Joe

Why do you hate freeloading virus-loving mouth-breathers so much? screams into the air: Why won’t anyone think of the freeloading virus-loving mouth-breathers?! /s

Many people have “itches to scratch” and some interest in development but little time to learn, so AI coding tools will allow them to scratch many of those itches without paying $ to others or investing that time (for better or for worse). Even as an experienced (but no longer full time) coder, I use it to scratch itches when I don’t have the time/lust.

Often enough, you’ll find some customizable app that does 90% of what you want, with a bunch of features you don’t care about. Writing personalized apps is a cool new thing, giving you exactly the functionality that you want. Many times these will be based on OSS or open libraries, which the AI just glues together.

Will this personalized development result in new quality OSS apps, though? I doubt it. We also don’t really need more sloppy code on github.

There are a lot of personal apps that just happen to have an OSS license… and then there are OSS projects, built and maintained as OSS community projects. It takes dedication to run a real OSS project, build a community, handle issues, websites, etc.

Will AI coding tools assist developers of real OSS projects? Sure… many are already using it to varying degrees. We’ll increasingly see it being used to find and fix bugs and security issues ahead of time - security researchers & blackhats are already having a field day.

Indeed. I suspect it would need to be framed around national security and national interests, to have any realistic chance of success. AI is being seen as a necessity for the future of many countries … embrace it, or be steamrolled in the future by those who did, so a soft touch is being embraced.

Copyright and licensing uncertainty could hinder that, and the status quo today in many places is to not treat training as copyright infringement (eg. US), or to require an explicit opt-out (eg. EU). A lack of international agreements means it’s all a bit wishy washy, and hard to prove and enforce.

Things get (only slightly) easier if the material is behind a terms-of-service wall.

Let me know if you convince any lawmakers, and I’ll show you some lawmakers about to be invited to expensive “business” trips and lunches by lobbyists.

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In socialist states a larger part of the surplus is used to improve the labor pool, which explains the rapid growth.

Sure. If the right policies are prioritized and investments made, it should be much more efficient. Investments in primary healthcare and education in particular tend to be clear winners.

stark contrast from before and after the dissolution

Russia’s sudden shift to oligargchic capitalism was deeply corrupt and destabilising, harming russia itself and much of the neighbourhood.

to say that capitalism improved living standards is just assassine

It’s not capitalism that improves living standards. It’s sustained (and sustainable) growth, stable institutions and investment over time. Both capitalism and socialism can (and have) supported that, each with risks and caveats.

Sorry about that

Thanks

Recovering from WW2 losses was indeed a challenge for many soviet bloc countries. My suspicion is that without the cold war, W.Europe would also have recovered much slower as US investment and interest could have taken quite a different form.

Latin America is a different beast, worthy of its own discussion separate to this one.

The graph serves as simple contextualisation.

All european countries were already on the same trajectory. Russia was lagging behind for perfectly understandable reasons, but it was on the same trajectory. The soviet movement came at the right moment to benefit from this (and yeah, there’s a good chance they accelerated it, and in the worst case were “not bad” as someone phrased it).

A government would have had to monumentally screw up to not benefit from the rapid changes across europe at the time.

If the OP (or many of the commenters here) want to demonstrate uniquely soviet achievements, there are better metrics to focus on than life expectancy.

The original poster was terribly one sided, clearly meaning to shock people into thinking that the USSR’s socialism was solely responsible for it.

That the USSR achieved what it did is not in dispute… that socialism alone could have achieved this is my point… russia was a blank slate, primed for rapid improvement. It also didn’t improve uniformly (not surprising given its size and geography).

Neoliberal shock doctrine aka capitalism does that (followed by a rule 1 violating insult)

Russia’s internal collapse and slide was quite special, and most other former USSR states did better (even pre-1991), including Belarus & Ukraine. That speaks very much to russia, not the USSR of course

I expect people here to be capable of basic research and forming their own opinions. If your opinion is “ussr was perfect, does no wrong” then OK, good for you.

The users here are fully capable of doing minimal research and applying critical thinking without being spoon-fed.

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While no country is the same, you might look at finland (independent) and the baltics (joined USSR in 1940) for a somewhat comparable shared modernization trend and the resulting improvements in life expectancy, the 1970s dip, etc.

Russia started out in a terrible position (with no small thanks to the late abolishment of serfdom). But it isn’t particularly surprising that it improved when or as much as it did with the arrival of new technology, urbanisation trends, better sanitation and health care (especially pre-natal care), and of course its location. The world was changing fast, and russia was well primed to change with it.