The curse of Eastern Europe, to die and empty out. It's the same in my country. Life in the UK and Germany > at home.
And it's an exponential process, for every 1 person, 5 probably leave. My hometown was nearly 100k in the 80s, down to 50k if that by now. And it's mostly elderly, children, who grow up, go to the capital or just immigrate.
Curious why you think that is. I understand that a higher standard of living can be had abroad, but there is there not investment interest in the country given its relatively well-educated but low wage workforce? The tug of wanting the familiar? Think it'll ever equilibrate and reverse?
There is no low wage workforce to invest into, because the job market is the whole EU. People (especially educated younger generation) won't work for low salary at home if they can earn more euros for the same work on the other side of the fence. Local businesses have to pay competitively.
And the fact countries can't use protectionist measures inside EU does not help either.
Baltics lost and continuing losing population for decades, however currently their population is propped by migration from Belarus (since August 2020 and then next waive after Feb 2022). Even with those trend Lithuania has lost 1/3 of its population in 30 years.
Czechia and Poland has a influx of Ukrainians since Feb 2022.
On other side Bulgaria is losing ~1% annually without signs of stopping.
So yes, I would say the trend is very visible everywhere in Eastern Europe + Balkans.
My personal experience is quite the opposite - globalization allows capital to move to the lesser developed and cheaper places, bringing jobs and education, and over time an improved quality of life, so that people who were before desperate to leave no longer feel it’s necessary. Sure, it’s not as simple, but just wanted to mention it, since it’s not as straightforward as it seems.
On a slightly related note, I’d rather point the finger at urbanization - in my short lifetime I’ve witnessed multiple small villages (1.5 - 2k population) pretty much disappear as the younger generation moved out for multiple different reasons.
The abandonment of rural areas and the mess that left behind were the seeds to populism growing in my part of the world (US). It was an unforeseen aspect of winner-take-all globalism-driven economic growth.
Let's be real, there is no reason for any country to be granting Albanian citizens asylum. There isn't a genocide going on, it's a (relatively) free country:
Talking about irregular migration, it's significantly harder to enter the UK directly from either Germany, Austria or Italy. Air carriers check passports and visas (indeed BA pulled a relative of mine this morning at a London airport for what the airline termed a "visa check" during an attempt to check in online).
Paying a people smuggler to take you across the Channel from France to the UK would appear to be significantly simpler. The UK government publishes detailed statistics on irregular migration routes, and for the last few years small boats represent by far largest proportion of irregular migration arrivals, not air.[0]
I’d like to see a source for that. I don’t really see how it could compare to WW2 or the Three Kingdoms War or Taiping Rebellion or Great Chinese Famine or Black Death or either the Justinian or Antoine plagues.
To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the soviet union has been a generational catastrophe for russia. A funk they seem unable to get out of demographically, economically, politically, etc.
In the US, our population has grown 50% since 1990 ( almost 150 more people ). The russian population has dropped 5% since 1990. After ww2, russia had major population growth like the US. After germany and japan lost ww2, their population, economy, etc improved drastically. For some reason, losing a hot war ( japan, germany ) turned out to be much better than losing a cold war ( russia ).
Think about it, we are nearly 2 generations into the post-soviet world and russia still hasn't recovered their population. After ww2, russia almost doubled their population in 2 generations. Losing the cold war appears to have demoralized the russian elite and people far more than losing ww2 did to germany and japan. Why? Who knows.
I disagree on how you scoped the discussion on the fall of communism. Why are we scoping down to just Russia? If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.
There’s also the matter of scoping WW2: I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions. If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Because the soviet union was russia. Russia is the successor state of the soviet union. Which country would you use? Moldova? Estonia?
> If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.
Even russia's life expectancy improved after the initial disastrous decline. My point was that overall population hasn't recovered since the soviet collapse. This is true for ukraine, moldova, russia, estonia, most former ex-soviet nations. The only one to buck the trend are muslim ex-soviet nations.
> I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions.
WW2 didn't affect 'thousands of millions'. The world population in 1940 was around 2 billion. Also we are talking about the effects of the fall of the soviet union. Why I limited it to russia/soviet union.
