I think my country was better in communism...

[Vyxn]

I'm pretty sure the US would dry up as well if their resources were dried up.

The Nordic countries are as succesful as they are, not just because of resources, but also because of a good welfare system where education and health care is free, and taxation is high in order to keep the welfare running.


I wouldn't put it as "rob" them, after all, they choose to live in a socialist society and since they're rich they shouldn't have too much of a problem from moving.

America being prosperous has more to do with its people then its recourses. what good is it to have many and plentiful recourses if it wasn't for they drive and ingenuity of the people to use them and find new ways of use

what was oil good for other then to use in oil lamps if it wasn't for entrepreneurs like Henry Ford. Socialist and communist countries will never produce entrepreneurs like Henry Ford because there is no incentive to become one.

why did Mr Ford want to mass produce cars? because he wanted to sell more and to be able to sell more cars he needed to make them cheaper. it was greed he wanted to make money. it wasn't to better the community it was about bettering himself. the better community was a byproduct. now when government takes away more of the money you make the more you make then there in no incentive to make more there for there is no incentive to better your self hence there is no byproduct of a better community

lets take farming for example America produces more food per acre then any other country. not because we have more or better soil then lets say Russia it is because of greed the more crops the farmer was able to produce per acre the more money he will make. it is not because he wanted to feed the hungry it is just a beneficial byproduct of the farmers greed. Greed produces the ingenuity to be able to make more to be able to make more cheaper to be able to make more money

[Deleted]

America being prosperous has more to do with its people then its recourses. what is good to have many and plentiful recourses if it wasn't for they drive and ingenuity of the people to use them and find new ways of use

what was oil good for other then to use in oil lamps if it wasn't for entrepreneurs like Henry Ford. Socialist and communist countries will never produce entrepreneurs like Henry Ford because there is no incentive to become one.

why did Mr Ford want to mass produce cars? because he wanted to sell more and to be able to sell more cars he needed to make them cheaper. it was greed he wanted to make money. it wasn't to better the community it was about bettering himself. the better community was a byproduct. now when government takes away more of the money you make they more you make then their in no incentive to make more there for their is no incentive to better your self hence their is no byproduct of a better community

lets take farming for example America produces more food per acre then any other country. not because we have more or better soil then lets say Russia it is because of greed the more crops the farmer was able to produce per acre the more money he will make. it is not because he wanted to feed the hungry it is just a beneficial byproduct of the farmers greed. Greed produces the ingenuity to be able to make more to be able to make more cheaper to be able to make more money

You're really confusing socialism and communism here. We don't share profits in Scandinavia. The state don't own everything. Entrepreneurs are encouraged here. Did you know Spotify and Skype are both Swedish inventions?

[Tierbook]

1. You operate under the illusion of freedom without taking serious thought to evaluating it.

2. Jonathan Kozol would like a word with you. Your education is completely controlled by the local state and federal government. Worse its subject to socio-economic disparities.
We have freedom to decide what we do in college and as far as money goes that is what scholarships are for
3. You are corralled in your choices(if you really want to even truly call it choice still): 2 party system and marginalization of any other parties or individual candidates. You cant even write in candidates in some places. More over lets say you can vote for a rock if you're willing to(and as mentioned if in an area that allows full freedom to write in anyone). Is it really freedom or just futility?
sure in the big elections its Republican or Democrat is smaller elections that will effect you probably more directly theres a bit more choice
4. Sure you can petition them. But the government has no obligation to do anything but give you lip service(as often it does if even lucky then).
well a single persons opinion wont be given a second thought thats why you get thousands of like minded people and as such a petition, if you get 25k on the white house website the president is required to comment on it
5. Can you freely do so without accountability for what is said? are you sure on that? Homeland security has wonderful lectures to offer you on the contrary :P
As long as your not preaching that america should be destroyed and that you will do it they wont care
6. For just the simple point of leaving and re-entering the country, having no passport or identification(ie governement issued) pretty much squashes that thinking. But domestically you cant think of places you're not permitted to go nor go whenever? Really?
well there are high security military bases but your probably have no reason to go there anyway and its the same in all countries
7. I would argue this to not be the case, given number 2 as a misdirecting factor alone. Add to this all other things that can restrict it you then have to say that your ability and success to do so is dramatically corralled and subject to a host of mitigating(if not subjugating) factors.

