Comment Re:...and Kim is to blame (Score 2) 45
I pretty much think they well could. I actually lived in a communist country for quite a long while and I personally, first-hand, know how things worked there. "Control by the government" is a grossly overstated illusion.
The fact of the matter is, the guards, especially the ones working "in the field" and whose tasks are to control the actual people rather then organize the whole process, are usually recruited from these proverbial illiterate peasants, so the educated city dwellers could very easily find the loopholes in the written and unwritten laws and customs to do whatever the hell they please, especially if they are criminally minded. There's always a way to conceal what you do on the internet from a low-ranked guard tasked in controlling you, because you know your computer system in and out and he doesn't. In order to get you scrutinized by the higher-level (and educated) officials this guard would need something more than just a suspicion of your wrong-doing. Provoke his suspicion three times in a row without actually doing anything "prohibited", watch his angry superiors investigate the empty suspicion and shut him up for good; after that you're free to do whatever. That's just one way of doing things, there are many others.
It only appears that totalitarian governments control the crime, the reality is rather far from that appearance.
My initial post was intended as a sarcasm regarding the well-ingrained mindset among the Westerners (not only Americans) that regards the people in the communist and ex-communist countries as some kind of untermenschen, a mere drones at the command of their Supreme Leaders. The replies I received here so far only underscores the assessment that this mindset is pretty much alive and unshaken.
The fact of the matter is, the guards, especially the ones working "in the field" and whose tasks are to control the actual people rather then organize the whole process, are usually recruited from these proverbial illiterate peasants, so the educated city dwellers could very easily find the loopholes in the written and unwritten laws and customs to do whatever the hell they please, especially if they are criminally minded. There's always a way to conceal what you do on the internet from a low-ranked guard tasked in controlling you, because you know your computer system in and out and he doesn't. In order to get you scrutinized by the higher-level (and educated) officials this guard would need something more than just a suspicion of your wrong-doing. Provoke his suspicion three times in a row without actually doing anything "prohibited", watch his angry superiors investigate the empty suspicion and shut him up for good; after that you're free to do whatever. That's just one way of doing things, there are many others.
It only appears that totalitarian governments control the crime, the reality is rather far from that appearance.
My initial post was intended as a sarcasm regarding the well-ingrained mindset among the Westerners (not only Americans) that regards the people in the communist and ex-communist countries as some kind of untermenschen, a mere drones at the command of their Supreme Leaders. The replies I received here so far only underscores the assessment that this mindset is pretty much alive and unshaken.