> If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Maybe it's a language issue. You don't seem to have a solid grasp of the english language. My point was that the fall of the soviet was worse FOR RUSSIA than ww2 was FOR RUSSIA. I'm not saying that the fall of the soviet union was worse overall than ww2. That's another discussion. So no. One person's cancer diagnosis isn't worse than ww2. One person's cancer diagnosis is worse than that person's diagnosis of ankle sprain. You see. You have one person and two bad events. You have one russia and two bad events. You compare the bad events on the one person or one russia.
You are being very disingenious here. I can't for the life of me understand why.
It was lost in the sarcasm, but I was trying to emphasize the disparity. The fall of communism wasn't close in loss of life or resulting affects to any of those of hundreds of other events.
What's more, how many people did Soviet 'communism' itself crush? What was the life span of a Ukrainian farmer in Soviet Russia? Did that go up after the fall of communism? I can't see any decrease in quality that can be directly and singularly tied to the fall of the USSR, except for perhaps the dictators at the top of the heap. Arguably, those same class of dictators are responsible for repressing quality of life even after the dissolution.
And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed.
Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions.
Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own and had to become satellites of Russia if they wanted to survive.
You mistake me for USSR advocate. I’m not. With that being said, you can’t just dissolve such system in a year. It’s like waking up from comma and entering adult world all of a sudden. Dissolution of USSR without any planning was the reason for infamous 90s, oligarchs usurping all of the resources and kleptocracy across whole post-Soviet space.
USSR should’ve went China path, for better or worse.
It also doesn't reflect changes in life expectancy during COVID, showing a consistent 0.08% increase every year. Seems less statistics and more projections.
To add a bit of context for those not too well versed in Eastern European history (from someone with a Croatian background): Back in the real-sozialist/communist era, the people didn't have much rights (especially not those that were against the dictators), but in exchange at least the government took somewhat of a care of providing everyone with a life worth living (notable exception: the remote areas of Russia that have historically served only as a supply for young men to grind in Russian wars) - it's not unlike the societal reality currently in China. The nation blocks, either the Soviet Union or the "non aligned movement", supported each other and distributed workload to make sure everyone (both in terms of nations as well as people) could make a living - even if that was often far less efficient than Western countries, because the Communist nations prioritized jobs for their people over having machines do these jobs.
Then, Communism fell... corrupt entities took over many of the countries, only looking to enrich themselves, and as the international solidarity system failed against "cheaper" products there was no hope to keep the often horribly outdated factories alive, and at the same time Western societies hungry for more labor force (and way more attractive currencies) began to "brain drain" the former Communist countries.
Today, the people may have rights on paper, but in practice they're worthless (either due to corruption or because the state is too poor), and society is crumbling apart from decades of looting and corrupt elites on one side and young generations moving abroad because they can't see any way that their country escapes the death spiral. Many people struggle with survival every day. So yes, in conclusion it's warranted to say that the fall of Communism led to a massive drop in quality of life.
TikTok and the "gangsta" life style are just the cherries on the cake.
You really skipped over that “didn’t have rights” part. How many people were in Gulag? And you think there was no corruption in the ruling communist class? Corruption is a feature of any political organization and should be stopped, but money was just as much a motivator for the communists as it is for the capitalists. The only difference is that it wasn’t available to the working class so they weren’t incentivized to produce or invent.
> And you think there was no corruption in the ruling communist class?
Real-socialism/communism failed for good reasons and deservedly. I shed no tears for that period.
My point is that what came after tended to be even worse - the post-downfall period, the breakdown of intra- and inter-block trade, the looting by criminals and corrupt (former) elites and other destruction and the resulting brain drain had consequences that have held or taken the affected countries back in development for decades.