8. To make some extreme examples of the relativity of this: expressing having a dangerous object in an airport, fire in a crowded theatre, declare associations with alqueda or other similar and see how quickly your "freedom" ends where the necessity to protect the "freedom" of others begins.
if you do any of your scenarios your pretty much trying to get people killed or scare the shit out of them at least and i believe its considered disturbing the peace or something along those lines
9. That's a tricky one. I would offer that every significant news outlet is heavily influenced by the controls of various political machines. This then really blurs if not pulls the wool over one's eyes with regards to the perception of the definition of control.

Media controls the government not the ther way around

[Deleted]

Socialist and communist countries will never produce entrepreneurs like Henry Ford because there is no incentive to become one.

May I ask for examples of "socialist countries" ?

[Deleted]

Romania and Bulgaria, though, are the only 2 countries that aren't prospering because of their membership. Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus and Malta all joined 3 years before Romania and Bulgaria and they're relatively prospering. Sure, Croatia has corruption, but our level of development and corruption is closer to the countries that joined in 2004 rather than Romania and Bulgaria.

Also, Croatia is the most tourist country in Europe, tourism in Croatia amounts for 20% of our GDP and tourist arrivals are rising by 5% a year. That means that our GDP is rising by 1% a year due to tourism only (although it's not rising at the moment because of other factors). And the point is, when we enter the EU, even more people will swarm in for the tourist attractions.



There's no doubt about it, Tito was a benevolent dictator but he ruled with an "iron fist", while he ruled, non-Serbs in Yugoslavia didn't even get the idea of their country separating from the federation. It was in everyone's subconscious though. Yugoslavia was a brewing shitstorm waiting to explode.

I understood from someone that your corruption is similar to ours though, not sure what to say. That said, look at the other side of the coin too, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, these all joined even earlier and aren't prospering. The idea I want you to understand is that the entry in the EU won't bring milk and honey. It is how your leadership makes the benefits from the EU work what will or will not make milk and honey pour. If you have a crappy leadership... hot tar will pour.

About second thing, isn't Slobodan Milosevic the one that triggered something after all though? I remember reading that he sort of made the equality so serbs are higher then others, and only then did other nations from the union (I don't know how to call Yugoslavia, so union seems best) got pissed.

Well, we saw how well it worked for the USSR when they tried to subsidize allied governments. Haven't you red the news for the past year ? It's all about how the EU is boned. It's a bad pass, there's definitely potential in Romania : cheap (and good!) land, cheap workforce, tons of people (you're like the 7th most populated state in the EU iirc), access to the EU market.. Whenever Europe picks up I bet the ex-communist countries will pull a China on the westerners and flood the market with cheap goods.

That's the deal, I did talk about cheap workforce. The multinational companies come here and treat everyone like dirt and pay very little money, but because there's no other jobs people take them. I don't really find that to be a very good trade. Also, to add to this, many of them have already moved away, Algeria, Bulgaria, Ukraine etc. simply because those countries either have cheaper workforce or their laws on firms are more relaxed.
And would be nice to flood the market with cheap goods... but we don't really produce much and what is produced is done so for major companies which sell it at 10 times the price there in the EU. You'd be surprised, but much of the clothing in France is made in Romania and sold at 10 times the price.

I think it's the fault of the Romanians themselves that it's this bad now.
Look at West-Germany, Czech and Poland. They are doing far, far better without communism.

No. The leadership is to blame. Because from start it was corrupt. But at start it hid that. Now when people realized it, the old revolutionaries are 40+ with families and wouldn't risk them, while the new young people are mostly uneducated due to corrupt leadership fucking everything. The fact that not even I know what happened fully during communism even if I did the political sciences university and learned my best and got high marks there and even studied in plus and yet I should be someone with an education knowing this exact aspect amongst many shows clearly that our education is doing really bad. I'm not the smartest person ever, but I did finish a university without paying a dime (my scholarship for high grades) yet not even I am fully educated on the matter I studied. I think this kind of fits our education in a nutshell. It produces something that appears good, yet it's flawed by hiding parts of what happened.

Every system has its merits and communism is no exception. Communism is alluring to anyone who in their nobility wants to see everyone succeed and be happy. The only problem is, people are stupid and corruptible, and that is the main reason why democracy and capitlism is at this moment in time the most viable option for any country. Democracy and capitalism, while flawed, have inherent mechanisms to prevent any one person or group from maintaining an oppressive stance for a prolonged period of time. For as long as humanity remains in a state where individuals see themselves as an end in and of itself democracy and capitalism will be mandatory.

Well... not fully true. When all actors in the political game shake hands when the issues concern them, then you have a problem.
For example, our two major political alliances can't even agree on who goes to the European heads of state meetings, but when they wanted new cars, all of them voted yet even if people were starving, because the old cars were 2 years old.

