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Comment by rottencupcakes

1 day ago

Odd how nobody ever builds a balloon to fly towards the communist utopias.

One guy did use a plane to land in Red Square. Remember him?

  • Not to live there though, just as a "symbol of peace".

    • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

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.