Hacker News Reader

Comment by atemerev | Hacker News Reader

As someone who was born in Russia and lived there in 1990s, I have quite a good idea of this arrangement. This was not mafia state yet. The mafia state is the modern Russia, where former organized crime groups became fully integrated into the government. Technically, the state retains the monopoly on violence. Practically, violence comes from influence of competing groups within the state. And yes, US is moving towards the same regime type. This is clearly visible to me, from my Russian experience, but I don't understand how to convey this to Americans.

View on HN

What you’re describing is feudalism, which Russia has never been able to shake. Russia remained stubbornly feudalist while other European countries were developing modern states, and it remains that way. But feudalism, where the government relies on feudal lords to maintain power is distinct from what we’re talking about with organized crime. The argument that the U.S. is heading towards a feudalist state is still wrong, but a much more plausible argument than your original comparison to south africa.

the US is absolutely moving towards feudalism, and the ones pushing it are big on techno-feudalism a la Yarvin and his adherents -- Peter Thiel and Musk, etc.

This is not feudalism. Feudalism requires people to exploit and land domains to control. "Tech feudalism" requires neither.

I think Russia is more of a dictatorship than a feudal state.

What you describe as feudalism- a czar/emperor/king/absolute ruler at the top with some people under him to carry on orders - applies to any dictatorship.

Feudalism includes (among other things) complete lack of population movement: serfs were not allowed to leave their villages. In Russia today people can (still) leave the country.

Oh please, have you never heard of the "Semibankirshchina"?

Isn't that where Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz comes from? Semibankirshchina powiat Łękołody?

> Practically, violence comes from influence of competing groups within the state. And yes, US is moving towards the same regime type

The ideological and demographic makeup of certain internet communities makes them incapable of understanding what you mean by this.

Yes, most liberal or libertarian white people can’t look at a place like say Egypt and understand why a dictator like El-Sisi is genuinely popular. They don’t have the mental structures to even understand what they’re seeing in a society that’s so different from their own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com