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Vacations in the Soviet Union

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Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#341

Post by maerF0x0 »

sokoloff wrote: post #286
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have ~ 15y of experience and I have a grand total of 3 weeks PTO. My father, at my age had 5 whole weeks and doesn't understand why I don't take big trips more. Despite the trend in 'unlimited vacation', I feel it's only getting worse.

Unlimited vacation has the greatest negative spread between "how it sounds" and "how it actually works". It's incredibly employee unfriendly. As a leader, I will fight against it every time it gets proposed.

^^ you're correct on average, this is why it's good to establish in the interview what is common, how much is taken by higher ups etc.

If they push back you can literally say to the manager "You told me that 6 weeks was normal"

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#342

Post by ahelwer »

nradov wrote: post #182
ahelwer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prolonged periods of time spent without obligation to work for pay is one of the greatest luxuries you can have in this life. People shouldn't have to wait until retirement to enjoy it. Sabbatical, basically, although even sabbatical often comes with obligations for self-improvement serving the company offering it. A lot of discourse on working hours revolves around decreasing the hours worked per week. I would also…

If you don't want to work for a year then just quit your job and then get a new job later. But it's ridiculous and unrealistic to think that an employer should hold your job open for a year. How are they supposed to get work done during that period, hire a temporary employee and then lay them off when you decide to return? If you want that lifestyle then just become an independent consultant rather than an employee.…

If you aren't careful you'll find yourself making an argument against maternity leave, like you just did.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#343

Post by maerF0x0 »

ahelwer wrote: post #108
maerF0x0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People shouldn't have to wait until retirement to enjoy it. Also people should not pursue a strategy that concentrates ALL their enjoyment until retirement. It's a high variance strategy with IMO low EROI . My bias is because my father died in his 40s and my step father in his late 50s.. Both never saw a day of retirement despite saving for it. I highly recommend a patterned approach to life enjoyment, yes this is…

I'm happy you've boiled your recharging needs down to a science but none of this compares with long contiguous periods of unstructured time you can choose to use as you wish. Three months off every decade? Really?

> with long contiguous periods of unstructured time

Can you tell me more concretely what you're thinking? How do you define "long"? And, what is it about my list (despite it's prescriptive structure) that makes the time usage not "unstructured" ?

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#344

Post by ahelwer »

ejb999 wrote: post #88
californical wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea — there could be a sabbatical accrual of sorts. One way this could realistically work today (with a lot of kicking and screaming about how it’ll ruin the economy) is each year of work earns a month of sabbatical, and once you’ve earned at least 2 months you can exercise your sabbatical rights, given some notice. Companies could cap it at 6 months at a time so you don’t completely lose trac…

>>I don’t see a reason that we couldn’t pass a law tomorrow that does this. Why do we need for a law to be passed? There are so many people seemingly in favor of this, why don't they just band together and start a company and then pay people to take 6 month vacations?

I know you're asking this question in bad faith because you posted the same thing elsewhere in the thread, but the answer here is because they will be outcompeted by companies that don't offer that policy. In much the same way, businesses that use child labor will outcompete those that do not. Of course a great many people are against child labor, but you don't see people telling them to go start their own company that doesn't use child labor if they're so against it.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#345

Post by int_19h »

lawrenci wrote: post #335
int_19h wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also lived in that society, albeit briefly, I can tell you that "experiencing a stronger connection with your community" is not necessarily a positive. Especially when you don't exactly have much choice when it comes to picking said community in the first place.

Certainly, I completely agree that it's not always a positive. Western capitalist culture is better suited to providing freedom to non-conformists, and it's true that life can be arduous in communal cultures if one deviates from the norm. On the other hand, there are psychological advantages to collaborating with one's community to address shared issues. In western capitalist culture, many individuals are predisposed…

I don't recall much "collaboration with one's community", at least not in urban Soviet landscape - perhaps things were different in the villages (but if they were, I don't think the Soviets could claim credit for that). The society that they ended up building was actually very cutthroat in many ways once you got past the guaranteed basics that everyone had, precisely because anything above that was that much harder to get.

