> One can debate the practical merits of planned economies all day long but this does not change the fact that privatization is theft.
No, it's not. Theft is theft. Privatization is privatization.
There's been some pretty poorly implemented privatizations in history, but also some decent ones. I'm in Mongolia now, and they did an okay job of it -
Still imperfect, but much better than the clusterfuck that was communism.
Seriously, everyone remotely educated in an ex-communist country hates communism. I've been to most of them - Cambodians, Chinese, Mongolians, Ukrainians, Czechs... it's only people who live in the outstandingly, legendarily prosperous West that wax poetic about the horrors of that era.
Seriously, I've seen a lot of it firsthand. I've also been to still-somewhat-communist places like Vietnam, and they operate a hell of a lot worse than their neighbors.
Anyways. Generally speaking, trying to repair a massive, systematically flawed system is hard. It's like how the tax breaks on mortgage interest screw up American housing prices, making it so high earners have more of an incentive to buy housing, thus locking younger people, lower earning people, and senior citizens out of housing, or making them pay inflated prices.
It's screwed up. It's a bad system. But unwinding it now would cause a cascading set of problems in the housing market. Thankfully, that poor system of incentives is limited to one sector of the American economy, whereas communism pretty much systematically destroys innovation, free thought, invention, and any semblance of sanity and order.
Seriously, go compare equivalent communist and non-communist countries. West Germany and East Germany, Taiwan and PRC, Cambodia/Vietnam and Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore (not perfect comprables, but close-ish). Hong Kong and PRC.
Oh yeah, and North Korea and South Korea.
Communism sucks. Unwinding a broken system is hard to do, but thank god they're trying to move past communism.
Edit: Lots of upvotes and lots of downvotes. To the people downvoting, look - Hacker News is, what, 80%+ Western Europe, USA, and Australia?
If you're sitting at your computer in San Francisco, you've never been further out of the States than Cancun, and you've gotten your worldview from some professor of Postcolonial Studies that also has never gotten outside of San Francisco, then I don't know what to tell you. Seriously, stop and reflect for a moment. Communism actually fails in real life. And I don't mean fails the way AT&T's customer service fails. I know it's not a realistic short term suggestion, but if you get the opportunity, check out Cambodia, the Killing Fields, and Security Center 21. Check out Saigon, and note that much of the infrastructure hasn't been replaced since the Fall of Saigon in 1975 (the fire hydrants are still almost all American-made - when they've occasionally failed, they're just removed and not replaced). Compare West Berlin and East Berlin for a stark contrast.
Seriously. I don't know what to tell you. Communism is really, really bad. If you're in the West and have never left the West, you don't understand and can't understand. Go through a few of these countries critically, yes on paper, but also in the real world and see how bad things were, and how much better they are in sane places with private property and rule of law. I'm not writing this for my health - if you currently are sympathetic to forced-collectivism, I'd really encourage you to look at how it's turned out historically. If you're sympathetic to communism, I'd like you to stop that, because I think it's destructive the same way that believing in religious violence is destructive.
Seriously, go compare equivalent communist and non-communist countries. West Germany and East Germany, Taiwan and PRC, Cambodia/Vietnam and Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore (not perfect comprables, but close-ish). Hong Kong and PRC.
Hear. Hear. I am very familiar with the PRC and Taiwan comparison, as a speaker and reader of Chinese (since the Cultural Revolution) who has been to both countries, and your point is quite correct that it is by no means easy to wind down a communist system. Russia had a communist dictatorship for a whole human lifetime, and less challenge from an alternative model across a border with free flow of information, so that task is especially hard in Russia.
Its not really fair to compare PRC with Taiwan, they started off on completely different footings. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan:
"When the KMT government fled to Taiwan it brought the entire gold reserve and the foreign currency reserve of mainland China to the island, which stabilized prices and reduced hyperinflation.[citation needed] More importantly, as part of its retreat to Taiwan, the KMT brought the intellectual and business elites from mainland China.[63] The KMT government instituted many laws and land reforms that it had never effectively enacted on mainland China. The government also implemented a policy of import-substitution, attempting to produce imported goods domestically. Much of this was made possible through US economic aid, subsidizing the higher cost of domestic production."
China in 1949 just started baby booming after the war. I'm not saying whether Communism is better or worse, but it does tend to drive away those already in positions of wealth and power.
