I Lost My Past (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#121

Post by DarylZero » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #113

shrimpx wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably have a decent point to make, if only you bothered to hone in on it. Sure you can say some people won't work for Google because their conscience prevents them, but you can't reasonably compare getting rich by working for Google to getting rich by getting your friend arrested because they read a book or listened to a radio station... If you have a point to make, make it.

Most (almost all) party people back them didn’t get anyone arrested, they just did their jobs in power plants, schools, and cheese factories, just like they would in the west. Same as googlers today. Sure, some did evil things. Again, just like in the west it’s easy to make money by hurting others. My point is, the perceived difference between those is really just the narrative, the way they are being described in po…

The USA especially has roughly the same proportion of its people imprisoned as totalitarian regimes, but those people are so dehumanized socially that they are impossible to imagine as even a part of this discussion.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a woman in NYC who migrated from some former USSR country and worked as a domestic servant -- she called working for such low wage in such conditions "communism."

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#122

Post by refurb » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #72

gigel82 wrote: post #60

I have friends that immigrated from Romania, and I was surprised by their very different stories of living as a teenager in the 80s under communism. One was enjoying vacations abroad, imported goods and generally mostly living a western lifestyle while the other was struggling to survive. Later learned that the former's father was an informant for Ceausescu's secret police (Securitate) - a butcher by profession but a…

Quoted post unavailable.

Kind of, but the big difference is getting rich (enough to afford a luxury lifestyle) in the West is more accessible. In the other system, you were either connected or not. If not, you were likely SOL.

Look at Musk. You think a communist country would tolerate a foreigner who became a billionaire and calls out politicians in a public forum? Maybe ask Jack Ma how his moderate comments were received.

I had an acquaintance from a communist country who was allowed to study in the US. One of the first ever. How did he get that privilege? His father was a high ranking party member who had a serious disagreement and was going to be expelled. The deal was “you quietly retire and we’ll let you son go to college in the US”. So he kept his mouth shut. They had total control, so using your family against you was fair game. I have no doubt Musk’s kid won’t face that same challenge.

Sure, both systems cater to the powerful, but one is a relatively open system and the other closed only to the “permanently privileged”.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#123

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#124

Post by DarylZero » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

PixyMisa wrote: post #89

jeroenhd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communism would be great if people would actually be good. It's hard to not feel enticed by a future where everyone has equal rights, where the plentiful resources of the world are shared among everyone else and where there is no need for class warfare. Sadly, time and again humanity has proven unable to do good at the scale of a country. The laudable ideals of any political system will need to resist man's evil natu…

> Communism would be great if people would actually be good. Communism replaces a multitude of small, localised optimisation problems with a single, centralised, completely intractable optimisation problem, and at the same time destroys the very information required to tackle that problem at all. Communism cannot work on any but the smallest scale, and is utterly doomed when applied to any modern nation state. J. B.…

That's assuming we want to tackle this "optimization problem"... people under capitalism may be more interested in escaping from the over-optimization of everything.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#125

Post by the_af » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #46

kstenerud wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this particular case, the North was in the right. As far as they were concerned, the Americans were just one more occupier in a long line of Western occupiers. And even though the Americans didn't intend to become occupiers, that's ultimately what happened (a theme that's repeated itself many times). The Americans and the Vietnamese were fighting different wars with each other. So the North pushed out the occupier…

This is the story that is told, but one can’t avoid the similarity between the South’s alliance with the US, AUS, NZ, Korea and the North’s with the USSR and China (which had many soldier stationed there). Without material support the USSR and China provided, the North never could have won the war. There was no “rightful” liberation. It was a civil war in its essence with two opposing groups of Vietnamese fighting fo…

> It was a civil war in its essence with two opposing groups of Vietnamese fighting for control of a fractured post-colonial state

It wasn't a civil war, not to begin with at least. The US installed a dictatorship in the South (the dictator they propped up was so bad they ended up greenlighting his removal and "accidental" assassination), with the promise of free elections. When predictions showed Ho Chi Minh would have won the elections in the South by a landslide, they simply cancelled the election.

That's not Vietnamese vs Vietnamese, it's Vietnamese vs colonial power.

