Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 971 posts

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#381

Post by hotpotamus »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #340
MichaelCollins wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Republicans have long said any government is bad. Most republicans are not anarcho-libertarians. Asserting that any government is bad is fringe even among libertarians, and most republicans aren't even libertarians.

"I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." – Grover Norquist

It's really strange to me that there was a decade where every Republican had to pledge allegiance to this guy (which ended when he married a Muslim woman).

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#382

Post by eternalban »

LtWorf wrote: post #272
eternalban wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake This notion is based on ignoring historic facts. Germany (and Japan) in WWII were fully vanquished foes whose entire socio-political system was redrawn by the victors. Marshall plan executed in an environment of near total control over Germany. US simply was not in a position to do a Marshall Plan for ex-Sovie…

Good point. Except you're forgetting Marshal plan wasn't only for Germany and Japan.

Not forgetting. Wartime allies, totally vanquished foes, and newly minted countries. Russia in 1991 was neither.

US did in fact do another Marshall Plan after WW2, catapulting China into 21st century. But that help came after a very deep strategic understanding between US's and China's ruling class. Again, nothing of the sort happened with Russia nor was it possible.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#383

Post by AnimalMuppet »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #326
agumonkey wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling under american control and keep reaching higher. People say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing money at a large problem fails.. I think the population was just more mentally compatible. Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand. Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite streams of contradictory arguments)

Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese cities probably had something to do with their willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such a bitter war also played a role. There were probably innumerable factors that went into it. But there are a lot of differences between that situation an…

Chief among them is, the US did not conquer or occupy the USSR. We had definite say in Japan (and West Germany). We didn't in the USSR.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#384

Post by cpursley »

einpoklum wrote: post #329
bhupy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti... A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market econ…

Tell that to people in Belarus or Ukraine (not talking about the situation since 2014), Kazakhstan etc. Not sure about the situation in the others. A post talking about "GDP per capita" rather than what people's lives are like is kind of a joke.

Fwiw, Russian PPP is not far behind Germany.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#385

Post by cpursley »

cezart wrote: post #347
einpoklum wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to people in Belarus or Ukraine (not talking about the situation since 2014), Kazakhstan etc. Not sure about the situation in the others. A post talking about "GDP per capita" rather than what people's lives are like is kind of a joke.

You can add Moldova to the list. Yes, now the people have well wealthier lifestyles than during he soviet period, and overall the direction seems optimist. But going from a postcard republic of sorts, to literally the poorest country in Europe, the transition has heavily bruised many people's faiths.

Yeah, Moldova is an order of magnitude worse-off now:

https://youtu.be/wnDxHTaeNX0

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#386

Post by vkou »

tylersmith wrote: post #374
patentatt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard variations of this story a lot. Common people and workers received a share of the company they work for, but times were so dire most people sold them to those with money for a pittance. So foreseeable, why was it allowed to happen?

Some people chose to put their assets to work for later and others to sell their assets for cash right now. Why shouldn't people be allowed to make those decisions?

If you're starving, why shouldn't you be allowed to sell yourself into a lifetime of slavery in exchange for a meal today?

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#387

Post by mromanuk »

bhupy wrote: post #288
paganel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agricultu…

The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti... A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market econ…

Except Russia and except Ukraine, which was 90% of the URSS GDP

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#388

Post by coldtea »

bhupy wrote: post #288
paganel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agricultu…

The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti... A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market econ…

>The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia

That might be what it writes in the link, it wasn't the case though, except if you mean after things stabilized 15 and 20 years later (and it's still bad in most places). Tons of conflict, forced migration, poverty, crime, sexual slavery, and so on...

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#389

Post by [deleted] »

koheripbal wrote: post #314
lapcat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged rather than discouraged that outcome.

You cite no evidence for this conspiratorial claim.

[deleted]

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#390

Post by throwaway0a5e »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #326
agumonkey wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling under american control and keep reaching higher. People say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing money at a large problem fails.. I think the population was just more mentally compatible. Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand. Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite streams of contradictory arguments)

Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese cities probably had something to do with their willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such a bitter war also played a role. There were probably innumerable factors that went into it. But there are a lot of differences between that situation an…

WW2 was the culmination of Japan's semi-conscious effort to speed run the transition from feudal backwater to first rate world power. Considering all the stuff they had pulled off up until that point and that they exited WW2 with their national identity and power structures intact I don't think it's that surprising that they pulled off the transition from imperial government to constitutional democracy with an imperial figurehead.
Post reply on HN