying because the uniformity of their reporting is so consistent. (The obvious answer, that maybe it really does suck there for a lot of people, is dismissed as propaganda.)
Surprisingly smart people can be paranoid enough to believe everyone is lying to them or there’s some hidden secret to the world or politics only they can parse out; it’s easy for such people to fall down this rabbit hole.
That’s how most wind up being a tankie or Putin apologist or whatever.
You can honestly have a pretty comfy life in the first two countries, especially as an expat. And at least with China, the brutality is hyped up to a point that it's disappointing when you arrive there expecting to be some rebel in some 1984 dystopia and find out people are happy and living a quality of life no different from Europe or the US. In some ways better (cheap cost of living, world-class public transport), and some ways worse (internet and freedom of speech is clearly restricted, but nowhere near the murderous levels of North Korea or even Russia arresting people disapproving of war. Just posts being blocked in 99.9999% of cases, like a heavy-handed version censorship you'd find on reddit but applied almost everywhere). Like a more relaxed version of the UK which arrests people for offensive twitter posts or teaching a dog an offensive salute.
Throughout east Asia, people really just do not care what others outside their family do and don't get upset about it. But because it's none of their concern, basically nobody bothers to march in the streets for it, and governments are slow to push for social change.
https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2019/4/21/fatherhood-fin...
> Today in China, gestational surrogacy is illegal for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. Adoption is restricted to people in heterosexual marriages. This means gay people can't have kids.
China lags significantly behind basically any European country in terms of gay rights and gay families and it’s getting worse:
https://www.latestly.com/socially/world/china-bans-gay-coupl...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna85528
Asserting people don’t care when the government continues to pursue obviously anti-LGBTQ policies is silly.
> Today in China, gestational surrogacy is illegal for everyone
That sounds less like a problem for LGBT people and one for everyone. And that's not unique to China. Japan and Korea don't recognize it. And to bring up Italy again, it's illegal there.
China really isn't exceptionally bad in any of these aspects. It's really just at the global standard. The US, mostly due to places like California, New York, and Massachusetts, is paving the way for this. A large portion of the US (red states) is kicking and screaming and trying to find ways to get the courts to strike it down as we speak, or repeatedly passing laws to restrict it that get immediately struck down by courts.
And again, Italy is happily pushing the opposite direction. The consensus in east Asia as a whole is "whatever. Who cares" (with Taiwan being the sole exception), which is at least better than that. But Italy will keep topping travel and expat destinations despite being actively more antagonistic to LGBT families.
My favourite kind of fan fiction about NK is... let me think... ah yes, when Kim Jong Un has had some family member executed... only for them to reappear a few months later.