In any colonial administration, people cozy with the colonial power will defend it and resent a change, of course.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#126

Post by CrazyStat » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #98

refurb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are my facts incorrect? If so, please call them out. OP said the North was “right” because the South was X,Y,Z. I countered with “the North also did X,Y,Z.”, thus countering their claims that the North was somehow “more pure or righteous”. Maybe it is whataboutism, but that seems appropriate when someone is trying to claim superiority to another?

I didn’t say your facts are incorrect, I said it’s whataboutism - trying to redirect the discussion away from facts inconvenient to you.

Curiously enough, the accusation of "whataboutism" itself is more often than not an attempt to redirect the discussion away from facts inconvenient to the accuser.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#127

Post by the_af » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #102

moksly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sort of distorting of history the article speaks about. Vietnam was invaded by the French in the 1800 and turned into a colony. That colony was lost, and then semi-regained over the course of WW2 and the years following. When the French lost and withdrew, America invaded and was subsequently beaten. This is not a defence of China or Russia, look at how they are invading Tibet and the Ukraine, but the Viet…

No, you’re distorting history. After the communist victory at Dien Bien Phu, the French negotiated a peace (without much choice) that forced them to give up the North (where the communists were strongest). The French slowly disengaged from the South over the next decade leaving a fragile Vietnamese government in the South that had no interest in joining the communists in the North (1 million fled during partition). T…

The US propped up a dictatorship in the South and canceled free elections because they knew Ho Chi Minh would win. This is a matter of recorded fact, not a conspiracy theory.

They had also been supporting the French with materiel and even limited numbers of advisors during the First Indochina War.

There was a war of national liberation against a colonial power, and the US sided with the colonial power.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#128

Post by the_af » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #97

sofixa wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the story that is told, but one can’t avoid the similarity between the South’s alliance with the US, AUS, NZ, Korea and the North’s with the USSR and China (which had many soldier stationed there). Without material support the USSR and China provided, the North never could have won the war The difference is that with no outside meddling and support, South Vietnam wouldn't have existed or would have existed…

I’d have to disagree on the popular vote. By the time of the proposed election, the Communists had complete control of the Northern population. There was no “free” vote for unification - any more than there would be a free vote in Vietnam today. And the US didn’t get significantly involved (beyond material support for the French) in Vietnam until the early 1960’s with the help of military advisors. The build up didn’…

The South never existed without US backing. It was a made up thing, without popular support, ruled by successive dictatorships (some even had to be toppled with the ok of the US, so terrible they were).

It's not your right to decide whether people have free will or not. It's their call. "Deciding" for them is called colonialism.

Ho Chi Minh had huge popular support; precisely what the US feared.

PS: before the US fucked things up, Ho Chi Minh even looked up to them and fully expected their support against the French. That's how bad the US fucked up.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#129

Post by anovikov » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #110

PixyMisa wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares much about international law, but it was in no-ones interest to have a dozen smaller, likely unstable, post-Russian states all armed with nuclear missiles.

Nobody might care, but nody also had any way of imposing a breakup.

Easily. Just to say: split up, or you will not get food. They had weeks of food left in storage and many regions already starved. Plus, everyone in Russia already expected breakup as inevitable. At that point, rejection of everything related to the country - being Soviet Union or Russia - reached the apogee and a well-propagandised, well-funded drive to just restart history from scratch - every switching away from Cyrillic and renouncing Communism and the Orthodox church - could work.

Other post-Soviet countries shrugged off previous Soviet history easily and never looked back. In 1991, Russia was no different and saw previous regime as sort of occupation by "them" (communists), not "us" making some mistakes in governing.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#130

Post by anovikov » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #53

anovikov wrote: post #19

[flagged]

Communism would be great if people would actually be good. It's hard to not feel enticed by a future where everyone has equal rights, where the plentiful resources of the world are shared among everyone else and where there is no need for class warfare. Sadly, time and again humanity has proven unable to do good at the scale of a country. The laudable ideals of any political system will need to resist man's evil natu…

Everything would be great if people would actually be good; but in any case, lack of possibility to improve your and your posterity's life outcomes vs others, by saving/investing/building capital, which is the case in both socialism and communism, is a depressing thing to think of and i don't think it's "great" in any sense of it.