• rottingleaf
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    1 month ago

    Yes, thank you for explaining the same thing politely, I had a slight hangover yesterday.

    The problem is with unneeded people making unneeded decisions for you anonymously (for them), centrally and obviously with no transparency.

    The advantages of the Internet as it came into existence for us were disadvantages for some people. Trapping people inside social media with one entry point and having the actual communication there allows for control which the initial architecture was intended to make hard.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The problem is with unneeded people making unneeded decisions for you anonymously (for them), centrally and obviously with no transparency.

      In business, it’s described as a kind of Principal-Agent problem. What happens when the person you’re working with has goals that deviate from what you contracted with them to do?

      A classic “unsolved problem” of social relationships.

      • rottingleaf
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        1 month ago

        I agree it’s an unsolved problem, but have you contracted police to, well, police your area? Had Soviet citizens contract NKVD?

        It’s rather between the two. In fact it’s a mechanism imposed on you with power, but there’s a lot of effort to conceal it as an imperfect market.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          have you contracted police to, well, police your area?

          Sadly, I’ve been outvoted in every election that centers on inflating police budgets.

          Had Soviet citizens contract NKVD?

          The NKVD was a tool of the Russian Soviets to police itself. So, less a contract between citizens than between party bosses.

          But Soviet police were far closer to the ideal community policing model than their Western peers, simply because they weren’t built atop the framework of plantation overseers, slave catchers, and anti-indigenious paramilitary.

          Pick up a copy of Fanshen (Chinese Cultural Revolution, not Russian Stalinist era, but it’s the same through line). The social transition from a country of sovereign landlords to egalitarian policing was rocky, but it was real and significant.

          it’s a mechanism imposed on you with power

          All societies are. The question becomes whether you find value in this mechanism or whether it is entirely extractive.

          The difference between a plantation overseer and a union rep is significant primarily because of who they answer to.

          • rottingleaf
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            1 month ago

            The NKVD was a tool of the Russian Soviets to police itself. So, less a contract between citizens than between party bosses.

            NKVD means “People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs”. And in Stalin’s era they still retained the pretense of a democracy on new principles from the 20s.

            But Soviet police were far closer to the ideal community policing model than their Western peers, simply because they weren’t built atop the framework of plantation overseers, slave catchers, and anti-indigenious paramilitary.

            No. If you ever learn Russian well enough … I actually don’t know what specifically to recommend you. Vysotsky’s songs? It’s just everything you read that will communicate some idea of how it all worked.

            Soviet “militia” (it was called that, but in fact it was police, of course) was quite similar to all three things you’ve mentioned.

            Also NKVD was both what later became KGB and what later became MVD (after Stalin and Beria USSR had sort of a moment of epiphany, not complete, but hundreds of thousands of people were released from prison camps, hundreds of thousands rehabilitated postmortem, and it was said publicly and officially that such things shouldn’t happen again), so it included both people in black leather coats who’d come at night and people in white coats who’d regulate road traffic and catch small time thieves at day. With pretty similar methods between them.

            Imagine if German police under Nazis and Gestapo were one and the same organization administratively. There’d be more “cultural exchange” than there was in reality.

            Pick up a copy of Fanshen (Chinese Cultural Revolution, not Russian Stalinist era, but it’s the same through line). The social transition from a country of sovereign landlords to egalitarian policing was rocky, but it was real and significant.

            I will, but my knowledge of Stalinism is closer to the root, and Russian is my first language, so I don’t think this will be useful for that kind of example.

            The difference between a plantation overseer and a union rep is significant primarily because of who they answer to.

            Since USSR came into this discussion, official unions in USSR made that difference very small. Their main activities were about organizing demonstrations on all the important days, though. And also the usual Soviet organization stuff - distribution of some goods via that organization to its members (like some fruit which would rarely be seen in some specific area due to Soviet logistics being not very good), sending children of some members to some kinda better summer camps or some competitions, all that.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              NKVD means “People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs”.

              Internal Affairs. Yes. Internal to the Russian Communist Party.

              Imagine if German police under Nazis and Gestapo were one and the same

              The NKVD weren’t Jew-hunters, engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing.

              my knowledge of Stalinism is closer to the root, and Russian is my first language

              You could say the same thing about Ayn Rand.

              Their main activities were about organizing demonstrations on all the important days, though

              You definitely sound very knowledgeable

              • rottingleaf
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                1 month ago

                Internal Affairs. Yes. Internal to the Russian Communist Party.

                No, to the union. That included police.

                The NKVD weren’t Jew-hunters, engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing.

                Actually they were that too for a short period of time before Stalin’s death, when he got paranoid.

                Also did you know there were unofficial quotas for good universities for the amount of Jewish students, while some simply didn’t accept any? In MSU such quotas existed, while in Gnesinka there were no Jews at all.

                You could say the same thing about Ayn Rand.

                She is usually criticized for her simplistic understanding of the world outside of Soviet matters, not for understanding them wrong.

                You definitely sound very knowledgeable

                Well, what they clearly was outside of their usual activities was protecting worker rights.