Of course the elites were corrupt. But there was a marked difference in corruption when there still was some sort of government that held them a bit accountable, or when the government essentially vanished and the criminals became the government. Russia is the easiest example (because it's best documented, information on the Balkans is pretty scarce): Your average Russian "elite" back in the USSR era, he maybe had a couple villas and Western cars, that's it. Your average Russian "oligarch" (or to put it better, kleptocrat) today? Buys a soccer club for billions of euros, has multiple luxury yachts and stashed away many billions of dollars more. Hell, the billionaire Russian oligarchs alone have a net worth of over 500 billion dollars [1] despite the war, and that doesn't include the millionaire mini-oligarchs. Imagine where Russia would be, had that wealth remained in the hands of the nation, and its leaders invested it into education, social cohesion and modern industry?!
> society is crumbling … many people struggle with survival every day
What locations are you talking about? Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.
> Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.
Albania's average wage is about 600-700 USD per month depending on whom you ask. Croatia's is a bit higher, around 1100... but the prices even for everyday staple foods are higher than in Germany. It's all shiny and nice in the tourism areas, but outside of them life can suck pretty hard.
This is hilarious. The reality is that the fall of communism led to a total crash… in the proportion of humanity living in absolute poverty. With the vast majority of the gains coming from formerly communist countries.
Its almost as if complex social and economic systems aren't magic and you can't just yell 'capitalism' and turn into the Belgium. Its almost as if just talking about complex social and economic system as a binary isn't a smart thing to do.
Only mainstream whitewashed political opinions are welcome on HN, anything too gritty and your text slowly vanishes from the page. Please refer to CNN and the US State Dept for acceptable political takes.
HN is exceptionally left-leaning. The only reason posts like that get downvoted is because it signals some kind of moral posturing that is completely irrelevant/unearned and exceptionally negative. It also comes across as lazy when people try to discuss some nuanced topic and a poster just blankets the conversation with the same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance other than a wiki link. It’s senseless. Go drill some wells in Africa if you want to help, your lazy “advocacy” is just annoying when spouted at people who don’t hold any responsibility for those events and frankly don’t care.
> same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance
> lazy advocacy
This characterization you're making is what's wrong. It's definitely arguable that Belgium enjoys the prosperity it does today because of centuries of economic exploitation of other countries.
You may disagree, but the behavior of HN both in its programming and users to erase valid opinions like this is ridiculous.
> HN is exceptionally left-leaning
You're criticizing GP as making blanket statements (his statement was accurate) while making a blanket statement that's inaccurate. There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place.
> There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place.
That’s because politics has two axises. HN is definitely left-leaning, but in support of social democracy. Hacker News is first and foremost populated by /hackers/ and we don’t go for authoritarianism. We know that as left-leaning as we are, the only good tankie is a dead tankie.
Some ideas are well worth discussing but never implementing, authleft schools of thought definitely fall in that bucket.
As I was saying, defining "left" is problematic, different people mean different things by that term. To me, left means anti-establishment, anti-censorship, pro free speech, anti war. I see tons of people on here defending censorship of social media ("they're private corporations"), pro Ukraine war. I see much less defense of the women's rights movement on HN than I traditionally associate with the left. I mean the comment I just responded to is a perfect example -- the guy is tearing someone down for pointing out imperialism from the Belgian government. "HN leans left" isn't something you can substantiate in my view.
Your definition of left is based on a set of issues, not on philosophy, which is not how such things are defined and thus is erroneous. There is two axes, so left/right is definitely oversimplification but it is very clearly defined.
Left/Right is split on economics, almost entirely, and specifically on the topic of private property vs public property and where the line is drawn, inclusive of many things besides real estate that count as “property”. Philosophically it is a split between Collectivism and Individualism, and almost all conflicts revolve around duty to self vs duty to society.
There are very left-wing political movements in history, including arguably the most “successful” and powerful that were pro-censorship, against free speech, and explicitly warmongering. “Anti-establishment” is a meaningless term, whoever is currently in power is the “establishment”, regardless of anything else.
HN is far more left than the typical viewpoint in the US, which is the country that dominates discussion here. The US has no true left-wing major party, but the closest thing we have (neoliberal globalists with collectivist views on social responsibility) is not only the party currently in power, but arguably put there by significant financial support from individuals and companies in tech.
