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Red Death - The Horrors Of Communism

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TheGoggles
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21 Feb 2014, 1:00 pm

Organized crime tends to develop more or less naturally in poverty stricken-neighborhoods. I mean, you're born into poverty, society has no interest in you leaving poverty, there's virtually no chance of escaping even if it did, and the rest of your country assumes you're scum from the day you're born. Being part of a militia gives you a support group, pride, and income.



Kurgan
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21 Feb 2014, 1:16 pm

TheGoggles wrote:
Kurgan wrote:
LKL wrote:
Venezuela is going to hell in a hand basket as we speak, but I don't think that you can really claim that the resource curse affects left-wing governments, except that those were the ones most likely to have their democratically elected governments overthrown in CIA-staged coups for American fruit/oil/other resource extractive companies.


Actually, the coup in Chile was one of the reasons Nixon had to resign (Watergate was just the final straw). The relationship between the Pinochet government and the US government cooled down rapidly after Gerald Ford took over. Even though Pinochet was a tyrant, he nevertheless made sure that Chile grew; if you overlook the economic freedom (since politics after all are more than just left vs. right), he was not that different from Fidel Castro, who didn't manage to continue the rapid growth Batista started.


Well, he may have been a mass-murdering psychopath, but at least he made the trains run on time!


I'm not justifying what any of these people did. Having said that, a socialist equivalent of Pinochet, would have left Chile in ruins. Furthermore, Musso was arguably the lesser of two evils compared to both Lenin and Stalin.



thomas81
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21 Feb 2014, 3:40 pm

Kurgan wrote:
TheGoggles wrote:
Kurgan wrote:
LKL wrote:
Venezuela is going to hell in a hand basket as we speak, but I don't think that you can really claim that the resource curse affects left-wing governments, except that those were the ones most likely to have their democratically elected governments overthrown in CIA-staged coups for American fruit/oil/other resource extractive companies.


Actually, the coup in Chile was one of the reasons Nixon had to resign (Watergate was just the final straw). The relationship between the Pinochet government and the US government cooled down rapidly after Gerald Ford took over. Even though Pinochet was a tyrant, he nevertheless made sure that Chile grew; if you overlook the economic freedom (since politics after all are more than just left vs. right), he was not that different from Fidel Castro, who didn't manage to continue the rapid growth Batista started.


Well, he may have been a mass-murdering psychopath, but at least he made the trains run on time!


I'm not justifying what any of these people did. Having said that, a socialist equivalent of Pinochet, would have left Chile in ruins. Furthermore, Musso was arguably the lesser of two evils compared to both Lenin and Stalin.


Meh, different context. There were undoubtedly communist Italian politicians at the time who would have made far less brutal presidents than Mussolini.


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appletheclown
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21 Feb 2014, 3:45 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
appletheclown wrote:
thomas81 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
I come from a union household, and I can tell you they don't make workers "into whiny drama queens who sass the boss." It wasn't just journalists who had accomplished workers rights, but rather, it was by and large guys like my Dad and Grandfather who had practiced their right as Americans to protest to get what they want. You know why wages have been stagnating, why benefits have been cut, and why companies have gotten away with outsourcing jobs in this country? Because unions have been made out to be the bad guys, and have seen their influence diminish.


Forget it, appletheclown is probably a bosses child. He is so far up their backsides he is practically chewing their caviar and lobster.

Its like to trying to debate industrial relations with Ayn Rand or the guy off the monopoly logo.

The hyperbole and dramaticism of opening thread subject matter says it all really.


HA! Your calling me rich! This is becoming entertaining! Although, I do recall my great aunt owning a chemical lab that made circuits for missiles, my grandfather started as a machinist, then became an engineer, and that my great grandfather was a machinist for 44 years straight.
So maybe I'm not poor, but I'm not some pushover who doesn't know how to weld, or is afraid of dangerous working conditions.
Machining is dangerous inherently.


