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East Germany balloon escape

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Re: East Germany balloon escape

#91

Post by potato3732842 »

martin-t wrote: post #80
lukan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I am not sure if a lynchmob and more blood would have helped the transition. The main important thing to the people was, that the wall was down and Stasi (secret police) out of power. There has been prison time and the careers of anyone important connected to the Stasi ended.

I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation? Obviously, if you intend to abduct ("imprison") or kill ("execute") somebody as punishment, then you should have very high certainty they deserve that punishment. One of the methods of achieving that is giving them a chance to defend themselves ("court process"). I don't see any difference between individuals and monopolies on violence ("state…

>I don't see any difference between individuals and monopolies on violence ("states") doing this, as long as they both have sufficient levels of certainty.

This peasant is faulty. He's not indoctrinated enough. Someone nab him and send him for reeducation. /s

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#92

Post by immibis »

prmoustache wrote: post #58
TacticalCoder wrote: post #43

Wait... People want to escape from communist countries?

A communist country has never existed and never will so we will never know. Communism is a lovely idea on paper but a complete utopia due to human nature. We are nearly all motherfuckers who if given the chance will try to obtain more power or more wealth than our peers in a group of any size. Thus you can't have all citizens of a given country agree on abandoning private ownership and sharing wealth, work and power…

Communism is the idea of "can't we all just get along?" which is obviously not something you can actually implement, but is easily used as a buzzword by evil regimes. Remember, H-tl-r called his regime "socialist", much the same way N-rth K-rea calls itself "democratic"

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#93

Post by dmaa »

martin-t wrote: post #20

One good metric of quality of life (which includes various freedoms) is how many people emigrate or immigrate. Anybody who defends authoritarians has to explain why so many people want to leave and why the regime wants to keep them in. (With some exceptions such as China which weaponizes emigrants by threatening their families.)

For me, this is the maxim that governs speaking with someone defending a totalitarian regime.

If the person has no issue that people have to be kept by force INSIDE for the country to function, then we have a fundamental disagreement on what is good and what is bad and any further discussion is a waste of time.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#95

Post by _ink_ »

immibis wrote: post #92
prmoustache wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A communist country has never existed and never will so we will never know. Communism is a lovely idea on paper but a complete utopia due to human nature. We are nearly all motherfuckers who if given the chance will try to obtain more power or more wealth than our peers in a group of any size. Thus you can't have all citizens of a given country agree on abandoning private ownership and sharing wealth, work and power…

Communism is the idea of "can't we all just get along?" which is obviously not something you can actually implement, but is easily used as a buzzword by evil regimes. Remember, H-tl-r called his regime "socialist", much the same way N-rth K-rea calls itself "democratic"

You can spell out Hitler and North Korea here. Meta has no power here.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#96

Post by neilv »

neilv wrote: post #50
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #11

My elementary school showed the Disney movie about this at least once a year.

That movie was also all over the Disney Channel when I was a kid. Many other movies have related messages. And much of the public library books were a couple generations old, plus there was the Cold War, which meant lots of exposure to anti-fascism messages, and to anti-Soviet-like messages. So, today, people of a certain age, who paid attention in school, have been programmed that the secret police saying, "Your pap…

Downvoters: The story is about the terrible politics, and should be a cautionary tale that's immediately very relevant. Unless you were only interested in the ballooning "maker" angle?

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#99

Post by potato3732842 »

m4nu3l wrote: post #89
mothballed wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the form of authoritarian. The two of the richest countries on a GDP PPP basis are Lichtenstein and Singapore, also some of the most free economically, yet they could probably be described as benevolent authoritarian systems. Dubai further behind, although some similar points. It seems authoritarians that know how to use their authority to force the populace to accept (some forms of) freedom can perform be…

What I find confusing about this comment is that to me, authoritarian and libertarian are opposites, but have only to do with individual freedoms, not the political system. With these definitions, you can have a democratic or non-democratic system, and both can give rise to libertarian or authoritarian societies. Democracies tend to produce more libertarian systems than dictatorships, but only to some extent, and in…

>What I find confusing about this comment is that to me, authoritarian and libertarian are opposites, but have only to do with individual freedoms, not the political system.

"Do whatever the F you want as long as you don't challenge the state" isn't that incompatible at first glance and might work ok if you have a low touch state. Where it gets obviously incompatible is when you have eastern european style oligarchs and western style administrative state and state favored businesses and industries that leverage state violence to stifle competition.

I don't think it's possible to have an authoritarian government in a modern society that doesn't trend in one of those directions.

Re: East Germany balloon escape

#100

Post by lukan »

martin-t wrote: post #80
lukan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I am not sure if a lynchmob and more blood would have helped the transition. The main important thing to the people was, that the wall was down and Stasi (secret police) out of power. There has been prison time and the careers of anyone important connected to the Stasi ended.

I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation? Obviously, if you intend to abduct ("imprison") or kill ("execute") somebody as punishment, then you should have very high certainty they deserve that punishment. One of the methods of achieving that is giving them a chance to defend themselves ("court process"). I don't see any difference between individuals and monopolies on violence ("state…

"I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation?"

Maybe because of your language?

"Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable."

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