Those that survived the fascist period, yeah. A lot of my family didn’t make it (I’m talking greatuncles and greataunts), but a few managed to survive the pogroms, death trains and forced labour, including my grandpa.
He followed the party line meticulously and taught my dad to keep his mouth shut during the communist period, so they were pretty safe and actually had a reasonable life, despite some pretty horrible things happening around the country (Roma forced adoption policy, ban on birth control & reduced womens’ rights, worsening work conditions to accomplish the 5 year plan, etc).
EDIT: Just realized I didn’t actually answer the question about today :)) Yeah, my family’s doing absolutely fine these days.
Difficult question. I’ll try my best at making my thoughts somewhat legible.
If you ask 10 different people what communism is, you’ll get 10 different definitions, so just to be absolutely clear, when I think “communism”, I think of authoritarian, centralized socialism where the state is the ultimate arbiter of all things. Communism has proven to work extremely well and be pretty nice at the level of a town or village as long as everyone has the option to stay or leave (for example, kibbutzes). The important part here is the voluntary nature and human scale. This amount of centralization and power is insane at the level of a state.
I think any authoritarian government has certain inherent problems, and leads naturally and inevitably to institutional paranoia. This is extremely bad for citizens. Not all authoritarian systems are equally bad, but this part I feel is unavoidable in any authoritarian government.
I am a big proponent of socialism, especially syndicalism (although recently, the more I read about anarchism the more it makes sense), but it has to be in a system where people have control over their own lives.
What happens if we throw AI into the mix? Would anyone trust an AI to manage the state?
It’s been on my mind for a long while now. It’d remove human biases, though how resilient should it be against corruption and the political elite? Guess such things are pointless to think about, but still
Eventually, it won’t matter what people trust. Our opinions will matter about as much as a pet gerbil best case, or bugs to be exterminated in the worst case. I’m sure everybody’s aware of how things can go wrong, but here’s an author talking about his series where the various AIs like us and keep us around:
The essay talks about the political structure that he thinks would arise in that situation, and I tend to agree with his conclusions, assuming we don’t go down the paperclip route.
Those that survived the fascist period, yeah. A lot of my family didn’t make it (I’m talking greatuncles and greataunts), but a few managed to survive the pogroms, death trains and forced labour, including my grandpa.
He followed the party line meticulously and taught my dad to keep his mouth shut during the communist period, so they were pretty safe and actually had a reasonable life, despite some pretty horrible things happening around the country (Roma forced adoption policy, ban on birth control & reduced womens’ rights, worsening work conditions to accomplish the 5 year plan, etc).
EDIT: Just realized I didn’t actually answer the question about today :)) Yeah, my family’s doing absolutely fine these days.
How do you feel about communism as a whole?
Difficult question. I’ll try my best at making my thoughts somewhat legible.
If you ask 10 different people what communism is, you’ll get 10 different definitions, so just to be absolutely clear, when I think “communism”, I think of authoritarian, centralized socialism where the state is the ultimate arbiter of all things. Communism has proven to work extremely well and be pretty nice at the level of a town or village as long as everyone has the option to stay or leave (for example, kibbutzes). The important part here is the voluntary nature and human scale. This amount of centralization and power is insane at the level of a state.
I think any authoritarian government has certain inherent problems, and leads naturally and inevitably to institutional paranoia. This is extremely bad for citizens. Not all authoritarian systems are equally bad, but this part I feel is unavoidable in any authoritarian government.
I am a big proponent of socialism, especially syndicalism (although recently, the more I read about anarchism the more it makes sense), but it has to be in a system where people have control over their own lives.
What happens if we throw AI into the mix? Would anyone trust an AI to manage the state?
It’s been on my mind for a long while now. It’d remove human biases, though how resilient should it be against corruption and the political elite? Guess such things are pointless to think about, but still
Eventually, it won’t matter what people trust. Our opinions will matter about as much as a pet gerbil best case, or bugs to be exterminated in the worst case. I’m sure everybody’s aware of how things can go wrong, but here’s an author talking about his series where the various AIs like us and keep us around:
http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm
The essay talks about the political structure that he thinks would arise in that situation, and I tend to agree with his conclusions, assuming we don’t go down the paperclip route.