latvia here i come!!

[krustytheclown]

Thanks for the perspective, folks!

Just a few things to consider:

1) The Soviet Union's policies killed over 30 million of its own citizens in the form of starvation, executions, purges and deaths in Siberian exiles. The Chinese Communists are also directly responsible for 30+ million deaths of its citizens in the form of starvation, executions and purges. Again, how many deaths are corporations directly responsible for?

2) Current American interrogation techniques are brutal and a crime, BUT, you need to again consider the scale on which they are being done between capitalistic societies and communistic societies. WAY more people are tortured in communist countries, using techniques whose brutality make the American techniques pale in comparison. Again, another strike against the "virtues" of communism.

3) COMMUNISTIC MEDICINE IS NOT FREE! This is the number one thing that discredits any proponent of communistic medicine. How do you think the hospitals get built, the medical equipment gets purchased, the medicine gets purchased, the utility bills get paid, the salary of the staff get paid? These scams are financed through crushing taxes on all people. So, people are taxed up to 70% of their income under threat of force: pay your taxes to fund this system, or we will imprison you for trying to stop us from confiscating your money. And besides, when the government has an ownership interest in health care, they can easily use it as an excuse to oppress people: don't smoke, don't engage in certain activites such as skydiving or gymnastics, you must live within X meters of a health care facility, you may only have X children, etc. And, besides, it is proven time and again monopolies do not allow for technological advancement...if there's no reason to improve, why would anyone? Communistic health care scams will kill the possibility of any medical significant medical breakthroughs.

4) If these places are so great, then why did people risk death to defect to the West? Why did few Westerners defect to the communists?

5) As far as luxury goods being available: a 2-stroke Lada which cost 2 years salary and had a 5-year waiting list? The fact that Putin- you know, the President of Russia- STILL has multiple phones on his desk because the country's telecommunication infrastructure is still stuck in the 1960's?

6) The widespread prohibition of books and ideas? The thousands of political prisoners? You really can't be that blind...

Please do not romanticize such an evil, brutal ideology as socialism and communism. The bad far outweighs what little good existed in those governments.

I'll take capitalism over communism or socialism any day. At least I have the choice to live like I'm in the Stone Age as opposed to being *forced* to live that way for some stupid ideology.

 

[naga_sadu]

1) The Soviet Union's policies killed over 30 million of its own citizens in the form of starvation, executions, purges and deaths in Siberian exiles. The Chinese Communists are also directly responsible for 30+ million deaths of its citizens in the form of starvation, executions and purges. Again, how many deaths are corporations directly responsible for?

As far as the USSR is concerned, the purge of 30 million was true- but only during Stalinism. In the post Stalinist years, it wasn't uncommon for official newspapers to openly criticize his policies, which bought forth such a purge. More than Soviet policy itself, the deaths of the 30 million plus was caused by forced demographic relocations during the second world war.

Another different between SOcialist and capitalistic run systems is that the former doesn't have a global thrust whereas the latter does. If you want to account how many deaths corporate policy has accounted for, you'll need to take the death tally of 'Nam, for starters. The Iraq war. The arming of the Taliban (in the 80s) for short sighted goals. The global promotion and proliferation of the war on drugs, etc...

2) Current American interrogation techniques are brutal and a crime, BUT, you need to again consider the scale on which they are being done between capitalistic societies and communistic societies. WAY more people are tortured in communist countries, using techniques whose brutality make the American techniques pale in comparison. Again, another strike against the "virtues" of communism.

The US jails 7 times more folks than the Peoples' Republic of China, even if the US pop is around 300 mil and the Chinese at 1.3 billion and the US houses 22.5% of the world's total prisoner population (Source: L.E.A.P). And you can't really say one form of torture is better than the other. Is it "better" to have you raped by a Siberian yak or to have a beer bottle shuved up your 6'0'clock?? I dunno...

In Socialist prisons, you get the shit beaten out of you day and night, for a really long time but in "democratic" prisons, you get to become the sex slave of "big nasty joe" day and night, for a really long time.

Since this is a travellers' forum, I'll try and connect the aspect of a traveller here. When I visited Soviet towns outside the citys, you barely saw a cop. From Tashkant to Termez, I remember seeing no more than 3-4 cops on route. In our typical modern "democracy", especially the "developed" ones, cop cars litter the streets, the chowks and the roadways. During Soviet times, for example, in Termez, the "counter narcotics" division of the police forces had an old, beat up UAZ jeep and had no more than a dozen men who'd play cards all day. Now, in capialist Uzbekistan, for instance, the counter narcotics forces are far more active, and have about 5000+ members enlisted. And they've arrested 10000+ in a fiscal quarter and thrown them in jails... Talk about freedom man...

