Nobody “died in the GULAG”

GULAG is an acronym of Russian words which roughly translated into English means, the Main Administration of the Correctional Facilities (or thereabouts).

It refers to the organisation of officers who administered the labour camps, and implemented the production quotas.

The reason there are labour camps is because in a centrally planned economy, there is no “invisible hand of the market” to allocate labour and capital - it is done by the people through the government.

Consequently there is no such concept as “excess labour” or “unemployment”. You won’t even hear a person above the age of 45 or so refer to “bes rabotnii” or “person without a job/unemployed”. There was a different word for those people during Soviet times.

Labour and capital are directed towards those purposes the government deems a priority.

For example housing reconstruction following the Great Patriotic War.

It's insane kids are being taught this

Half of his EOs get thrown out by courts

Congress who is supposed to pass laws can't even pass a funding bill 9/10 years now

Kids are too dumb to realize if anyone told Stalin they refuse to fund his initiatives or that the courts which didn't even exist over ruled him that they would be executed

You’re incredibly wrong about that.

If you ever in Nashville, let me know, and I’ll let you borrow one of my books to help educate you on the subject.

https://imgur.com/a/oGUUeyj

Both Hitler and Stalin did the best they could for their countries. Regardless of what atrocities you can attribute to them, you have to admit that their intentions were good and that there was no element of personal gain right?

Additionally, they both had personal courage and put themselves on the line. Hitler was twice decorated with the Iron Cross for bravery during WW1. Stalin robbed Tsarist banks.

Compare this to Trump, dodged the Vietnam draft, and everything he is doing is for the sake of his billionaire buddies and for the sake of Israel to prevent his pedophilia from getting blackmail exposed.

The GULAG is not a place, it is a bureaucracy.

Are your books written in Church Slavonic or mainstream Russian? Kzazhelenyu, ya magu tolko prechitau po’Russki

You use the word “is” as though it is the present meaning of the word.

But, language evolves over time.

Historically, it was an organization. But in English, we have referred to the Gulag as a network of forced labor camps.

You know that. But for some reason you wanted to make a distinction without a difference.

Would you have preferred it if I had just used the phrase forced labor camps LMAO?

Meh. Words have meanings. You choose to describe them as “forced labour camps”, probably because that’s how you read them as being described in some English-language text book.

But by all means, double-down, it’s of little consequence to me.

What books will you lend me, and who are the authors?

Click the link. I circled it for you.

And that wasn’t my description. I was asking you if that’s how you would prefer it to be described.

They were more like torture camps as described by Solzhenitsyn.

Some people claim that the camps were used as a mechanism to silence political dissidents. Maybe that’s right.

Other people observe that in a centrally planned economy, “political dissident” is not recognised as a required category of labour in the same way as, say, a teacher or mechanical engineer would be. And therefore their labour is allocated to output that the state deems important.

I don’t have a strong view one way or another, if you ask 10 different people from the former Soviet republic you’ll get 10 different answers.

What I can say is, if the camps were in operation today, you might see them filled with mumble rappers, influencers and OF performers.

Either way, these nuances about [insert description of network of camps] doesn’t change my central argument that Stalin is essentially at the pinnacle of any scale seeking to rate authoritarianism among a given country’s leadership.

And comparing him to Donald Trump in that way is ridiculous.

There is an established framework to rate the relative level of government control from a theoretical libertarian state through to totalitarian and everything in between.

Some of the measures of state control include conferring benefits on a group of loyal insiders to consolidate control among branches of the government or across states in a federation.

Others include influence and control over the media.

Yet others relate to the level of state control in elections and the realistic prospect of a meaningful opposition assuming power.

The camps were just one manifestation of an economic system which itself both delivers a high degree of control to the government but also relies on a high degree of government control (and bureaucratic cronyism) for its existence.

You may not agree with the comparison itself nor its finding but it’s not ridiculous.

Agreed. Which is why I gave it about 3 seconds of airtime in my 54 second video. But it’s the only thing that you have focused on for some reason. 😂

Yeah I’m actually obsessed with pre-90’s labour economics

Also the central monetary system and the currency collapse

Noting I was a kid when all this happened so it’s discussions with my parent’s generation and what I’ve read in books

Damn. Just found this online from the AP Gov textbook.

It’s funny how both the extreme left and extreme right models of economic and political organisation result in poor people subsisting on what essentially amounts to economic slavery

Lol. Political Compass is a fun little test to post your results on a forum or a group chat or something similar. It's definitely not something that should be taught in an AP class though. It's quite incomplete as an ideology barometer.

Here's the site for anyone interested

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

Thanks. I think I've taken one of those before.

I did this test, and im in the middle... and i think atleast half the questions were loaded/inaccurate. e.g. leaning towards anti-government sees you as a socialist, which i definiately am not. So a populist like myself rates too left because question is loaded..

I am probably middle/right for social issues, and hard right for financial.