Thing is, you fundamentally can't enforce good socialization. You can enforce socialization in general, but the more it is forced, the less likely it is to actually be good. A good society is the one that gives opportunities for people to socialize if and when they want it, and accepts that some people really just don't and that's fine too.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#346

Post by janalsncm »

badpun wrote: post #321
janalsncm wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korea is an exception, since it’s pretty hard to talk to actual locals. Having lived in one of those illiberal countries for a while (China) I could clearly see how the US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening, and took every opportunity to highlight the negatives. It is to the point where every positive, interes…

> US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening The media I follow generally acknowledge that Chinese adopting capitalism led to the greatest increase of standard of living in entire human history (in terms of how quick it was and how many people were affected). That's not downplaying.

That is a fairly simplified view which is very convenient for particular Western political interests but I don’t see it as a reflection of reality.

The Chinese have “capitalism” with significant public investment in infrastructure and education. Bullet trains can take you everywhere on the cheap. Few foreign companies have been successful due in some part to protectionism (but also failed business models). Their markets are highly regulated, preventing mergers and IPOs of large companies. Ant Group for example. Jack Ma was severely punished for even suggesting that bank regulators ease up. They also have strict data regulations.

On the other hand, workers’ rights are a lot more curtailed. A lot of tech works 996, and unionization is pretty rare. Getting 2 days off per week isn’t the norm like in the US. And forget about OSHA. So in that sense they are almost hyper-capitalist.

The point is, I don’t think it fits cleanly into the ideologies that many would like to apply to them.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#347

Post by catiopatio »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #336
catiopatio wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you pretending these things are mutually exclusive? You can, in fact, lift a country out of poverty without also inflicting an authoritarian state on the populace. Half the world managed it — you’re just making excuses for authoritarianism. We’re discussing basic human rights, not “VPN annoyance”.

If you truly want to know what I think and why I think it, feel free to email me and take this discussion off HN. You can find my contact through my profile.

If you can’t make the case for China’s authoritarian capitalism here, I don’t see how picking it up over e-mail is going to help.

It’s also counterproductive to take the debate offline, as further discussion would be for the benefit of anyone else that might read this thread. I’ll never agree that lifting people out of poverty requires authoritarian control over the populace.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#348

Post by kelipso »

atdrummond wrote: post #338
FooBarWidget wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When were you there? Did you choose to have a tour instead of freely traveling on your own, or was it not a deliberately choice?

This was right before COVID. I was there as part of an economic cooperation summit, so the tours were part and parcel of that event. I am supposed to visit again later this year.

So presumably you can wander out into town in the evening after work? Maybe you should try doing that next time.

Even bog standard tourist bus trips in literally every country have obvious levels of orchestration designed to show you a face of that region which lacked any warts.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#349

Post by sireat »

obscurette wrote: post #233

I lived half of my life in Soviet Union and would say that this article is simplification with sources more from instate propaganda than from reality. The article basically describes russian upper middle class (yes, there were classes within soviet society) after WWII. Most of people couldn't even dream about Sochi. Soviet Union was huge and differences between regions, classes, nationalities etc were very much there…

While any article will be a simplification this one does match my own anecdotal experience.

To wit: My current mother in the law was a simple accountant in a mid-sized Baltic city. She was able to go to a sanatorium in Crimea (without husband of course) for the yearly vacation due to a slipped disk in her back. Where she apparently had a platonic affair with another vacationer who kept writing her letters afterwards..

Similarly I was able to attend Artek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artek_(camp) ) in Crimea solely due to my grades. Our village grade school in Latvia had one ticket allocated.

Now this was in February which is not in season. Our komsomol - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komsomol guide mentioned that only extremely privileged kids with parents high in the party got to go in the summer to meet with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith and other VIPs.

Note: It might not have been solely due to my grades. I was visiting Kiev on an academic trip in late 2021. The head of institute mentioned that Artek tickets were quite expensive and not everybody with an opportunity actually went. She mentioned price being 200-300 rubles - which was about twice my father's official salary.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#350

Post by 62951413 »

gpgsource wrote: post #259
62951413 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during the war, mostly civilians ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War ). A total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag not including labor colonies ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet... ). The Communists didn't prey in some vaguely psychological sense, they physically exterminated anyone who disagreed.

1. 1,053,829 is from https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf . Which has no source on the claimed number. 2. USSR had no extermination camps (unlike the NAZIs), GULAG was a prison system no different from the US Prison system today.

Tell me you have no ancestors from the USSR without telling me.
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