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

Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

novayagazeta.ru

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 323 posts

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#211

Post by Etherlord87 »

yk wrote: post #190
nuccy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People from the west may say: well yes, our media is biased also. And that is true, but direction of this bias is different for each media outlet, so by watching something else you can find discrepancies and inconsistencies. While in Russia all tv, radio, newspapers are government controlled, so they put the same fake and propaganda which due to lack of anything else (all blocked) yields brain washing on a whole coun…

There are also a lot of systematic biases in western media, first of all they all write that the west is really, really great. If they don't write that, and only write that the west is really great, then their readers will look for a publication that uses an appropriate number of "really" when telling their readers that the west, and by extension the presumably western reader, is great.

Can you point to some examples of that? Sorry but your revelations sound like utter bs...

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#212

Post by bigDinosaur »

mercy_dude wrote: post #70
threeseed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided they are vertically integrated and own the entire supply chain. Otherwise they will find that planes not flying in/out and container ships not delivering will make it hard to import anything at scale. Not that they could pay for goods anyway. Also I suspect China may use its new found leverage to flood the Russian market with their goods.

This whole thing makes me question the western/NATO motives of not pursuing de-escalation. Wouldn’t agreeing to Putin’s NATO non expansion terms be better than letting your economic competitor to basically establish monopoly on the entire Russian economic atmosphere?

Putin's 'non-expansion' terms actually mean rolling NATO back. Sure, it'd probably 'work' in the sense that he'd be able to restore the Russian Empire as a result. I guess he might be happy with just that.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#213

Post by cudgy »

Tade0 wrote: post #129
mercy_dude wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole thing makes me question the western/NATO motives of not pursuing de-escalation. Wouldn’t agreeing to Putin’s NATO non expansion terms be better than letting your economic competitor to basically establish monopoly on the entire Russian economic atmosphere?

That would imply that sovereign states don't get to decide who they're aligned with. As seen with Ukraine that in turn would make them first targets for an invasion. Such a decision would be anything but de-escalation.

The reality is that Sovereignty is relative to how close a country is to the border of super power nations. Do you think Mexico or Canada can ally with any nation or join any military alliance they wish?

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#214

Post by kavalg »

delegate wrote: post #86

Photos of queues in shops and empty shelves is the only resistance left. Any non-official information about the war is punishable with 15 years in prison camps. What's happening in Ukraine is a tragedy, but what's happening in Russia as a result of sanctions is quite tragic in itself. Currency is in free fall, hundreds of companies closed shops and offices, many will lose their jobs, etc. This will hit marriages and…

> any men will take a beautiful woman for sex, but providing for her long term is another thing

Looks like you never dated a Russian woman. Beware! You may end up totally dominated and providing her long term :).

Jokes aside, poverty combined with increased materialism and class division was indeed a big problem in Eastern Europe after the fall of USSR. Lots of women simply wanted "something better", which is to be translated that they valued money a lot more than true love. Social values were turned upside down. Thieves and crooks became the new social reference for success. You could no longer impress a girl with just a smile and a guitar. It was somewhat normal to prove your masculinity by fighting on the street or spending lots of money in a stupid way. Police rarely bothered, unless someone "important" person was involved. Crime proliferated to unbelievable levels. People were stealing things like tires, fuel and windshield wipers. At some point I had to lock the battery of my soviet car with a padlock (battery costed nearly half of monthly income and for some people over here it still does). Oligarchs were born out of criminal activity and questionable privatization of government property, such as factories and land. Later it turned down most of oligarchs had connections to the ex-secret service ranks. Some of them were loyal to the US, others to Russia. Most medium to large business is still controlled by such people or their offspring. Foreign investment often needed their blessing. It is a long story indeed, but I feel that after more than 30 year of "transition" to the new form of rule, people are slowly returning to some of their previous values, such as family, friends and other non-material things.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#215

Post by bigDinosaur »

usr1106 wrote: post #132
tiku wrote: post #63

I was wondering, how much of a percentage of visitors knows about the war and is against it?

A very high percentage. You are in Moscow and the customers have income well over Russian median. They speak foreign languages. There are over 100 millions over Russians that live in a very different world, for those the percentage will be different.

On the other hand, does the political opinion of anyone in Russia actually matter outside of Moscow?

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#216

Post by cudgy »

_0w8t wrote: post #175
konart wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest this sounds like a fairytale to me. IKEA has\had good things like lamps and tabletops. But the furniture has terrible quality. I'm still kind of angry at myself for buying their Stockholm cabinet. You _have_ to fix it agains the wall to stop the wiggling (that's what the manual AND their support tells me). Unfortunately we really don't have anything that is mass-production and of good quality at the same…

It is not а fairytale. It just tells the state of Russian furniture industry if they cannot match even IKEA despite cheap labor and raw materials.

At least real wood furniture can be repaired. Try repairing the cheap sawdust board that Ikea furniture is manufactured out of.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#217

Post by Etherlord87 »

twaw wrote: post #163
sdb0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you believe in freedom of speech?

Typical liberal democracy has 2 modes of work: peace time and war time. In time of peace, value of human life is infinite, thus fredom of someone ends where freedom of somewhere else starts. Nobody can cut basic freedoms of someone else without court decision. In time of war, this freedom creates vulnerability, so modern democraties have utalitarian laws designed to maximise survivability of nation as whole instead.…

I don't think the separation to the time of peace and time of war is even needed.

Ideally, any limitation of freedom is there to actually guarantee freedom, e.g. your freedom is limited in the form of an obligation to come to a police station to submit an explanation, but thanks to that the police can protect people from those that would otherwise limit their freedoms.

In similar vein, freedom of speech has to be limited, when some propaganda could lead to the decrease of the freedom.

It is tricky of course to judge what limitations are justified, but I find the sanctions against russian news sources on the quite safe side.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#218

Post by egao1980 »

delegate wrote: post #86

Photos of queues in shops and empty shelves is the only resistance left. Any non-official information about the war is punishable with 15 years in prison camps. What's happening in Ukraine is a tragedy, but what's happening in Russia as a result of sanctions is quite tragic in itself. Currency is in free fall, hundreds of companies closed shops and offices, many will lose their jobs, etc. This will hit marriages and…

Only false information will get you a fine or a criminal conviction. If you report facts backed by hard evidence you'd be safe. To get 15 years you'd need to create some fakes on purpose that led to for example mass casualties at the war zone.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#219

Post by nirav72 »

neverminder wrote: post #144
jdrc wrote: post #97

These kind of photos always impress me about the number of people who are on their phones. We dont live in countries anymore, we live in screens with our legs on some kind of ground. I hope it's not irreversibly long until these stores can be reopened. We should stop pretending we re living in the cold war era, world is always new. Russia has shown itself to be an irresponsible holder of nukes. After the fall of puti…

They may be spending much less time on their phones soon. The apps in Russia are shutting down like falling dominoes. Same goes for phone sales.

I wonder if the reliance on external services for apps to function will eventually force Russia to accelerate isolating their internet infrastructure. I know they've been attempting to do that. But now this might be the impetus.

Re: Last Day of IKEA in Moscow

#220

Post by egao1980 »

It's actually not the last day but a temporary suspension. Russian market is quite large and attractive to likes of IKEA and they will try to return when the hype is over. But some would be displaced by that time by the other companies. We've seen this in 2014-2015.
Post reply on HN