Ifi crushed by cheap Chinese gear

[AnotherSpin]

2 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Is that why by 1985 the happy people of USSR were drowning their happiness in 15 liters of pure alcohol per person per year, on average?

 

How about a drug usage in a "free world"? And alcohol too?

[mansr]

There's a much simpler test. If the government finds it necessary to prevent people leaving the country, it's probably not that great a place to be.

[pkane2001]

18 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Funny thing the life of wealth and so-called freedom would be a cage too. The conditions of existence never important to those who "are".

 

Look you can burry your head in the sand and pretend like everything's great almost anywhere. But if you think about how to improve your condition, how to achieve more, how to build a better life and to provide more opportunities for your kids, you'll see the difference. Knowledge is a powerful thing.

[AnotherSpin]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

There's a much simpler test. If the government finds it necessary to prevent people leaving the country, it's probably not that great a place to be.

 

Most of jewish people from Odessa left anyway. The question is would you be happy just because you put your body in a new place.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Most of jewish people from Odessa left anyway.

Why?

 

[AnotherSpin]

2 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Look you can burry your head in the sand and pretend like everything's great almost anywhere. But if you think about how to improve your condition, how to achieve more, how to build a better life and to provide more opportunities for your kids, you'll see the difference. Knowledge is a powerful thing.

 

I have no intention to offend, but what you said is a self-deception cliche. Sorry. Conditions do not matter, kids never appreciate your efforts, the more you achieve the more you need and it never stops, therefore people are not happy.

[AnotherSpin]

1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

Why?

 

 

Crowd instincts. "You are leaving?... Ok, we think about the same"

[AnotherSpin]

If it may help – the current life in Ukraine is very far from communism and opposite to USSR reality. It doesn't make people more ot less happy though.

[pkane2001]

Just now, AnotherSpin said:

 

I have no intention to offend, but what you said is a self-deception cliche. Sorry. Conditions do not matter, kids never appreciate your efforts, the more you achieve the more you need and it never stops, therefore people are not happy.

 

You're making sweeping generalizations from your own personal point of view, which certainly doesn't apply to everyone. In fact, if I may say so, this is a very pessimistic, typically Russian, point of view. Would you allow that not everyone thinks or feels the way you do? 

 

 

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

The question is would you be happy just because you put your body in a new place.

That should be for me to decide, not the government.

[AnotherSpin]

Just now, mansr said:

That should be for me to decide, not the government.

 

The more opportunities you have the more reasons to be un-happy you have. It is not communist, it is from Upanishads.

[AnotherSpin]

9 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

You're making sweeping generalizations from your own personal point of view, which certainly doesn't apply to everyone. In fact, if I may say so, this is a very pessimistic, typically Russian, point of view. Would you allow that not everyone thinks or feels the way you do? 

 

 

 

Of course. Please think and feel whatever you choose, I do not care. I am not Russian. I am Ukrainian, please learn the difference. The world has more colors that two.

[pkane2001]

20 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Of course. Please think and feel whatever you choose, I do not care. I am not Russian. I am Ukrainian, please learn the difference. The world has more colors that two.

 

Give me some credit, I know a little about the subject. I didn't say you're Russian, I said you hold a typically Russian point of view. There is a difference.

 

[mansr]

31 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

The more opportunities you have the more reasons to be un-happy you have.

Prisoners sentenced to life in solitary confinement must be the happiest of all.

[AnotherSpin]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Give me some credit, I know a little about the subject. I didn't say you're Russian, I said you hold a typically Russian point of view. There is a difference.

 

 

"Typically Russian" - may I label it as a sweeping generalization? 

[AnotherSpin]

7 minutes ago, mansr said:

Prisoners sentenced to life in solitary confinement must be the happiest of all.

 

Who knows? We all are prisoners or dreamers, no principal difference. Sentenced to bodies.

[opus101]

1 minute ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

We all are prisoners or dreamers, no principal difference.

 

Way too sweeping a generalization. Surely a prisoner can be a dreamer too?

[pkane2001]

7 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

"Typically Russian" - may I label it as a sweeping generalization? 

 

No, just a generalization, not a sweeping one

 

 

[AnotherSpin]

7 minutes ago, opus101 said:

 

Way too sweeping a generalization. Surely a prisoner can be a dreamer too?

You tell me.

[AnotherSpin]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

No, just a generalization, not a sweeping one

 

 

 

As you wish.

[sligolad]

Wow....never seen a thread get so derailed....seems like we need a venting section or pub car park around here!

[mjb]

@sligolad Yeah, its amazing..... happens almost everytime too. CA needs a lounge area...

[Summit]

18 hours ago, GUTB said:

There’s two topics that often get conflated — state-planned economy and class warfare. In the Marxist sense, class warfare is the battle between the workers and the owners, with communism being the end result of the workers winning over the owners, resulting in the destruction of the owning class. State-planned economies are a liberal system in which the government exerts control over the economy which may or may not include an owning class strata of society.

 

 

You have mixed this up. A state planned economy is an economy where decisions on what to produce, how to produce and by who are decided by the government in a centrally managed bureaucracy. Liberalism strive for the opposite that the most decisions should be made by individuals or households rather than by the state or any another government.

 

Adam Smith is the author of The Wealth of Nations and Liberal economic theory (e.g. capitalist market economy). “Smith declared that as long as supply, demand, prices and competition were left free of government regulation, the pursuit of material self-interest, rather than altruism, would maximise the wealth of a society through profit-driven production of goods and services. An "invisible hand" directed individuals and firms to work toward the nation's good as an unintended consequence of efforts to maximise their own gain. This provided a moral justification for the accumulation of wealth, which had previously been viewed by some as sinful.” Though, economic liberalism can accept government intervention in order to remove private monopoly, as this is considered to limit the decision power of individuals.

[Summit]

Communism is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology. Just like many other ideologies it’s a collection of normative beliefs and values held by a group of people. And like capitalism, socialism, liberalism or conservatism it’s more of an ideology that stipulate how the world and our society should be formed than how it really is. Communism (the ideology) share some fundamental values and principals with socialism. Some would say that communism is an extreme form of socialism and the opposite of capitalism.

 

Theory and ideology is one thing and practise often another. Even if many countries are supposed to have a capitalist market economy, it’s never in its purest form there everything are self-regulated by the so called market mechanism and without any interfering from big brother, aka the state. The ideology is an idea about how the society should be and is always more or less mixed up with other ideas and reality. So instead of capitalism, socialism, liberalism and conservatism we have social-liberalism or liberal-conservatism and so on.

 

I have no doubt that China under the Mao Zedong regime and the years after was a communist country, because it was sure not liberal or conservative. Today it’s much harder to classify China with its communist political and capitalist market economy.   

[firedog]

6 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

Why?

 

Jews were heavily discriminated against in the USSR and still are in Russia. Ask my freinds, who left about things like quotas against Jews at universities and the like.