Sure helps to promote growth when you close down the industries, leading to mass unemployment.

That's preety much what happened here too, except we didn't have a West Romania to lift us up afterwards. And the companies were then closed, because they were bringing competition and the new western companies didn't want that.

I really regret that our country didnt have a lustration law to ban all communist related people from the political life. We didnt even send our dictator to jail... Romanians at least shot their's.

Yea, we shot the big guy and his wife, but other little communist leaders still got into politics. Our current president for example was an army ship captain during communism. To be that and to travel abroad as he did he had to have a certain connection to the communist party. He claims otherwise, but anyone who lived then knows what I said here is true and you couldn't travel abroad when your mind desired without certain connections to the Party.

That said, you can't shoot everyone with a connection to communism.
First, there's too many people.
Second, you'd create voids in many spheres of industry and even leadership.

The Russian public never starved to death because of the space programme. In fact, there was never any Soviet famine during the 50s nor the 60s.

Socialism to communism is as liberalism is to capitalism. It is true they have some principles in common, like the worker is not just a resource, and that welfare is a necessity for a society to work, but whereas communism wants to completely destroy classes, socialism just wants to fade classes and make sure everyone has the same chance in life to become something.

I like socialism better then communism... maybe I should have written that in title, but I can't really have socialism back as we've never had true socialism.

[Kasierith]

America being prosperous has more to do with its people then its recourses. what good is it to have many and plentiful recourses if it wasn't for they drive and ingenuity of the people to use them and find new ways of use

I find this to be a fundamental flaw in peoples' interpretations of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, scientific drive was intrinsically tied to the Soviet ideology, and under its direction scientists were able to make numerous rapid discoveries and innovations. The US was not the first into space, after all. In particular, Soviet scientific advancement focused on theoretical levels, as opposed to application, due to the belief that the US could be easily surpassed by moving forward into the next generation of scientific thought while the US was touching up the fine details of application with the current scientific knowledge. Mathematics and physics were the forefront of this scientific advancement. There were some areas of scientific suppression, but these were mostly related to Stalin's era and ultimately much of the suppression died with him.

Media controls the government not the ther way around

Where do you pull this from, exactly?

[Tierbook]

I find this to be a fundamental flaw in peoples' interpretations of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, scientific drive was intrinsically tied to the Soviet ideology, and under its direction scientists were able to make numerous rapid discoveries and innovations. The US was not the first into space, after all. In particular, Soviet scientific advancement focused on theoretical levels, as opposed to application, due to the belief that the US could be easily surpassed by moving forward into the next generation of scientific thought while the US was touching up the fine details of application with the current scientific knowledge. Mathematics and physics were the forefront of this scientific advancement. There were some areas of scientific suppression, but these were mostly related to Stalin's era and ultimately much of the suppression died with him.





Where do you pull this from, exactly?

you can have space we get the moon and mars.

Media controls the people and the people control the government if you didnt have something like Fox and NBC i imagine the political sphere would be different. Also to that quote alll of my other answers are in Italics

[Kasierith]

you can have space we get the moon and mars

Can't we have both and acknowledge that there were two parties that made astronomical (pun intended) leaps forward in science and were able to achieve amazing result?

[Deleted]

That's the deal, I did talk about cheap workforce. The multinational companies come here and treat everyone like dirt and pay very little money, but because there's no other jobs people take them. I don't really find that to be a very good trade. Also, to add to this, many of them have already moved away, Algeria, Bulgaria, Ukraine etc. simply because those countries either have cheaper workforce or their laws on firms are more relaxed.
And would be nice to flood the market with cheap goods... but we don't really produce much and what is produced is done so for major companies which sell it at 10 times the price there in the EU. You'd be surprised, but much of the clothing in France is made in Romania and sold at 10 times the price.

Well, once people start having money you can run a consumer economy where people are just worried they won't be able to buy the latest i-phone. You need to start somewhere - can't have a middle-class if there's nobody to provide services to.

[Giants41]

I think if it was Communist today you would be saying the opposite honestly.

