[HN Gopher] East Germany balloon escape
___________________________________________________________________
East Germany balloon escape
Author : robertvc
Score : 673 points
Date : 2026-01-16 17:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| gnatman wrote:
| The investment, planning, danger, and dogged persistence...
| incredible story.
| VelNZ wrote:
| The Damn Interesting podcast (no affiliation, just a huge fan)
| had an episode on this topic if you prefer to listen to this
| story: https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/
| Isuckatcode wrote:
| You beat me to it :D love the podcast. Too bad they stopped
| uploading from a while ago. You got any suggestions of podcasts
| in similar space? Nothing ever could scratch the itch like Damn
| Interesting
| gwbas1c wrote:
| "Stuff you should know" and "Freakanomics"
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I felt so tense and anxious listening to that.
| mkmk wrote:
| The photo of the balloon here really helps put the story into
| perspective.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museu...
| qwertox wrote:
| The text in the link is nice to read. I did a Google Translate
| on it which you can read here: https://pastebin.com/SdkKQkC6
| neilv wrote:
| > _"Are we here in the West??" Only this one question is asked
| by Peter Strelzyk and Gunter Wetzel when they were in the early
| morning of the 16th._
|
| The "Handmaid's Tale" TV series has a great variation on that
| moment, which chokes me up every single time.
|
| (spoilers in video title)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c
| observationist wrote:
| >Ballonfahrt in die Freiheit
|
| Gotta love the way German sounds to English ears. Always good
| for a chuckle.
|
| This guy is a hacker hero - do the engineering needed, get the
| proof of concept built, move fast, break things, start over and
| go big, then scores a victory over the commies and saves his
| family.
| assaddayinh wrote:
| The private mechanics and electrical hacking culture that is
| the base for German engineering . Tuftler in jedem Schuppen..
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I enjoyed learning about the town of Bad Kissingen
| lostlogin wrote:
| Completely agree - although the shine has rather worn off the
| 'move fast and break things' approach.
| bboygravity wrote:
| SpaceX is doing fine woth that approach?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Great example.
|
| But when Musk took that approach to DOGE, chaos.
|
| And some of the approach hasn't always gone well at Tesla
| either.
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/06/01/elon-musk-
| wan...
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/12/24/elon-
| musk-...
| K0balt wrote:
| This is a great example, an object lesson in something
| that is deeply misunderstood.
|
| Running a company and running a government are
| fundamentally disparate things to the point of one set of
| skills being antithetical to the other, even though there
| is overlap in orthogonal skillsets
|
| A company operates to extract value from employees
| (labor,automation,process, knowledge ) and concentrate
| and deliver that value to a minority set of individuals.
| Debts are costs to be paid. Cash surplus is power to act.
|
| A government operates to -deliver- value to its
| constituents through redistribution of resources towards
| goals that are inherently cost centres. Debts are
| confidence in future economic growth and are not really
| ever paid in any real sense of the term, the monopoly
| game set doesn't get richer or poorer when you move money
| around or print more bills. It only gets richer or poorer
| when you add or take away players, burn or draw in more
| properties or utilities, or melt or 3d print more houses
| and hotels. Cash surplus is useless and
| counterproductive.
|
| The idea that business leaders will be effective
| political leaders is catastrophic. There is no more
| hopeless place to live than a country operated as an
| efficient and well planned business. At least in the
| chaos of Mogadishu or Haiti you can find the fetid seeds
| of opportunity to make something worthwhile, chaos
| creates pockets of opportunity and ad-hoc fiefdoms. Chaos
| is a ladder. A well oiled machine is a stifling factory
| farm, but for people.
|
| Obviously you don't want Mogadishu or Bechtel as your
| governance model, but the sweet spot is closer to
| Mogadishu, at least insofar as mandatory structures
| determining your life trajectory goes. Mogadishu is
| closer to a democracy than Bechtel. At least in Mogadishu
| it's not a centralised power that threatens your life,
| liberty, and pursuit of happiness, just your neighbours.
| It's at least conceptually transcendable.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Rapid prototyping works well in engineering, because you
| can test for faults quickly.
|
| But transferring engineering practices into politics -
| which is not really new, "social engineering" has emerged
| again and again since the Enlightement Era - is usually a
| disaster.
|
| In social contexts, people often cannot agree on what
| even constitutes a "fault" and how to measure outcomes.
| Individuals will adjust their behavior (unlike, say, a
| valve in a rocket engine, which can't consciously decide
| to sabotage the flight) and the systems tend to have long
| feedback loops.
| eru wrote:
| You can only move so 'fast and break things', when failure
| can land you and your family in jail or get you killed.
|
| That being said, the timeline is remarkably short for such a
| hardware project.
| danesparza wrote:
| They originally wanted to make a helicopter. (Not kidding)
| hasanabi wrote:
| "hacker hero" - choke on your own words Spacko, don't spin
| the story!
| nephihaha wrote:
| I keep on thinking it was a lot smaller! Wow!
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Poor family members though
| honzabe wrote:
| I recently read a book of interviews with people who escaped
| from North Korea, and what shocked me was the discovery that
| the relatives of those who escaped are often executed
| (publicly) and that even children are executed in North Korea.
| We live in a terrible world. I mean... you expect a book from
| North Korea to contain terrible things, but somehow it was even
| worse than I expected.
| qcnguy wrote:
| Left wing thought doesn't contain any philosophy of
| limitations on state power, so under a left wing regime there
| is no limit to what it might do. No matter how terrible
| something is, if it can be imagined they will consider
| implementing it. To avoid that outcome there has to be an
| understanding of the flawed nature of government, and from
| that an ideological commitment to a state limited in power
| and role.
| olelele wrote:
| So everyone not a libertarian is dangerous?
| qcnguy wrote:
| Only if they get into power? I mean what's your reading
| of the last few centuries of history?
| immibis wrote:
| > Everything I don't like is left wing.
| qcnguy wrote:
| We're talking about North Korea executing children
| because their family members escaped. Doesn't get more
| left wing than North Korea. Not a good look to deploy a
| stock reply without thinking.
| blahaj wrote:
| North Korea is an extremely class based society. About as
| far away from left as it gets.
| immibis wrote:
| I'm not sure you understand the situation here.
| _Everything_ I don 't like is left-wing.
| nrjames wrote:
| Disney made a movie about this called Night Crossing in the early
| 1980s. More recently, there's a 2018 German movie about it called
| Balloon.
|
| [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774
| lukeweston1234 wrote:
| The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend
| checking it out!
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| +1 to this! I wonder if some of the horror in it (the
| constant threat of the Stasi and its implications) translates
| well to non-German audiences. In case you're wondering about
| Germany's strict privacy laws - this is part of why they
| exist.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Probably this is an also big component in the notorious
| German preference for cash over cards.
| immibis wrote:
| That was caused by interchange fees, and it has
| disappeared now.
| dgxyz wrote:
| It's still a thing in some areas from direct experience
| recently. Hell it's still a thing with former East
| Germans I know in the UK. And it's not about interchange
| fees - it's about purchase surveillance.
|
| My ex partner wouldn't even allow location services on
| her phone to put exif data in photos.
| petre wrote:
| > wouldn't even allow location services on her phone to
| put exif data in photos
|
| This should be standard practice, I do it as well. Not
| East German but East European. We had our own Stasi that
| would terrorize youths for listening to Western music of
| Radio Free Europe.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Yeah everyone suffered that side of things for sure. I'd
| rather have location recorded but not leaked out to
| whoever sold me the phone personally. I don't sync any
| files to the cloud already.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Are you german? Most of my german friends tell me it is
| because after the experiences of nazism and comunism (in
| the GDR), most germans value their privacy a lot.
| assaddayinh wrote:
| The havoc that finding out your family and friends spied on
| you for benefits, can not be overstated. How deeply anti
| social and lonely such a divided and conquered socialist
| utopian society is can not be expressed in words, and yet
| it can.
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesbeauftragter_f%C3%BCr_d
| i...
| 0928374082 wrote:
| Nowadays we don't even need family and friends to spy on
| you for benefits; websites and apps do it for advertising
| revenue.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I wonder if future generations will wonder why being
| spied on and monitored was even noteworthy, let alone a
| cause for concern.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Germany's strict privacy laws
|
| Not anymore.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| No, on the contrary. Germany is a big proponent of
| chatcontrol.
| vlowrian wrote:
| These are two very different things. Significant parts of
| the German government and many German members of the
| European Parliament are proponents of Chat Control. The
| general population, however, still has a strong desire
| for privacy and a deep fear of surveillance and data
| collection, shaped by historical experiences with two
| dictatorships (the Nazi era and the GDR).
|
| That said, there is a substantial disconnect between the
| substantive preferences of the voting population and the
| actual policies and decisions of the parties they elect.
| This is partly because promises like "internal security"
| gain much more traction in times of growing uncertainty
| and global instability, while only a relatively small
| portion of the population fully thinks through, or is
| willing to think through, the consequences and concrete
| legislative changes behind those promises.
|
| Nevertheless, looking at both public attitudes and court
| rulings, it is still fair to say that data protection in
| Germany, even compared to other EU countries, currently
| enjoys a particularly high status.
| qcnguy wrote:
| In practice the average German voter is still supporting
| the coalition against the AfD despite that the coalition
| is implementing Soviet-like policies. They talk
| constantly about banning the most popular political
| party, for example, and they regularly imprison or fine
| people for anti-left political opinions. Germans who
| aren't actively supporting the AfD should feel no sense
| of moral superiority, there simply isn't anything in the
| historical context to feel proud of there.
| vlowrian wrote:
| > and they regularly imprison or fine people for anti-
| left political opinions
|
| Do you have any sources to substantiate this claim? In
| particular, including under which law a prison sentence
| or fine was imposed for the expression of a
| constitutionally protected political opinion.
