Actually, it was not me who used the “humane” word. It was somebody else:
I “only” happened to relate to that sentiment.
Now you can vote but look at the choices - it is more a rub-it-in than a genuine freedom of choice.
Also, the freedom to travel is not worth much if you cannot afford to travel. Which many, and increasingly more, can’t.
And publishing an opinion? The West did a master choice here - instead of hunting down the critics it allowed publishing everything and drowned them in noise.
When you get jailed for what you say, it gives you additional credibility. (And your words are sought after, moved around by samizdat and magnitizdat.) When you get ignored, you can publish until you run out of funds or time or motivation; then, problem solved.
…and you still can get in major trouble for what you say. Whether loss of a job (and possibly future jobs), or worse.
I’d say that at least in 80’s a life of a Soviet-satellite dissident was less dangerous than a life of a Latin America US-satellite’s dissident. Two words: death squads.
I dunno, check the headlines on “putin popular” google query. Quite some are articles attempting to explain his popularity.
Granted, much of it is in the more rural areas. A similar mechanism of telling people what they want to hear can be in play that also explains the popularity of Faux News in the more rural areas of the Beacon Of Freedom.
You can oppose it until you run out of breath. Then you get the Citizens United.
Ideologies, whether the communism or the free market, better work in their idealized form. In real world deployment things can and do get ugly fast.
Economists are jokes. Sadly, too many people still take them seriously.
The First Law of Economics: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The Second Law of Economics: They’re both wrong.
“Economics is the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposing things.” Specifically, Myrdahl and Hayek shared one.
Q. What do economists and computers have in common ??
A. You need to punch information into both of them.
More here: EconJokes
The guy you refer to is most likely one of them.
When you have the choice. Also, look at the conditions in Chinese factories; the Foxconn-related affairs are easy to find.
It is. It just gets a bit more tricky and involved to do it well with subjective stuff. You cannot just slap numbers on a thing and then call it a day; then you’d be an econometrist.
They had a chance to emigrate in '68 and stayed put. Severing the interpersonal ties and going into the uncertainty was not worth the difference.
The labor camps are known as for-profit prisons.
The class being under assault are the poor.
That.
Do you include those suffering such fates in the gentle hands of US-supported (and even coup-d’-etated) dictators? The Bengal famine under Churchill?
The Russian goods were ranging from crappy to outright excellent, the latter still being surprisingly affordable. I still have some taps and dies, and a virtually indestructible set of chromium-molybdenum alloy screwdrivers.
And the crappy were still better than the Chinese crappy now.
That.
You could get in trouble for saying wrong things. But you didn’t run a day to day risk of losing job and food and place to live.
Also, a joke at the end as an illustration. (Context: ringing one’s keys was a mass display of “go away” to the ones in charge, at some major demonstrations.)
One homeless man tells another one:
“During the revolution, I was ringing my keys. From the house, from the car, from the cottage…”