Someone is a pushover if they don't know how to weld? And why should working conditions be dangerous where it can be avoided?


If you are smart enough to use a machine, learn how to do it without killing yourself.


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Kraichgauer
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21 Feb 2014, 3:56 pm

appletheclown wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
appletheclown wrote:
thomas81 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
I come from a union household, and I can tell you they don't make workers "into whiny drama queens who sass the boss." It wasn't just journalists who had accomplished workers rights, but rather, it was by and large guys like my Dad and Grandfather who had practiced their right as Americans to protest to get what they want. You know why wages have been stagnating, why benefits have been cut, and why companies have gotten away with outsourcing jobs in this country? Because unions have been made out to be the bad guys, and have seen their influence diminish.


Forget it, appletheclown is probably a bosses child. He is so far up their backsides he is practically chewing their caviar and lobster.

Its like to trying to debate industrial relations with Ayn Rand or the guy off the monopoly logo.

The hyperbole and dramaticism of opening thread subject matter says it all really.


HA! Your calling me rich! This is becoming entertaining! Although, I do recall my great aunt owning a chemical lab that made circuits for missiles, my grandfather started as a machinist, then became an engineer, and that my great grandfather was a machinist for 44 years straight.
So maybe I'm not poor, but I'm not some pushover who doesn't know how to weld, or is afraid of dangerous working conditions.
Machining is dangerous inherently.


Someone is a pushover if they don't know how to weld? And why should working conditions be dangerous where it can be avoided?


If you are smart enough to use a machine, learn how to do it without killing yourself.


Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes accidents are unavoidable with a malfunctioning machine. And machines should be safe if only for the sake of productivity - after all, what business wants to have work interrupted because of injury, and requirement to replace an injured worker?


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thomas81
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21 Feb 2014, 6:07 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
appletheclown wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
appletheclown wrote:
thomas81 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
I come from a union household, and I can tell you they don't make workers "into whiny drama queens who sass the boss." It wasn't just journalists who had accomplished workers rights, but rather, it was by and large guys like my Dad and Grandfather who had practiced their right as Americans to protest to get what they want. You know why wages have been stagnating, why benefits have been cut, and why companies have gotten away with outsourcing jobs in this country? Because unions have been made out to be the bad guys, and have seen their influence diminish.


Forget it, appletheclown is probably a bosses child. He is so far up their backsides he is practically chewing their caviar and lobster.

Its like to trying to debate industrial relations with Ayn Rand or the guy off the monopoly logo.

The hyperbole and dramaticism of opening thread subject matter says it all really.


HA! Your calling me rich! This is becoming entertaining! Although, I do recall my great aunt owning a chemical lab that made circuits for missiles, my grandfather started as a machinist, then became an engineer, and that my great grandfather was a machinist for 44 years straight.
So maybe I'm not poor, but I'm not some pushover who doesn't know how to weld, or is afraid of dangerous working conditions.
Machining is dangerous inherently.


Someone is a pushover if they don't know how to weld? And why should working conditions be dangerous where it can be avoided?


If you are smart enough to use a machine, learn how to do it without killing yourself.


Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes accidents are unavoidable with a malfunctioning machine. And machines should be safe if only for the sake of productivity - after all, what business wants to have work interrupted because of injury, and requirement to replace an injured worker?


Sometimes cutbacks are made. Sometimes workers are killed and injured because employers made profit driven decisions that led to faulty or dangerous work equipment or environments.


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Kurgan
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21 Feb 2014, 6:09 pm

thomas81 wrote:
Kurgan wrote:
TheGoggles wrote:
Kurgan wrote:
LKL wrote:
Venezuela is going to hell in a hand basket as we speak, but I don't think that you can really claim that the resource curse affects left-wing governments, except that those were the ones most likely to have their democratically elected governments overthrown in CIA-staged coups for American fruit/oil/other resource extractive companies.