| qcnguy wrote:
| Nice try. The German constitution is a poor document and
| doesn't protect political opinion, so your
| "constitutionally protected" political opinion caveat
| just makes it useless. You'd just defend every example
| with "our constitution allows that" rather than
| recognizing that it just means the constitution itself is
| wrong.
|
| Example: the American author CJ Hopkins has been
| repeatedly prosecuted in Berlin despite being acquitted
| the first time, because in Germany there's apparently no
| constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. His
| "crime" was criticizing COVID authoritarianism. You're
| now going to tell me why the German constitution allows
| this, and incorrectly use that as a moral justification.
| vlowrian wrote:
| Any source showing people being imprisoned or fined
| merely for expressing an anti-left opinion then? Which
| specific law were they convicted under?
|
| The claim that Germany has "no constitutional protection
| against double jeopardy" is false. Art. 103(3) of the
| constitution embodies ne bis in idem. The German criminal
| procedure allows legal remedies (appeals), including
| Revision (appeal on points of law), which can be brought
| by both parties before a judgment becomes final. That's
| what happened in this case.
|
| In the CJ Hopkins case, the issue was not "criticizing
| COVID authoritarianism" as such, but the use of a banned
| symbol under 86a StGB. One can freely say "the government
| acted authoritarian during COVID"; that kind of political
| criticism is protected speech under Art. 5 GG.
|
| > and incorrectly use that as a moral justification.
|
| I'm not interested in moral justifications. Morality is a
| matter of opinion, and you're entitled to yours just as I
| am to mine. The same applies to your view of the German
| constitution.
|
| However, backing up claims about concrete cases with
| sources helps me (and others) understand which cases
| you're referring to and whether they actually support
| your argument in a way that lets me learn something new
| (preferably) or whether we'll simply end up acknowledging
| that we have different opinions on the matter ;)
| dkga wrote:
| +1, really well-done movie!
| mndgs wrote:
| +2, very nice movie. Might be very eye-opening for any some
| about what it was like under USSR umbrella...
| omnibrain wrote:
| It's interesting that this is a serious movie by the director
| Michael 'Bully' Herbig, who is generally known for bad taste
| comedies, full of clichees about race and sexuality.
| foota wrote:
| I watched Night Crossing in my german class in high school. I
| remember it being intense.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| For the 80s it was intense yes. Watching it now that same
| tension feels milder but I guess that's because every single
| TV show now has to have constant explosions, car crashes etc
| in it.
|
| There is actually gunfire in it and a teenager dies in the
| beginning but it still feels less intense due to the 80s pace
| IMO.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Great movie yes! The 1980s one, I have not seen the new one.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| My elementary school showed the Disney movie about this at least
| once a year.
| neilv wrote:
| That movie was also all over the Disney Channel when I was a
| kid. Many other movies have related messages.
|
| And much of the public library books were a couple generations
| old, plus there was the Cold War, which meant lots of exposure
| to anti-fascism messages, and to anti-Soviet-like messages.
|
| So, today, people of a certain age, who paid attention in
| school, have been programmed that the secret police saying,
| "Your papers, please" and sending people off to concentration
| camps, are obviously the very bad guys, and America is the good
| guys who don't do that. People with that upbringing would see
| certain textbook political maneuvers and tactics coming from a
| mile away, and be concerned.
|
| To counteract that IMHO great programming, you'd need something
| extreme, like Rupert Murdoch and others pounding large swaths
| of the electorate with propaganda for decades -- to get them to
| support some politicians that are stereotypes we were told for
| decades before are outright evil.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I think a lot of that programming and political action was
| because at the time there was genuine fear of communism
| taking over in the US and other western nations (like it
| already had in Eastern Europe).
| neilv wrote:
| Yes, IIUC, that was one of the things that mobilized a lot
| of IMHO positive education/propaganda.
|
| It may not have always been for the most noble of reasons
| (e.g., a very wealthy person not wanting to be disrupted),
| but the fascism-is-bad messages are still great messages.
|
| For example, "Don't Be a Sucker" (long, but worth a watch
| sometime for anyone who hasn't seen it):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I think people do tend to forget the meanings of the
| important words over time though. For example:
|
| Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to
| elect, even if you don't like their choice. (Some people
| reapply that definition to the word "populism". No, it's
| real democracy to elect the people's choice.)
|
| Censorship = intentionally suppress certain ideas and
| messages
|
| Propaganda = choosing what to publish (or even publishing
| lies) to intentionally create or support a particular
| worldview or narrative, especially one that favors
| certain political people or groups (as opposed to simply
| publishing truth to keep those in power accountable)
|
| Fascism = the state tells you what to do, not the other
| way around
|
| Liberty = the people choose what to say and do with their
| own lives, without interference by the state (besides
| enforcement of laws written by democratically elected
| legislators)
|
| Justice = everyone is equally accountable to the law
| regardless of who they are. This especially includes
| legislators and rich/powerful people.
| defrost wrote:
| > Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to
| elect, even if you don't like their choice.
|
| That rather rules out what happens in, say, the USofA,
| where entrenched party politics limits the choice of the
| wider population to those few candidates that are backed.
|
| > Some people reapply that definition to the word
| "populism". No, it's real democracy to elect the people's
| choice.
|
| Populism isn't democracy, democracy isn't populism; it's
| generally used to describe a cynical political strategy
| of appeal to the broadest, lowest common denominator
| instincts, to gain support from a base who at best get
| little more than lip service toward addressing their real
| needs. Frequently associated with strawmen and
| strawissues as a focus of common manufacted enemy, etc.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Agreed on all points. The USofA is very far from true
| democracy. For starters, the NGO networks and a lot of
| unelected bureaucracy are the real government authority
| by quite a margin -- all of whom are directly opposed to
| and working against the US Constitution.
| defrost wrote:
| > NGO networks and a lot of unelected bureaucracy are the
| real government authority by quite a margin
|
| In a well structured government for the people by the
| people such groups are as _essential_ as military, as law
| enforcement, as health professionals, etc.
|
| _Politicians_ debate policy and advocate on behalf of
| representatives.
|
| Unelected civil servants put policy into _practice_ and
| need to be immune from the cycle of elected officials,
| just as the military needs to be.
|
| All these groups, military, judges, civil service need to
| be held to high standards and subject to scrutiny with
| respect to professional conduct.
|
| The USofA looks a bit off to outsiders in many respects,
| not simply tipping. So many elected positions that aren't
| merit based and seemingly immune to standards and
| termination for misconduct.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > > Democracy = elect whoever the people actually want to
| elect, even if you don't like their choice. That rather
| rules out what happens in, say, the USofA, where
| entrenched party politics limits the choice of the wider
| population to those few candidates that are backed.
|
| It's also weird in that the candidate with the most votes
| might not win. The electoral system is weird.
| defrost wrote:
| Sure .. but 'less' so.
|
| In the EU, European Union, member countries are voting on
| EU positions .. whether it's weighted or unweighted, it's
| a collection of N countries voting, not a collection of N
| millions of people voting.
|
| Similarly in the USofA, formed as a union of states to
| have a common government for those things that are agreed
| to superseded individual state interests.
|
| I live in a country with mandatory voting - _everybody_
| (of age, save for those convicted of _serious_ crime)
| votes, and ranked proportional voting.
|
| Compulsory voting offends the sensibilities of a number
| of USofA citizens, but there is a strong case to be made
| for it, ranked voting does a lot to avoid two party
| Hotelling's law quagmires where major parties barely
| represent anybody and yet MySportingTeam divisions
| dominate.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| That's not weird at all. Democracy as the word is
| commonly used does not require direct popular vote, let
| alone at the highest tier of government. Every
| "democratic" country I'm aware of uses a more complicated
| scheme.
|
| Then you've got the part where the US was never billed as
| a "democracy" to begin with but rather a "democratic
| republic".
|
| What's weird to me is how quickly a group with an
| advantage will attempt to discard compromises and other
| agreements once they have what they wanted.
| neilv wrote:
| Downvoters: The story is about the terrible politics, and
| should be a cautionary tale that's immediately very relevant.
| Unless you were only interested in the ballooning "maker"
| angle?
| stackghost wrote:
| >The family members included:
|
| > Peter Strelzyk, aged 37
|
| > Doris Strelzyk
|
| > Frank Strelzyk, aged 15
|
| > Andreas Strelzyk, aged 11
|
| > Gunter Wetzel, aged 24
|
| > Petra Wetzel
|
| > Peter Wetzel, aged 5
|
| > Andreas Wetzel, aged 2
|
| Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in
| Germany?
| lukan wrote:
| Not as of my knowledge. Coincidence I suppose, or desire by
| them to keep it private.
| honzabe wrote:
| > Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in
| Germany?
|
| A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| > East Germany immediately increased border security, closed all
| small airports close to the border, and ordered the planes kept
| farther inland.[6] Propane gas tanks became registered products,
| and large quantities of fabric suitable for balloon construction
| could no longer be purchased. Mail from East Germany to the two
| escaped families was prohibited.[12]
|
| > Erich Strelzyk learned of his brother's escape on the ZDF news
| and was arrested in his Potsdam apartment three hours after the
| landing. The arrest of family members was standard procedure to
| deter others from attempting escape. He was charged with "aiding
| and abetting escape", as were Strelzyk's sister Maria and her
| husband, who were sentenced to 21/2 years. The three were
| eventually released with the help of Amnesty International.
|
| People - here in Germany as well as abroad - forget too easily
| what a sinister but also ridiculous state the GDR was.
|
| Authoritarians everywhere belong on the dustpile of history.
| martin-t wrote:
| Dustpile of history, sure, but gallows first. Bleeding out on
| the pavement is also acceptable.
|
| Way too often, connected ("powerful") people manage to escape
| proper punishment, sometimes in the name of a "peaceful
| transition of power".
| lukan wrote:
| Hm. I am not sure if a lynchmob and more blood would have
| helped the transition. The main important thing to the people
| was, that the wall was down and Stasi (secret police) out of
| power.
|
| There has been prison time and the careers of anyone
| important connected to the Stasi ended.
