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The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

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Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#61

Post by user3939382 »

supazek wrote: post #42
user3939382 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only mainstream whitewashed political opinions are welcome on HN, anything too gritty and your text slowly vanishes from the page. Please refer to CNN and the US State Dept for acceptable political takes.

HN is exceptionally left-leaning. The only reason posts like that get downvoted is because it signals some kind of moral posturing that is completely irrelevant/unearned and exceptionally negative. It also comes across as lazy when people try to discuss some nuanced topic and a poster just blankets the conversation with the same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance other…

OPs point was completely valid.

> same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance > lazy advocacy

This characterization you're making is what's wrong. It's definitely arguable that Belgium enjoys the prosperity it does today because of centuries of economic exploitation of other countries.

You may disagree, but the behavior of HN both in its programming and users to erase valid opinions like this is ridiculous.

> HN is exceptionally left-leaning

You're criticizing GP as making blanket statements (his statement was accurate) while making a blanket statement that's inaccurate. There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#62

Post by WeylandYutani »

illwrks wrote: post #14

As sad as it is, it's no different from any country at any other point in time. In the past it was letters, postcards, phone calls, now it's just tictok AND youtube, facebook etc. Even in the UK the young move from less prosperous areas to more prosperous ones. Globally, people need to be educated on the reality of what's behind the camera not the illusion portrayed in front of it.

I saw a program once about Dutch people emigrating to Australia in the 1950s. They made a good life for themselves but they weren't welcomed with champagne and caviar when they came off the boat.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#63

Post by goodbyesf »

542458 wrote: post #11
noah_buddy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fall of communism was one of the largest drops in quality of life and lifespan ever recorded, IIRC.

I’d like to see a source for that. I don’t really see how it could compare to WW2 or the Three Kingdoms War or Taiping Rebellion or Great Chinese Famine or Black Death or either the Justinian or Antoine plagues.

In comparison to ww2, the fall of the soviet union was worse than ww2.

https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030....

To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the soviet union has been a generational catastrophe for russia. A funk they seem unable to get out of demographically, economically, politically, etc.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population

In the US, our population has grown 50% since 1990 ( almost 150 more people ). The russian population has dropped 5% since 1990. After ww2, russia had major population growth like the US. After germany and japan lost ww2, their population, economy, etc improved drastically. For some reason, losing a hot war ( japan, germany ) turned out to be much better than losing a cold war ( russia ).

Think about it, we are nearly 2 generations into the post-soviet world and russia still hasn't recovered their population. After ww2, russia almost doubled their population in 2 generations. Losing the cold war appears to have demoralized the russian elite and people far more than losing ww2 did to germany and japan. Why? Who knows.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#64

Post by joshe »

epolanski wrote: post #38
joshe wrote: post #21

Nice that social media is providing a clear pathway out of towns like this. Sad for the people left behind but the answer is for them to leave, not for everyone to be trapped there. And note the Eastern Europe is doing great at the country level. In general people should engage in more geographic mobility.

Did you even read the article? It points at how miserable virtually all Albanians that get baited into traveling to UK have it

I did read it, this was a counterpoint. The article is lying. A small minority had a bad time, they did nothing like a comprehensive counting of everyone who left.

Remember that a greater number of people who stayed would have died as miserable alcoholics. Women are still beaten by their husbands in small towns. Boredom leads to drugs.

Even in the US suicides are 50% higher per capita in rural vs urban areas.

If someone is happy in a rural area they should stay. But if they aren't and they get up the gumption to leave who are you to sit in judgement of how stupid they are?

It is better to move out of towns like this. Better != perfect.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#65

Post by mschuster91 »

soared wrote: post #53
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a bit of context for those not too well versed in Eastern European history (from someone with a Croatian background): Back in the real-sozialist/communist era, the people didn't have much rights (especially not those that were against the dictators), but in exchange at least the government took somewhat of a care of providing everyone with a life worth living (notable exception: the remote areas of Russia that…

> society is crumbling … many people struggle with survival every day What locations are you talking about? Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.

> Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.

Albania's average wage is about 600-700 USD per month depending on whom you ask. Croatia's is a bit higher, around 1100... but the prices even for everyday staple foods are higher than in Germany. It's all shiny and nice in the tourism areas, but outside of them life can suck pretty hard.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#66

Post by tristor »

user3939382 wrote: post #61
supazek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is exceptionally left-leaning. The only reason posts like that get downvoted is because it signals some kind of moral posturing that is completely irrelevant/unearned and exceptionally negative. It also comes across as lazy when people try to discuss some nuanced topic and a poster just blankets the conversation with the same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance other…

OPs point was completely valid. > same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance > lazy advocacy This characterization you're making is what's wrong. It's definitely arguable that Belgium enjoys the prosperity it does today because of centuries of economic exploitation of other countries. You may disagree, but the behavior of HN both in its programming and users to erase vali…

> There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place.

