41–50 of 241 posts
I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…
Oh no! What would we do without our rabbit food?
I had the chance to visit Belarus last year for a extended period. The capital, Minsk, is by far the cleanest and safest place i have seen anywhere. Putting aside the human right issues, i think the president there has run the country quite well given the circumstances and the post-soviet situation he inherited. Mostly staying out of conflicts, keeping a balance between the big brother to the east and the western Eur…
> Putting aside the human right issues... I'm not sure that is a safe start to an argument that a country is well run. When human rights get suppressed that means people lose the ability to, eg, honestly complain about massive problems or take basic steps to improve their standard of living. Growing an economy at the expense of human rights is kinda stupid. What is the point of making people's lives materially better…
Do they have such laws or you believe that a proposed law (according to the cited articled) is an existing law already? You seem to quickly go and claim border-line slavery without checking it first.
I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…
>no vegetables Oh no! What would we do without our rabbit food?
>> Rolled over through the centuries with Moscow's wars with other parts of Europe What a profoundly backward perspective. It's the other way around. Belarus was a part of the Russian Empire. So much a part of it, in fact, that the long form of the title of the Russian monarch contained its name. You can't "roll over" something you already own. It wasn't Russia's wars with European states that repeatedly fucked up Be…
Another point to consider: much of the Rus (Ruth) that russia claims to be descendent of is modern Ukraine and Belarus lands, and historically they were figthing most of the time with moscow armies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably don't live with family members in a poor neighborhood if your rent is over US$200 a month per person.
by the standards of my area, let’s go with “middle middle class”. $19,800 a year ($55 a day) is, indeed, a fucking struggle to live and support a family on here. (urban area, new england)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
by the standards of my area, let’s go with “middle middle class”. $19,800 a year ($55 a day) is, indeed, a fucking struggle to live and support a family on here. (urban area, new england)
If you can support a family on a single salary, you aren't anywhere close to being poor. But I think we're talking about US$5.5 a day, not US$55.
The poster i was originally replying to was complaining that $1 US a goes further in other places and "could be like $10"; my point is that that's still pretty poor!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Putting aside the human right issues... I'm not sure that is a safe start to an argument that a country is well run. When human rights get suppressed that means people lose the ability to, eg, honestly complain about massive problems or take basic steps to improve their standard of living. Growing an economy at the expense of human rights is kinda stupid. What is the point of making people's lives materially better…
>> I wasn't impressed to read that they have laws where a "change of job and living location will require permission from governors [for 9% of the workforce]". Do they have such laws or you believe that a proposed law (according to the cited articled) is an existing law already? You seem to quickly go and claim border-line slavery without checking it first.
>> Rolled over through the centuries with Moscow's wars with other parts of Europe What a profoundly backward perspective. It's the other way around. Belarus was a part of the Russian Empire. So much a part of it, in fact, that the long form of the title of the Russian monarch contained its name. You can't "roll over" something you already own. It wasn't Russia's wars with European states that repeatedly fucked up Be…
It was only temporary part of russian empire (for about a century), with every attempt to fight it drowned in blood. During that time russia tried to exterminate any self-identity, forbidding to even have a name and calling it "north-western area". To get an idea of what was happening in that region historically you may read about Great Duchy of Lithuania Another point to consider: much of the Rus (Ruth) that russia…
The former soviet states are a great natural experiment in economics. Countries that liberalized their economies, like Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Latvia (the "mostly free" countries here: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking ) have grown much faster than countries that retained socialism and central planning, like Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was only temporary part of russian empire (for about a century), with every attempt to fight it drowned in blood. During that time russia tried to exterminate any self-identity, forbidding to even have a name and calling it "north-western area". To get an idea of what was happening in that region historically you may read about Great Duchy of Lithuania Another point to consider: much of the Rus (Ruth) that russia…
145 years continuously (and on and off before then, dating back to Peter The Great), then 74 years under the Soviets. A pretty good chunk of time IMO.
"Soviets" was a union of 15 republics, not one big russia.
To your original comment: russia absolutely didn't behave nice on that land at any time in history regardless of who they were at war with.