49 Replies to “Great Moments In Socialism”

  4. If they’d close the dammed border maybe Californians could shorten the lines a little.

  7. Look at the bright side of this. You can visit with your neighbours one day while in a lineup for food. The next day you can visit with other neighbours while you wait to get some clothes.
    However, you have to be prepared that just when you get to the front of the line, the staff goes for a two hour coffee break or they have run out of product.
    Furthermore, just like in Canada with politicos, those that are more equal have special GUM stores they can go to.

  8. Should have added ‘just like in Canada with politicos, ie Jack seeing a private health clinic’…

  9. Exactly! The image speaks a million words about how socialism actually works. some of my relatives could attest to that.

  10. The real problem is a shortage of cold. If it were cold, there wouldn’t be these long lines. I’d be up for exporting some cold, but not sure how to smuggle it across the tropics.

  14. Danny Glover, was a crappy actor in “Men in Black” and “Independence Day” he should just shut up and stick to acting rolls he is best at like “Driving Miss Daisy” and leave the world alone.

  15. “Danny Glover … should just shut up and stick to acting rolls he is best at like ‘Driving Miss Daisy’…”
    Er, I believe that was Morgan Freeman.

  16. Reading the comments in that article, there is a lot of dumb f*cking communists commenting on it.

  17. Old Soviet-era Russian joke:
    A man hears there’s been a delivery of bread to the state shops and so takes his shopping bag and heads into the city. He sees a long line of people stretching several blocks and joins it.
    After many an hour of shuffling along he arrives at the shop and orders two loaves of bread.
    “Oh dear, comrade,” responds the sales clerk behind the counter, “how unfortunate! This is the shop with no meat – you want the line for the shop with no bread.”

  19. A story from the Bad Old Days: an American, a Pole, and a Russian are chatting together. The Pole says,
    “In Poland we have to line up to buy meat!” American: “what’s a ‘line-up’?” Russian: “what is ‘meat’?”

  20. You can have plenty of money,
    but you cannot buy something called ‘no food’
    get you some MREs,
    don’t starve foolishly..

  21. This could be Russia a year or two after we stop exporting food to them.
    Armies aren’t the only weapon.

  22. Unfortunately, in the mean time, Europe is shivering in the dark after Vlad shuts off the gas for two weeks. All those windmills and all those solar panels ain’t gonna keep Germany, Denmark, or Belgium warm.
    After all, Europe is too advanced and too modern to drill the shale gas under their feet.

  23. Somebody probably found a few rolls of toilet paper and is selling individual squares for a profit.

  24. I think you’re being sarcastic with your comment.. but just to offer a bit of insight, the state gov’t in Venezuela does give food stamps equivalent to citizens that can show a need. I’m not sure if party membership in the PSUV (the socialist Chavez party) is required, or what other requirements may need be met.
    But,
    When I was there, the folks that were given these coupons seemed to know there was something fishy with the concept, they’d trade the paper coupons they were given for other favors, like the coupons were for something at face value, and worth something, yet when I asked them why they didn’t just go to “Mission Mercal” and buy what they wanted, they were resigned to knowing what they wanted wasn’t there. So they’d trade the coupons at at discount, knowing the chance of being pleased with the result was, of a diminished value.
    Like toilet paper for example, for the past year.
    The Mission Mercal stores I saw there were more like, the authorities knew how many coupons were given out, that some wouldn’t be used, so they had to have 80% (for example) of the food value in their storage facilities and could simply say, “we’re out” …
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Mercal
    The lineup in the photo Kate’s posted, isn’t at all uncommon now, people used to line up for sugar, and there’d be a sign saying “2 kilos / person” with 2 or 3 members of the same family in line. Which is exactly as I’d expect when price controls are placed on basics, with currency controls in place.
    I don’t think there was a price control on whiskey though, there was a lot of it, if you like cheap whiskey, priced cheaply…

  25. I think that’s a lineup to see Justin Bieber in decadent semi-capitalist Toronto.
    I worked as a deck hand on a salmon troller in the 1960’s.My skipper was a unique individual in that he had been a deep sea trawler Captain for the Polish commercial fishing fleet, who had defected to Sweden with his whole crew in the 1950’s.
    I knew little about day to day life in the Soviet paradise and Canadian university communists I knew were,at that time, painting a picture of exactly that,a soviet paradise.
    After a season fishing off the West Coast, I was well informed about the special treatment of communist Party members in Poland. . Party members had no lines,special stores, more choices and always bread and meat, but what impressed me the most was that on his trawler,there was a commissar who did no work, and spent his entire career just spying on all the crew, listening for a word of complaint against the government or communism.
    I could NOT imagine having to live under that kind of stress. His story ended happily, when he and his crew had enough and grabbed the commissar, tied him up, and defected to Sweden.
    Old Joe,(as I then thought of him although he was only in his fifties) my skipper, was a decent, hard working, honest man, a great addition to Canada. Whenever I mentioned his story to the educated crowd I spent time with, faces closed up, one associate prof said Joe was a “liar”.
    No, he wasn’t, as I’ve had his story confirmed many times, but if I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that Canadian socialist/communists who have never lived under that system will almost NEVER,ever concede there is anything undesirable about their imagined utopian paradise or their ideology.
    Ideological blindness is the communists greatest feature.

