[Left] group over individual ------> individual over group --------> king over all [Right]Smitty-48 wrote:Greater personally liberty and autonomy from the crown is to the left, but if you keep going further left from the crown, to a commune, then you're on the far left, theoretically, the commune garners you more liberty from a crown, by collective action, on the far left, you believe that the individual alone lacks the power to resist the crown, thus you need to form a collective in order to protect your liberties, and your liberties are expressed through collective will rather than individual.
Liberalism is the near left, then socialism, then communism, the further left you go, the more collective the nature of your liberties, and it tends to be reactionary to the power and repession of the crown, so, British Crown less repressive, American revolution less collective, French Crown more repressive, French revolution more collective.
The more radical the repression of the crown, the more radical the revolutionary upheavel against it, and in the end, the American Revolution was basically just a tax revolt, the British Constitutional Monarchy and associated Parliament was hardly the House of Bourbon, nor the House of Romanov, mostly, the American colonists just didn't want to pay their taxes, which, same old same old Americans.
War With Communists
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Re: War With Communists
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Re: War With Communists
Kazakhstan has had similar growth as Russia, btw. And By IQ (if one is so dumb to believe the IQ stats) they are not on the low scoring side. Nearly a quarter of the population are Russians.Martin Hash wrote:These are my thoughts on where communism is appropriate.
I don't know what the IQ of the people in Kyrgyzstan is but it's high enough they will work but low enough that complex entrepreneurship is rare. Capitalism requires profits. You can't make money from poor people or some Capitalist would be doing it already, so those poor people just pick their cotton & ride their water buffalo in the fields for centuries while the rest of the world moves on. Here's where communism comes in: it doesn't require profits. As long as there's production someplace, the excess can be used to keep an artificial economy going. Hence, the people of Russia paid for the tractors & machinery that the Kyrgyzstani people used, and provided a veneer of the modern aspects of life; enough that the outside world was fooled anyway. As long as Russians paid for and managed Kyrgyzstan, it prospered, from 1922 to 1992, the best 70 years of their history. Eventually, the Russian people were, "fuck that shit, we're Capitalists now," and Kyrgyzstan slowly slid back to its old ways. Communism is definitely "give a man a fish" rather than "teach him how to fish," but some people just can't fish.
p.s. Apparently, the lower the IQ, the more outside cash & management has to flow in, because communism in Africa was a failure.
It's Ukraine that has been the basket case. Hence no wonder they had a revolution (or many) and a civil war.
Besides, the only ones who made socialism work somehow were the Germans. The difference of the East and West tell so well just how great socialism is (or the Koreas, to give another example). Otherwise it's been a parking break left on: of course many cars do finally move even with the parking break on.
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Re: War With Communists
This is a perfect example of where stats lie.
The Stans have huge petroleum exports. The rest of the country picks cotton by hand but there's a .01% that lives the good live, kind of like America except we serve hamburgers.
The Stans have huge petroleum exports. The rest of the country picks cotton by hand but there's a .01% that lives the good live, kind of like America except we serve hamburgers.
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IQ is one of the most well-understood concepts in psychology and the stats are pretty damned accurate. The lower the average IQ, the less prosperous the nation. Lefties can play semantic games with it all they want, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. Go look at a list of nations ranked by average IQ and you might notice a pattern.
https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country
It seems to me that, truly, there exist only two high-tech civilizations on Earth right now (West and East Asian). Everybody else is just kind of pulled along like an entourage.
https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country
It seems to me that, truly, there exist only two high-tech civilizations on Earth right now (West and East Asian). Everybody else is just kind of pulled along like an entourage.
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Re: War With Communists
No they don't in this case.Martin Hash wrote:This is a perfect example of where stats lie.
The Stans have huge petroleum exports. The rest of the country picks cotton by hand but there's a .01% that lives the good live, kind of like America except we serve hamburgers.
Stats tell about economic growth. If that economic growth has touched the common man in these countries or not is totally another thing. After all, have you noticed that every historical economic stat either starts post WW2 or ends at 1939? The reason they skip this time period is that WW2 was a time of huge economic growth! The GDP during those times growth was so whopping awesome that basically only perhaps in the 1960's the US produced as much as during WW2. Tells something about Keynes invention of the GDP. After all, even Americans had back then rationing.
When things have gone really bad, it's likely you will read about political turmoil, demonstrations and insurgencies. A country lacking those usually is doing rather OK.
And Kazakhstan? Here's some other stats showing it's not so bad...
Doesn't look so Soviet to me:
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Re: War With Communists
It's a good thing I have firsthand experience, or I might be fooled like you: Land of Illusion
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Re: War With Communists
Thing about the Soviet Union was, the Communists were the urbane elites and they all lived in the cities, Lenin and Trotsky, these guys were public intellectuals, they didn't even live in Russia, they were hanging out at the Cafe Central in Vienna Austria, with Hitler and Sigmund Freud by the way, they all hung out at the same coffee shop.
