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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

I am a thinking person and I wish for the collapse of the Iranian, Russian, and Chinese nation states (among others). Some people always have a rough time in a societal collapse, but that would at least offer the possibility of a brighter future instead of perpetual authoritarian oppression. And, selfishly, it would eliminate threats to the US and our allies.

I don't think we should intervene military to cause such a collapse. But we should exert peaceful pressure to hasten it, just like we did with the USSR.

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And the "crazy nineties" happened shortly after USSR's collapse. Hyperinflation, high levels of poverty, poor law enforcement, gang wars and high unemployment where things the average exsoviet citizen had to face in his daily life for years.

In some countries this was solved with external intervention (like adhesion to the EU) but others ended up being post-soviet dictatorships. In my humble opinion, we wouldn't have seen this many wars unfold in Eastern Europe if both Yugoslavia's and USSR's collapse had been better organized and supervised. Citizens of countries under oppressive regimes must fight against them... But avoid at all costs a power vacuum to appear.

No snark inteded, but how can a collapse be organized better?

The USSR collapse was actively organised badly, at least in Russia proper, in the years following 1991. A neoliberal society was transplanted from whole cloth to the people. In reality, a few oligarchs-to-be in various ways acquired for free what had been state property. A ruling elite replaced by another ruling elite who could climb the ladders fast enough.

Had the transition not been so chaotic and fast, a lot of grief would have been spared.

But is there any reasonable way for that to happen without outside intervention from an organized entity? It seems like something that can’t happen “without bootstrapping”.

No, there isn't, but also it's a virtual certainty that you will have outside intervention. So the powers that be should take it seriously and try to reign in both official operators and buckaroos going over. Every opportunistic country and individual will take a shot, so standing back won't work either, unfortunately.

Sadly it's not something that has an easy answer.

Trying to switch systems peacefully without losing total control of a country is not an easy feat.

Even countries that managed to do that like Germany's unification, Portugal (Carnation Revolution), Greece (military junta fall) or Spain ended up with regrets and damage that takes generations to cure.

Germany's unification? A huge mess and the damage is ongoing. Kohl bought votes by setting Ostmark exchange rates to 1:1. This took on all debt of the GDR at full price but got him favour with veryone with money in the bank. He enriched his cronies by selling companies and banks with credits in billions (taxpayer backed) for peanuts. He promised them "Blooming Landscapes" but they got sold out big time. What is blooming there? Fascism.

Why not wish for a peaceful transition to a more open and free society? China has already proven it can move towards being more open without collapse, for example.

Why wish for a peaceful transition? The best approach for China, and the world as a whole, would be for revolutionaries to summarily execute every member of the Communist Party down to the lowest village commissar. Communism is a cancer, and it's too dangerous to leave them alive.

Not often you get people on HN saying we should murder 90 million people.

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