Intravenous Drug Addict Kregel An Expert On Socialist Paradises

[GOBUCKS]

Tue Oct 1, 2013, 02:08 PM
Taverner (54,984 posts)

Anyone else here get a chance to see a real live "Marxist" country in action?
I saw the USSR during an exchange program through my church

I got to see Cuba during the first legally allowed Christmas (98)

I got to see Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos right after they eased restrictions.

There were a few big things that stuck out

- There was a LOT of art. I mean TONS. Very little of it was Socialist Realism.
- There was a LOT of extra labor. At any restarant, there were usually 2-3 waiters to help you.
 - Also, the cooks all took lunch at lunch time. So they would take your order in a hurry, and then wait for the cook to come back.
 - Not everybody felt "imprisoned"
- Not everybody was cared for
- Everybody traveled in groups. Going out by yourself was really strange. Even in a group of 2. If you made friends they would try and go with you everywhere because they felt sorry for you ("How can you stand be ALONE???? Poor American!")
 - Some food was great (Vietnam) some was godawful (Cuba, USSR)
- Sex was not frowned upon. That scene in "Amerika" where a girl got in trouble for kissing would have never happened.
 - The Russians love their children their children too

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018490536

Response to Taverner (Original post)
Tue Oct 1, 2013, 03:03 PM
rug (51,654 posts)

2. I spent four days on a bicycle in Vermont once.

[DefiantSix]

Tue Oct 1, 2013, 02:08 PM
Taverner (54,984 posts)

Anyone else here get a chance to see a real live "Marxist" country in action?
I saw the USSR during an exchange program through my church

I got to see Cuba during the first legally allowed Christmas (98)

I got to see Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos right after they eased restrictions.

Had to re-read this. I was expecting his next sentence to be that he was on that swift boat with TomInTib and John F'n Kommie back Christmas of '68.

[Freeper]

It's no surprise that not everyone felt imprisoned. Some people need to be ruled. Here in the US we call them DUmmies.

[jukin]

I installed a piece of electrical manufacturing equipment in USSR in 1988. It was a hellish experience.  We had to bring all the necessary installation equipment including a welder with us from West Germany. The night before we left all of it went missing but that was figured into the price. Also the Sovs that were there to help drank vodka in unmarked clear glass jugs all day long. I made the mistake of thinking it was water the first day, it was really terrible quality and for a time I thought i might go blind.  The factory which made printed circuit boards had some western equipment but the rest was from the 1920s.

The small city had huge store fronts that were all covered in butcher paper with hand painted signs about items and prices. However when you got into these stores there was old and EMPTY shelving with people hanging around doing nothing. People got in line early and took what few meager items they had. Also saw a woman that sat at the bottom of a non working escalator for the day. She watched the non working escalator as her job.

It was a little slice of heaven.

[DefiantSix]

I installed a piece of electrical manufacturing equipment in USSR in 1988. It was a hellish experience.  We had to bring all the necessary installation equipment including a welder with us from West Germany. The night before we left all of it went missing but that was figured into the price. Also the Sovs that were there to help drank vodka in unmarked clear glass jugs all day long. I made the mistake of thinking it was water the first day, it was really terrible quality and for a time I thought i might go blind.  The factory which made printed circuit boards had some western equipment but the rest was from the 1920s.

The small city had huge store fronts that were all covered in butcher paper with hand painted signs about items and prices. However when you got into these stores there was old and EMPTY shelving with people hanging around doing nothing. People got in line early and took what few meager items they had. Also saw a woman that sat at the bottom of a non working escalator for the day. She watched the non working escalator as her job.

It was a little slice of heaven.

Guy I work with had a similar experience working Exxon-Mobil jobs in Siberia.  Literally had to weld job boxes closed in order to keep 'em from being raided.

They had an incident where the tire went out on a JLG. Took the wheel off, and went to lunch, with the expectation of changing out the tire and getting back on the job after lunch.  Instead, they come back to find the entire wheel and tire missing from the repair shed, and they had to order another flown into Vladivostok and then choppered up to the work site 3 days later.

[BannedFromDU]

Guy I work with had a similar experience working Exxon-Mobil jobs in Siberia.  Literally had to weld job boxes closed in order to keep 'em from being raided.

They had an incident where the tire went out on a JLG. Took the wheel off, and went to lunch, with the expectation of changing out the tire and getting back on the job after lunch.  Instead, they come back to find the entire wheel and tire missing from the repair shed, and they had to order another flown into Vladivostok and then choppered up to the work site 3 days later.

     That explains why an asshole like Mark Kregel finds Marxian economies so appealing: you don't have to do anything, your neighbor is poor, so you don't have to feel like a failure, and you are expected to steal stuff and get high every chance you can. Wouldn't that explain the appeal of centralized planning to all DUmmies?

[DefiantSix]

     That explains why an asshole like Mark Kregel finds Marxian economies so appealing: you don't have to do anything, your neighbor is poor, so you don't have to feel like a failure, and you are expected to steal stuff and get high every chance you can. Wouldn't that explain the appeal of centralized planning to all DUmmies?

You're probably on to something.

[sharkhawk]

I was only 12 and visited relatives in Poland. 

The things I remembered.

1.  We had to buy Toilet paper

2.  People tried to buy our jeans right off of us on the street.

3.  The exchange rate on the street was some 20x what the official rate was.

4.  The Grandma sitting in the bathroom collecting coins for use.

5.  Going with my Aunt to the Grocery Store and standing in a huge line to buy whatever was available.  (Although my Uncle was a Master Sargent and my Aunt worked in the Army Kitchen and could bring some stuff home.

6.  The total gloom of the country and of my Aunt and Uncle, and how they were able to come over 8 years later and how happy they were./

[Aristotelian]

I remember once way back when, somebody posted in the DUmp Lounge about how things weren't really too bad behind the Iron Curtain (could well have been Kregel, I forget)...unfortunately one the regulars in there was a German who was born in the East, she gave a pretty good bitch-slapping about how the G.D.R. was far from a paradise.

[Gern]

[BannedFromDU]

I was only 12 and visited relatives in Poland. 

The things I remembered.

1.  We had to buy Toilet paper

2.  People tried to buy our jeans right off of us on the street.

3.  The exchange rate on the street was some 20x what the official rate was.

4.  The Grandma sitting in the bathroom collecting coins for use.

5.  Going with my Aunt to the Grocery Store and standing in a huge line to buy whatever was available.  (Although my Uncle was a Master Sargent and my Aunt worked in the Army Kitchen and could bring some stuff home.

6.  The total gloom of the country and of my Aunt and Uncle, and how they were able to come over 8 years later and how happy they were./

     Are you sure you don't mean you were in Venezuela yesterday?