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's a hard one. I can tell you something which _doesn 't_
| work because the Americans have tried it twice so far. It
| won't work to say "Well, that was naughty, please don't do
| it again".
|
| That silliness is how you get Jim Crow, it's how you got
| Trump 2.0
|
| In a civilized country I can believe jail time would be
| good enough, but the US still uses capital punishment, so
| seems to me that if you want to be taken seriously some of
| those responsible have to be executed
|
| In practice I remain doubtful that such an orderly transfer
| is likely. If there's chaos, for even a few days, that's
| how you get France's "Wild Purge" in the period when German
| withdrawal and Allied liberation are happening one town at
| a time. The accused are punished, sometimes even executed,
| without anything resembling due process.
| martin-t wrote:
| > The accused are punished, sometimes even executed,
| without anything resembling due process.
|
| I also don't like this but I wonder, if this is because
| the choice is between a) full punishment with less
| certainty of guilt now b) lenient or no punishment with
| high certainty of built later.
|
| The ideal would be to hold those people until they can be
| tried and punished in an orderly fashion. And in
| principle all you need for this is enough food to keep
| them alive, though in such situations, even that might be
| a luxury.
| martin-t wrote:
| I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad
| implementation?
|
| Obviously, if you intend to abduct ("imprison") or kill
| ("execute") somebody as punishment, then you should have
| very high certainty they deserve that punishment. One of
| the methods of achieving that is giving them a chance to
| defend themselves ("court process").
|
| I don't see any difference between individuals and
| monopolies on violence ("states") doing this, as long as
| they both have sufficient levels of certainty.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I don't see any difference between individuals and
| monopolies on violence ("states") doing this, as long as
| they both have sufficient levels of certainty.
|
| This peasant is faulty. He's not indoctrinated enough.
| Someone nab him and send him for reeducation. /s
| lukan wrote:
| "I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a
| bad implementation?"
|
| Maybe because of your language?
|
| "Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable."
| martin-t wrote:
| Because the optimum is a public process which proves
| their guilt beyond reasonable doubt so that every good
| person supports their punishment and has the confidence
| (certainty of guilt) to support it publicly.
|
| But if the choice is between no punishment and somebody
| gunning them down in the street or droning them, i prefer
| the latter.
|
| Court processes are useful when guilt is uncertain at
| first look and you want to increase certainty. But
| dictators and their close supporters, the certainty is
| often sufficient by nature of many their actions being
| public. Sometimes they literally go on TV and declare
| they're going to a foreign country to kill their people
| and take their land. At that point, it only becomes a
| matter of making sure you have the right person.
|
| And don't forget the victims. Many authoritarian regimes
| don't kill opposition outright (for various reasons) but
| imprison them instead. Such a victim knows many of the
| people (cops, judges, informants, etc.) responsible for /
| guilty of falsely imprisoning them. After a regime
| change, the victims go free and have often more knowledge
| of the offenses than can be proven to a court by the
| simply virtue of being there and therefore have more than
| enough confidence to deliver a just punishment.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You need "a little bit" of politician/judge/enforcer
| lynching to keep the government in line the same way they
| make a big show of "a little bit" of kicking in people's
| doors at 4am to keep the peasants in line.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| A _peaceful transition of power_ is nothing to sneer at.
| After a revolutionary change, they are rare.
| martin-t wrote:
| 1) Not sneering at it but everything has a cost. If
| authoritarians get the impression that all their past
| offenses will be forgiven if they hold everyone hostage and
| negotiate well, then there's no risk for them. And it's
| disrespectful to the victims.
|
| There should be things you don't come back from.
|
| For example, if you imprison people for political reasons,
| the time they spent in prison should be added up,
| multiplied by a punitive constant (2-3) and given to the
| offenders. And if that is a just punishment (I believe it
| it), then not doing that to them is unjust. Simple as that.
|
| 2) We should be looking for ways how to have both a
| peaceful transition and just punishment for the offenders.
|
| Look at Unit 731 as an example (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 ).
|
| The people most responsible got away for free by skillful
| negotiation (immunity in exchange for data).
|
| Instead, the proposition should have been a) you give us
| the data and graciously accept your death penalty b) we
| repeat the experiments on you, nonlethal first. That's
| harsh and will make many people today recoil (because
| they've been indoctrinated into a 1-step moral system which
| seems to correlate with stability but injustice), but it's
| fair and just. They think those experiments were OK to
| perform on innocent people, so they are very much OK to
| perform on them (guilty people) _by their own logic_.
| Roark66 wrote:
| Yes, here in Poland 36 years later people still seriously
| argue the country would be much better if we hanged the
| communists off lampposts (like it was done in few other
| places).
|
| There ws a great cost to a "peaceful transition". The
| entire judiciary was basically full of extremely corrupt
| people, half of the political class. Even today when the
| old judges are almost all gone the horrible culture they
| had still corrupts many younger ones (although today it is
| more towards incompetence and indifference rather than
| corruption).
|
| Would it be better to have half a million (or possibly
| entire million if you count inevitable victims on the other
| side) die to avoid it? We are still paying the price.
|
| There is an argument that had we sorted the communist
| problem successfully back then we wouldn't have politicians
| later that let themselves be corrupted by Putin into
| funding his army. And perhaps there would never be an
| invasion of Ukraine.
|
| Or if we done away with the peaceful transition, the
| communists in other neighbouring countries would attempt to
| hold on to power with everything they got. Who knows.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| _" Should we have put 500,000 people to death?"_ sounds
| like pub conversation, to be frank. There are plenty of
| options between _' no repercussions for the old regime'_
| and Rwanda.
| nephihaha wrote:
| The GDR seems to be forgotten/misunderstood by many people.
| Which is a pity because it serves a warning about mass public
| surveillance plans that keep rearing their ugly head, even in
| Germany.
| tim333 wrote:
| People go on about surveillance but it's not really the
| problem compared to murderous dictatorships.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Murderous dictatorships are enabled by mass surveillance
| and personal data collection. Especially East Germany,
| which was obsessed with data harvesting on every individual
| and installed as many CCTV cameras as its budget and tech
| would allow. East Germany would be creaming itself over the
| panopticon we are walking into.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah but there's lots of surveillance like stuff that
| goes on without turning into murderous dictatorships. In
| England where I live we have cctv all over the place and
| on the internet Google knows most of my stuff but neither
| really worry me - we haven't really had a dictatorship
| setup since 1215 or so.
| nephihaha wrote:
| 1215? Try Cromwell, or numerous dubious monarchs. The
| Tudors murdered 10% of the English population, I believe.
| Other monarchs have usurped the throne and most people
| never had the vote until Victorian times and after. Then
| you have the beginnings of an attempted coup against
| Harold Wilson and Blair using the so called Criminal
| Justice Bills to force things through. Lockdown
| demonstrated their powers well. Even Private Eye which
| poses as a dissident voice towed that line.
|
| The UK is certainly not the paradise it thinks it is.
| Northern Ireland was pretty oppressive throughout much of
| my lifetime, and the state authorities were part of that
| along with the paramilitaries. The British state has
| engaged in all kinds of shenanigans to undermine Scottish
| and Welsh nationalism, including people dying under
| mysterious circumstances, manufactured political scandals
| and agents provocateurs. Some declassified information
| details the effort put into derailing the Scottish
| independence movement in the sixties and seventies (and
| even the devolution movement).
|
| If you are in England, then agents provocateurs have been
| common in the environmentalist movement, the far left &
| far right etc. The Socialist Workers Party has to be one
| of the most obviously infiltrated groups out there or it
| certainly looks like it. The state has also tried to make
| the campaign against Digital ID look ridiculous by
| linking it to Flat Earth and chemtrail agents
| provocateurs, even though hostility to it is much more
| widespread and serious.
| mothballed wrote:
| Depends on the form of authoritarian. The two of the richest
| countries on a GDP PPP basis are Lichtenstein and Singapore,
| also some of the most free economically, yet they could
| probably be described as benevolent authoritarian systems.
| Dubai further behind, although some similar points.
|
| It seems authoritarians that know how to use their authority to
| force the populace to accept (some forms of) freedom can
| perform better than democracies. To the point the reigning
| monarch of Lichtenstein is basically a straight up fuedal
| prince, although one that has a sort of half libertarian/ancap
| flavor to how he wields power. Yet very few people describe
| Lichtenstein as a dystopia, it just kind of quietly gets
| ignored as an example of authoritarian success in both wealth
| and freedom.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That makes sense to me. Authoritarian government is not
| _inherently_ abusive of citizens, even though it often gets
| used in rhetoric as though that was the case. It 's just that
| there are no guard rails against the whims of the people in
| charge, so you better hope you manage to keep good people in
| charge forever (and that is obviously not going to happen).
| KiwiJohnno wrote:
| I read a quote somewhere that said democracy does nothing
| to promote good leadership. The point of democracy isn't to
| elect a good government, the point is to quickly get rid of
| a bad government
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| If you're a bus driver in Singapore denied the right to
| protest, strike, and otherwise organize for better pay and
| conditions, you might feel a bit different about how free
| Singapore is economically.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Does Singapore force people to be bus drivers?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Once you have banned protest, how would you know if they
| were forced or not?
|
| EVERYONE IS HAPPY.
| tim333 wrote:
| Sounds like you haven't been to Singapore.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Not sure why you'd say that. Did you see protests or
| Something?
| immibis wrote:
| Aren't those just plain old tax havens?
| zweifuss wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| They all have a very solid industrial base, like 30% to 50%
| of the economy, with ~50% of workers living abroad (not
| fully part of the welfare state). Comparatively high R&D.
| Low taxes.
|
| And plain tax evasion is now illegal, but those countries
| are still an important stop to hide money elsewhere.