[Deleted]

America being prosperous has more to do with its people then its recourses. what good is it to have many and plentiful recourses if it wasn't for they drive and ingenuity of the people to use them and find new ways of use

what was oil good for other then to use in oil lamps if it wasn't for entrepreneurs like Henry Ford. Socialist and communist countries will never produce entrepreneurs like Henry Ford because there is no incentive to become one.

why did Mr Ford want to mass produce cars? because he wanted to sell more and to be able to sell more cars he needed to make them cheaper. it was greed he wanted to make money. it wasn't to better the community it was about bettering himself. the better community was a byproduct. now when government takes away more of the money you make they more you make then there in no incentive to make more there for their is no incentive to better your self hence their is no byproduct of a better community

lets take farming for example America produces more food per acre then any other country. not because we have more or better soil then lets say Russia it is because of greed the more crops the farmer was able to produce per acre the more money he will make. it is not because he wanted to feed the hungry it is just a beneficial byproduct of the farmers greed. Greed produces the ingenuity to be able to make more to be able to make more cheaper to be able to make more money

It depends. Then why did Russia get to space first if there was no innovation?

Here's how a true communist society works. You work. You work for yourself still. However, to get more benefit you need to work more, because you don't get the full benefit of your work. There's 9 other people, so you need to work 10 times harder to have twice the benefit of today or you need to motivate the others or give them a means to work as good or fast as you so you can increase productivity overall, so that you could benefit, as well as everyone else.

So, overall, a truly communist system would work if applied to small communities, let's say of 100.000 people each. Then each community could compete against others. In a way like countries, the difference is that each community has same amount of people, and each has a different resource, so each must compete for their community to prosper. But you won't get a leader alone to prosper, for all are equal inside the community, so all 100.000 people prosper at same time. Obviously that the community would be forced to train their weak links too, and they'd have the incetive of being better then other communities to work. In the end, is this not why a single individual works today? Do people work to have a better tv, or just to have a better tv then the other people? Until a certain point they work to have a better tv, but from that point on they will only work to have more then the others. This is capitalism and consumerism.

[Tierbook]

Can't we have both and acknowledge that there were two parties that made astronomical (pun intended) leaps forward in science and were able to achieve amazing result?

over Neil Armstrongs dead body... and possibly Neil DeGrasse Tyson's he annoys me

[Kasierith]

I think if it was Communist today you would be saying the opposite honestly.

The grass really is greener on the other side, especially when both sides are brown to begin with.

Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA says hi.

Oh god I love IKEA...

over Neil Armstrongs dead body... and possibly Neil DeGrasse Tyson's he annoys me

So baseless nationalism. Check!

[starlord]

the trouble with communism is its implementation. or rather incompetent people.
the trouble with capitalism is capitalism. its always necessary to reign it in as it leads to massive exploitation.

[Tokru]

People who are nostalgic for the Soviet Block are just that: nostalgic. Soviet-style communism was an unmitigated disaster on almost every front. That Old East German states are still lagging behind the West (http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-439838.html) should be reminder enough. But if that's insufficient, remember that while the East Germans were building this:



The West Germans were building this:

Communism, as idea, has relatively little to do with that.

The biggest influence was the vastly different start for both sides. The West got financial aid whereas the East actually had to pay heavy reparations. Pure money and, more important, whole factories (those which were not destroyed) were disassembled and transported to Russia. Even rails were ripped from the ground. Also the East had to assimilate a proportionally larger number of expellees from the lost territories.

Of course the ideology had an influence on the development of such things, but if they had both started on equal grounds the differences would have been much smaller in the end.

[Vyxn]

You're really confusing socialism and communism here. We don't share profits in Scandinavia. The state don't own everything. Entrepreneurs are encouraged here. Did you know Spotify and Skype are both Swedish inventions?

from technology produced from who my i ask?

[Tierbook]

The grass really is greener on the other side, especially when both sides are brown to begin with.



Oh god I love IKEA...



So baseless nationalism. Check!

Fine you can have Mars but we are keeping the moon.... and we may take mars back if something valuable is found there

also how is it baseless?

[Deleted]

from technology produced from who my i ask?

The US and France. How is that relevant?

[Vyxn]

Can't we have both and acknowledge that there were two parties that made astronomical (pun intended) leaps forward in science and were able to achieve amazing result?

the big difference is that Russia didn't capitalize on it technology because the Russian government owned that technology it it wasn't used for the publics benefit other then a feather in their cap

America was able to use its technology for public use because it was owned by private industries there for it was also used for the publics benefit

[Kasierith]

Fine you can have Mars but we are keeping the moon.... and we may take mars back if something valuable is found there

also how is it baseless?

Because the fact that the US was the first to land on the moon does not discredit the fact that the Soviets were the first in space. Just like the fact that the Soviets were the first in face does not diminish the importance of America's achievement in reaching the moon.

the big difference is that Russia didn't capitalize on it technology because the Russian government owned that technology it it wasn't used for the publics benefit other then a feather in their cap

America was able to use its technology for public use because it was owned by private industries there for it was also used for the publics benefit

See my above post on application vs theoretical knowledge.