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Vacations in the Soviet Union

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Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#201

Post by xenospn »

zvmaz wrote: post #179
atdrummond wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you (barring safety concerns) to travel to countries whose governments are considered illiberal. Some of my most enlightening trips were to DPRK, Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Brunei. You learn a lot about how the western media tends to exaggerate for political ends.

> Some of my most enlightening trips were to DPRK, Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Brunei. You learn a lot about how the western media tends to exaggerate for political ends. I am not a Westerner, and I highly doubt you could get an understanding of what it is like to live in such countries by merely visiting them as a tourist .

When I went to DPRK, the entire visit was completely orchestrated - but I still got to see people go about their daily lives (even tho I had no idea who they were and had no way of interacting with them). I saw peasants carrying bundles of sticks along empty roads and witnessed how impoverished they really are. I got to kick a ball around with some kids and see locals enjoying a sunny Sunday in the park. I also looked out my hotel window at night and saw a city in darkness.

When visiting Turkmenistan, I was completely unsupervised - and it was eye-opening and completely bizarre. I actually interacted with the locals and got to hear their stories - same in China and Uzbekistan.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#202

Post by medvezhenok »

bequanna wrote: post #165
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #103

There are a bunch of zoomers out there who un-ironically claim Communism is the ideal way of life. I've worked with some of them. I still can't fathom what's going on in their brains.

One explanation I've found pretty accurate: When the young start to become educated (late teens, early 20's) they face the realization that they will be entering the world on the bottom of the economic totem pole. There are two primary responses to this: 1. Realize that the real world is competitive and difficult and much self-improvement and hard work will be needed to thrive. These people put their heads down and g…

Sort of. I think it's more nuanced than that.

Communism rebalances the relative worth of people in society. I.e. my grandfather, an engineer, earned less than a factory worker. An average or passing artist could earn a decent living in the Soviet Union, compared to having scraps today (in relative terms).

I notice this calculus as I have an artistic career and a software career. I would like to pursue the artistic career (and am actually pretty good at it), but I would make many multiples less than I currently do in software. This is partly because of how we've financialized/structured the economy (i.e. software monopolies should have been broken up, taxes imposed, etc), not because the work is actually worth less in some sense.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#203

Post by davidw »

boveus wrote: post #79

>It encouraged workers to vacation with groups of relative strangers as opposed to their friends and families. This can actually work out well. I experienced something similar in the US while on vacation. I was traveling with someone from Glenwood Springs, CO to Denver, CO via Amtrak. We went to the dining car for lunch an since there were two of us and space is at a premium, the Amtrak policy was to seat us with one…

I served on a jury last year and that was one of many interesting aspects of it: dealing with people from all walks of life who I ordinarily would not interact with.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#204

Post by systems_glitch »

nradov wrote: post #184
systems_glitch wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey if they let people work less because the machines do it, they might figure out we're "dangerously" close to post-scarcity in a lot of fields. Gandhi figured that out a long time ago and talked about it, it's why the only machine he liked was the sewing machine.

The things that people really covet will always be scarce no matter how much machinery we have. There will never be "post-scarcity", it's just a silly concept.

Indeed, that's why I said, "in a lot of fields."

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#205

Post by wing-_-nuts »

poisonarena wrote: post #136
samstave wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much amazing beauty in the world, including the largest country on the planet, Russia - and then especially areas in China, which I would LOVE to visit, but the governments of each country kinda suck, so its not a place I'll likely go (imagine mtn biking through some of the amazing landscapes of either) With that said, I'd love to hear Lex Fridman's opinion on all of this.

this has got to be the most reddit thing i have ever read

Is he wrong though? No way I'd set foot in russia and I'd probably just avoid china as well. Plenty of other places to see in the world.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#206

Post by OkayPhysicist »

ActorNightly wrote: post #135
0xDEF wrote: post #38

It's fascinating how the ideology of Marxism–Leninism (Communism) today is more popular than ever among young people in former capitalist heartlands like the US, Canada and UK. A simple European-style welfare state with universal healthcare is all you need to satisfy 90% of people but the elites in the US and the UK refuse to provide that.