No offense, but you sound like a broken western propaganda record. Having been born in USSR, I know a lot of highly educated people that grew up, went to universities, and built various careers in the USSR. While none think communism is perfect, or even worked in that particular case, it has a lot of merits and these people recognize them.
As Putin said, (paraphrased) "anyone who doesn't miss Soviet Union doesn't have a heart; anyone who wants to bring it back doesn't have a brain." I think this reflects well people's feelings towards the regime. It didn't work in the long run, but it wasn't all bad - far from it.
I'm surprised Putin paraphrased Mussolini (anyone who isn't a socialist as a teenager doesn't have a heart, anyone who is still a socialist as an adult doesn't have a brain)...
As another Soviet emigré, I concur strongly with this assessment. One-dimensional, sophistic Cold Warrior propaganda does not for an erudite treatment of the manifold facets of life in the USSR make.
I downvoted you because your post has nothing to do with the parent's original assertion (that privatization is viewed by many people as unfair - what does privatization in the UK have to do with communism?), and your constant use of the word "seriously." It's seriously annoying.
> I downvoted you because your post has nothing to do with the parent's original assertion (that privatization is viewed by many people as unfair - what does privatization in the UK have to do with communism?)
I linked to how the Mongolian People's Republic (ex-Communist) privatized by giving shares in state companies to their own citizens, on their own locally-run Stock Exchange, which has nothing to do with the UK.
It was a pretty good way to privatize without just giving company control over to the former communist leaders. Click the Wikipedia link if you didn't, it's kind of interesting how they did it.
"Click the Wikipedia link if you didn't, it's kind of interesting how they did it."
I just did. Apparently you don't know anything about how privatization was done in other post-communist countries.
The voucher scheme was used in Russia, with disastrous results (http://cog.kent.edu/lib/Ellerman5.htm) and is remembered as one of the biggest scams of the "wild 90s."
One thing you also don't seem to know is that Mongolia was governed by the incumbent communist party during the time the privatization took place (they won 85% of the vote in the 1990 elections and continued to govern without major opposition until 1996). This is why the following bit of information from the Wikipedia article is very informative:
"Government Resolution No. 170 announced that the state would retain a stake of 50% in some large enterprises; mining, energy, transportation, communications, and water supply companies were excluded from the privatisation scheme entirely."
The communist government kept those enterprises from the same fate they suffered in Russia by preventing their privatization. This is very similar to what happened in Belarus.
PS - Many sectors in the UK underwent privatization in the 1980s. I don't see how that is irrelevant.
I was born in a communist country (which ceased to be communist ~2 years later) and I downvoted you for gross generalizations and incendiary statements that have little to do with communism as an economic system. Thanks for assuming.
Normally a fan of your comments Jarek - you're a smart dude and I like reading what you have to say - but when you see an incorrect generalization, you can just point out how your experience is different rather than saying "that's wrong" without saying where or why.
As for incendiary, I don't know man. Is calling the Nazis really fucking bad incendiary? Is calling the Crusades utterly barbaric incendiary? Is calling the Genghis Khan not a nice guy incendiary?
That's the class and order of magnitude of horror we're dealing with here. So, you were 2 years old when an SSR started transitioning to a liberal democracy (or whatever the system is, I don't want to be assuming). Yes, "everyone educated" is a generalization, but it's true enough to be correct.
I do see people that are pro-Communist, but they tend to be the uneducated nationalists. They're the same kind of people that are pro-white power in the American South, neo-Nazis in Germany, and Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East. I don't think they're actually pro-Communist in terms of the economics, so much as they're in rage and want to cling on to any cause.
That's what I've actually seen with, y'know, walking around and talking to a lot of people and doing business and socializing with a lot of people across a lot of different classes. The people who are educated don't like communism. Pretty much all of them, from taxi drivers to entrepreneurs to professors to writers to journalists to construction workers to... everyone.
But again, I've liked your comments so you're welcome to express disagreement here if you want a discussion. I do think communism is really, really bad, and should get the same treatment as Nazism, slavery, the crusades, etc - because when it was implemented, it did equivalently large amounts of damage. (Actually, more damage, technically, than any of those)
So, in addition to all your other nonsense, you're claiming that they grow bananas in Russia these days. Compare to FSB isn't spying, businessmen aren't extorted, etc... bananas being grown in Russia would be the most realistic of your claims about Russia so far.
man, you probably never been to Sochi. I've been there. You can try to research/Google the agricultural profile of bananas and the climate profile of Sochi. This is snow in Sochi:
>So, growing bananas in Russia hardly seems like nonsense.