You can take that or interpret that however you want, I’m agreeing with the GP to my original comment.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong, the issues are not that simple. The parties have huge internal divisions and so many Americans don’t vote precisely because that’s not true. The issues are based on philosophies, you’re drawing a distinction that has no significance to the point.
> Collectivism and Individualism
No that is not the only way all major issues are divided. And even where they are, there are policy nuances that may align with both and be rolled into a single solution.
I already explained how HN is on major issues not left. I’m not going to repeat it. To say “those are just issues” doesn’t make HN left when it’s advocating positions from the right.
> I’m sorry but this is just wrong, the issues are not that simple.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I wrote. I am very clearly acknowledging the complexity of political philosophy, which is why there are two axes, not a single line. There is not just Left/Right, but the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. Political philosophies can be identified as a coordinate on a two-dimensional plane in relation to one another. https://www.politicalcompass.org/ is one attempt to do so (however not necessarily conclusively correct).
> > Collectivism and Individualism
> No that is not the only way all major issues are divided.
All political philosophies fundamentally reduce to whether they derive primacy for the individual or for society. Of course, all strike some balance between the two, and there are significant nuances, but if you do not recognize this, I would argue you do not have the necessary base knowledge of political philosophy to engage in this conversation, certainly not to assert that I am incorrect.
Except you don't. Belgium the country had a parliament that limited the king and was doing well outside of whatever happened in Congo. Congo was given to the King of Belgium as private property basically, not the government of Belgium.
While some of Belgium population did profit from it, the argument that all of Belgium current wealth is whole depend on the Congo is complete nonsense.
So it was the fault of free markets giving these men what they wanted, and not the prior mode of government's and ossified tradition's inability to deliver that way of life?
People will read this article and draw possibly misleading conclusions about the entire country. Emigration is certainly a problem everywhere in Albania, but northeastern Albania where the town in question is located, is a special case. It has always been, for centuries, the poorest, most backward part of the country, unable to benefit from trade and intellectual exchange with more prosperous neighbors like other regions of Albania could. Even within the country people were moving en masse from there to Shkodër near the coast, or Tirana.
As sad as it is, it's no different from any country at any other point in time.
In the past it was letters, postcards, phone calls, now it's just tictok AND youtube, facebook etc.
Even in the UK the young move from less prosperous areas to more prosperous ones.
Globally, people need to be educated on the reality of what's behind the camera not the illusion portrayed in front of it.
Totally true. In Spain happened the same in the from the 50s to the 70s with thousands of people emigrating to France, Germany, and other European countries, talking about how well they could live and how they can eat every day, but excluding how they live in mass in barracks away from local people, and how most of local people made an effort to avoid them to integrate (like making them go out of bars and buses).
I saw a program once about Dutch people emigrating to Australia in the 1950s. They made a good life for themselves but they weren't welcomed with champagne and caviar when they came off the boat.
Nice that social media is providing a clear pathway out of towns like this. Sad for the people left behind but the answer is for them to leave, not for everyone to be trapped there. And note the Eastern Europe is doing great at the country level.
In general people should engage in more geographic mobility.
There are always some people who stay, and always some of the children of the people who left will return to revitalize the area.
It takes one or two generations for that secondary effect of revitalization but it happens as children and grandchildren of those who emigrated want to return to their culture and find land prices very low.
I've seen it in rural China, India, and Italy before that. Even Russia had a large number of emigrant's (or their children) return during the economic book in the 2000's. Potion ruined that, and many have since left again, but it demonstrates the effect.
Get misled by a TikTok "influencer" and go join a street gang or be forced into prostitution in other parts of Europe? I wouldn't call that "escaping" anything.
I did read it, this was a counterpoint. The article is lying. A small minority had a bad time, they did nothing like a comprehensive counting of everyone who left.
Remember that a greater number of people who stayed would have died as miserable alcoholics. Women are still beaten by their husbands in small towns. Boredom leads to drugs.
Even in the US suicides are 50% higher per capita in rural vs urban areas.
If someone is happy in a rural area they should stay. But if they aren't and they get up the gumption to leave who are you to sit in judgement of how stupid they are?