Actually, the coup in Chile was one of the reasons Nixon had to resign (Watergate was just the final straw). The relationship between the Pinochet government and the US government cooled down rapidly after Gerald Ford took over. Even though Pinochet was a tyrant, he nevertheless made sure that Chile grew; if you overlook the economic freedom (since politics after all are more than just left vs. right), he was not that different from Fidel Castro, who didn't manage to continue the rapid growth Batista started.


Well, he may have been a mass-murdering psychopath, but at least he made the trains run on time!


I'm not justifying what any of these people did. Having said that, a socialist equivalent of Pinochet, would have left Chile in ruins. Furthermore, Musso was arguably the lesser of two evils compared to both Lenin and Stalin.


Meh, different context. There were undoubtedly communist Italian politicians at the time who would have made far less brutal presidents than Mussolini.


Such as?

Mussolini wasn't more brutal than other dictators, and at the very least, not as much of a sociopath as Hitler or Stalin. The welfare system and social security of Fascist Italy was also better than that of the USSR. Mussolini was an evil genious, but unlike Stalin and Lenin, he genuinely cared about some of his minions. He was a lot like Hank Scorpio on that aspect.



Last edited by Kurgan on 21 Feb 2014, 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Kraichgauer
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21 Feb 2014, 6:11 pm

thomas81 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
appletheclown wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
appletheclown wrote:
thomas81 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
I come from a union household, and I can tell you they don't make workers "into whiny drama queens who sass the boss." It wasn't just journalists who had accomplished workers rights, but rather, it was by and large guys like my Dad and Grandfather who had practiced their right as Americans to protest to get what they want. You know why wages have been stagnating, why benefits have been cut, and why companies have gotten away with outsourcing jobs in this country? Because unions have been made out to be the bad guys, and have seen their influence diminish.


Forget it, appletheclown is probably a bosses child. He is so far up their backsides he is practically chewing their caviar and lobster.

Its like to trying to debate industrial relations with Ayn Rand or the guy off the monopoly logo.

The hyperbole and dramaticism of opening thread subject matter says it all really.


HA! Your calling me rich! This is becoming entertaining! Although, I do recall my great aunt owning a chemical lab that made circuits for missiles, my grandfather started as a machinist, then became an engineer, and that my great grandfather was a machinist for 44 years straight.
So maybe I'm not poor, but I'm not some pushover who doesn't know how to weld, or is afraid of dangerous working conditions.
Machining is dangerous inherently.


Someone is a pushover if they don't know how to weld? And why should working conditions be dangerous where it can be avoided?


If you are smart enough to use a machine, learn how to do it without killing yourself.


Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes accidents are unavoidable with a malfunctioning machine. And machines should be safe if only for the sake of productivity - after all, what business wants to have work interrupted because of injury, and requirement to replace an injured worker?


Sometimes cutbacks are made. Sometimes workers are killed and injured because employers made profit driven decisions that led to faulty or dangerous work equipment or environments.


Absolutely true.


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21 Feb 2014, 8:23 pm

DoodleDoo wrote:
You can look at the actual numbers of dead under Chávez vs Pinochet, there is a difference.
In Venezuala approx 3 years of homicides under Chávez equals all deaths under Pinochet. Under Chávez not factored in are the frequent armed robberies, carjackings, kidnappings and extortion's.

The difference being that the murders under Chavez were not perpetrated by the government with the intention of killing off the political opposition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_d ... hile_(1973–90)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez

Venezuela under Chavez had no desaparecidos, no political opponents tossed out of helicopters.



91
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21 Feb 2014, 8:31 pm

LKL wrote:
DoodleDoo wrote:
You can look at the actual numbers of dead under Chávez vs Pinochet, there is a difference.
In Venezuala approx 3 years of homicides under Chávez equals all deaths under Pinochet. Under Chávez not factored in are the frequent armed robberies, carjackings, kidnappings and extortion's.

The difference being that the murders under Chavez were not perpetrated by the government with the intention of killing off the political opposition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_d ... hile_(1973–90)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez

Venezuela under Chavez had no desaparecidos, no political opponents tossed out of helicopters.