Well, the same thing was thought about corn in 60ies (state-wide corn enforcing campaign, 40+ years later still a source of countless jokes as you can force people to plant corn, yet you can't force corn to grow in that climate) and about putting monkeys into Siberia in 70s-80s (fortunately it was only a small pack of monkey that experiment was conducted on)
Your pictures are blocked at work for me, but Wikipedia shows pictures of both snowy mountains and lush sea-side vegetation in Sochi. Elevation as well as latitude affects growing conditions.
As far as growing corn in Russia or having monkeys in Siberia goes, they are entirely different matters as to whether or not it is possible to grow bananas in Russia.
Wikipedia reports that Sochi lies in a 8b/9a hardiness zone. The banana species I linked to can grow in hardiness zone 5. I maintain my position that it is possible to grow bananas in Russia.
>As far as growing corn in Russia or having monkeys in Siberia goes, they are entirely different matters as to whether or not it is possible to grow bananas in Russia.
you win as your logic's complexity is beyond my understanding considering that Iowa is in zone 5 and corn can be grown even in zones 2-4.
The term "banana-republic" means a failed state with a corrupted government, the banana joke was mostly likely not meant to be taken literally (but more like "it was so bad that it was like banana-republic without even the bananas").
Perceptions of communism is actually an interesting topic for me. I can't right now, but I'll try to write up a reply longer than three lines later today here.
No, it's not. Theft is theft. Privatization is privatization.
There's been some pretty poorly implemented privatizations in history, but also some decent ones. I'm in Mongolia now, and they did an okay job of it -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Stock_Exchange
Still imperfect, but much better than the clusterfuck that was communism.
Seriously, everyone remotely educated in an ex-communist country hates communism. I've been to most of them - Cambodians, Chinese, Mongolians, Ukrainians, Czechs... it's only people who live in the outstandingly, legendarily prosperous West that wax poetic about the horrors of that era.
Seriously, I've seen a lot of it firsthand. I've also been to still-somewhat-communist places like Vietnam, and they operate a hell of a lot worse than their neighbors.
Anyways. Generally speaking, trying to repair a massive, systematically flawed system is hard. It's like how the tax breaks on mortgage interest screw up American housing prices, making it so high earners have more of an incentive to buy housing, thus locking younger people, lower earning people, and senior citizens out of housing, or making them pay inflated prices.
It's screwed up. It's a bad system. But unwinding it now would cause a cascading set of problems in the housing market. Thankfully, that poor system of incentives is limited to one sector of the American economy, whereas communism pretty much systematically destroys innovation, free thought, invention, and any semblance of sanity and order.
Seriously, go compare equivalent communist and non-communist countries. West Germany and East Germany, Taiwan and PRC, Cambodia/Vietnam and Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore (not perfect comprables, but close-ish). Hong Kong and PRC.
Oh yeah, and North Korea and South Korea.
Communism sucks. Unwinding a broken system is hard to do, but thank god they're trying to move past communism.
Edit: Lots of upvotes and lots of downvotes. To the people downvoting, look - Hacker News is, what, 80%+ Western Europe, USA, and Australia?
If you're sitting at your computer in San Francisco, you've never been further out of the States than Cancun, and you've gotten your worldview from some professor of Postcolonial Studies that also has never gotten outside of San Francisco, then I don't know what to tell you. Seriously, stop and reflect for a moment. Communism actually fails in real life. And I don't mean fails the way AT&T's customer service fails. I know it's not a realistic short term suggestion, but if you get the opportunity, check out Cambodia, the Killing Fields, and Security Center 21. Check out Saigon, and note that much of the infrastructure hasn't been replaced since the Fall of Saigon in 1975 (the fire hydrants are still almost all American-made - when they've occasionally failed, they're just removed and not replaced). Compare West Berlin and East Berlin for a stark contrast.
Seriously. I don't know what to tell you. Communism is really, really bad. If you're in the West and have never left the West, you don't understand and can't understand. Go through a few of these countries critically, yes on paper, but also in the real world and see how bad things were, and how much better they are in sane places with private property and rule of law. I'm not writing this for my health - if you currently are sympathetic to forced-collectivism, I'd really encourage you to look at how it's turned out historically. If you're sympathetic to communism, I'd like you to stop that, because I think it's destructive the same way that believing in religious violence is destructive.