That’s because politics has two axises. HN is definitely left-leaning, but in support of social democracy. Hacker News is first and foremost populated by /hackers/ and we don’t go for authoritarianism. We know that as left-leaning as we are, the only good tankie is a dead tankie.

Some ideas are well worth discussing but never implementing, authleft schools of thought definitely fall in that bucket.

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#67

Post by mschuster91 »

supazek wrote: post #46
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a bit of context for those not too well versed in Eastern European history (from someone with a Croatian background): Back in the real-sozialist/communist era, the people didn't have much rights (especially not those that were against the dictators), but in exchange at least the government took somewhat of a care of providing everyone with a life worth living (notable exception: the remote areas of Russia that…

You really skipped over that “didn’t have rights” part. How many people were in Gulag? And you think there was no corruption in the ruling communist class? Corruption is a feature of any political organization and should be stopped, but money was just as much a motivator for the communists as it is for the capitalists. The only difference is that it wasn’t available to the working class so they weren’t incentivized t…

> And you think there was no corruption in the ruling communist class?

Real-socialism/communism failed for good reasons and deservedly. I shed no tears for that period.

My point is that what came after tended to be even worse - the post-downfall period, the breakdown of intra- and inter-block trade, the looting by criminals and corrupt (former) elites and other destruction and the resulting brain drain had consequences that have held or taken the affected countries back in development for decades.

Of course the elites were corrupt. But there was a marked difference in corruption when there still was some sort of government that held them a bit accountable, or when the government essentially vanished and the criminals became the government. Russia is the easiest example (because it's best documented, information on the Balkans is pretty scarce): Your average Russian "elite" back in the USSR era, he maybe had a couple villas and Western cars, that's it. Your average Russian "oligarch" (or to put it better, kleptocrat) today? Buys a soccer club for billions of euros, has multiple luxury yachts and stashed away many billions of dollars more. Hell, the billionaire Russian oligarchs alone have a net worth of over 500 billion dollars [1] despite the war, and that doesn't include the millionaire mini-oligarchs. Imagine where Russia would be, had that wealth remained in the hands of the nation, and its leaders invested it into education, social cohesion and modern industry?!

[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-billionaires-...

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#68

Post by logifail »

Glawen wrote: post #30
logifail wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fleeing war or persecution Q: Is there much war or persecution in France at present?

Did you mean Germany, Austria or Italy?

> Did you mean Germany, Austria or Italy?

Talking about irregular migration, it's significantly harder to enter the UK directly from either Germany, Austria or Italy. Air carriers check passports and visas (indeed BA pulled a relative of mine this morning at a London airport for what the airline termed a "visa check" during an attempt to check in online).

Paying a people smuggler to take you across the Channel from France to the UK would appear to be significantly simpler. The UK government publishes detailed statistics on irregular migration routes, and for the last few years small boats represent by far largest proportion of irregular migration arrivals, not air.[0]

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration...

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#69

Post by logifail »

laputan_machine wrote: post #36
panick21_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are being told that you are following the wrong sources.

> In 2022, around 16,000 Albanian citizens applied for asylum in the UK, making up 16% of all asylum applicants. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries... What's that? Let's be real, there is no reason for any country to be granting Albanian citizens asylum. There isn't a genocide going on, it's a (relatively) free country: https://www.equaldex.com/region/albania

> there is no reason for any country to be granting Albanian citizens asylum

...and most European countries don't.

Q: Why does the UK?

Re: The Albanian town that TikTok emptied

#70

Post by betaby »

epolanski wrote: post #37
techwiz137 wrote: post #2

The curse of Eastern Europe, to die and empty out. It's the same in my country. Life in the UK and Germany > at home. And it's an exponential process, for every 1 person, 5 probably leave. My hometown was nearly 100k in the 80s, down to 50k if that by now. And it's mostly elderly, children, who grow up, go to the capital or just immigrate.

I really would not say it applies to whole Eastern Europe. Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania and many other places are developing fine and less and less people are emigrating. And the picture definitely is nowhere near as depressing as Albania and this region in particular.

Baltics lost and continuing losing population for decades, however currently their population is propped by migration from Belarus (since August 2020 and then next waive after Feb 2022). Even with those trend Lithuania has lost 1/3 of its population in 30 years. Czechia and Poland has a influx of Ukrainians since Feb 2022. On other side Bulgaria is losing ~1% annually without signs of stopping. So yes, I would say the trend is very visible everywhere in Eastern Europe + Balkans.
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