|
| But the main secret sauce is a flexible fast legal system.
| Stability, low crime, and less gridlock in the legislature
| when the need for change is realized.
| m4nu3l wrote:
| What I find confusing about this comment is that to me,
| authoritarian and libertarian are opposites, but have only to
| do with individual freedoms, not the political system.
|
| With these definitions, you can have a democratic or non-
| democratic system, and both can give rise to libertarian or
| authoritarian societies.
|
| Democracies tend to produce more libertarian systems than
| dictatorships, but only to some extent, and in fact, they are
| often authoritarian in various aspects. All it takes to
| oppress some people in a democracy, even when they are not
| causing harm, is the majority of people wanting to do so.
|
| Vice versa, a dictatorship with some enlightened,
| incorruptible, and perfectly mentally stable dictator that
| acts as a night-watchman so that individual freedoms are
| respected would be more libertarian than a democracy, but
| it's unlikely you'd get such a dictator.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >What I find confusing about this comment is that to me,
| authoritarian and libertarian are opposites, but have only
| to do with individual freedoms, not the political system.
|
| "Do whatever the F you want as long as you don't challenge
| the state" isn't that incompatible at first glance and
| might work ok if you have a low touch state. Where it gets
| obviously incompatible is when you have eastern european
| style oligarchs and western style administrative state and
| state favored businesses and industries that leverage state
| violence to stifle competition.
|
| I don't think it's possible to have an authoritarian
| government in a modern society that doesn't trend in one of
| those directions.
| qcnguy wrote:
| There have been such dictators in the past. Singapore is
| one example. Arguably the British Empire was libertarian by
| the standards of its time (and empires).
|
| Perhaps the least recognized example is America. The
| Constitution imposes libertarianism on the population
| against majority will. You can't change the constitution
| with a 50%+1 vote, so it forces freedom of speech and other
| rights on people who might otherwise easily vote to get rid
| of them. There's no one man enforcing the constitution,
| just a general agreement to obey SCOTUS.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Dubai and is a human rights cesspit.
|
| Sharia law. Beat your wife. law. Fine rape victims. Use
| slaves, flog gay people.
|
| Name a regressive and disgusting way of treating humans -
| it's probably done there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Dubai
| niemandhier wrote:
| As long as the country is very wealthy at least compared to
| its neighbors it might work.
|
| Lichtenstein and Singapur found their niches, which do not
| scale to larger countries, Dubai was just lucky.
|
| Happy slaves don't dream of freedom.
|
| I wonder what would happen to Lichtenstein if the EU would
| pull a Trump on them and block trade and airspace until the
| adjust their tax policies...
|
| Not that this would ever happen.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| "East Germany" fell apart because the people stuck there
| quickly realized how "ridiculous" it was. (See the post you
| replied to.)
|
| There was a lot of contact between West and East Germans due
| to the awkward nature of the division of East and West
| Germany and East and West Berlin. In contrast, that contact
| doesn't exist between North and South Korea.
|
| (Remember, West Berlin was an enclave inside of East Germany,
| and West Germans were allowed to travel through East Germany
| in order to travel in and out of West Berlin.)
| nunobrito wrote:
| There was a democratic referendum in 2003 to essentially
| reduce the authority of the Liechenstein ruler, the
| population largely voted to grant absolute power to the
| ruling family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Liechtenste
| in_constitutio...
|
| Authoritarianism is the oldest form of effective government.
| Just as curious note, dictatorship was introduced during the
| Roman epoch and was used as temporary measure during war
| times. Look for example in Ukraine where the same ruler is
| avoiding elections since some time due to war, in the root
| sense of the government-style it is possible to describe it
| as a dictatorship today, if it hadn't been for the negative
| connotation of that term in the last 100 years.
| michalpleban wrote:
| The ruler is not "avoiding" elections due to war, he is
| prohibited by the constitution to hold them during wartime
| (not to mention the feasibility of letting the inhabitants
| of occupied regions to exercise their voting rights). So it
| is not a dictatorship in any sense.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _People - here in Germany as well as abroad - forget too
| easily what a sinister but also ridiculous state the GDR was_
|
| Wait till you hear how sinister its precursor state was
| nephihaha wrote:
| We hear far more about the precursor than the GDR, don't we?
| (Actually its immediate precursor was Allied Occupied Germany
| with the GDR being the Soviet zone.)
| lostlogin wrote:
| Do we? I'd say it's pretty close, especially if you include
| every time that someone shrieks 'that's socialism,' or
| 'that's communism' every time any social programme is
| proposed.
|
| Eg: Shall we improve public healthcare?
| jen20 wrote:
| > especially if you include every time that someone
| shrieks 'that's socialism,' or 'that's communism'
|
| But... why would you include that? They're certainly not
| discussions of the DDR.
| nephihaha wrote:
| We do have socialised medicine where I live and it is
| falling apart TBH. Never hear it compared to East
| Germany.
| nephihaha wrote:
| By "we", I didn't mean Americans, but weaterners. We have
| the National Health Service where I live and it is a
| complete mess (I know someone who waited over seven years
| for a jaw operation, another who has several years to
| wait for autism screening). I don't want the American
| system, and the basic principle of the NHS is good but
| still....
|
| This AI slop is a pretty accurate description of my local
| medical practice (bar the cheap joke at beginning and
| everyone having an English accent):
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w3U25wNyVRw
|
| We hardly ever hear about East Germany or all the horrors
| of living in such a place. Very rarely these days. I've
| known quite a few people who lived under that regime and
| they told me what it was like. Everyone was being
| watched, and even school children had to write spy
| reports on their neighbours. All while the East German
| state kept proclaiming how it was a place of freedom and
| equality.
| solarexplorer wrote:
| > Propane gas tanks became registered products
|
| I still remember the two gentlemen in their black, faux leather
| jackets who rang our doorbell and demanded to see our dinghy.
| (dinghies where registered products too) We showed them our
| dinghy, they said thank you and left.
|
| Probably someone fled over the Baltic sea to Denmark in a
| dinghy. So the secret police went from door to door until they
| found someone who could no longer show it to them...
|
| This was in the late 80s.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Oh wow. At that point, just make everything a registered
| item.
| Terr_ wrote:
| The greatest trick authoritarianism ever pulled [0] was
| convincing people it was competent, rational, or efficient.
|
| Putting young men into fresh uniforms to march in synchrony
| _looks_ impressive, but in the background sycophancy rules
| while expertise is wasted, and people who could be improving
| harvests and preventing floods are slaving away in the "Office
| of Subversive Objects" trying to figure out the source of the
| googly-eye scourge being traitorously installed on Dear
| Leader's statues.
|
| [0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/03/20/devil/
| petre wrote:
| > Putting young men into fresh uniforms to march in synchrony
|
| A security circus and a waste of time. Look at the Korean
| People's Army. Their main areas of expertise are marching in
| synchrony, digging trenches, construction and agriculture.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Meanwhile we put experts to work optimizing conversion and
| engagement metrics. A truly enlightened way of life we've
| built for ourselves.
| honzabe wrote:
| > Meanwhile we put experts to work optimizing conversion
| and engagement metrics. A truly enlightened way of life
| we've built for ourselves.
|
| I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, and claims like this
| really bother me. As if it is somehow comparable to being
| forced to serve in the army of a dictatorship. What is
| wrong with working on optimizing conversion and engagement
| metrics? It can be interesting and useful. People are not
| forced to do it. It is just one of many jobs that one can
| do in a free society.
|
| I believe that one of the reasons why authoritarianism
| seems to be on the rise in the US and around the world in
| general is that it has somehow become fashionable to
| belittle and disparage what we have in the West... and how
| good it is, despite its imperfections. I fear that we will
| only realize this once we have lost it.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I think there's a misunderstanding here. I'm not arguing
| in favor of a state run economy or a dictatorship or
| whatever else it is you seem to have concluded. Flawed
| though our system may be I don't want to throw the baby
| out with the bathwater.
|
| But all the same it's important to be able to recognize
| where we could do better. Optimizing for investor return
| is frequently not synonymous with optimizing for societal
| well being. I don't think engagement algorithms that
| result in negative emotions are really a benefit to
| anyone other than the company that deploys them.
|
| So too for the online advertising industry. We - ie
| capitalists - have dedicated some of our best minds to
| building out something that vaguely resembles a
| panopticon. When you consider the intangible social and
| political externalities it seems to me that the place
| we've arrived at isn't a good one.
|
| Don't forget that in addition to any negative impacts of
| the things that were built, every day spent in that way
| was a day not spent pursuing scientific or mathematical
| breakthroughs.
| honzabe wrote:
| No, I understood well.
|
| In my country, there is a barrage of Russian propaganda
| trying to relativize our shitty experience with the
| communist regime. They keep flooding the zone with claims
| about democracy being flawed, weak, bureaucratic,
| meaningless, and decadent. And it is working. People
| appreciate democracy a lot less than ten or twenty years
| ago.
|
| Sure, there is a time for the self-criticism of the flaws
| of the West. I just think now is not the time. Democracy
| and freedom are under serious threat worldwide. Now is
| the time to keep reminding ourselves how great it is what
| we have built. Now is the time to be absolutely clear
| that the flaws of democracies are not in the same
| category as the flaws of authoritarian regimes.
|
| I still remember what it was like living in a
| totalitarian regime - and I was living in a soft
| totalitarianism nearing its collapse. I am not old enough
| to remember the hardcore Stalinist era. And still, it was
| so bad that whatever you believe is bad about capitalism
| is like 1% of how bad it was. Which is why it bugs me so
| much when people talk about the flaws of both in one
| breath as if they were even remotely comparable.
|
| Look, I am a pessimist. I think there is a very real
| chance that the US is turning into a Russia-like state. I
| hope not, but if that happens, very bad things are likely
| to happen in Europe too. We will all live it once again.
