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Comment by vladms | Hacker News Reader

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything

If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda.

Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being...

Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.

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Years ago is different to now. Many places in Russia or China, Dubai etc is very livable. Even lots of people are going about their lives normally in Dubai - these days.

China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA.

> Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the on

totally true.

Having also lived in a communist country, I agree that 35 years ago the difference was huge.

Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago.

The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage.

Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance.

Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).

> Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities.

Hiding or not 20 years ago the west was trying to surveil it's population as much as they could as well, see the Snowden/NSA scandal.

> even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe

Spot on. I would go even further and argue that "communist countries" used to rule through "fear of the state", while west ruled through (among others) "fear of others" (used to be communist, now becomes migrants or other religious groups).

For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.

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