[lazide]

So you’re saying the guys like Stalin in the USSR (who only had a couple dachas and nothing too fancy) were better than folks like Putin, because they weren’t greedy?

Or something else?

If you’re arguing having centralized political power is just a huge attractive nuisance, I certainly agree.

But It’s not like HOA’s aren’t a consistent top 10 complaint for people though either.

At least everyone knows what the greedy asshole is after, and it’s ‘only’ money. Usually. At first.

[Gormo]

Stalin used the state to steal literally everything from everyone. That's pretty much the epitome of greed.

Centralized power absolutely is an attractive nuisance, and the idea of creating greater nexuses of centralized power to counter the bad effects of the existing ones is pretty crazy.

[lazide]

Greed is taking things for yourself, which Stalin didn’t really do did he?

He took it and burned it, essentially, rather than steal it.

Which yeah, is arguably worse - but at least no one was able to be jealous after the fact, no? At least at anyone in the country. Which is why it went that way I suspect. Crabs in a bucket. They did seem pretty jealous of the West though, come to think of it. Which would explain a lot.

No one can stand any one party winning (and no party is strong enough to ‘win’), so everyone loses. They’re miserable, but miserable as “equals”. Though typically, even the winners are often poorer and more miserable than the losers would have been under another approach, Except for those who somehow managed to be ‘more equal’ somehow. Weird how that happens.

I think the crazy effect you’re noticing is essentially using fantasy as a coping mechanism.

The current mess is untenable, and we can’t figure out how to make it better (every time we try, we get convincing arguments that we’re at fault somehow or it's not good enough), so surely if we found the ‘good man’ to fix it for us, everything would be great.

But how, one asks? Too difficult to figure out, so you are a bad person for asking - apparently.

Which, uh, yeah, typically isn’t actually going to produce a good outcome, but…. The ‘good man’ says it will all work out, and everyone else seems worse, right?

Personally, I'm wondering if I'm actually being cynical ENOUGH about the current direction things are going in the US.