| If you still don't understand what I mean, I suggest
| this: let's bookmark this discussion and get back in 5
| years, if we are still alive. Then, you will tell me what
| you think about optimizing conversion and engagement
| metrics. If you still think it is a problem worth
| mentioning by then, I will be very happy.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Which is why it bugs me so much when people talk about
| the flaws of both in one breath as if they were even
| remotely comparable.
|
| I agree. But it was not my intent to portray them as even
| remotely similar, hence the misunderstanding.
|
| Reading about things like the balloon escape and what
| surrounded it gives a very real sense of just how bad
| things were. So when you see just how much better we have
| it, the sheer amount of opportunity available to our
| society in a general sense, it's more than a bit
| depressing to think that this is how we (collectively)
| chose to use it so far.
|
| A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced
| bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a
| society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply
| it to create the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi
| novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus. Like yeah I think
| the advanced bioengineering is a fantastic
| accomplishment. I don't think we should get rid of it.
| Things were definitely worse before we got that figured
| out. I don't miss amputations and lobotomies. But is it
| really necessary to so badly misappropriate the
| opportunity that it affords us?
|
| Given how different your perspective is from my own I can
| appreciate that my original short and rather flippant
| comment failed to convey that particular message.
| honzabe wrote:
| There is no doubt in my mind that your intent was good.
|
| > A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced
| bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a
| society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply
| it to create the Torment Nexus
|
| What connection between bioengineering and Torment Nexus
| do you have in mind? The advances of bioengineering that
| pop up in my mind are mRNA vaccines and new cancer
| treatments, which I consider awesome and not at all
| Torment Nexus-y. When you say Torment Nexus, that makes
| me think of Thiel's Palantir, but this is not something
| we do collectively as a society - is it? To me, that is
| exactly the anti-democratic stuff pushed by a few
| specific people that we as a society need to rein in.
| qcnguy wrote:
| Conversion metrics = people find what they want to buy
| quicker and more efficiently, allowing them to spend time
| on leisure that would otherwise have been spent on
| gathering needed goods.
|
| Engagement metrics = making entertainment that's popular
| rather than what's mandated by the state's culture
| committees.
|
| Optimizing them is a virtuous and noble profession.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Extensive effort to improve conversion metrics tends to
| result in dark patterns (and increased revenue).
|
| Extensive effort to improve engagement metrics tends to
| result in negative emotional states (and increased
| revenue).
|
| When it comes to entertainment, optimizing return on
| investment often means maximizing the size of the
| potential audience. The end result of that process is
| usually slop.
| qcnguy wrote:
| Dark patterns and slop aren't well defined terms.
| Engagement resulting in negative emotional states is not
| obviously a problem. Social studies academics pretend it
| is, but have no trouble with people consuming state TV
| news even if it shows them a constant stream of bad news
| stories.
| baud9600 wrote:
| In Eastern Europe in 1979, those were big sums of money. What an
| extraordinary story
| toephu2 wrote:
| Yeah I'd be curious into how they acquired so much money
| lukan wrote:
| Likely black market deals/work I think. Also just getting a
| replacement car was not really easy for normal people.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Yes, was noticing the same. It was easy for them to sell
| the car and get a new one, so this meant a lot of
| connections and underground "jobs" for the extra revenue.
|
| Anyways, fantastic story. First time reading despite living
| relatively close.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| What I've read about the GDR is that money was rarely the
| problem. You couldn't spend the money if what you wanted to
| buy was simply not available (except maybe in "Intershops"
| where you needed to pay in Western currency, that was in fact
| very expensive). It really was a different system.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes the movie Night Crossing also shows very well that
| there was a lot of suspicion, for example they had to buy
| the fabric from lots of different places and this a slipup
| actually caused them to be ratted out (not sure if this
| particular part of the story happened to these people in
| real life too but it was really a thing)
| wishfish wrote:
| Read a memoir by a KGB agent who arrested a man in Moscow
| who was passing info to the CIA. Had been doing so for
| years. The CIA had the typical western attitude towards
| money so they kept giving him stacks of rubles. Thinking
| they were being generous. The man (a professor, I think)
| had nothing to spend it on so he stacked cash up in a
| closet. Had around 1 million stored when he was caught. He
| probably would have been better off just burning it as the
| money was used as evidence in his trial.
|
| Had a chance to ask a Russian / Soviet historian how one
| could spend a million rubles in the late 70s, early 80s. He
| just shrugged and laughed about it. Almost no way to spend
| that much. Nothing cost very much and there wasn't much of
| it.
| martin-t wrote:
| One good metric of quality of life (which includes various
| freedoms) is how many people emigrate or immigrate.
|
| Anybody who defends authoritarians has to explain why so many
| people want to leave and why the regime wants to keep them in.
| (With some exceptions such as China which weaponizes emigrants by
| threatening their families.)
| mothballed wrote:
| If that's the case the theocratic monarchy in UAE takes the
| cake, I think, although maybe there are similar amounts
| elsewhere.
|
| Pretty much all the highest % immigration countries are
| monarchy that I can think of, since in those country another
| tax payer is an easy win and immigrants that cause problem can
| be instantly booted so there is very little downside to taking
| anybody with $1 or a job who cares to come. Top
| Countries by Percentage of Immigrants (approximate recent
| figures): Qatar: Around 77% (or 76.7%). United Arab
| Emirates (UAE): Around 74-88% (some sources show higher
| figures for earlier years). Kuwait: Around 69-73%.
| Bahrain: Around 55%.
|
| Singapore not far behind (~40% from memory), a one party state
| but with voting, sometimes described as essentially an elected
| recallable monarchy. Also note most of those countries have
| relatively low emigration rates of native citizens.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I think "immigrants" is the wrong statistic here, since it
| includes workers with no path to citizenship. (In some cases,
| they can't leave because their employer stole their
| passport.)
|
| It confuses "this is a good place to resettle" with "here I
| can arbitrage higher wages in order to send money back home."
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE
| citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely
| have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more
| than most places.
| qcnguy wrote:
| You're still an immigrant even if you can't become a
| citizen.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > > it includes workers with no path to citizenship
|
| > You're still an immigrant even if you can't become a
| citizen.
|
| Yes, like I said. My point is that these two scenarios
| are very different:
|
| 1. "I am +1 to the immigrant count because this is a
| great place for me and my family to live and I wish for
| us to move here permanently."
|
| 2. "I am +1 to the immigrant count temporarily because
| the wages here are so much more than I could earn at
| home, and I'm remitting that money back to my family who
| live somewhere else. As much as this is an opportunity
| for me, we could never move here because same wages would
| have my family homeless and starving, making this a
| terrible place to move permanently."
|
| Both people are happily adding to the "immigrants inside"
| count, but they are very different judgements about the
| country.
| martin-t wrote:
| That's a good point. Perhaps a better statistic would be
| people who _want to_ emigrate or immigrate. We 're
| introducing a bias by measuring only those who actually do.
| dmaa wrote:
| For me, this is the maxim that governs speaking with someone
| defending a totalitarian regime.
|
| If the person has no issue that people have to be kept by force
| INSIDE for the country to function, then we have a fundamental
| disagreement on what is good and what is bad and any further
| discussion is a waste of time.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I first read about this in Reader's Digest back in the eighties.
| hmng wrote:
| I'm not the only one then! :-)
| nephihaha wrote:
| I read about them in RD long before I saw the film, I think.
| It is an amazing achievement and I doubt most people could
| have pulled it off. Thinking about it now... You would have
| to wait until the wind was going in the right direction, and
| wouldn't change, and also be well away from the border to
| avoid patrols. They had luck on their side.
|
| I think I saw the film in the late eighties/early nineties
| round about the time the Eastern Bloc was falling apart so it
| had less impact.
| mothballed wrote:
| I'm amazed most of all they were able to keep it under wraps with
| 4 children involved. I don't think you could pay my children at
| that age $1 million to keep their mouth shut even under the same
| risks.
| drcode wrote:
| I think it's such a crazy idea, even if a 5 year old tell a
| teacher about it or something, who's going to take the story
| seriously?
| mandevil wrote:
| After they found the remains of the balloon from the first
| escape attempt, the Stasi put out a reward for information, I
| think everyone would take the story seriously at that point.
| It was why they decided they had to go through with the
| second attempt, because they were convinced the Stasi was
| going to catch them soon. But they had to buy the materials
| for that balloon _after_ the Stasi had found the remains of
| their previous attempt.
| petre wrote:
| > But they had to buy the materials for that balloon after
| the Stasi had found the remains of their previous attempt
|
| The repressive state apparatus was moving too slow. Maybe
| they hoped there won't be a second attempt after the first
| one failed, maybe it wasn't promptly reported to the
| appartchikhs and handled internally by the Stasi to avoid
| backlash.
| lukan wrote:
| I would assume they did not tell them anything at all, until
| the time was there. And after the first failed attempt, they
| were probably shocked enough for real to understand the
| situation and keep their mouths shut.
|
| Children put in serious situations are capable of much more
| serious behavior, than children who have only known comfort
| and safety.
| netsharc wrote:
| The Wikipedia page references Gunter Wetzel's website. Reading
| https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html , he's
| written down more information - apparently they came to a
| disagreement about the story, and on that page there's more
| detail, from his point of view: for the first attempt they did
| everything in Wetzel's house (whose oldest kid was 4), because
| of concerns the Strelzyks' children (who were 10 and 14) could
| blurt something out. After some disagreements (Strelzyks told
| some relatives about the balloon, Wetzel thinks the balloon was
| too small) Wetzel gave Strelzyks all they've built (he was also
| worried about getting caught with the stuff, especially since
| now the relatives have heard about it) and decided to follow
| the concept of a ultralight airplane.
|
| That's the reason the first attempt was just the Strelzyks...