  26. Just like the old East Germany: Schlange Stehen!
    The grocer would get some stock and the citizens would while away hours to get foodstuffs in the “Workers Paradise”.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  27. Well, if they weren’t wasting their time in a line-up to buy food, they wouldn’t have to waste their time later in another line-up to buy toilet paper.
    Sure, I make a joke, but the point is, when one has to spend a great part of one’s time simply waiting to acquire the necessities of life, that is time that cannot be spent doing productive pursuits, like earning a living. So less work gets done, because the workers are all waiting in lines, and less stuff gets produced, so the lines become longer and more time is wasted. It becomes a downward spiral, doesn’t it?

  28. Just think.
    In 50 years, people will say….
    “It’s a great place to vacation.
    The people are so friendly as long as you take toothpaste and toothbrushes for them in your suitcases.
    And the best part?
    They still have cars from the 1990s and the early 2000s!”

  29. Stood in one of these lines myself once, in Leningrad back in 1988.
    Joined a line out of curiosity, what would be in that store? Turns out the only there was was vodka, matches, and some disgusting pieces of something that might once have been chicken.
    And some people still think socialism is good for the people…

  31. I dunno could be a lineup of sheeple at any city in Canada trying to get a cup-a-jo at Hortons.

  32. Don, when my uncle from Alberta visited relatives near Orenburg in 1982 there was a party member at every family gathering, and if the relatives wanted to tell my uncle something they would sneak him off to the side.

  34. A lady friend told me about a shopping experience in Lithuania in the ’70’s.
    She could buy a brassier alright. Lots available… all double “D’s”, or whatever a humungous one is called.

  37. Several months ago I suggested scrapping Keystone and Northern Gateway pipeline plans, and build a pipeline to Chutchill, to sell to European markets. That would reduce the ridk of Europe being held hostage by Russia. That still looks like a good idea to me.

  39. Rmgk >
    “That would reduce the ridk of Europe being held hostage by Russia. That still looks like a good idea to me.”
    That is a good idea.
    The only problem I could see though is pissing off Russia and possibly having them turn Canada into the next Ukraine, right over the Arctic.
    Now that Obamba has proved what a pussy he is to Putin, there’s no really stopping Putin from seeing western Canadian resources as an easy conquest.
    Canada has no army to speak of, and Canadian Liberals have for the most part left the Canadian people defenceless outside of some hunting rifles and shotguns.
    Putin’s biggest problem would be beating the Chinese to the spoils. Edmonton and Calgary could become the next Kiev.

  40. That is one of the well-known problems with a command economy. In a free-ish mar ket economy, the
    decisions of individual buyers and sellers determine prices and hence availabilities.
    In a command economy a central bureau
    must determine the prices of everything. Any mistake will result in gluts and scarcities.
    I suspect that is why the National Socialists (NSDAP) in Germany did not convert their economy to a
    full command economy; unlike the Bolsheviks, who used violence to cover their stupidities.

  41. Ah, now, there hasn’t been TRUE socialism, which can now use the power of the computer.

  42. Perhaps if we sent some of our Canadian Localbores
    there to show them how to grow huge amounts of food
    on the apartment block roofs? Sort of a win-win.

  44. Looks like the lineup in Cayuga Ontario to get a flu shot. Except these guys aren’t standing in the rain at 35F like we were.
    Principle is the same though. Lineups and shortages are inevitable given central planning. Canada, Venezuela, all the same.

  45. Your agent remembers, growing in a socialist state run by communists, could write a whole book of adventures in socialism.
    Like.
    About 10 years old had to go with mom down to the vegetables and fruits store at about 5 am so we could have potatoes for lunch and maybe next day. Each bought 5 kg of potatoes that was maximum per person.
    Mom would get up at 4 am to wait in front of butcher shop until it opened at 7 am to get some meat for Sunday lunch. Lunch being the main meal of the day in those parts of the world.
    Mom would get up at 5 am to buy milk and baking stuff for breakfast, before it sold out.
    And so on and so on.
    All of this in stores run by the government bureaucrats, there was not private enterprise, none, nada, zip.
    Isn’t socialism cool?
    One other adventure was on a visit back home from Canada at about 1979 of the past century.
    Walking by a lineup at a store, asking “what are they selling here, what’s up with the line up?”
    This may sound and probably is ridiculous, anyway they were selling these thermos things that when you push on the top it pumps whatever is inside, out.
    Obviously outside of realm of necessity, though them people thought they just must gotta have it before their neighbors so they would be one up.

  46. Neither China or Russia will have to conquer N.America by military force. The Chinese have already done it in the aisles of MalWart, and now the wealthy ones are buying it up at 10 cents on the dollar. Russia will have it’s hands full conquering Europe in the same way. “You want gas? Kiss my ass.”
    Question is: where do the Muzzies figure in all of this? Both the Chinese and Russians hate them with good reason. We’re not that smart.

  47. “A story from the Bad Old Days: an American, a Pole, and a Russian are chatting together. The Pole says,
    ‘In Poland we have to line up to buy meat!’ American: ‘what’s a ‘line-up’?’ Russian: ‘what is ‘meat’?”
    A variation:
    Capitalism, Socialism and Communism are in a bar talking.
    Capitalism says, “I just had a big plate of kielbasa for lunch. It was delicious!”
    Socialism replies, “I too had some kielbasa for lunch, but I shared mine with some other people.”
    Communism then asks, “Hey you guys! Just what is this ‘kielbasa’ you keep on talking about?”

  48. Forward!
    In the bread line that is.
    Take a good hard look America. This is your future under the rule of President 0.

  49. Wrong! An example: Newspapers – use: reading, wrapping paper, insulation and finally toilet paper. Ask some Russian.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation