Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

There's a reason why Communist revolutions had a vanguard and political prisons.

It wasn't because they're ontologically evil. It's because order is a very delicate thing. As we've seen, it's incredibly easy to espouse reactionary sentiments and get a lot of people supporting things out of misplaced fear.

If for example you're trying to build a social/political project based on dialectical materialism, a particularly enigmatic liar is like a fire in a barn. You can't "Marketplace of ideas" your way out of a liar who serves to benefit off their lies.

So what do you do? You throw them in the gulag, shoot em, put them to work, put them into reeducation. One liar isn't worth sacrificing the project as a whole.

Cuba reached near 100% literacy, eradicated parasites in children, and took the mob bosses who ran the country out of power. Of course they had to show no mercy to the bay-of-pigs types. The people who benefited when children had feet full of worms and the laborers couldn't read. They were a fire hazard.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: