Would you rather live in the Soviet system or the American?

[United Marxist Nations]

Did you even read my post before you posted that? What part of '48 did you not understand?

You cited war damages as an excuse, but I don't you understand that even in periods of peace the USSR consistently displayed poor economic management.

I cited war damage as the cause of the only famine that happened after industrialization.

[Constantinopolis]

In the Soviet Union no matter what I do I would be the same as everyone else no matter how hard I work.

Not true. The difference in pay was much smaller than under capitalism, of course, but pay differentials existed nonetheless. There was more equality than under capitalism, but nothing close to absolute equality.

If you didn't acted like if you were in favour of the repression you would be kicked put of your job

Actually, the one thing that really couldn't happen to you was getting fired. It was not possible to fire people in the Soviet system (the closest thing was a disciplinary transfer to a different job). The only way you could lose your job was by getting arrested, which, in the post-Stalin era, happened very rarely. You basically had to scream "fuck communism" on a crowded street, or something equally attention-catching, to get yourself arrested.

Also, fun fact: Since the United States currently has the highest percentage of people in prison out of any country in recent history, that means you are more likely to get arrested in the present-day US than in the Soviet Union.

[The Grey Wolf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union

Can you give examples from that era from that article about people being punished for criticism?

This fine chap might like to have a word with you.

[The Remnants of Kobol]

Well, one of those systems systematically crossed names off my family tree.

I think I prefer the American system. That system may be pretty shit, but at least I'm not a "political enemy" for being born with the wrong last name.

[Valkalan]

You cited war damages as an excuse, but I don't you understand that even in periods of peace the USSR consistently displayed poor economic management.

I cited war damage as the cause of the only famine that happened after industrialization.

And other famines are to be ignored as if some how the rest of the USSR's history is a justification?

[Constantinopolis]

Look: It is true that in the Soviet Union you could get arrested for opposing the government, but in the United States you can get arrested for extremely petty crimes, and the number of basically-innocent people held in US prisons for petty crimes dwarfs the number of political prisoners in the late USSR.

[United Marxist Nations]

I cited war damage as the cause of the only famine that happened after industrialization.

And other famines are to be ignored as if some how the rest of the USSR's behavior is a justification?

Famines during industralization happened due to attempts to industrialize rapidly, that is, when the Soviet Union barely even existed. By that logic, child labor and slavery should be rampant in what we're comparing.

[Constantinopolis]

I cited war damage as the cause of the only famine that happened after industrialization.

And other famines are to be ignored as if some how the rest of the USSR's behavior is a justification?

Why do you keep responding with "there was a famine in 1932-33!" to UMN's statement that there were no famines after industrialization?

Yes, there was a famine in 1932-33. And then there was another one in 1948, due to war damage. And then there were no others. That's his point: After the USSR industrialized, there were no more famines.

[Valkalan]

And other famines are to be ignored as if some how the rest of the USSR's behavior is a justification?

Why do you keep responding with "there was a famine in 1932-33!" to UMN's statement that there were no famines after industrialization?

Yes, there was a famine in 1932-33. And then there was another one in 1948, due to war damage. And then there were no others. That's his point: After the USSR industrialized, there were no more famines.

Then came the economic stagnation that you and I have already discussed. My only point is that even in peacetime the economy of the USSR was ill-managed with disastrous results.

[United Marxist Nations]

Easily the American system, considering I possess significantly more political freedoms, have greater capacity for artistic expression, and have lesser reasons to fear what will happen to me because of my sexual orientation and gender identity.

It is highly likely that the Soviet system would have reformed its view of homosexuality and the various LBGT things just like the entire rest of the world did. I mean, let's not pretend that the Soviet Union was around when people weren't being put in mental institutions for it in the Western countries.

[United Marxist Nations]

Why do you keep responding with "there was a famine in 1932-33!" to UMN's statement that there were no famines after industrialization?

Yes, there was a famine in 1932-33. And then there was another one in 1948, due to war damage. And then there were no others. That's his point: After the USSR industrialized, there were no more famines.

Then came the economic stagnation that you and I have already discussed. My only point is that even in peacetime the economy of the USSR was ill-managed with disastrous results.

