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| Thread: Belarus Planning to Bring Back Serfdom |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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blizzardboy
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posted June 02, 2014 04:22 PM |
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Belarus Planning to Bring Back Serfdom
Serfdom in Belarus
The FT's Isabel Gorst reports Belarus will no longer allow farm laborers to leave their jobs if they want to move to the city.
This is also known as serfdom.
"Yesterday, a decree was put on my table concerning – we are speaking bluntly – serfdom,” Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko told a meeting on Tuesday to discuss improvements to livestock farming, gazeta.ru reported.
Lukashenko is seeking to curb urban migration, and is notoriously obsessed with farming, Gorst says. He has said he hopes the decree would “teach the peasants to work more efficiently,” and that regional governors who failed to ensure timely and efficient harvests in their regions would be dismissed.
Historically, serfdom meant that you have very limited mobility in society. If you were a farmer raised on a particular Lord's lands, you were civilly obliged to farm on those lands and pay taxes in exchange for your security and welfare. You were not free to go to another person's lands, since that meant cutting profits for one vassal and giving them to somebody else. We find this situation very similar to this proposed contemporary harsh immigration restriction, which would not enable farm laborers to find work elsewhere in the cities. They would be bound to their trade under pain of punishment from the civil authorities. Belarus is widely considered "the most Soviet" of the former Soviet republics, but if it has enough backing, it could eventually move elsewhere in the exCCCP (in a few decades). Even within eastern Europe, immigrants from rural areas to urban areas are widely unpopular, because they are perceived as taking people's jobs away. It's a very strong parallel to the immigrants in W. Europe & States, who, in turn (allegedly) take away jobs from Westerners. The difference is that E. European culture is even less sympathetic towards their own people than certain other countries are towards foreigners.
This is one of the dangerous aspects of a democratic or quasi-democratic system. Short-term, kneejerk thinking from the populace (X person moved in, X person now has a job, therefore X person took my job away) is a very dangerous ideology. There is a lack of wider perspective.
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Stevie
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posted June 02, 2014 04:44 PM |
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Don't tell me you actually care...
You just want to collect more QPs like a squirrel collects more nuts.
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mvassilev
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posted June 02, 2014 05:41 PM |
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kipshasz
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posted June 02, 2014 06:22 PM |
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mvassilev said:
Time for Maidan to come to Belarus.
the maidan will be smoked out in a jiffy. Comrade Lukashenko doesn't take crap from anyone.
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"Ashan to the Trashcan", "I got PTSD from H7. " - LizardWarrior
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OmegaDestroyer
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posted June 02, 2014 07:55 PM |
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Stevie said:
Don't tell me you actually care...
You just want to collect more QPs like a squirrel collects more nuts.
I find the article to be quite interesting and do not suspect Blizzard posted it for the purpose of collecting QPs.
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted June 02, 2014 08:30 PM |
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This is not the VW Stevie. What happens in Europe concerns many of us here in HC, so your attitude is not welcome.
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kipshasz
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posted June 02, 2014 09:25 PM |
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I think this is just a way to enforce local grown food produce.
which is in a bit of a crappy state as recently there's been an african swine plague outbreak in Belarus recently.
and in the places bordering Lithuania. which in a chain reaction triggered a mass of panic here because the danes who own large swine complexes here freaked out at the loss of profit, and out parliament douches start a mass genocide of swine and boar.
It is a good thing, because Belarus' economy is based on agriculture and manufacturing. at least the all knowing wikipedia says so.
the story seems a bit one sided, as usual.
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"Kip is the Gavin McInnes of HC" - Salamandre
"Ashan to the Trashcan", "I got PTSD from H7. " - LizardWarrior
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted June 02, 2014 09:29 PM |
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It's a good point Kip. Though I would always prefer the carrot in case when a nation is faced with such a dilemma.
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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kipshasz
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posted June 02, 2014 09:34 PM |
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also, the conditions in the rural areas aren't the best in Belarus, so that's one of the reasons of people mass evacuating to the cities. Same as here, there are few jobs and a lot of drunks hung on cheap wine. but given that the communal farms are still a thing there, you could think they'd be better. but then again there were drunks in communal farms during the glorious time of the Soviet, so meh.
I'm pretty sure there are more to this than the article stated. probably some financial subsidiaries and conpensations for people who still do farming or so.
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"Kip is the Gavin McInnes of HC" - Salamandre
"Ashan to the Trashcan", "I got PTSD from H7. " - LizardWarrior
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fred79
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posted June 02, 2014 09:35 PM |
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OmegaDestroyer said:
I find the article to be quite interesting and do not suspect Blizzard posted it for the purpose of collecting QPs.
who in the hell actually posts anything just for a gay-ass qp? that's retarded. oh wait... i forgot. we actually have one of those... 
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blizzardboy
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posted June 03, 2014 06:16 AM |
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kipshasz said:
also, the conditions in the rural areas aren't the best in Belarus, so that's one of the reasons of people mass evacuating to the cities. Same as here, there are few jobs and a lot of drunks hung on cheap wine. but given that the communal farms are still a thing there, you could think they'd be better. but then again there were drunks in communal farms during the glorious time of the Soviet, so meh.
I'm pretty sure there are more to this than the article stated. probably some financial subsidiaries and conpensations for people who still do farming or so.
Maybe there is or isn't, but either way, this is the beginning of a caste system. If you are a farm laborer, you are restricted from immigrating to the city, and more than that, the restriction doesn't go both ways: a person in the city would still be permitted to become a farm laborer, but that doesn't seem to be popular. Somebody here has to be getting the short end of the stick.
And yeah, alcohol probably does play a significant role in it all. Belarus has the biggest alcoholic dependency in the world, more than Russia, although Russia's alcohol problem is probably curbed somewhat by its Muslim population in the south. Among ethnic Russians, who knows. If you're a farm laborer, then you have a job, and if you have a job, there's a limit to how much of an alcoholic you're going to be. Move to the city, don't find work or find unsteady work, and in that kind of culture, you drown in the bottle until you're on the street. A lot of the migrators are young people and they don't want to live on a farm.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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mvassilev
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posted June 03, 2014 06:24 AM |
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kipshasz said:
It is a good thing, because Belarus' economy is based on agriculture and manufacturing. at least the all knowing wikipedia says so.
It's a good thing that people will be forced to have certain jobs and not be allowed to quit?
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted June 03, 2014 12:15 PM |
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^ @M
If that's the job the state needs them to do, then yes. Everyone running around willy nilly all wanting to be industrial workers, will find themselves starving to death, and then naturally blame the government.
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kipshasz
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posted June 03, 2014 01:16 PM |
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Tsar-Ivor said:
^ @M
If that's the job the state needs them to do, then yes. Everyone running around willy nilly all wanting to be industrial workers, will find themselves starving to death, and then naturally blame the government.
Again Mvass has absolutely no idea what's going on and pretends to be an all knowing smartass.
And Tsar is right. look at yanks for example. they had a very strong manufacturing industry, untill they destroyed it. now we see morons in retail or flipping burgers, but no real stuff made in the states.
same is happening here, we have new shopping malls popping out, but no real industry going on, and that which remains is being derailed and sold to foreign capitals.
Sometimes you need to go into the extreme.
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"Kip is the Gavin McInnes of HC" - Salamandre
"Ashan to the Trashcan", "I got PTSD from H7. " - LizardWarrior
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orzie
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posted June 03, 2014 01:44 PM |
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Same for us in Siberia actually. The factories which were evacuated from the Western regions in the times of WWII now stand inactive, deserted or decimated. A lot of new entertainment centers and shopping malls open, but no new schools/kindergartens/hospitals are being built.
It's for those who thinks Putin has 'raised Russia from its knees'. The power of the oligarchs grows more and more, and the natural resources of Siberia like oil are sold in raw form without even trying to manufacture something from it. And then Russia buys high-tech products made from that oil, paying thrice more.
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mvassilev
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posted June 03, 2014 05:45 PM |
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Tsar-Ivor said:
^ @M
If that's the job the state needs them to do, then yes. Everyone running around willy nilly all wanting to be industrial workers, will find themselves starving to death, and then naturally blame the government.
If farm work is so valuable and wages are allowed to adjust, then farmers should be getting paid a lot. If they're not, it either suggests that there are enough farmers, or prices aren't being allowed to adjust freely.
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted June 03, 2014 06:59 PM |
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Quote:
If farm work is so valuable and wages are allowed to adjust, then farmers should be getting paid a lot. If they're not, it either suggests that there are enough farmers, or prices aren't being allowed to adjust freely.
Trying to manipulate people into agriculture through wage enticements to make it seem appealing is downright absurd, especially when it comes to food, a necessary everyday resource. What your suggesting is that if food is such a scarcity then the value of agriculture would by force of nature be high, thus attract workers, though it is a logical theory, it assumes too much.
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mvassilev
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posted June 03, 2014 10:50 PM |
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If by "wage enticements" you mean "jobs that are in high demand have higher wages", If food is expensive, it's a price signal to consume less of it (where possible) and produce more of it. If food is cheap, it's the opposite signal.
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted June 03, 2014 11:04 PM |
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Are you suggesting that once food prices go up due to lack of surplus food due to nobody working the farms, that then people will seek to become farmers to take advantage of the high prices? Then the more people that jump on the bandwagon, the lower the prices get, therefore farming again no longer seems like an ideal occupation. Thus the cycle starts anew.
Is this the theory that you're presenting?
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mvassilev
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posted June 03, 2014 11:21 PM |
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Prices/wages adjust as people leave agriculture, and also as they consume food. As people leave an industry, supply of labor in that sector (in this case, agriculture) shrinks, which raises the wages of the people remaining in the sector. This process stops (reaches an equilibrium) when wages in the sector adjust to a level at which the net number of people entering/leaving the sector is near zero. Prices would have to be unrealistically rigid for what you describe to happen.
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