It is better to move out of towns like this. Better != perfect.
I was just reading an article about an agency that rents out fancy penthouse suites, supercars and private jets by the hour to social media "influencers" who want to promote their baller lifestyles and amass a following. I see posts of this kind in my feed every day even though I have no interest in such content or the people behind it. It is a wild industry. 100% smoke and mirrors, yet teenagers and young men and women around the world are hooked by it.
People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time. How do you afford it? By becoming an influencer yourself, of course.
The "hustle culture" pyramid scheme is going to collapse soon, and lots of young people are going to have a rough life because of it.
> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time.
What do you expect when there are no good jobs left over for college grads between the double whammy of a pandemic and LLM automation threats? Not everybody can be software engineers and most other entry level jobs simply don't pay well enough for a decent life in most cities. It's no wonder that the average non-STEM major are turning towards "hustling" on tiktok when their future contains either prostituting themselves on OnlyFans or being a perpetual serf in the service industry.
Skilled trades destroy your body and are generally unappealing for very good reasons. The unions play gatekeeper in a closed shop industry with mandatory apprenticeship training (and not to mention the perceptions of class and sexual harassment issues). We need more white collar paper pushing jobs that pay well even if they don't necessarily generate value. If the massive tech-enabled concentration of wealth continues, we will have societal problems. You can already see this happening in countries like Japan and Spain where growth has stalled and the youth are suffering from massive unemployment.
> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are “NPCs”, and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time.
From the perspective of the ruling class (whether the capitalist elite of the haut bourgeoisie, or the pre-capitalist elite of the landed aristocracy) people with jobs have always been NPCs, and there’s always been a segment of society below that elite that spends money to conspicuously adopt outward trappings of elite lifestyle (and attitudes) for attention, as a tool for entertaining the masses, and for grift. Modern “influencers” may use a new medium to reach their audience, but they aren’t otherwise a particularly novel thing.
I would like to read another article on this with perspectives from Albanian. I don’t doubt that gangs/etc are taking advantage of immigrants, but the language used to describe innocuous things (rather than “growing cannabis” it’s “adding chemicals” etc) feels like they’ve exaggerated on points.
Additionally, though clearly unfair - 1-2 years of labor with pay seems like a reasonable trade off for the rest of your life to be significantly improved? Making immigration legal or at least legitizming parts of it even if the immigration remains illegal seems like it’d be a huge step.
Europe's Cocaine Tsunami[0], a documentary by VICE, is about Albanian Mafia and Columbian clan del gulfo. Here, you can hear about how Albanians in UK are 'enslaved' by Albanian mafia families, and how many young Albanians from Northern Albania leave to work in the cocaine field.
I felt at the time, and still do, that the arab spring was fueled by the ability of people to see life in other places via satellite TV and Internet. "Hey, life doesn't have to be as bad as it is here."
Even before then I thought it might be great to make A4 phased array antennas with photographs of dictators on them so people could put them on their walls were satellite dishes are forbidden.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadAnd it's an exponential process, for every 1 person, 5 probably leave. My hometown was nearly 100k in the 80s, down to 50k if that by now. And it's mostly elderly, children, who grow up, go to the capital or just immigrate.
And the fact countries can't use protectionist measures inside EU does not help either.
Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania and many other places are developing fine and less and less people are emigrating.
And the picture definitely is nowhere near as depressing as Albania and this region in particular.
Birthrates are low.
Abandoned cities will be everywhere over the next century. Especially after the population collapse in Asia.
On a slightly related note, I’d rather point the finger at urbanization - in my short lifetime I’ve witnessed multiple small villages (1.5 - 2k population) pretty much disappear as the younger generation moved out for multiple different reasons.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries...
What's that?
Let's be real, there is no reason for any country to be granting Albanian citizens asylum. There isn't a genocide going on, it's a (relatively) free country:
https://www.equaldex.com/region/albania
...and most European countries don't.
Q: Why does the UK?
Q: Is there much war or persecution in France at present?
Talking about irregular migration, it's significantly harder to enter the UK directly from either Germany, Austria or Italy. Air carriers check passports and visas (indeed BA pulled a relative of mine this morning at a London airport for what the airline termed a "visa check" during an attempt to check in online).
Paying a people smuggler to take you across the Channel from France to the UK would appear to be significantly simpler. The UK government publishes detailed statistics on irregular migration routes, and for the last few years small boats represent by far largest proportion of irregular migration arrivals, not air.[0]
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration...
https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030....
To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the soviet union has been a generational catastrophe for russia. A funk they seem unable to get out of demographically, economically, politically, etc.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population
In the US, our population has grown 50% since 1990 ( almost 150 more people ). The russian population has dropped 5% since 1990. After ww2, russia had major population growth like the US. After germany and japan lost ww2, their population, economy, etc improved drastically. For some reason, losing a hot war ( japan, germany ) turned out to be much better than losing a cold war ( russia ).
Think about it, we are nearly 2 generations into the post-soviet world and russia still hasn't recovered their population. After ww2, russia almost doubled their population in 2 generations. Losing the cold war appears to have demoralized the russian elite and people far more than losing ww2 did to germany and japan. Why? Who knows.
There’s also the matter of scoping WW2: I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions. If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Because the soviet union was russia. Russia is the successor state of the soviet union. Which country would you use? Moldova? Estonia?
> If you scoped broader to include the other post-Soviet counties you’d include all the countries where life expectancy has significantly increased since then.
Even russia's life expectancy improved after the initial disastrous decline. My point was that overall population hasn't recovered since the soviet collapse. This is true for ukraine, moldova, russia, estonia, most former ex-soviet nations. The only one to buck the trend are muslim ex-soviet nations.
> I would argue that WW2’s direct effects on thousands of millions of people deserve more weight than the fall of communism, which affected hundreds of millions.
WW2 didn't affect 'thousands of millions'. The world population in 1940 was around 2 billion. Also we are talking about the effects of the fall of the soviet union. Why I limited it to russia/soviet union.
> If we don’t take this type of scoping into effect I could claim that one person’s cancer diagnosis was a worse quality of life drop than WW2, and the discussion gets a little absurd.
Maybe it's a language issue. You don't seem to have a solid grasp of the english language. My point was that the fall of the soviet was worse FOR RUSSIA than ww2 was FOR RUSSIA. I'm not saying that the fall of the soviet union was worse overall than ww2. That's another discussion. So no. One person's cancer diagnosis isn't worse than ww2. One person's cancer diagnosis is worse than that person's diagnosis of ankle sprain. You see. You have one person and two bad events. You have one russia and two bad events. You compare the bad events on the one person or one russia.
You are being very disingenious here. I can't for the life of me understand why.
What's more, how many people did Soviet 'communism' itself crush? What was the life span of a Ukrainian farmer in Soviet Russia? Did that go up after the fall of communism? I can't see any decrease in quality that can be directly and singularly tied to the fall of the USSR, except for perhaps the dictators at the top of the heap. Arguably, those same class of dictators are responsible for repressing quality of life even after the dissolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_conflicts
And on top of that go over what every post soviet republic went through after USSR collapsed. Those countries were under dysfunctional system for 70 years and suddenly they're being thrown in a 180 turn economy without any institutions. Also keep in mind that majority of republics were left on their own and had to become satellites of Russia if they wanted to survive.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#:~:text=In....
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ALB/albania/life-expec...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...
It also doesn't reflect changes in life expectancy during COVID, showing a consistent 0.08% increase every year. Seems less statistics and more projections.
Then, Communism fell... corrupt entities took over many of the countries, only looking to enrich themselves, and as the international solidarity system failed against "cheaper" products there was no hope to keep the often horribly outdated factories alive, and at the same time Western societies hungry for more labor force (and way more attractive currencies) began to "brain drain" the former Communist countries.
Today, the people may have rights on paper, but in practice they're worthless (either due to corruption or because the state is too poor), and society is crumbling apart from decades of looting and corrupt elites on one side and young generations moving abroad because they can't see any way that their country escapes the death spiral. Many people struggle with survival every day. So yes, in conclusion it's warranted to say that the fall of Communism led to a massive drop in quality of life.
