That's interesting, because I was guessing you would say one of the 'Stans or something like that. English language media make it sound like Slovenians are much better off today than under Tito, even that Slovenia has its act together relatively speaking, which is why it was the first of the former Yugoslavian countries to accede to the EU. Would you say they're wildly off base?
Which country?
I suppose if you're in a country that moved from communism to a different kind of top down system where government is powerful enough to control everything and bestow favors on friends of policy makers, then yeah, things would still suck. But that sort of cronyism isn't laissez faire capitalism and it certainly hasn't been every society's postcommunist experience.
Anyway, joking aside, social democracies as seen in i.e. northern Europe and perhaps Canada are hardly bastions of slavery.
They're also not socialist per se, since, generally, the means of production are still more or less privately owned.
I don't think of Canada's system as all that different from that in the U.S. Taxes are a bit higher and they have a single payer healthcare system. Are there any other major differences?
In fact, slavery was mostly practised by capitalists, as it was the ultimate low cost labour and desired by large scale land owners and maybe industrialists, not by communist collectives.
I have friends who grew up under communism. From their descriptions, I don't think they'd appreciate the distinction.
And the USA was rather guilty of using it, yet I don't think anyone is looking back to pre-civil war USA and thinking, "socialism!"
Fair enough, but that's because socialism (and I mean full frontal socialism, not a welfare state) is a subset of slavery, not a synonym for it.
The BBC gives a tailored page depending on where you're connecting from.
In the U.S. You get the U.S. front page. That's what americans want.
I'm American, and I don't want that. But they let me switch to the international front page, so it's all good.
To continue the list, when I checked out Voice of America it was a lot better than I expected, and RT's not bad either, at least when reporting on things other than Russia.
To continue your metaphor, most Western countries have had policies that act like snowmaking machines for some time now, so you're probably right.
How stupid he must be to have had, for a long time, the signature "Socialism is slavery".
Not really. If the state owns everything you need to survive, it's hardly a stretch to say that it effectively owns you.
Bullshit, or you'd have done it already.
Or see Walmart's web site, where they sell new Acer 10.1" Aspire One netbooks for $228.
I got my mom, now 78, on Ubuntu Linux several years ago, and she's been happy with it since. She like to post pics of the grandkids, print things, etc., as well and I can't imagine asking her to use a tablet as her primary machine.
If someone has webmail and basically thinks that the web is their computer, then this might not make a difference. Use cases matter.
Where were free markets tested?
Indeed. I grew up in D.C. and always wondered why homeless people didn't migrate south for the winter. Then I moved to South Florida and found out that a lot of them do.
Right, he was making a suggestion, not lamenting about the current state of things.
Work without a vision is slavery, Vision without work is a pipe dream, But vision with work is the hope of the world.