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| Odd how nobody ever builds a balloon to fly towards the communist
| utopias.
| nephihaha wrote:
| One guy did use a plane to land in Red Square. Remember him?
| echelon_musk wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Not to live there though, just as a "symbol of peace".
| nephihaha wrote:
| I'm not sure it worked much as a symbol of peace. He got
| sent to a Soviet prison/interrogation for a while which I'm
| sure was a laugh a minute.
| mopsi wrote:
| He was mentally disturbed, which kinda proves the point.
| After returning to Germany, he stabbed a woman for rejecting
| his advances. Later, he was convicted of shoplifting, and a
| few years after that he was convicted again of selling stolen
| goods.
|
| Definitely a "character", even if medically sound enough to
| stand trial.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I didn't know about the stabbing bit. You'd have to be off
| your head to land a plane next to the Kremlin. He was lucky
| he wasn't shot down.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes he was so cool. The plane is still in a museum.
|
| PS: He was dumb as hell too of course, and it was only due to
| incredible laxness of the air force that he was never shot
| down.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure any countries really shoot down light aircraft
| unless it's an active war zone. They are not much of a
| threat and it's also hard to tell if they are there legally
| or not.
|
| You're more likely to get hassled when you land like the
| Ethan Guo guy
| (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04rql923kdo)
| nephihaha wrote:
| Guo must have been a few sandwiches short of a picnic to
| try and fly to Antarctica unaided as well. Three year ban
| from Chile isn't long.
| marcodiego wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servi%C3%A7os_A%C3%A9reos_Cruz...
| wolvoleo wrote:
| If I were in the US I would certainly leave to a more socialist
| country. I could not live there. Even before Trump.
|
| However there is a spectrum between it. I don't think either
| extreme is great, neither American unrestricted capitalism nor
| full-on communism. A balance of both is needed. I was a lot
| happier in the 80s when Holland was a lot more socialist. Less
| things to worry about, a safety net, cheap housing and
| schooling, still the ability to run your own business if you
| really wanted to. We had a great combination.
|
| However the VVD neoliberals (who idolize America) have
| destroyed it over the last decades and there are so many huge
| problems now because they always went for the quick fix.
|
| With full-on capitalism you get lots of disenfranchised people
| angry at not having any upward mobility, corporations just dump
| all over the citizens, and differences in wealth get insanely
| high. With full-on communism you end up with a surveillance
| hellscape and inhumane processes. The secret sauce is in
| between IMO.
| immibis wrote:
| What would you call the current surveillance hellscape and
| inhumane processes in the USA? Is that full-on communism?
| layer8 wrote:
| Totalitarianism exists on both sides of the spectrum.
| immibis wrote:
| That is a non-answer.
| layer8 wrote:
| I understood your question to be a rhetorical one.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Wait... People want to escape from communist countries?
| nephihaha wrote:
| Remember the GDR called the Berlin Wall the "Antifascist
| Protection Barrier"
| immibis wrote:
| I believe the USA-Mexico border wall was called something
| similar
| nephihaha wrote:
| That wall is to keep people out from another state, not in.
| 0928374082 wrote:
| After all, they kept Paul Robeson in by simply pulling
| his passport, no wall needed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#:~:text=A%20mo
| nth...
| nephihaha wrote:
| I don't need to go to Wikipedia to read about Robeson.
| Guy became a Stalin fan and crumbled mentally when he
| realised the USSR was not what it claimed. Great singer
| though.
| thatcat wrote:
| That's how east berlin marketed it too, it still features
| bi-directional blocking abilities, like all walls.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| There were no fascists in the DDR.
|
| There are fascists in the former DDR today.
|
| So I guess it worked.
| bentley wrote:
| > There were no fascists in the DDR.
|
| That was certainly the party line of the DDR at the time.
| Do you honestly believe it?
|
| It's no coincidence that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man
| who served in East Germany, claims that his war in Ukraine
| is justified in the name of denazification. It's an easy
| rhetorical trick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformat
| ion_in_the_Russian_...
| nephihaha wrote:
| I believe this about as much as the Chinese Communist
| official who claimed that there were no homosexuals in
| the PRC.
|
| In reality, a lot of careerists shifted their loyalties
| from the National Socialist government to the Communist
| one. There were several years in which the Communists,
| much like their western counterparts, tried to weed out
| all the Nazis, before realising many of them were
| experienced in administering things. (The Eastern Bloc
| had its own smaller version of Operation Paperclip,
| although the scientists tended to be less willing.)
| tirant wrote:
| The fascists were everywhere in the DDR: just called
| members of the party or as part of the Stasi.
|
| And I take the definition of fascists as anyone who
| prioritizes their political system, State or political view
| to a point of depriving any other citizen of their basic
| freedom.
| razakel wrote:
| Authoritarianism isn't the same thing as fascism.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Some ways, yes, some ways no. Communism and Fascism in
| practice had mutual influences on one another although
| they would be loathe to admit it. (By Communism here, I
| mean Communist party rule, not the future utopia which
| none of these countries ever achieved.)
|
| If you want to take a more Trotskyite view, many post-
| revolutionary states enter a so called "Bonapartist"
| phase, where militarism, ultranationalism and symbology
| combine to produce something which looks a lot like
| Fascism. Mao and Stalin were not above using
| ultranationalism and chauvinism to push their rule. North
| Korea has gone all the way with this with Juche which
| contains mystical, ultranationalist and even racial
| supremacist features.
| nephihaha wrote:
| "There were no fascists in the DDR."
|
| Not officially although in reality the Stasi quite happily
| reused Gestapo files, and there were numerous National
| Socialists who ended up east of the border.
|
| The GDR had a series of fake political parties, besides the
| Communist, in order to pretend they were a democracy. I
| believe they did have one that pretended to appeal to such
| people.
|
| "There are fascists in the former DDR today."
|
| Much more so than the west which did not have years of
| Communist rule.
| prmoustache wrote:
| A communist country has never existed and never will so we will
| never know.
|
| Communism is a lovely idea on paper but a complete utopia due
| to human nature. We are nearly all motherfuckers who if given
| the chance will try to obtain more power or more wealth than
| our peers in a group of any size. Thus you can't have all
| citizens of a given country agree on abandoning private
| ownership and sharing wealth, work and power in equal terms.
| Any government that pretended to do that was just faking it and
| forced their citizens to pretend.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| > _Communism is a lovely idea on paper but a complete utopia_
|
| _dystopia_ ?
| immibis wrote:
| Communism is the idea of "can't we all just get along?" which
| is obviously not something you can actually implement, but is
| easily used as a buzzword by evil regimes. Remember, H-tl-r
| called his regime "socialist", much the same way N-rth K-rea
| calls itself "democratic"
| _ink_ wrote:
| You can spell out Hitler and North Korea here. Meta has no
| power here.
| immibis wrote:
| Incorrect. Users are running autoflag bots.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Every day you make comments that are downvoted (and
| probably flagged) by several people... I think it's quite
| possible that the real issue is not "other people."
|
| Usually people who feel (or are) targeted are not 100%
| innocent.
| immibis wrote:
| There's a clear pattern where comments containing certain
| words are flagged much more often than comments
| containing mildly cens-red versions of those words. Could
| be HN itself but if we assume HN isn't lying about how
| its algorithm works (a big assumption) then it must be
| user flag bots.
|
| It's not just my comments - you see something similar
| with headlines on the front page that contain certain
| names like El-n M-sk. They will accumulate hundreds of
| points and comments and then be cens-red.
| tirant wrote:
| That's not the idea of communism.
|
| That's actually the point of libertarianism, anarchism: do
| what you want, but you will only do well if you get along
| with the rest of the society by providing something helpful
| to them, as no one is forced to help you. And that's why
| free market capitalism works. Even the most selfish
| individuals have needed to cooperate, work for others or
| open businesses with useful products for society in order
| to be able to accumulate wealth.
| hmokiguess wrote:
| Meanwhile in Brazil:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli
| adharmad wrote:
| Reminds me of George Gamow and his wife's attempts to escape from
| the Soviet union by kayaking across the Black sea (first attempt)
| and the Norwegian sea (second attempt) until he was lucky enough
| to be given permission to visit the Solvay conference and was
| able to defect using conventional methods (Simply not returning).
| russdill wrote:
| One of favorite escapes:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape
|
| They built boats to sail down the Salt River, to the Colorado
| River, and to Mexico. Of course the salt river is almost always
| just a dry river bed. It's shocking to me that no dramatization
| of this escape exists
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| Interesting story. The lack of dramatization might have
| something to do with making Nazis sympathetic characters.
| Hogans Heroes aside.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't think the Great Papago Escape was that great - "Over
| the next few weeks, all of the escapees were eventually
| recaptured without bloodshed."
|
| The thing that makes this balloon escape story is so
| enthralling is that it actually _worked_.
| russdill wrote:
| I mean, their escape was quite complex and did actually
| "work", it's just they didn't get very far beyond that. Any
| dramatization would clearly need some comedic element
| anonnon wrote:
| The GDR was a showcase state that, much like the DPRK, being on
| the periphery of the communist block, was propped up by USSR so
| that direct comparisons with its capitalist neighbor wouldn't be
| so unflattering. One of the most important forms of assistance
| the GDR and other satellites received was cheap energy. In the
| case of the GDR, through the Friendship Pipeline. One only need
| look at the DPRK to see how vital this assistance was; it was
| only _after_ the USSR collapsed and Russia turned off the spigot
| that North Korea started regularly suffering famines:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine
|
| And yet even with the high (in comparison to other communist
| states) quality of life people in the GDR enjoyed, people still
| risked life and limb to escape. You could leave Brazil under its
| various juntas, Chile under Pinochet, Portugal under Salazar, and
| Spain under Franco, yet the only option for citizens of the GDR
| and other communist states (in some cases, still today, e.g.,
| Cuba and the DPRK) was escape and defection.
