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Comment by euroderf | Hacker News Reader

Socialism XOR Dystopia

I glimpsed last years of Soviet Union and it was pretty meh.

I remember seeing anything in the street (a payphone or a playground for kids) and assumed it will only degrade because as a general principle, things in the streets are unmaintained.

You could say that Soviet Union was bad specimen of socialism because of these stupid Russians?

Except, Russia actually got 100% out of socialism with our space exploration, passenger planes and nuclear stations. It's just that 100% of socialism is worse than your average capitalist dystopia.

I'm not sure it's fair to tar socialism with a Stalinist brush.

My own interest would be in finding out how management incentives can be made to work in a socialist scheme of ownership, so that management is on the ball - and not building empires at the expense of the underlying society.

Degradation of public goods or services happen independently of socialism. Where I live we're unashamed capitalists, and every common thing, like playgrounds, are derelict and only being improved by community initiatives. The municipality has no money for it, and the state doesn't care. Neither does the capitalists.

Yea, there is so much propaganda on economy types people just stop thinking and spout what they've heard without understanding. Pretty much every government these days have some kind of mixed economy because capitalism is effective at making things, but it's really ineffective at social goods/public services. Without effective regulations behind capitalism you end up with winners taking all and company towns issuing scrip to they can effectively own their employees.

Pretty sure Russia is Russia because Russians are Russians and Russian culture is Russian culture. Not because Russia was communist.

I will address some of your concerns.

Karl Marx was European. His publisher was European. His early adopters were Europeans. The evidence that Europe cannot be communist is not there. Soviet Union is a pinnacle of socialist achievement. It is possible that your communism will have mass starvation and hoe strikes breaking skulls phase which is not followed by space exploration and nuclear power phase.

You are miserable now, let's asusme. People were miserable under socialism (not all of them, but the vibe was off). We can't rule out you will be happy under socialism, but no facts support that even indirectly. It will require a leap of faith.

P.S. I was replying to much longer, non-tautological and less-borderline-racist version of your comment.

Sorry for late editing, it felt too much writing to essentially mean the same thing.

I don’t mean it in a negative way. I just mean ideologies or religion doesn’t dictate what whole civilizations do. It is just a small part of it.

It is arbitrary to assign positive/negative outcomes to religion or ideology.

For example, the science advancement in Russia began before communism with Petro as far as I know. So the positive science success of Russia can't be attributed to communism only

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