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Comment by ossobuco | Hacker News Reader

> No, the U.S. has not done worse than Russia has in this war. Not even in Vietnam, I think.

Rethink[0]. It just takes some basic math to understand that the USA has done much worse, even if we just consider civilian deaths estimates. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. And for what, to stop communism? Is that a valid reason to devastate three countries?

> But, I guess we were orcs when we invaded and occupied Iraq

Orcs once, orcs forever. Isn't that how it works? If you can call an entire population "orcs", then there must be some intrinsic evil rooted in their ethnicity, culture, or whatever it is.

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_...

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Communists killed more than 100 millions worldwide, not thousands.

It's recently become mainstream knowledge that those numbers were a more like wishful thinking than fact, also pretty useless because nobody parroting them knows any control group numbers, and would be off-topic even if true.

It's Russian and Chinese propaganda.

China - 61 million victims (and counting).

USSR - 36-37 million victims (25 million of them are Ukrainians).

North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.

And the numbers themselves are NATO propanda to push a NATO world order, it's not all propaganda just because you disagree, pointing out that China disagrees with the US on a very US vs China geopolitical and ideological dispute is indistinguishable from cheering on your favorite sports team at this point.

No, it's communist propaganda. Physical elimination of richer or ideologically different people is the core of communist ideology. You should know that if you call yourself "antifa".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

I cannot read your mind.

25k people starve to death each day[0]. Those deaths all happen in capitalist economies. That's 9 million each year, for who knows how many years since we developed the necessary technology to have a surplus of food. We're talking about hundreds of millions of preventable deaths, if not more. That's just the result of a very inefficient economic system—without even counting wars, lack of healthcare, and so on.

I'll happily choose communism over such an incredibly unjust system, even if it caused "100 million" deaths worldwide, as you say. That number is complete BS, by the way.

- [0]: https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/losing-25000-hunger-...

Which of the countries facing hunger have anything resembling a modern market economy?

The real question is why don't they have a modern market economy, and if they all did, what would happen to the existing modern market economies?

That was a long way of saying "none".

Massive food surplus is a feature of efficient market economies. By rejecting it on ideological grounds, it should come as no surprise that countries like Afghanistan or North Korea end up with hunger.

Their development into modern countries would free others from the burden of having to provide food and other aid to their starving citizens.

What a laughably naive view of the world.

Ever wondered why goods are affordable in our "modern market economies"?

It's because we exploit labor and resources in poorer countries, at a fraction of what it would cost here, to produce cheap goods.

So what do you think is going to happen the day that all poorer countries have developed into "modern market economies" and we can't exploit them like we do today? You realize that our economies would have to change completely?

> It's because we exploit labor and resources in poorer countries

Of course we do, tovarisch.

> Of course we do, tovarisch.

Nice argument you got there; it really shows your unwillingness to see things for what they are. Keep living the dream, no worries, there is no exploitation in the world, and your lifestyle is entirely moral.

It's huge difference between death and kill.

Holodomor (genocide of Ukrainians by USSR) was planned for 8 years, and then carefully executed, while nobody plans deaths of starvation because of overpopulation.

I'm not too well-informed about the operational mechanics of the Holodomor, so if you have any articles/chapters to recommend in regard to the long-term planning process that led up to it, that would be appreciated.

You can read some history and documents here:

https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/the-history-of-the-holodom...

I cannot find detailed history of Holodomor translated to English language. However, nothing special here: physical elimination of richer people is the corner stone of communism ideology. Communists did the same in all captured countries.

> physical elimination of richer people is the corner stone of communism ideology. Communists did the same in all captured countries

Now you're making it sound like a good thing though...

Evidently they're speaking your language.

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