| ricksunny wrote:
| West Berlin was also a showcase city.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other
| communist states
|
| _yawns_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_Soviet_Union_aliyah
| anonnon wrote:
| The Soviet Union had almost no legal emigration prior to the
| 1970s, and limited, targed emigration quotas after. The US,
| by contrast, prior to 1965, had strict quotas limiting
| _immigration_ (based on national origins).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >hey needed just ten minutes to inflate the balloon and an
| additional three minutes to heat the air.
|
| That's faster than most professionals by a substantial margin. I
| guess when it matters you make it work.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > Propane gas tanks became registered products
|
| Ha. Someone does a thing and the state moves in to regulate. Same
| as it ever was, apparently.
|
| Item registration... not used to prevent crime, just to make it
| easier to document after it happens.
| justinclift wrote:
| > not used to prevent crime
|
| Wouldn't "registration" as used in the article mean the
| purchase details were sent to the authorities, so they could
| investigate/stop a potential escape attempt?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Registration always precedes confiscation.
|
| Even if the devices were registered, you might be up and away
| before they figure it out. But if another family flew away,
| that registration list would be handy door to door.
| layer8 wrote:
| The registration serves as a deterrent, and therefore does
| reduce crime. It wouldn't have been practical to outright
| prohibit propane gas.
| snicky wrote:
| This reminds of a person I read about on HN years ago - a Russian
| guy who escaped from the USSR jumping off a cruise liner and
| swimming a couple of days to Philippines.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Ocean-Slava-
| Kurilov-S/dp/965555...
| eastbound wrote:
| Well in this theme, there were 800,000 "boat people" (name
| given to the Vietnamese who escaped communism by boat in
| 1975-1995).
| lazysheepherd wrote:
| It amazes me that some people will somehow still have the
| audacity to defend communism...
| chihuahua wrote:
| "That wasn't real Communism! It's actually great when done
| correctly!" /s
| immibis wrote:
| Same. Anyone who defends a red coloured party, after red
| coloured parties did so much damage in the past, is obviously a
| monster.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| People will do anything to escape the fruits of marxism.
| Discoursers today should take note!
| exabrial wrote:
| There was a mcgyver episode about this.
| marginalien wrote:
| This is so impressive. Survival of the fittest at work.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Fascinating. Always enjoyed the near-history one can feel in east
| germany.
|
| Europe is obviously very old e.g. I go to a pub back home that's
| 500 years old, but you can still sort of feel the concrete
| setting in some parts of Germany. Although saying that it might
| be that they haven't changed much since and I don't like the
| future chosen much elsewhere.
|
| Or it's just the light temperature... In places that have kept
| their old street lighting I find it interesting to find angles
| that look the same now as they did in 1981 (or '71, etc).
| freakynit wrote:
| Was curious to know the calculations involved. Found them to be
| pretty simple.
|
| Vibe-coded an online calculator for future escapists:
| https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site
| svara wrote:
| Now calculate the necessary rate of fuel burn and fuel
| requirement for a given trip; tensile and tear strength needed
| for the balloon material and seams.
|
| Tbf they probably didn't do all these calculations, but should
| have. They risked their lives by getting some of these things
| wrong.
| freakynit wrote:
| Done. Updated: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site
|
| Thanks..
| mfld wrote:
| You can compare them with the original calculations that can be
| found at https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/ballonrechner.html !
| jryle70 wrote:
| A reminder of something much bigger, much longer, and far more
| tragic. People died, families split, a country divided.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people
| refurb wrote:
| Yup.
|
| I met a guy in the East Bay who escaped Vietnam in 1978. Family
| sold everything to bribe the government to look the other way.
|
| Boat trip lasted a week - people died, mostly the youngest and
| oldest, their bodies thrown overboard. Thai pirate came and
| stole anything of value they had left and raped the women.
| Boats passed by and did nothing.
|
| They finally make it to Malaysia and spent almost a year in a
| refugee camp before coming to the US.
|
| Now multiply that story by 2,000,000 with 200,000-400,000 dying
| along the way. A total of 4-5% of the entire population tried
| to escape by boat. The lucky ones fled before 1975, some later
| one.
|
| A massive human tragedy that few people know much about.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The barber I patronized for many years was a boat person.
| Wonderful people.
| lutusp wrote:
| This true story moves us because it resembles much of human
| history, in which clever but powerless people struggle against
| morons -- morons who somehow gain control over a modern
| industrial state, then use that power to punish innocents who
| dare to assert simple human rights.
|
| People in Moscow, in Gaza, in Tehran, in Minneapolis, are all
| saying, "How can I rise above this? -- where's _my_ balloon? "
|
| Too many morons. Too few balloons.
| wtcactus wrote:
| > Moscow, in Gaza, in Tehran, in Minneapolis
|
| Man, you really went ahead and tried to compare Minneapolis
| with Teharan. This is got me laughing out loud.
| diab0lic wrote:
| While the difference between the two may still be wide, it is
| a lot more narrow than it was a year ago. Some people find
| this concerning.
| lutusp wrote:
| > Man, you really went ahead and tried to compare Minneapolis
| with Teharan.
|
| It would help if you could spell "Tehran". Then notice that
| in either place you can be killed for annoying authority
| figures, without due process or recourse.
|
| > This is got me laughing out loud.
|
| I suspect that by 2028 you won't be laughing quite so loudly
| -- or at all.
| decimalenough wrote:
| More interesting escapes from the DDR, this time by three
| brothers, who all fled separately:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethke_brothers
| yde_java wrote:
| > The Berlin Wall fell six months after Egbert's escape.
|
| Ironic. Still quite an adventure. Thanks for sharing!
| bot_user_7a2b99 wrote:
| The engineering ingenuity and determination required to pull this
| off is truly mind blowing. Building a homemade balloon under such
| surveillance is an amazing feat.
| car wrote:
| The autobiographical graphic novel "Time Zones" by Sven Diekmann
| describes an attempted balloon escape from the GDR in 1977, but
| it was thwarted at the last minute [1].
|
| It is a powerful book, quite chilling as it describes life under
| the totalitarian puppet government of East Germany. I also often
| found it eerily reminiscent of our current times.
|
| I can highly recommend it, both for the suspenseful narrative and
| great visual storytelling. A great read for HS/college kids that
| are into history too.
|
| [1] https://store.bookbaby.com/book/time-zones
|
| [2] Authors website: https://www.svensiekmann.com/bio
| elbci wrote:
| - What capitalists did in 6 months that communists didn't manage
| in 50 years?
|
| - Make communism look good.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia
| tirant wrote:
| Communism and socialism have always looked good when compared
| to the principles of other economic and political doctrines:
|
| - No poor people; everyone supported by the State; Everyone
| works for the common good; shared resources no matter how lucky
| or unlucky you are...
|
| From an intentional and moral perspective, nothing can beat it.
|
| However it fails and will always fail because of a couple of
| important reasons:
|
| - it requires the sacrifice of freedom and individuality. - it
| needs to suppress any other political alternative - it's
| finally always implemented by humans (flawed by default) that
| have their own benefit as a goal.
|
| Even with constant examples of countries demonstrating why
| communism always ends up being a perverse system, many people
| still romanticize the system. Interestingly usually only people
| in free capitalist societies.
| elbci wrote:
| Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states don't
| "romanticize", they just remember being better. Utopia - no,
| but better than capitalism. Without an example of a communist
| state shielded from constant attacks, sabotage and sanctions
| from the dominant capitalist we will never know how good it
| could get. We just know the imperfect as it was, it was still
| better.
| honzabe wrote:
| > Those 50-60-70+% of people in former communist states
| don't "romanticize", they just remember being better.
|
| Where did you get those numbers? I remember reading about
| one survey where the number of people with previous regime
| 'nostalgia' was around 50%. That survey had flawed
| methodology, and the results were probably mostly about
| nostalgia related to the times when we were young, and our
| backs did not hurt (obviously, Russian bots in my country
| keep blabbering about it ad nauseam as if it were actually
| about the quality of the old regime).
|
| Let's focus on the numbers that matter - the election
| numbers: in the 2025 elections in my country (Czechia),
| communists did not even get over the 5% necessary to get to
| the parliament. So, I guess what people actually remember
| here is communism _not_ being better.
| elbci wrote:
| there's a wikipedia link above (showing indeed Czechia
| amongst the least "nostalgic" - only 25% in 2021). As for
| elections results, how many ppl don't bother to vote (31%
| absenteeism vs 36% best electoral score, ANO)? how many
| tv stations do communists have, how many lavishly funded
| NGOs? how many instances proving the "communist" party to
| be no more that a pale imitation if not straight up
| controlled opposition...
|
| As for the "flawed methodology": 66.2% of Romanians
| regret Nicolae Ceausescu in a study..."commissioned by
| the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes
| and the Memory of the Romanian Exile" - I'd say if the
| "institute" of bad-mouthing communism had to admit that
| number... well it seems the russian bots are extremely
| efficient, maybe we should listen to them instead of
| useless Ursula bots ;)
| trelane wrote:
| It necessarily increases the concentration of power in the
| hands of the few. Some of you may recall a statement about
| power corrupting, etc.
|
| Just on the face of it: extending the idea of company towns
| to an entire _nation_ seems bad to me on paper.
| petre wrote:
| It was mainly the USSR's doing. China managed to switch to
| state capitalism. I guess we'll see how that works out for
| them.
| Squarex wrote:
| It is interesting how dictatorships for resourceless countries
| needed to keep the people in like east germany or czechoslovakia.
| But current dictatorships with natural resources like Venezuela
| or Iran let dissent go. It makes them more stable sadly.
| fsh wrote:
| Since West Germany considered East Germany to be occupied
| territory, East Germans had automatic citizenship in the west.
| This made it uniquely easy to emigrate into the much wealthier
| country.
| Squarex wrote:
| Well apart from the high chance of being killed at the
| borders.