Anyways, they didn't have any clue how to run things outside of the urban paradigm, and they had no understanding of agriculture, they weren't farmers they didn't know anything about farming, and they had no relationship with the peasants, they didn't know them and they didn't understand them.
So, there was always a wide gulf between Soviet sucesses in science and industry and the disaster which was Soviet agriculture, and there was always deep resentment and dissent by the peasants against the elites in the cities. Agriculture and the peasants were always the weak links in the chain of socialism. Not only did they not want to play along, but the agricultural paradigm didn't fit neatly into the Communist obsession with central planning.
It was only Koba who had any understanding of Russia amongst the Bolsheviks, it was only Koba who understood that the peasants would never be onside for the revolution, and this is why he basically starved them to death in favour of funding the industrial side of the equation, as he said "death solves all problems, one man, one problem, no man, no problem".
Anyways, they didn't have any clue how to run things outside of the urban paradigm, and they had no understanding of agriculture, they weren't farmers they didn't know anything about farming, and they had no relationship with the peasants, they didn't know them and they didn't understand them.
So, there was always a wide gulf between Soviet sucesses in science and industry and the disaster which was Soviet agriculture, and there was always deep resentment and dissent by the peasants against the elites in the cities. Agriculture and the peasants were always the weak links in the chain of socialism. Not only did they not want to play along, but the agricultural paradigm didn't fit neatly into the Communist obsession with central planning.
It was only Koba who had any understanding of Russia amongst the Bolsheviks, it was only Koba who understood that the peasants would never be onside for the revolution, and this is why he basically starved them to death in favour of funding the industrial side of the equation, as he said "death solves all problems, one man, one problem, no man, no problem".
Last edited by Smitty-48 on Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
Nec Aspera Terrent
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Re: War With Communists
The urban/rural divide cannot be stressed enough. I don't know about Asia, but in the West, it's definitely a thing. The rural aristocracy took over in the medieval period and had a good run. The urban merchant class took over in the course of the Enlightenment, and they don't have any intention of letting go of power, or balancing it for that matter.
The political system itself is almost a completely different issue from who runs it.
I am coming to the opinion that we need to divide these two realms and let them govern themselves. The people are too different. Their economic interests are too different, and often contradictory. I am not sure it's possible to truly balance or compromise these two interests.
You can sort of see this divide play out even in communist regimes. The Soviets were run by urbanites, and they murdered so many Kulaks they were no longer able to feed the empire. Some of the Latin American regimes were(are) run mostly by rural communists, and they can't figure out how to industrialize to save their lives. These kinds of people create terrible environments for investment.
In some cases, it's not the system at fault, but the people running it. Maybe it's true, though, that communism only amplifies the faults of the people who run it. Some American rural states are soaking up new business relocations in the wake of the skyrocketing democratic party taxes in places like California. I guess we will see how long that can last.
The political system itself is almost a completely different issue from who runs it.
I am coming to the opinion that we need to divide these two realms and let them govern themselves. The people are too different. Their economic interests are too different, and often contradictory. I am not sure it's possible to truly balance or compromise these two interests.
You can sort of see this divide play out even in communist regimes. The Soviets were run by urbanites, and they murdered so many Kulaks they were no longer able to feed the empire. Some of the Latin American regimes were(are) run mostly by rural communists, and they can't figure out how to industrialize to save their lives. These kinds of people create terrible environments for investment.
In some cases, it's not the system at fault, but the people running it. Maybe it's true, though, that communism only amplifies the faults of the people who run it. Some American rural states are soaking up new business relocations in the wake of the skyrocketing democratic party taxes in places like California. I guess we will see how long that can last.
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Re: War With Communists
The Soviet solution to the agriculture problem was to essentially just ignore it, this is why they could build nuclear submarines and rocketships, but they couldn't build tractors and grow wheat, and this was central to their collapse, because they basically ended up selling oil to acquire US dollars, so they could buy grain from the USA and Canada, and when the oil price collapsed, they couldn't afford to feed the people anymore, and when the bread lines got long enough, the whole thing started to spiral.
Just another reason why Star Trek is American Bolshevism and Trekkies are a buncha Commies; where does the food come from on the Starship Enterprize? The Replicator; a magical machine which just creates food out of nothing, this is how the Soviet Union "worked" as well.
Just another reason why Star Trek is American Bolshevism and Trekkies are a buncha Commies; where does the food come from on the Starship Enterprize? The Replicator; a magical machine which just creates food out of nothing, this is how the Soviet Union "worked" as well.
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Re: War With Communists
But do you think it was better during the Soviet Union?Martin Hash wrote:It's a good thing I have firsthand experience, or I might be fooled like you: Land of Illusion
The slipping back means that you assume it was better during the Soviet Union.
I had the chance to visit the Soviet Union. It really, really sucked.