Also, in Termez, it wasn't uncommon for people to smoke mj in full view of Soviet Red Army troops stationed there. And they didn't give a shit. Try that now and you get shot...

3) COMMUNISTIC MEDICINE IS NOT FREE! This is the number one thing that discredits any proponent of communistic medicine. How do you think the hospitals get built, the medical equipment gets purchased, the medicine gets purchased, the utility bills get paid, the salary of the staff get paid?

Socialist economies are managed by workers' and traders' unions, and not by bureaucrats. All the material inputs required to physically construct the hospitals are supplied by factories and units such as steel factories, cement factories, carpentrys etc. Each of those factors producing the inputs required to build a hospital (for example) would be managed by workers working in those different input producing units. Then all the costs would be collected and compiled onto a white paper. So, people knew exactly how much a hospital cost. As in, the white paper envisioned a hospital in 5 years that would house 300 patients and 20 speciality cases in your town, and after the time mentioned, the actual results after completion fell below what was written in the white paper, you could say WTF. In capitalistic systems, there's simply no way of finding out open costing for corporate run projects. This paves way for lots of funds siphoning for non productive use. In practicality, the hospitals looked bare by US standards, but they did the job.

And for the poorer person, this meant that there were absolutely zero wastefully spent resources that went into building that hospital- such as tinted glass deco, interior design, imported equipment, manicured lawns, expensive furniture, central A/C, TVs in each room etc. Such structures add marketing appeal to your hospital, in terms of attracting an exclusive clientale, but push the variable (operational) costs way high.

Actually, if you are involved in the construction biz as a commission agent or a promoter, you'd be shell shocked at how much non productive inputs jack up unit price.

And in capitalistic economies, all transactions are measured by cash. Not so in Socialistic ones. For example, in a typical capitalistic model, a firm producing steel bars (required to build a hospital) would supply the material to a contractor, who would employ an engineer and a construction team. The mfr. of the steel bar would inflate the price by a good 16%-25% and the contractor further jacks up the price by another 10-20%. And mind it that the steel bar is but ONE input to building a hospital. You also have others such as cement, bricks, construction jelly, etc. A typical "commercial structure" has no less than 250 physical inputs. And don't forget, most private investors (in a capitalistic economy) who build the hospital don't invest out of their hard cash reserves, but do it out of a loan they take from a private bank, which again, invites a compound interest rate. So, by the time a hospital is complete, you have astronomical fixed and variable costs, which can only be covered through marketing to a clientale that's able to pay for the treatment you provide. This is either done indirectly thru private health insurance aka. daylight robbery.

Socialist economies were free of this sort of thing. Say a steel factory was located in Murmmansk and a hospital was being built in Termez. Inside the Murmmansk steel factory, you'd have the workers unions deciding productivity quotas. The central planning commission would usually induce a 25% surplus target. Also note that in communistic systems, the work hours are divided amongst a large labour force. You'd have three 4 hour shifts instead of one 8 hour shifts. Out of the 3 shifts, the first two would go into covering the productivity target set by workers working in that factory, which would go into funding local projects (such as housing in Murmmansk, for example) and the remaining shift would generate the surplus target set.

The surplus steel that's produced here gets directly loaded onto trucks and rails and is transported to the physical location where the hospital is being built. The same works for every other physical input. And the remaining stock - the surplus gets distributed locally. So, in the end, if you calculate the markups private sector providers charge, with direct transfers, you'll notice that building a hospital doesn't cost that much at all.

And the industries were located in locales where the people favoured industrialisation and modernisation. For example, the Latvians, Estonians and Belarussians favoured industrialisation, whereas the Uzbeks and the Tajiks didn't. The Uzbeks, the Turkmen and Tajiks favoured an agrarian lifestyle. In effect, you'd naturally see more industrialisation in Latvia, Estonia and Belarus than in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Since the Uzbeks didn't favour industrialisation, you would only see a very few limited traces of industrialisation and modernisation in an Uzbeki locale. An Uzbeki locale would only appeal for "industrialisation" projects they deemed necessary: such as hospitals, fire stations, and schools. SO, in this way, the cost of industrialisation was also efficiently managed.

I also found the SOviet Union very condusive to a "backwoods" type of lifestyle as well. For one, you didn't need to buy land if you wanted to live off the natural economy. If you saw a piece of unused land, you were more than free to occupy it, and support yourself out of it- housing included. Many people in the USSR lived this way. Modern corporate run economies tend to streamroll those types of non mercantile cultures.