Can you really call the period between two wars that killed millions of people, and that was marked by desperately trying to prepare for the next war to avoid being destroyed in it "peacetime"?

[Occupied Deutschland]

Seeing as I'd be shot in the back of the head in the Soviet system, at best, I'm gonna have to go with 'American' by default.

[United Marxist Nations]

Seeing as I'd be shot in the back of the head in the Soviet system, at best, I'm gonna have to go with 'American' by default.

What would get you shot in the back of the head? You could always become a subsistence hunter (totally allowed in the USSR, even under Stalin). In the rest of the USSR's history, there wasn't near as much shot to the back of the head stuff.

[Imperializt Russia]

The inconvenient truth of the Soviet system is that it only works in small, self-policing groups of people. It does not account for humanity.

You're thinking of communism. The supposed goal of the Soviet leadership. Socialism does not have to be a transitionary state to communism.

Socialism actually works quite nicely - at least a "socialised" society.
The NHS, for example, was once eerily similar to the Soviet model of socialised healthcare. That's what it is.

Under the Soviets, everyone had a job. Everyone had healthcare. Everyone had a house.
Not literally everyone, there were obviously outliers, dissidents aside.
But, in how it expected its citizens to live (after toeing party line), it was fairer and more just, certainly moreso than the United States. Poverty rampant, healthcare unaffordable and measures to change that violently opposed, threatening economic disaster under frankly vile rhetoric branding it as "communist". The idea that a person is entitled to receive medical care, "communist".

Says everything you need to know about capitalism as a system, or at least the US' interpretation of it.

[Occupied Deutschland]

Seeing as I'd be shot in the back of the head in the Soviet system, at best, I'm gonna have to go with 'American' by default.

What would get you shot in the back of the head? You could always become a subsistence hunter (totally allowed in the USSR, even under Stalin). In the rest of the USSR's history, there wasn't near as much shot to the back of the head stuff.

1. Owning a business
2. Distributing banned material
3. Opposition to the people's Soviets decisions
4. Political dissension.
Etc.

I'd consider, in this situation, deportment to a gulag as worse than a shot to the back of the head, for context.

I don't want to be a subsistence hunter. What I want would be illegal under the Soviet system (unless I was a soviet political figure with enough clout to skirt the rules).

[Valkalan]

Then came the economic stagnation that you and I have already discussed. My only point is that even in peacetime the economy of the USSR was ill-managed with disastrous results.

Can you really call the period between two wars that killed millions of people, and that was marked by desperately trying to prepare for the next war to avoid being destroyed in it "peacetime"?

Yes. There were no significant hostilities between the combatants of the World Wars at that time. The mass preparation for war by far the most pronounced in Germany and the USSR. However in the case of the USSR, were it not for the generosity of the US all of those years of arming the Red Army may have well been in vain.

[Norstal]

What would get you shot in the back of the head? You could always become a subsistence hunter (totally allowed in the USSR, even under Stalin). In the rest of the USSR's history, there wasn't near as much shot to the back of the head stuff.

1. Owning a business
2. Distributing banned material
3. Opposition to the people's Soviets decisions
4. Political dissension.
Etc.

I'd consider, in this situation, deportment to a gulag as worse than a shot to the back of the head, for context.

2. Distributing banned material

I knew you owned a business but I didn't know you're an owner of a porn studio.

[United Marxist Nations]

What would get you shot in the back of the head? You could always become a subsistence hunter (totally allowed in the USSR, even under Stalin). In the rest of the USSR's history, there wasn't near as much shot to the back of the head stuff.

1. Owning a business
2. Distributing banned material
3. Opposition to the people's Soviets decisions
4. Political dissension.
Etc.

I'd consider, in this situation, deportment to a gulag as worse than a shot to the back of the head, for context.

1) Was not an executing offense, even in Stalin's time, as the NEP was in place at first; it would just be confiscated, and you be either given a job there, or given a job elsewhere.
2) In the time-frame we're talking about, I don't think that was an execution either. Not sure about Stalin-era. In later eras, the material was just confiscated, and you would be interrogated.
3) See 2
4) Define "dissension", it's very vague.

