Canada is ranked number 1 as the Best Country of the World and in Quality of Life

Ok, I took a look at the subrankins and I think they either aren't measuring for the best country to live in (although idk wtf else the best country is supposed to mean) or they have some fucked up idea of what that entails.

Apparently they have ten subrankings and the overall ranking is based on how well a country ranks on them. Now here's the deal...

Quality of life in a country only accounts for 13.88% of the score.

Read that again. Sure there are other important things, such as Agility (measures how well a country can adapt to shit going on in the world and accounts for 14.18%), Entrepeneurship and Open for business (important for the economy and thus for the future of the country, 14.16% and 9.42%) and Social purpose (human rights etc. 12.23%), but there is also a whole lot of stuff that probably doesn't give a lot of comfort to people living there if the above things aren't in check. Movers, Power, Cultural influence and Heritage together total in 25.18% of the score if my math checks out. That's ridiculously much for things that at the end of the day are relatively insignificant in terms of how good a life people living in a country can live.

 

western civilization is usually dated as emerging around the 8th or 9th century and is now universally used to refer to what used to be called Western Christendom, russia early on defined themselves as an orthodox civilization in reaction to the west. But even ignoring that germany by then was one of the most capitalist nation of western europe, and it was they who sheltered then arranged passage for the communist leadership back into russia then the west bankrolled the unpopular white movement with direct & indirect support in a civil war that decimated about 10 millions russians. The western nations were not fans of communism yet there was an universal jubilation at the fall of the Tsar (who was largely of western descent with a western wife speaking a western language, about the only russian thing about him was his religion).

As i already wrote above famines were endemic to russia, just in the 1890s about half of millions russians died of starvation.
The soviets union was a nation born in blood with hostile countries all around them many having participated in the civil war and others used it as an opportunity for a quick landgrab, they were with small exceptions considered an international pariah, so the regime pursued a singleminded effort at rapid militarization and industrialization to be able to defend themselves in an eventual war with the west, a war which that they barely survived.
In contrast there are census dating to the time of the tsar showing that as much as 70% of the peasantry lived below subsistence level after the abolition of serfdom, most peasants payed more than they produced and the periodical land reallotment which grew steadily smaller due to them being discouraged* to migrate all but guaranteed starvation and exploitation by landlords. A major reason of the early popularity of the soviets was just that, the redistribution of lands.
In many ways all the soviets did was bring out the worse that existed under the tsars while simultaneously greatly improving the lot of the average russian.
The police state already existed under them, as did the gulag camps, political repression, arbritary execution, early form of collectivization ect ect. Possibly the censorship of literature and discouragement of ideas was more extensive during the tsars.

 

Do you have a hammer and sickle tattoo or something? I've only heard hardcore communists attempt to explain away the problems of the Soviet Union by claiming they were caused by purely external factors or claiming that Russia was worse under the Tsardom. And you're doing both.

 

@somuchforsubtlety is right though. Russia under Tsardom was a rotting starving backwards shithole.

The Tsar was already doing the Gulag shit and in fact the USSR was the only reason Russians survived WW2 as Germany would have crushed Russia if it was still under Tsardom.

 

Tšardom most certainly sucked, there's no denying that. But the subtlety guy seems to be under the impression that Soviet Union wasn't a total shithole country, which is just wrong.

 

In the 1920’s, sure. The US also has had some rough times, like when that economic bubble burst, and they went from the Roaring 20’s into the Great Depression, there was a dust bowl, it was horrible. Yes, let’s be absolutely be fair to the Soviets and judge them on a quality of life standard for the extent of the regime.

I’m sorry what? How, exactly, does Europe start a civil war in Russia?

Okay, I see what you mean but that doesn’t take responsibility away from the Bolsheviks. Europe shipped the Bolshevik leadership back to Russia, and sold them arms. Lenin led the revolution. Russians loaded those arms and squeezed the triggers. So there’s a body count of 10 million already. I’d like to point out the Kulaks are included in that number, a class of landowners who knew how to manage farms. They didn’t resist, they were just slaughtered for having too much money and influence. Then there was a famine, in part because nobody knew how to manage farms. Because they were dead. Because the Soviets killed them.

There was an increase in life expectancy, was there? I guess that’s true if you remove all the ones that starved or were named enemies of the State. GDP per capita? Well yes, there were all of the technological innovations that were increasing that the entire world over. Plus if we cook the books and add the GDP produced by slave labor, without including the slaves in that “capita,” that definitely helps our Soviet cause, does it not? And you’re not going to convince me that women benefitted from this. Were they brought to the same level as men? Sure, by lowering the standard for everyone. Under the Soviet Union, women were equal slaves to the State alongside the men. Not in the gulag, though, which they had an equal shot at enjoying a tenure in. In the gulag, they got to do the same amount of work as the men, plus be raped by the guards.

Police existed. Not a police state. I believe a labor camp existed. The Soviets built a network of hundreds. Of course arbitrary execution is never justified, but it’s a poor argument to say “The Tsar did it first!” That the Soviets did it at all is still a human rights violation, and that they did it more is a travesty. The most interesting part, though, is the political repression.
Vladimir Lenin was an outspoken Marxist and rabble rouser, and was kicked out of university for his trouble. He continued to speak against the Tsar, and was exiled to Siberia for three years. Just three. Was that three years hard labor? No. He was given a furnished house, he had books, he wrote letters. The only difference was, he was physically removed from the other rebels and it was cold outside. He later toured Western Europe until he was ready to go home and overthrow the government. In contrast, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a… let me check… a university student leading an anti-Soviet protest? No, that’s right he was an artillery commander, fighting the Nazis. What was his crime again? Oh, he was corresponding with a guy who had elsewhere suggested the Soviets might not be as great as they’d hoped. He got ten years hard labor for it. Thrown into a camp where you were as likely to die of starvation, cold, disease, or a work accident as you were to finish your sentence. Not for public protest, but for writing private letters. Oh, that was after the torture. Yeah, they didn’t just rubber stamp you and send you off to cut pine trees in Siberia or build a dam on the Volga. They tortured you first, until you gave up the co-conspirators they assumed you had.

Everything the Nazis did to the Jews, with exception to gassing, the Soviets did to their own people, ten times over. The cattle cars, the starvation, the beatings, the rapes, it was all done in Russia before the War, during the War, and long, long after the War was over. For many of those victims, gas would have been a mercy.

I’m not an ignorant ‘Murican with the sleeves cut off of my denim jacket and a “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper sticker on my lifted truck. I know we have our own set of national sins to contend with. We built our own concentration camps here in the US during WWII, against recommendations from the Congressional investigation, threw our entire Japanese immigrant population in them, and let their neighbors steal their land. We made dirty deals with the indigenous tribes, and went back on our word several times. Worst of all, that blight on our conscience, we participated in chattel slavery in direct contradiction to our founding principles, long after we knew better and failed to integrate those freed slaves into our social fabric and share our inheritance with them. However, when we tried to build a wall it was to keep drugs and criminals out, not keep regular citizens in. I’m glad the Finns here love Finland, I’ll even support the Canadians in their love for Canada, but I personally still love the US. Sometimes despite itself. But you’ll never convince me Russia was ever better by any measure.

 

Russians survive WW2 in spite of the USSR more than because of it. Purging high-ranking officials and anyone capable of overthrowing Stalin in a coup 3-4 years before a war determining the very existence of Russians, and not preparing for a German invasion that both the US and the UK warned about weren’t exactly moves the USSR did to help Russians.

 

The USSR was innovative—something that the Tsardom wasn’t. They were able to get a satellite and a man into space before the US.

The economic model set up by Marxist regimes were great for the initial kickstarting of their economies, mainly because they either used existing factories (North Korea’s case, as they used Japanese factories there), or they depended on getting that funding from exports (USSR’s case). Neither case factored in time, whereas capitalist economies must factor that in due to competition.

Especially from the 1970’s on, you can see a pretty clear correlation between the USSR’s budget/spending, and oil prices worldwide.

 

It was, absolutely, and it was the same experience, if not worse, for the common Soviet citizen. You were still starving, you still had no rights and now you had to worry about NKVD agents knocking on your door at 2:00am to torture a confession of treason out of you because someone thought you may have looked at them the wrong way.

Imperial Russia did have labor camps, nothing compared to the gulag system though, either in terms of size or brutality. Solzhenitsyn did a pretty good job at explaining the difference between the two in the Gulag Archipelago.

Stalin did some really stupid stuff. He made a non-aggression pact with Hitler and trusted him not to break it. He held off on setting up defensive lines on the western border for fear of offending Hitler. He also thought it was a wonderful idea to murder all of his most experienced military leaders. Stalin was responsible for the massive defeats early in the war which necessitated the desperate scorched earth tactics and "Not One Step Back" policies.

 

Agreed on that, but the guy spent two decades preparing his nation for war and while the great terror harmed his nation it was in reaction of a coup or attempted coup. Way back when germany started to mobilize and violate the treaty of versaille he asked the western democracy to launch a pre-emptive attack and was ignored, after that with no western nation including poland willing sign a military treaty with russia and their spineless reaction to the invasion of czekoslovia it is no wonder that he did everything he could to stave off the germans until his nation was ready. He did not have the same luxury as the UK and the US, being separated by a great body of water and after seeing how germany handled poland and france not causing trouble was the right move especially with the lackluster performance of his army during the winter war.

The soviet lost about 25 millions people during the war maybe half of them being civilians, that it was so low was only because they stoped the german advance as the hunger plan was estimated to kill another 20 to 30 millions civilians and who know how many more would have followed.

 

I did not want to derail OP post off topic, my point of contention was just with @Meshuga's claim about how good life was under the Tsar. Russians's leaders have historically failed them with stalin possibly being the worst but as for your meme, communism as in the theory of a stateless egalitarian society has been humanity's way of doing thing for most of their existence.

 

I never said life for Russians was great under the Tsar. All I really meant to say was, some people value equality so much, and are so hellbent and tunnel blind on achieving that equality, that they forget they’re making everyone equally miserable.

But that claim that stateless egalitarianism has been the norm, that bears some explanation. Citations, please.

 

There is nothing farther from the truth than such laughable statement.

 

Ehh, communists today are anti-West edgelords and wumao who adore authoritarian regimes, even when nightmare Western-funded nightmares like China commit genocide. The far right and the far left both have useful idiots that China and Russia both fund and influence, and they push similar stuff as those Marxists, Maoists, and Stalinists.

But banishing the government via a vanguard of armed proletariat was the original aim of communism. Turns out that Marxists and Marxist-Leninists skipped psychology class and didn’t realise that the vanguard won’t simply drop their weapons and give up control. People get drunk off power.

 

Hunter gatherers were egalitarians and tribes too to a somewhat lesser extent. Considering how much people in early sedentary settlements worked compared to them, their stratified society and worse diet it is a wonder why they didn't go back to the old ways.

 

First of, egalitarian, doesn't equal communism.
And secondly, capitalism is far more egalitarian than communism ever was or will be.

 

I don’t understand, are you equating egalitarianism with communism?
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers (they still exist in remote African and South American regions) share with their tribe out of excess as a voluntary and cooperative practice. There is still personal ownership involved, private property, if you will. That’s my knife because I made it, that’s your bow, it belongs to you. In communism, as Marx defined it, there is no “yours” and “mine.” There is only “ours.”

And yet they didn’t, which tells us there must have been an advantage we aren’t appreciating. There’s this impulse to romanticize simpler, more rustic ways of living, and it’s based on a false premise. It’s based in naïveté.

 

Most people wouldn't risk a safe home and a reltively consistent source of food for being able to work less and eat better IF they happen to catch prey instead of starving or getting violently mauled to death.

Marx defined communism basically as a utopian end state of human civilization, where there is no state and humans just naturally live from each according to his ability to each according to his need. Also Marx only wanted to get rid of private property (factories and shit like that), not of personal property (stuff that's your because you actually personally use it at a regular basis). So arguably some nomadic societies actually do follow a very similar idea, just on a way smaller scale and in a way different type of context than Marx intented.

 

So, I own a factory, is that not personal property? where is the line between private and personal property? if I have a car I don't use, is it private property and hence needs to be removed?

Communism is so ridiculously flawed. And it's an UTOPIC ideology, for a reason, it just cannot happen, is flawed, is fairy dust, is wishful thinking at it's worst.