The entire system collapsed when the control over the factories and other units of production were taken away from the workers & traders unions and handed over to bureaucrats. This was done in the mid 80s. The main goal of some bureaucrats was inidividual wealth accumulation. The main goal of others was to build their personal fiefdoms. They ended up collapsing the system and in effect, formed their own niches, either politically or economically. After the USSR collapsed, people like Sardar Turkmenbashi and Alexandr Lukashenko ran their own sub-states like their kingdoms. Other more "sophisticated" ones like Boris Berezovski became multi billionares who even had private armies. The system failed in the USSR because it was destroyed from within, and not because of some inherent flaw in the system.

Most Western analyses only focuses on 2 phases of the Soviet economy: The Stalinist years and all the chaos that ensured in the mid 80s during PErestroika and Glabonist. The entire time frame in between is left out. And by travelling to the USSR, I was lucky to pick up on them.

5) As far as luxury goods being available: a 2-stroke Lada which cost 2 years salary and had a 5-year waiting list? The fact that Putin- you know, the President of Russia- STILL has multiple phones on his desk because the country's telecommunication infrastructure is still stuck in the 1960's?

Cars weren't necessary in the Soviet UNion, the public bus system was hardcore efficient. And the priority of the SOviet economy was not the provision of cellphones, but was the accomodation of the vast diversity of socio economies the USSR encompassed. You had "Western" socio-economies such as Latvia and Estonia and at the same time, very constrasting ones such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

6) The widespread prohibition of books and ideas? The thousands of political prisoners? You really can't be that blind...

Books were outright banned in the USSR, I agree. But there WAS counter culture. But how's about the availability of unbiased, factual info in our so called advanced democracies? We have lots of "official" sources and channels. But they all speak the same opinionated, one sided biased bullshit.

The USSR had tens and thousands of political prisoners, but our modern democracies have incarcerated enough people to be classified as the largest hosts of the world's total prisoner population. Every incarceration that results from the drug war, is indeed a socio-economic / political prisoner. ANd there are MANY. The Soviets never forced other countries to incarcerate people. The exporting of the war on drugs on a global scale does this.

And remember the Vietnam war? The people of Vietnam were punished for choosing an alternative to capitalism to such a degree that 14% of their total population lost their lives.

I find it highly skeptical that we would've had bhang shops in India had we aligned ourself w/ the US (instead of the USSR).

I'll take capitalism over communism or socialism any day. At least I have the choice to live like I'm in the Stone Age as opposed to being *forced* to live that way for some stupid ideology.

Nobody "forced" you to live in a particular way. As a matter of fact, if you've travelled to the USSR, you'd find that the system was WAY more accomodating to different cultures and ways of life than is corporate capitalism. My travels have made me observe that corporate capitalism as a system is way too linear for a diverse socio-economy.

For example, during SOviet times, there were populations who didn't favour industrialisation at all and were content with maintaining an agrarian community w/ extended families etc. These were your Central Asian Republics. The Baltic states like Latvia comprised of a culture that closely mirrored the West. But the Soviet economy never sidelined those who didn't favour industrialisation or modernisation. The Uzbeks got all the provisions of the Soviet PDS (public [resource] distribution system). For example, the literacy rates in Uzbekistan reached at 99% according to Western estimates.

Take any capitalistic society, for example. You have portions of the population who develop astronomically and those who are simply forgotten. The contingents of the population who have a socio-economy that resembles the corporate capitalists' vision of development or are deemed as "profitable" by the capitalist system get benefitted. The other sections are vastly ignored. Take Malaysia and look at how the Penan live. Take the Philippines and look at how the farming community in Luzon lives today after the farmlands they lived in for generations were seized and converted into SEZs for MNCs like Dole.



So, anyone whose culture and way of life doesn't mirror the vision of capitalism and consumerism is sidelined, ignored and never even given a chance to even sniff (let alone eat) the "economic pie." Of course, these guys in the pics weren't forced to live in such conditions by evil capitalists wearing swakny suits but social mobility is shut to such a degree that people have no alternative but to scrape a living by a garbage landfill. The only "mistake" these guys made was to have a different culture than cosmopolitanism.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Socialistic systems is that you didn't have private property. That's wrong. If you had a store called "Krustytheclown's mechanic shop" you owned that place and not some bureaucrat. However, you would be a part of a union consisting of others who owned mechanic shops in your locality. As a collective, you would decide on how much demand there is, and how much supply there should be. This process was collectively done and not centrally managed (except in the post Andropov USSR). This white paper was available to any person who could either get it from any mechanic shop or from any municipal office. The unionisation of trade was done in order to prevent monopolisation tactics by some suppliers w/a bigger cash reserve and for the sake of consumer confidence.

In the unregulated capitalist market, what happens is that some players w/ larger cash reserves mark down the price and shut down competition. After the competition is gone, they mark the price back up to the levels way higher than it was before they marked it down. This is how the would-be drug warriors such as Hearst became frevalent monopolists. Remember, according to Smith's version of a free market, no single player in a service or industry ought to have more clout than the others.

Also another point of unionisation of trade was to make price levels and industrial profitability uniform. You were given a profit bracket, within which you could charge consumers. The bracket ensured that no consumer got exploited due to lack of market information. In Smith's version of a free market, "perfect competition" in an industry is made possible only if the consumers have access to perfect information. ANY profit incurred due to consumer mis-information is called super-normal profit, a mercantilist phenominon Smith vigorously despised. So, if you had "Krusty's garage" and I had "Sadu's garage", and you charged higher than me, but at the same time, gave better quality service- the consumer knew why there was a price differencial and could choose between quality service and cost.

And the industry was designed around national development. For example, a Soviet automobile, even a luxury car like the Zil (the Zil has THE COMFIEST back seat around btw)- could be opened up and repaired by any mechanic in any town. The cars were made around a more mechanical (versus computerised) mechanism implied that it could be serviced by mechanic sheds nationwide and not just a few topshot sheds who have the $$$ to setup a capital intensive shed. Servicing a car like a Camry, for example, requires immense investment in capital. They can't be tinkered by a local mech. No way. This alone shuts off the doors of opportunity in the automobile industry to those who don't have a capital (machinery & technology) intensive shed.

And besides, when the government has an ownership interest in health care, they can easily use it as an excuse to oppress people: don't smoke, don't engage in certain activites such as skydiving or gymnastics, you must live within X meters of a health care facility, you may only have X children, etc

Any seasoned traveller whos been to Socialist countrys as well as Corporate run ones will tell you that the SOcialist countrys had far superior smoke scenes Take for example Laos. ANd compare it with Singapore. Or take India. ANd compare it with Malaysia. Or take SOviet Uzbekistan and compare it with the modern Uzbekistan...

And no sane public health planner in the right sense of mind will suggest hindering activities such as skydiving or gymnastics. Speaking of gymnastics, the Soviets dominated in that arena. And they had numerous skydiving clubs in the USSR.

And speaking of X amount of children, that was only done in the Peoples Republic of China. During the 60s-70s, in the USSR, in the Balkans and in the DPRK, housewives got a subsidy per child, which multiplied the more children you had. Many Socialist countrys encouraged people to have single working familys rather than dual because households don't run well if ignored.

The fact is: any seasoned traveller will tell you that life was way less oppressive as far as day to day activities went (i.e. smoking mj, getting an education, finding job w/ security, running a household) in Socialist countries. Don't forget that Holland too in the West follows Euro-Socialism (though some say it's eroding slowly nowadays). This probably is what kept them away from this insane war on drugs, which is pursued pretty religiously in many capitalistic countrys. Which is crappily sad.

Coming to Asia, for example, there's excellent bud that grows in Malaysia's lowland jungles and even on highlands. But it's severely suppressed, and the death penalty is not out of the question. Whereas in Laos, it was a completely different picture, with ladies openly selling it in places like Vang Vieng. Just goes to show you- materialism necessarily isin't an accurate barometer to measuring good administration in a system.

 

[Guest]

krustytheclown, naga_sadu has put everything very well. Actually, we lived happy, had cars and motorcycles, great food, free medicine, it was a pleasure to hunt books hard to come by, trade western jeans and bubblegums for georgian cognac and enjoy street kvass in hot summer. Life was good, mate. Ditches and bumps here and there but so is western way too. You've been seriously brainwashed with anti-soviet propaganda, just like us in the soviets with those scary stories about life in the US. I've seen both and it isn't all that black and white

 

[naga_sadu]

Here are some picturial links that mentioned life from the 60s thru the 80s...

http://voffka.com/archives/2006/06/15/027924.html

ANd here's more:

People:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/people/index.htm

Commerce:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/commerce/index.htm

Agrarian life:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/farming/index.htm

Religion:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/religion/index.htm

Social life (education etc):

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/social-services/index.htm

*None of them are political images, these are just representations of everyday life showing both the pros and cons- of course, only a limited geography is covered in these pics*

just like us in the soviets with those scary stories about life in the US.

Lol, like this?

 

[Guest]

haha, yep, that's pretty much it. Amaizing photographs, thanks dood.

 

[Guest]

While we at it guys, enjoy some pics and a video about Latvia and Riga.
Lots of good Riga pics
Video Latvia

 

[Guest]

and don't forget to kill the munchies at this place

some soviet Latvia pics here

 

[Guest]

second pic restourant "Lido"... werrrrrry nice food.... just get baked there and eat all u can...

 

[naga_sadu]

Omo, that place looks awesome and the food looks mighty delicious! Do you guys get plov & sishlek over there??

 

[Guest]

yes both plov and shashliki.. just smoke some and be there... it will be a paradise to a stoned ppl..

 

[RussianGrower]

Smarx was defending Russians.... EWG is who initially made the "Fucking Russians" remark......

Smarx is RUSSIAN.Respect ,MAN!
...and EWG is donkey,wich continues suck fascism dick!!!

world collapsed........persons,who dispersed firsts procession of veterans of Baltic SS ,presently disperses mass-meetings of the protest against demolition of the monument soviet hero-liberators....19 years old russian guy killed latvia polices.....freaks

clown,may be u recall how much where else people perished...all of meaningless wars?...crusaders,for america,each of american war...and,and,and...
War is process,were strongests die for interests of weaks.(c)...I add:sick interests!
...but all:better die standing up,than live on knee!

naga_sadu,respect too.For foto links - separate.

 

[RussianGrower]

At the same Baltic countries(and not sense) was small change coins at the dirty political games of Big countries,and now its are Mos'ka(little dog in the fable of Krylov) barking on elephant.Justifying treachery ,think up own history.Buy the way, thay don't remember ,what they rose due to soviet union....and they hates russian now.

Don't come Baltic repuplics!There are a fascists!!!...

EWG is who initially made the "Fucking Russians" remark

If not this - I kept silent.....fuckin' russians....I know a lot of anecdotes about batic public(very slowly and short-sighted public) and I can tell its.Its are more laughty than about jews,but abouot chukchi is the most funny.
всем сосать!!!

 

[riseup]

I know this is an old thread and everything, but I just couldn't let a thread about latvia end with someone saying this phrase - "Don't come Baltic repuplics!There are a fascists!!!"

Seriously dude, you have no idea what is going on around here. I live in the capital, so I know what I'm talking about. I have no hate for russians, I think it's lame to divide people by nationality, but here are my observations:
I have never heard of anyone being beaten up just for being russian, by latvians. And I have russian friends. Of course, there are groups of skinheads, but those retards are found all over the world.
On the other hand, it is very easy to get beaten up just for being latvian or not knowing the russian language, if you happen to wonder in the parts of the town where russian people make up the majority of inhabitants. I don't know whats up with this hate that russians have against latvians. My guess is that poverty plus lack of education plus some kind of post-soviet leftover mentality could be to blame in all of this. But again, the first two problems are common around the world.


All-in-all Latvia is a nice place, not the best there is (I personally like Vilnius more as a City, even though I don't live there), but I don't think anyone would deny that the women here are beautiful, the food is nice. Weed here is kind of hard to get though. No use trying to ask for weed to "the usual suspects" aka the rasta-looking guys with dreads, most of them are newmetal fans and drink alcohol. If you find yourself in Riga trying to find weed, try asking some skateboarders(not the little ones obviously, try to approach the ones that are over eighteen), as many of them are friendly people and, if they don't smoke, they usually know someone who does. I think this rule applies in most other countries too hah.
The weed in the streets is usually pretty shitty, I have heard tales of it being laced and shit, don't know if they are true though. A gram of weed usually costs 8-10 lats (that's about 15-19$), but the dealers mostly cheat on the weight, so mostly in place of a gram you get about .6 grams of mostly crappy weed. You could get lucky sometimes and get good quality, but rarely on streets, to get good quality for a fair price you mostly have to know someone who grows. As for night clubs, you could try club Depo, which is in old Riga, or Andrejsala, which is a place with a few underground DIY-ish clubs where artists and other open-minded people hang out, these are the places I'd start asking around for weed. Most of the other clubs are full with sex tourists from britain trying to get laid with the local chicks. That gets a bit annoying sometimes, though I have learned to tolerate them. Undercover cops are rare, I've never heard of anyone getting busted by an undercover.

 

[aker]

Someone will go outside this year?