| usrusr wrote:
| Sure, but they did have a place to go to. Unlike all the
| other people that risk getting killed at a border
| usr1106 wrote:
| That's not fully correct. The West accepted only a single
| German citizenship. So everyone from East Germany could
| immediately be issued a "German" passport by the Western
| authorities.
|
| For the East there were 2 citizenships. They had no
| adjectives, they only talked about "citizen of the German
| Democratic Republic" and "citizen of the Federal Republic of
| Germany".
|
| The occupation view was not official politics after 1970. The
| West had recognized the East as a state. But citizens of both
| states were assumed to have the same citizenship.
|
| Edit: recognized as state should maybe recognized as some
| kind of state. Like the citizenship there were numerous
| differences compared to other foreign nation states.
| gassius wrote:
| As a Venezuelan, I think the difference is not the Natural
| Resources, or at least is not the main difference. In 2017, the
| shortages and economic crisis generated by 15 years of
| communist policies has pushed around 4 million people out, and
| then, the regime "elected" a Constitutional Assembly which has
| the power to create a new Constitution and to overrid any
| previously elected organism (as it was at the time the
| opossition controled National Assembly).
|
| At that point I leaved Venezuela inmediatly with my 2 minor
| aged kids, because for me it was a NO BRAINER that the first
| thing they will do was to limit the emigration and the free
| ciruculation. My train of tought was very simple. As any other
| Socialist Dictatorship before, this one needs to halt the
| staggering loss of skilled proffesionals like Medics, Engineers
| or whatever they deemed of National Security, I mean, you still
| need Doctors, you still need the Electricity and Water to get
| into the industries and houses, and specially for Venezuela,
| you need to keep the Oil flowing off the earth...
|
| BOY WAS I WRONG, they never put a formal limit to the
| emigration and at least another 5 million people leaved
| Venezuela (so far). It did not matter at all that the already
| in shambles Public Health system collapsed, they doctors that
| stayed were private and they attended only the capacity that
| could pay for the scarse services, the basic services did not
| matter that much either, as people got use to get them once or
| twice per week, and even a country wide blackout of 3 weeks was
| not the end of the regime, and the Oil, well, does not matter
| either because what was once 3.5 million barrels per day went
| to be as low as 300.000 bpd.
|
| So, what was the difference? well, for all its downfalls, it
| seems to me that the XX century Communist/Socialist
| dictatorships were guided by Ideology, they really thought
| theirs ideas were for the better of their people, so having no
| Healthcare was a REAL PROBLEM, having no public services was a
| REAL PROBLEM. Of course, their recipes were doomed as their
| political ideals, but at least they tried.
|
| The Venezuelan Regime has no Ideology (it has some in form of
| propaganda, but that is different that actions) as the latest
| news can attest, They couldn't care less about the people and
| the wellness. They did not use any "Natural Resouces" to keep
| any level of living conditions, they just let loose the ruins
| of the economy they had messed so badly to let the most savage
| neoliberalism to correct the course while they stayed in power
| to keep leaching two sources of income, whatever oil they could
| produce and the drugs operations revenue, alongside their cut
| on any business their allies (AKA "Enchufados) could come up in
| the "liberalized" economy.
|
| All the people that leaved the country (including me) just made
| them easier to keep control of whatever was left. Ever
| decreasing political or social opposition, less pressure of the
| shambles public services and so on and on...
|
| The Natural Resources is just a part of their Income, it does
| not affects the hability to control or to even extract richness
| from the system.
| Squarex wrote:
| I can only speak of Czechoslovakia, but from 1968 to 1989
| there was no ideology. After the soviet occupation, there was
| normalization era, that was explicitly about compliance with
| the regime, not about believe in communism.
|
| I agree though that it is more complex, but for some reason,
| Czechoslovakia wanted to keep all the people and exploit
| their work, while Venezuela and Iran seems to let the people
| go in exchange for the regime stability.
| gassius wrote:
| First, of course I am talking about Socialist Dictatorships
| of the XX Century in an academic way, from what I have
| read, So I really don't know as much as what I have lived
| through in Venezuela.
|
| When I talk about Ideology, I am not referring to the
| people, but the regime hiercachy. I would guess in the case
| of Czechoslovakia the regime had some Ideology alignment
| with the Soviets, but I truly don't know. But yes, they
| modern approach seems to favor the exile instead of the
| reclusion or so it seems
| bregma wrote:
| Would that be possibly because while Venezuela and Iran
| have oil to extract and sell on the international market to
| enrich the coffers of the oligarchs in power, the only
| resources Czechoslovakia had was labour. The oligarchs
| could only enrich themselves by exporting manufactured
| goods like shoes and buses, mostly made from imported
| materials, extracting the excess wealth from the labour of
| others the way Venezuela and Iran extract oil from the
| ground?
| qcnguy wrote:
| No communist ideology? What was the regime demanding
| compliance with, do you think? The normalization era was a
| return to Marxism-Leninism, not a departure from it.
|
| Czechoslovakia in that period had one party politics,
| justified because multiparty democracy was "bourgeois
| deviation". It was a state run centrally planned economy,
| because the left wing don't believe in capitalism or free
| markets. Officially unemployment didn't exist, because only
| imperialist capitalist right wing economies had
| unemployment. Party membership and associated ideological
| compliance was required for any important role. Culture was
| censored, people were imprisoned by ideology police.
|
| It is bizarre to claim that the USSR was not ideological.
| It collapsed because it was pure ideology in defiance of
| reality.
|
| The reason the USSR kept people behind a wall is because
| they were able to mentally justify it to themselves within
| the framework of their far left ideology. They viewed the
| west as corrupt and, more importantly, full of corrupting
| ideas. They were just much more committed to winning the
| propaganda war than a place like Venezuela is because their
| worldview was formed at the end of the Victorian era when
| travel and communication was much more easily restricted.
| Maduro's socialist worldview was formed much later, when
| the idea of preventing Venezuelans having access to
| capitalist ideas would have seemed much more ridiculous.
| Squarex wrote:
| Of course there was a state ideology. Just the majority
| of the society and even the party did not actually
| believe it. There was a saying that there was more
| communists at a western university than in the whole
| Czechoslovakia
| Dansvidania wrote:
| Are you Czech or Slovak to be able to speak with this
| much confidence?
|
| I have spent 13 years in Czech Republic, admittedly after
| the curtain fell, and I can tell you for a fact that they
| were "communist" because otherwise tanks.
|
| You can see the relationship they had with the ideology
| in pretty much any sliver of cultural material from the
| period and after.
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| There were many "escapes", some weren't so romantic. E.g. for
| some escapees the drive to what they viewed as freedom was so
| intense that they did not hesitate to kill someone, e.g. a
| stewardess on a hijacked plane.
|
| To see a bigger picture let's juxtapose these escapes with the
| life of Luke of Simferopol (N. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky). He was a
| surgeon and a bishop of the Orthodox church. He opposed the anti-
| church policies of the Soviet government, was sent into an exile
| into Siberia and nearly died there. Then the war came. So he
| wrote a letter to Soviet officials asking to be sent to work in a
| hospital near the front, where his surgical skills would be of
| much use. At the end he added: "When the war is over I'm ready to
| go back to exile".
| kstenerud wrote:
| What's scary is that Russia plans to do this again.
|
| But not that surprising when you look at Russian history.
| cbdevidal wrote:
| Collectivism: Ideas so good, they're mandatory
| immibis wrote:
| Political buzzword du jour: every dictatorship ever.
|
| You know there isn't an ideology called collectivism, right?
| Nora23 wrote:
| How long did it take them to plan this escape?
| mkl wrote:
| From the second sentence, "over a year and a half of
| preparations". The third paragraph gives a starting agreement
| date of 7 March 1978, and the successful flight was 16
| September 1979.
| reflexe wrote:
| My favorite east Germany escape stories is the escape is train
| driver's Harry Deterling, that just drove the train into wall
| (which was not fully a wall by then if I understood correctly)
| https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/chronicle/_year1961/_mon...
| tim333 wrote:
| So much havoc caused by having a fascist/communist government in
| Russia, from partnering with Hitler to start WW2, through this
| stuff to Ukraine and it seems about half the evil in the world. I
| hope they fall one day and turn to something normal.
| api wrote:
| Other than North Korea, are there still countries that are
| literal prisons that you can't leave?
|
| It's astounding to me that this was a thing. The fact that it's
| so rare now is one of the quiet ways we have in fact progressed.
| olelele wrote:
| I spoke with the people working at a German resort in Tunisia.
| I was there for a short stint as sound tech. The only way out
| of the country is smuggling. You don't get permission to leave
| if you're of working age and can contribute to the economy.
| immibis wrote:
| The USA doesn't literally prevent you from leaving, but it uses
| its unique control of the global banking system to still tax
| you when you move to another country.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Hast du etwas Zeit fur mich?
| throw310822 wrote:
| Since then, the trust of wives in their husbands' weekend
| projects has dropped considerably.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| What is just awesome, to a tinkerer, is the great can-do spirit
| people had then. You couldn't buy it, so you made it yourself.
| They were going to do a helicopter, but for the lack of a
| suitable engine. As if the rest was just a solved problem, and
| may well have been, given the background of one of them.
|
| And then to build a working hot air balloon that even looks
| pretty cool, entirely in clandestine conditions with improvised
| materials. In a museum in Germany you can even see a homemade
| twin-engine airplane that was planned for an escape attempt (that
| didn't happen, maybe just as well) (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_DOWA_81 ). Just incredible
| technical competence everywhere, that fades when the _need_ is
| gone, when absolutely everything you could want is just an Amazon
| order away.
| alt227 wrote:
| I feel like hard situations force people to adapt. This was not
| a unique time in history, it continues today in warzones and
| places like Ukraine. It is only a few comfortable western
| countires who have such comfort of everything being a click and
| 1 days delivery away.
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