Average sentence to the Gulag system was <4 years.

[United Marxist Nations]

Can you really call the period between two wars that killed millions of people, and that was marked by desperately trying to prepare for the next war to avoid being destroyed in it "peacetime"?

Yes. There were no significant hostilities between the combatants of the World Wars at that time. The mass preparation for war by far the most pronounced in Germany and the USSR. However in the case of the USSR, were it not for the generosity of the US all of those years of arming the Red Army may have well been in vain.

The US could not have taken up the slack for the entirety of the USSR's industry, as the USSR was a massive industrial power in 1941.

[Occupied Deutschland]

1. Owning a business
2. Distributing banned material
3. Opposition to the people's Soviets decisions
4. Political dissension.
Etc.

I'd consider, in this situation, deportment to a gulag as worse than a shot to the back of the head, for context.

2. Distributing banned material

I knew you owned a business but I didn't know you're an owner of a porn studio.

The 'business' is just a cover.
I'm the biggest distributor of the Anarchist Cookbook in the Western US.

Also, I sell Catcher in the Rye out of the back of my truck to the local Christian schools. *nod*

[Norstal]

Average sentence to the Gulag system was <4 years.

It's not the length that counts. It's amount of punishment you subjected to whilst in the Gulag.

[Constantinopolis]

1. Owning a business

That wasn't so much a crime as it was an impossibility. There was no option to legally start a business, or privately own one, or enter into legal business contracts. You could try to start an informal black market business, of course, but that's different. And the penalty for black market activity was a fine and the confiscation of your black market goods, or prison time in the worst cases. Certainly not death.

2. Distributing banned material
3. Opposition to the people's Soviets decisions
4. Political dissension.
Etc.

The standard penalty for doing those things in the late USSR was being denied promotions in your workplace - in other words being stuck in an entry-level job for your whole life. And, of course, any banned materials would be confiscated, and the police officer dealing with your case might interrogate you to find out if other people were involved. But only if you did such things repeatedly and publicly could you expect actual prison time. And, again, the death penalty was completely out of the question.

[Jute]

How about a middle way? Don't know if it has been mentioned before, but in Germany for example there is state-provided healthcare as well (alongside private healthcare), and for those in the need housing is subsidied as well.
Employment is not guaranteed, but you are being helped to find a good job and various laws protect you from being easily fired, in a way that even benefits the employer (a model that is now being copied in various places in the world, since it has worked pretty well, it's called "Kurzarbeit", meaning half working hours in times of crisis with 75 % payment, partly payed by the state, as far as I know.)

[Occupied Deutschland]

1. Owning a business
2. Distributing banned material
3. Opposition to the people's Soviets decisions
4. Political dissension.
Etc.

I'd consider, in this situation, deportment to a gulag as worse than a shot to the back of the head, for context.

1) Was not an executing offense, even in Stalin's time, as the NEP was in place at first; it would just be confiscated, and you be either given a job there, or given a job elsewhere.
2) In the time-frame we're talking about, I don't think that was an execution either. Not sure about Stalin-era. In later eras, the material was just confiscated, and you would be interrogated.
3) See 2
4) Define "dissension", it's very vague.

Average sentence to the Gulag system was <4 years.

1) And when I refused to allow it to be confiscated? I'll answer my own question: I become a 'counterrevolutionary'.
2) And after repeated such events I become a 'counterrevolutionary'. Gulag and/or death. Both equally shitty prospects, albeit death might be slightly more tempting.
3) See 2
4) Speaking out against the system. Something the 'Soviet' system couldn't survive when it was allowed to a broader degree than it had been since the inception of the USSR when glasnost came into vogue in the 80s.

If I wasn't sent back into the Gulag system immediately after being released, it means my mind would have been broken by Soviet propaganda and punishment to make me a willing drone. A fate worse than death.

[Kazirstan]

I would have to say the Soviet system. Free services are something I can get here in Canada, but having dental care, pharmaceuticals, internet, and university paid for by the state is even better. Subsidized housing is an added bonus, and guaranteed employment is a godsend*.

*not really, I'm actually an atheist