>its more popular than ever among young people Its only popular as an aesthetic. On both left and right, most politically inclined people don't have the reasoning skills to talk about politics effectively, nor would the actually enjoy living under their hypothetical best system of government. Most political discourse is used as a signal to show what kind of person you are in conversation. And generally, there is a tr…

>> You make it sound very simple. Its not.

It's clearly not that hard, if most of Europe can pull it off with dramatically less money than the US. Where's our American exceptionalism when it comes to catching up with any random European country?

The issue in the US isn't a lack of means, it's a lack of will. Our political system is bought out by unimaginably rich interests, who's interest in the common welfare will only begin when it has fully eroded the foundation that they built their wealth on.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#207

Post by falcolas »

wnzl wrote: post #55
falcolas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Is that not common vernacular where you're from?

I’m from Eastern Europe and I’ve learned what PTO means after working with US folks. For us it was always called “vacation”. It is taken for granted that sick days, funerals (and plenty more that I can’t list from my head) are always paid.

That makes sense. I forget sometimes that we got vacation and sick days munged together into PTO.

"You'll get more time off!†"

† assuming you never get sick.

Thanks!

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#208

Post by bequanna »

medvezhenok wrote: post #202
bequanna wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One explanation I've found pretty accurate: When the young start to become educated (late teens, early 20's) they face the realization that they will be entering the world on the bottom of the economic totem pole. There are two primary responses to this: 1. Realize that the real world is competitive and difficult and much self-improvement and hard work will be needed to thrive. These people put their heads down and g…

Sort of. I think it's more nuanced than that. Communism rebalances the relative worth of people in society. I.e. my grandfather, an engineer, earned less than a factory worker. An average or passing artist could earn a decent living in the Soviet Union, compared to having scraps today (in relative terms). I notice this calculus as I have an artistic career and a software career. I would like to pursue the artistic ca…

Right, this is the kind of seductive but ultimately unrealistic kind of thinking that ropes in the vulnerable.

Shouldn't people be incentivized to pursue work that they are good at, enjoy AND which society actually demands?

If good art is rare and in higher demand, good artists will be able to demand higher pay. If good art is in high supply because many people prefer the artist lifestyle, artists will not be able to demand as high of pay. Both of these situations seem perfectly reasonable to me.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#209

Post by legitster »

r00fus wrote: post #134
vondur wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the Soviet government actually follow the Constitution of The USSR? I believe it also mentioned freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly, all of which seemed to be ignored.

Many many cultures do not share the US's "unfettered freedom of speech". Even within the US, we talk a big game but - have you ever felt it wise to "exercise free speech" with law enforcement? So yeah, it's complicated.

> Even within the US, we talk a big game but - have you ever felt it wise to "exercise free speech" with law enforcement?

Uhhhh... we literally just had an entire summer of people shutting down cities to voice their frustration over police.

My personal unwillingness to start cursing out every cop I see is not actually a good litmus test for my freedom of speech.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#210

Post by falcolas »

samstave wrote: post #74
guessmyname wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh. Is that not common vernacular where you're from? I don’t know about the parent commenter, but I am of the opinion that regardless of how common an abbreviation is, it should always be expanded, unless the circumstances prevent you from doing that. Here, in Hacker News, submissions must have a title with maximum 80 characters, but look at this: 30 characters -> Workers of the World, Take PTO 46 characters -> Wo…

This is very common in technical documentation, specifically things like RFPs (Request for Proposals) $MONEY and thus, will be scrutinized by the "penny pinchers" who will lack a lot of domain knowledge being addressed with an RFP for a project. For example, I, as a Director of OPs was constantly educating our CFO on cloud spend, and would have to kind of train him on technical matters while at the same time explaini…

The company I work for uses Requests for Discussion (RFD) where they really mean RFPs. Drives me batty.

And yes, all the documentation just said RFD as well. :)

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