Here’s a single example: in 2004, Nicholson Baker published a novel, Checkpoint, about a man trying to assassinate George W. Bush.
Had a writer in the consumerist-free utopia of the USSR done that about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and their ilk, he would have been disappeared into a labor camp, if not simply shot on sight.
What’s more important, being ignored and not-listened-to when you criticize the govt, or having time to spend with your children?
Seeing the compromises people have to make here today I am pretty glad I was a kid before the Revolution.
Sometimes you could get a redress even within the Eastern Bloc.
Both the Eastern and the Western systems sucked. The difference was mostly in the actual ways.
The Eastern system had a nasty habit of murdering millions of people, though.
Also, I’m a fan of elections.
You can get quite similar situations with various pet dictatorships. And then there’s the issue with the death squads all over Latin America; after Stalin died and the worst was through, the local dissidents weren’t exactly comfortably off but in comparison with e.g. El Salvador it was peachy.
Elections? Where you can choose between Kang and Kodos? How much better it is? Worth the time you couldn’t spend with the family?
Maybe you’re unfamiliar, but voting takes about 4 minutes. I somehow manage to participate in a liberal republic and spend time with my family.
I don’t talk about the time to vote but the time you have to spend exchanging for money. Some people have to work two jobs and still cannot make the ends meet, after paying for rent and basic food and other must-haves.
You have the luck you don’t have to. Many others don’t, and you and your family are just a single illness or lawsuit away from big trouble. The sword of Damocles is hanging above your head; you may choose to ignore it but it won’t go away.
What’s your point? The Soviet economic and social system was superior to any other?
Not so easy to say. There is no single value to compare but a multidimensional vector space full of values. And not all of them were inferior in comparison.
So it mostly sucked but there were a few nice things about it?
That depends on your personality.
This is a pretty weak defense of the Soviet way of life. Earlier you made it sounds so peachy.
You seem to dislike it really hard, despite apparently not living there for any significant time. Why, oh why?
Just trying to clarify your argument. I thought you were arguing for the superiority of the Soviet way of life, but when pressed on the issue you apparently don’t feel that way.
You are attempting to compare potatoes and coconuts.
You cannot say which is superior without first defining what aspects are how important for you. Any such attempt would be dishonest at least.
I’m not trying to compare anything, just wondering if there was some sort of point or coherent argument to what you wrote above.
Unless you live in a poor (read “Democratic”) district within a Reddish state. The picture kinda reminds me of a Moscow McDonalds line.
I’d rather wait in a line to exercise my franchise than wait in a line to buy bread.
What about waiting in a line for a chance to get a job for the day so you could go buy said bread?
