Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vkhorikov 2643 days ago
Every single one of what you listed is either FUD or not an accomplishment of socialism.

Specifically:

- Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least.

- Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred.

- The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism.

- China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.

1 comments

>- Cuba's hospitals are not top notch, to say the least

Cuba's doctors are excellent. And their healthcare is a marvel compared to their Latin American "free market" equivalents. And let's not even compare cost/benefit ratio to the US one (I obviously don't care if a millionaire can get better high end machines in a US hospital -- for the price of a Central Park overlooking condo or two). They key healthcare indicators are telling:

https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/onli...

>- Russia did the rapid industrializing but it already was on this way before the revolution and would be much better off should the socialist revolution never occurred.

If the "socialist revolution never occurred" the push to industrialization would be many times slower, and in all probability Russia would have been defeated and thus a German territory after WWII -- along with all of Eastern Europe if not more. So there's that.

>- The equality laws for men and women are not due to socialism.

"Beginning in October 1918, the Soviet Union liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality, permitted cohabitation, and ushered in a host of reforms that theoretically made women more equal to men." -- Stalin took some of those back, but it took a lot of time for the US to even reach that level (assuming they even have).

>- China enjoyed the economic rise because they freed the marked not because they tied it, it's the opposite of socialism.

China remains a single-party state, with mass government intervention in the economy, and centrally planned activities. Besides, combining an open market with a socialist state is as old as Lenin's NEP.