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Vacations in the Soviet Union

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Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#361

Post by explorer83 »

jrumbut wrote: post #132
explorer83 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know all of these things sound nice. But in the real world a lot of businesses aren't making the kind of profit that allows workers to just take time off and not generate any revenue for the company. Sure there are some that could pull it off. But most small businesses aren't making that kind of profit. Unless you are assuming workers are supposed to take unpaid time off. But then how are they going to afford to ta…

> But most small businesses aren't making that kind of profit. It always feels that way in a small business, but then all of a sudden a key employee needs to take a three month medical leave and somehow the business survives. You just have to plan well, and I'm sure there will be devoted employees who answer the odd emergency email during their sabbatical.

Businesses don't start flush with cash. It's a long process to become established. Your viewpoint is that businesses just have positive cash flow at all times and if they don't it's poor planning. It's not poor planning. It could be investments need to be made in certain areas in order to grow. or they haven't established a big product or client portfolio yet. Everyone starts somewhere.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#362

Post by atdrummond »

kelipso wrote: post #348
atdrummond wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did visit parts of the area on my own. My issue was with the discordance between what the Chinese press and my more militant Chinese friends say and what I saw in the totality of my time there. I had no less than 6 seemingly non-extremist Uighurs express their desire to live in the states for religious freedom reasons.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#363

Post by kfrzcode »

dubcanada wrote: post #170
kfrzcode wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think the ideology of communism is the issue, on paper it's a very sound ideal. The problem is when greed/other human attributes gets involved it stops working. As with any of them, it's all about the people and how they implement it. I don't think capitalism sounds good at all on paper, but has worked for quite a while, mostly due to some degree of working standards and unions. Remember most of these haven't…

> longer than like 100 years

I'm not sure we're on the same page, there's the PRC, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam.... not to mention the Stalin of it all.

Much of that history is well beyond 1920.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#364

Post by kfrzcode »

nicoburns wrote: post #124
kfrzcode wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Young people being naive is nothing new. And it's hardly surprising that young people are more aware of the atrocities that their own societies systems have wrought than those of a historical system that is no longer used. Of course, what we really need is the discourse to shift from "capitalism vs. communism", to recognise that both are extreme ideologies in their pure forms, and to start working out what a "best of…

How is capitalism an extreme ideology? Wouldn't something like a technocracy be the extreme of that spectrum?

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#365

Post by kfrzcode »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #238
kfrzcode wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll concede rudeness as it's perceptive and not intrinsic in this case; I apologize for the timbre of my approach. My stance is more of one rooted in individualism and self-advocation, i.e. if you're dedicated to a job that's considered a full time commitment, that's the social construct. We're not in a society post-labor, idealistic techtopia yet, and that transition if it occurs will be painful and bloated. The re…

The employer/employee relationship is a business transaction: I pay them in labor, they pay me in cash. PTO is just me adjusting the amount of labor provided. Imagine I walk into a spice stall and say: "I'd like to buy a pound of cinnamon, please." The seller might reply "Sure, that'll be $20 dollars". But I don't have $20. I have $10. So maybe I counter "Hmmm, best I can do is $10 dollars". The seller could then cou…

Right, there is an intrinsic ceiling to how much an employer will decide to pay for that. My point is you can unlock that ceiling by choosing to pursue other business transactions, by increasing the value of your time. What employer would pay you $100k per month? Is that enough to be considered enough? You could do that with your own business but unlikely to get that from employer.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#366

Post by kfrzcode »

nicoburns wrote: post #130
kfrzcode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 + 10 = one full calendar month (that's 6 business weeks) of work. You're asking for more than six weeks per year where you can just get paid for not working. Sure, there's plenty of holistic value-add to being a well rested, happy employee, but if the difference for your happiness and well-being is somewhere above having six weeks of paid vacation (plus assumed sick days as needed for actual sicknesses) and gettin…

> If your job is so stressful that the aforementioned six weeks plus sick days is not enough vacation for you to recuperate, you're likely underpaid Many people would prefer to be paid less and have more vacation time. Vacation time isn't just for recuperating from work. It's free time for people to live their lives as they wish.

Implying that "free time" is the luxury which should be coveted and is rare, rather than prioritizing "free time" as number one and deciding on a survival pathway that fits into that framework.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#367

Post by elzbardico »

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.

There’s always the kind of article that suggests that Chinese academic achievements are not that impressive because for some reason Chinese graduate students are just some kind of robotized academics incapable of independent thought, creativity and are just ver good order followers, which is something that everyone who has actually worked with Chinese folks know it is a stupid generalization.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#368

Post by elzbardico »

fifilura wrote: post #213
FooBarWidget wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be surprised to find out that outside of HN, not many people use Internet freedom as a prime measurement of dystopia. As a techie I am personally also very annoyed at the lack of Internet freedom. But as a Chinese I also recognize that there are many more aspects in life and society that are more important than Internet freedom, and that China scores pretty high at (especially in historic context).

...said the Russians. Until they got drafted into an illegal war...

Said the Americans. Until they got drafted into an illegal war in Vietnam or were given no other chance to earn a living than getting paid to kill in illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And let’s not even talking about all the coups the State Department and the CIA nurtured across countless countries

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#369

Post by l3mure »

catiopatio wrote: post #319
FooBarWidget wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you something much simpler than all of those things: having enough food, having housing that doesn't leak, having running water, having electricity, having access to schooling, having toilets, not having nearly every street in the city be a dirty mud pool full of trash, having safe streets mostly devoid of violent crimes. None of those things were a given when I grew up. Those things ard still not a given i…

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”.

> 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.

You mean the half of the world that enriched itself by inflicting "authoritarianism" on other populations - or indeed, their own populations too - unless you don't consider the treatment of Black and Native people in the US to be authoritarianism, or the Irish in the UK, etc etc?

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#370

Post by ido »

sangnoir wrote: post #298
silversmith wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the "I remember" I assume you lived through it. Were you per chance from "proper" soviet union, aka Moscow / Petrograd area? Because allegiance to the state and nothing else was the ideal in the "less correct" regions such as Baltics. It "got better" as time wore on, but especially after the occupation, every attempt was made to erode anything and everything else people might gather around. Forced ethnic mixing…

> Forced ethnic mixing with deportations to faraway regions to dillute national identity. Did you mean "to dilute regional/ethnic identity"? National identity cuts across regions and ethnicities.

I guess they meant the national identities like Ukranian, Georgian, Uzbek, etc.
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