TikTok and the "gangsta" life style are just the cherries on the cake.
Real-socialism/communism failed for good reasons and deservedly. I shed no tears for that period.
My point is that what came after tended to be even worse - the post-downfall period, the breakdown of intra- and inter-block trade, the looting by criminals and corrupt (former) elites and other destruction and the resulting brain drain had consequences that have held or taken the affected countries back in development for decades.
Of course the elites were corrupt. But there was a marked difference in corruption when there still was some sort of government that held them a bit accountable, or when the government essentially vanished and the criminals became the government. Russia is the easiest example (because it's best documented, information on the Balkans is pretty scarce): Your average Russian "elite" back in the USSR era, he maybe had a couple villas and Western cars, that's it. Your average Russian "oligarch" (or to put it better, kleptocrat) today? Buys a soccer club for billions of euros, has multiple luxury yachts and stashed away many billions of dollars more. Hell, the billionaire Russian oligarchs alone have a net worth of over 500 billion dollars [1] despite the war, and that doesn't include the millionaire mini-oligarchs. Imagine where Russia would be, had that wealth remained in the hands of the nation, and its leaders invested it into education, social cohesion and modern industry?!
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-billionaires-...
What locations are you talking about? Even from the article above in a remote poor town in Albania that sounds pretty bad, their society is definitely not crumbling and while poor, not struggling to survive every day.
Albania's average wage is about 600-700 USD per month depending on whom you ask. Croatia's is a bit higher, around 1100... but the prices even for everyday staple foods are higher than in Germany. It's all shiny and nice in the tourism areas, but outside of them life can suck pretty hard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...
> same old cliched anti-imperialist anti-“West” rhetoric while adding nothing of substance > lazy advocacy
This characterization you're making is what's wrong. It's definitely arguable that Belgium enjoys the prosperity it does today because of centuries of economic exploitation of other countries.
You may disagree, but the behavior of HN both in its programming and users to erase valid opinions like this is ridiculous.
> HN is exceptionally left-leaning
You're criticizing GP as making blanket statements (his statement was accurate) while making a blanket statement that's inaccurate. There are political trends on HN but they don't necessarily fit neatly into left/right, especially given that defining those terms is extremely problematic in the first place.
That’s because politics has two axises. HN is definitely left-leaning, but in support of social democracy. Hacker News is first and foremost populated by /hackers/ and we don’t go for authoritarianism. We know that as left-leaning as we are, the only good tankie is a dead tankie.
Some ideas are well worth discussing but never implementing, authleft schools of thought definitely fall in that bucket.
As I was saying, defining "left" is problematic, different people mean different things by that term. To me, left means anti-establishment, anti-censorship, pro free speech, anti war. I see tons of people on here defending censorship of social media ("they're private corporations"), pro Ukraine war. I see much less defense of the women's rights movement on HN than I traditionally associate with the left. I mean the comment I just responded to is a perfect example -- the guy is tearing someone down for pointing out imperialism from the Belgian government. "HN leans left" isn't something you can substantiate in my view.
Left/Right is split on economics, almost entirely, and specifically on the topic of private property vs public property and where the line is drawn, inclusive of many things besides real estate that count as “property”. Philosophically it is a split between Collectivism and Individualism, and almost all conflicts revolve around duty to self vs duty to society.
There are very left-wing political movements in history, including arguably the most “successful” and powerful that were pro-censorship, against free speech, and explicitly warmongering. “Anti-establishment” is a meaningless term, whoever is currently in power is the “establishment”, regardless of anything else.
HN is far more left than the typical viewpoint in the US, which is the country that dominates discussion here. The US has no true left-wing major party, but the closest thing we have (neoliberal globalists with collectivist views on social responsibility) is not only the party currently in power, but arguably put there by significant financial support from individuals and companies in tech.