Well its an unsolvable question. What is worse, chaos or control? But at least in my view, to not blame Chavez for the massive increase in crime would be the same as saying that the USA has no responsibility for the breakdown of the social structure of Iraq.


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LKL
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21 Feb 2014, 8:38 pm

No, Chavez is at least partly responsible in the same way that Obama is partly responsible for the decline in abortions under his watch; the policies of the head of state make a difference in larger social outcomes.

But I do think that state murder done to terrorize the political opposition is worse, death for death, that chaotic citizen murder.



91
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21 Feb 2014, 9:55 pm

LKL wrote:
No, Chavez is at least partly responsible in the same way that Obama is partly responsible for the decline in abortions under his watch; the policies of the head of state make a difference in larger social outcomes.

But I do think that state murder done to terrorize the political opposition is worse, death for death, that chaotic citizen murder.


I would agree with that statement (except for the part where Obama is responsible for declining abortions, one would tend to credit increasingly restrictive state laws for that). Chavez armed militia groups and supports chaotic elements like FARC, he simply did not have the ability to institute effective law and order policies because his other areas tend towards chaos. It is interesting though to engage in a thought experiment, of where would you rather live, using two extremes like Somalia and North Korea. One is chaos the other is controlled, in one you die in a Hobbsian style, the other in an Orwellian one: in both worlds virtue can get you killed. I had this conversation with a North Korean and it was more or less unanswerable, each was terrible but totally different. The Korean chap preferred the Chaotic world but I wonder if I might get a different response from someone living in Somalia? For myself, it made me glad to get back into China, a strange feeling, to cross into China and feel free by comparison.


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appletheclown
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23 Feb 2014, 7:03 pm

thomas81 wrote:
the guy off the monopoly logo.


Hmmm, I think you are on to something good sir!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5rmaNlpxVk[/youtube]


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appletheclown
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23 Feb 2014, 7:06 pm

Nambo wrote:
But not as beautiful as this one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af6VgvkWq48[/youtube]


Nor this one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29FFHC2D12Q[/youtube]


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LKL
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23 Feb 2014, 10:04 pm

91 wrote:
LKL wrote:
No, Chavez is at least partly responsible in the same way that Obama is partly responsible for the decline in abortions under his watch; the policies of the head of state make a difference in larger social outcomes.

But I do think that state murder done to terrorize the political opposition is worse, death for death, that chaotic citizen murder.


I would agree with that statement (except for the part where Obama is responsible for declining abortions, one would tend to credit increasingly restrictive state laws for that).

One would be incorrect. The decline in abortions is due to a decline in unwanted pregnancies, secondary to an increase in the availability of birth control (thanks to federal programs) and an end to federal funding of absinence-only miseducation.
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2014 ... +Institute)
(I also found this while looking for the above link: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/e ... yt252.full)
Quote:
It is interesting though to engage in a thought experiment, of where would you rather live, using two extremes like Somalia and North Korea. One is chaos the other is controlled, in one you die in a Hobbsian style, the other in an Orwellian one: in both worlds virtue can get you killed. I had this conversation with a North Korean and it was more or less unanswerable, each was terrible but totally different. The Korean chap preferred the Chaotic world but I wonder if I might get a different response from someone living in Somalia? For myself, it made me glad to get back into China, a strange feeling, to cross into China and feel free by comparison.

Interesting question to think about. Off the top of my head, from my own comfortable seat here in a warm, dry house, well-fed, working on a fairly recent-model computer, that I would go with the chaos as well; I have the sense that there I could die fighting on my feet, rather than being frog-marched to the pit of starving dogs and torn to pieces for the DL's entertainment.

edit: your statement about being 'glad to get back to China' also makes me wonder if the Chinese apparatchiks see a benefit to having such a dysfunctional state on their border, as a bad example to point to.



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27 Feb 2014, 9:31 pm

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/ ... y-problems