You can take that or interpret that however you want, I’m agreeing with the GP to my original comment.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong, the issues are not that simple. The parties have huge internal divisions and so many Americans don’t vote precisely because that’s not true. The issues are based on philosophies, you’re drawing a distinction that has no significance to the point.
> Collectivism and Individualism
No that is not the only way all major issues are divided. And even where they are, there are policy nuances that may align with both and be rolled into a single solution.
I already explained how HN is on major issues not left. I’m not going to repeat it. To say “those are just issues” doesn’t make HN left when it’s advocating positions from the right.
> I’m sorry but this is just wrong, the issues are not that simple.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I wrote. I am very clearly acknowledging the complexity of political philosophy, which is why there are two axes, not a single line. There is not just Left/Right, but the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. Political philosophies can be identified as a coordinate on a two-dimensional plane in relation to one another. https://www.politicalcompass.org/ is one attempt to do so (however not necessarily conclusively correct).
> > Collectivism and Individualism
> No that is not the only way all major issues are divided.
All political philosophies fundamentally reduce to whether they derive primacy for the individual or for society. Of course, all strike some balance between the two, and there are significant nuances, but if you do not recognize this, I would argue you do not have the necessary base knowledge of political philosophy to engage in this conversation, certainly not to assert that I am incorrect.
While some of Belgium population did profit from it, the argument that all of Belgium current wealth is whole depend on the Congo is complete nonsense.
Capitalism is what is starting to drive some people back into eastern Europe now.
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Even in the UK the young move from less prosperous areas to more prosperous ones.
Globally, people need to be educated on the reality of what's behind the camera not the illusion portrayed in front of it.
In general people should engage in more geographic mobility.
They're also abusing the asylum process to get to stay in the UK. It's a massive problem.
It takes one or two generations for that secondary effect of revitalization but it happens as children and grandchildren of those who emigrated want to return to their culture and find land prices very low.
I've seen it in rural China, India, and Italy before that. Even Russia had a large number of emigrant's (or their children) return during the economic book in the 2000's. Potion ruined that, and many have since left again, but it demonstrates the effect.
Eastern Europe will be the same.
It points at how miserable virtually all Albanians that get baited into traveling to UK have it
Remember that a greater number of people who stayed would have died as miserable alcoholics. Women are still beaten by their husbands in small towns. Boredom leads to drugs.
Even in the US suicides are 50% higher per capita in rural vs urban areas.
If someone is happy in a rural area they should stay. But if they aren't and they get up the gumption to leave who are you to sit in judgement of how stupid they are?
It is better to move out of towns like this. Better != perfect.
People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time. How do you afford it? By becoming an influencer yourself, of course.
The "hustle culture" pyramid scheme is going to collapse soon, and lots of young people are going to have a rough life because of it.
Maybe Elon can send them all to Mars, along with the telephone sanitation technicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0
What do you expect when there are no good jobs left over for college grads between the double whammy of a pandemic and LLM automation threats? Not everybody can be software engineers and most other entry level jobs simply don't pay well enough for a decent life in most cities. It's no wonder that the average non-STEM major are turning towards "hustling" on tiktok when their future contains either prostituting themselves on OnlyFans or being a perpetual serf in the service industry.
I think given the housing shortage there's a lot of untapped potential in construction/furnishings we'd only need a but of deregulation to unleash.
From the perspective of the ruling class (whether the capitalist elite of the haut bourgeoisie, or the pre-capitalist elite of the landed aristocracy) people with jobs have always been NPCs, and there’s always been a segment of society below that elite that spends money to conspicuously adopt outward trappings of elite lifestyle (and attitudes) for attention, as a tool for entertaining the masses, and for grift. Modern “influencers” may use a new medium to reach their audience, but they aren’t otherwise a particularly novel thing.
Additionally, though clearly unfair - 1-2 years of labor with pay seems like a reasonable trade off for the rest of your life to be significantly improved? Making immigration legal or at least legitizming parts of it even if the immigration remains illegal seems like it’d be a huge step.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOwZxRT5Qc
Even before then I thought it might be great to make A4 phased array antennas with photographs of dictators on them so people could put them on their walls were satellite dishes are forbidden.