Is there one country left free of communism where one can retire?

A very good question even though I am not sure about the answer provided in the article.

read more: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/71089

About fafc

The goal of the “Find a Free Country Project” is to research, explore and find a safe and secure free country outside the USA, that is not too large, has a relatively open immigration policy, has a friendly business climate, has a non-intrusive government committed to freedom, and then move to it.
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102 Responses to Is there one country left free of communism where one can retire?

  1. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Depends on what she means by “communism”, if she is worried about stupid UN resolutions, then Taiwan (an a non-member of the UN) would probably be her best bet, otherwise Estonia is probably the best option, since the people there hate communism with a passion.

  2. Croatian Capitalist says:

    And if modern technology is the issue, then Bhutan might be a good option, it is safe, clean, and it’s far behind the West in everyday application of such technologies.

  3. Anonymous says:

    Got this awhile back. Just found it again:

    from the interwebs:

    A quarter of a century ago, give or take, the entire Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Warsaw Pact Socialist Alliance collapsed under the weight of its own systemic failure. At every level of society, except for the ruling Party Elite, a hyper-invasive, corrupt, over-reaching one party government enforced Party Doctrine with a religious ruthlessness and brutality while controlling every aspect of each comrade’s existence. The removal of the individual and its replacement with the collective, along with wealth redistribution and enforced “equality” by synthetic manipulation being the sacred cornerstones of this secular religion.

    By the time of its collapse, the real legacy of 70ish years of this Rule by Social Justice Activists was, aside from 80 million or so rotting corpses, a shared legacy of misery, envy, hunger, depression, and hatred.

    Our own self-styled “Progressive Democrats” are now taking up the discarded, rejected and disproven dogmas of Marxist failure, seemingly intent on proving that failure is only failure when it fails in the United States.

    Imagine if, in 1970, the Democrats had suddenly launched a hell-bent mission to enforce militant Bushido-based hyper-nationalism as the one, true, political religion, insisting we adopt the policies, beliefs, behaviors, philosophies, slogans etc. of Imperial Japan, defeated a quarter of a century earlier. American Citizens would have laughed the Democrats out of any and all positions of any power or responsibility while calling into question the mental stability of party leadership–AND RIGHTLY SO!

    Yet here and now exactly the same situation is unfolding: an enemy’s defeated, repudiated, disproven, and rejected political philosophy, of known failure and brutality, is actively being proselytized and indoctrinated as the universal panacea by the Democrats, and rather than being justifiably laughed off-stage, the tame media, in lockstep with Party Commissars, promotes Hillary’s Medicine Show as if it were the Second Coming of Barack rather than the absurdist series finale of the United States which is actually is.

    “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world…and since it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought” — Roger Scruton

    • Croatian Capitalist says:

      Yes, it’s mind-boggling how many extremely stupid people there are in the 21st century West, not only do they not learn from history, but the present (the situations in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea, etc.) seem to be totally lost on them as well.

  4. Croatian Capitalist says:

    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/05/01/poll-germans-value-social-justice-individual-freedom/

    At least some of the places to avoid are becoming blatantly obvious.

  5. Croatian Capitalist says:

    This is interesting: https://ip.index.hr/remote/indexnew.s3.index.hr/zaostttt.jpg

    Croatia’s real GDP per capita has grown only 6,5% since 1989! It is by far the worse country in the EU in this regard, and it shows that communism here is alive and well, so if somebody wants to retire in a country that is free from communism, Croatia is not it and it won’t be for a long time (if ever).

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        Yes, it’s sad how the communist scumbags running this country have sabotaged it’s development, the Qataris wanted to build a LNG terminal here, because of the communists it didn’t happen, Carnival Cruses wanted to build their main Mediterranean base of operations here, because of the communists it didn’t happen, Ford wanted to build a factory here, because of the communists it didn’t happen and the factory was built in Romania, KIA wanted to build a factory here, because of the communists it didn’t happen and the factory was built in Slovakia, etc., billions upon billions of USD/EUR of foreign investments have been sabotaged by the communists and there is no sign of it stopping.

        I mean, even without me explaining it in details a person only has to look at that map and see that Croatia is so badly run that it has it’s own category, it couldn’t even achieve half the growth of socialist Greece!

        • fafc says:

          I think sometimes it does not help to refer to names like “communists” or “socialists”. In this case it was simply the choice of the people of Croatia, whatever you want to call them. They chose these leaders and approved those policies. It seems to me that you should either leave, or just accept it. It is the way it is.

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            I call the majority of the common people socialists idiots as well.

            Socialist idiocy is something I will never accept, as for leaving, the more time passes, the more I think I will leave, because things here are getting worse and worse, and I am finding it increasingly difficult to have any optimism for this country’s future, even looking at the (very) long-term.

  6. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Anyway, to get back to the map, I am happy to see that my main potential emigration destination countries have all improved nicely (Poland’s growth is third in the whole of Europe, and probably the healthiest, since Ireland is ahead probably only due to Google and Apple having their European headquarters there, while Malta is a small country which practices financial shenanigans, I am only a bit surprised that Hungary’s economy hadn’t grown a bit more during the period, but even so it’s growth was about 6 times larger than Croatia’s during the period), and about Croatia’s growth, I thought about it a bit more a realised that if it wasn’t for the growth in tourism (which doesn’t have anything to do with Croatia’s government, who constantly do stupid things that undermine the tourism industry), Croatia probably wouldn’t have had any real growth at all!

    My main problem with this country isn’ the stupid socialist laws, or the high taxes, or the fact the majority of people here are socialist idiots (even though all of those reasons are close behind), etc., my main problem is the lack of legal security, meaning the rule of law doesn’t exist here, for example lets say that you moved to Croatia and started a company which makes and delivers office supplies, lets then say that your main buyer was the Croatian government, lets then imagine that the Croatia government didn’t pay you after you delivered the office supplies and that you thus couldn’t pay your workers their salaries and various (social, medical and retirement) contributions, you would be sent to jail for it for the same government responsible for you not being able to pay your workers! And you know who is the biggest non-payer of workers salaries and contributions in Croatia? The Croatian government itself (there are still over a 1000 state-owned companies in Croatia)! And of course no politician or the people they appoint to lead those companies has ever been jailed for this, so not only are the laws stupid and unfair, they are also selectively applied, and even in the non-business related cases, you can get convicted without anything being proven against you, so in short dealing with the Croatian “justice” system is like playing Russian roulette.

    • fafc says:

      Sounds like Croatia is a nice place to visit, and maybe even a nice place to live, but not a nice place to do business. I think the problem in Hungary is similar to the problem in Croatia, but not as bad. In Hungary I don’t think it is the state companies that are dragging down the economy, but the state regulations. They are stifling. The only good thing is that the current government seems to be “trying” to improve things, but probably not fast enough. Government regulations are good for big companies that can afford to hire armies of lawyers and accountants to process the paperwork. It is the small guys that suffer, and I think that is what is going on in Hungary. But it is still a great place to live, and seems to only be getting better. I am on my way for a trip to Europe this evening, and I will be visiting Vienna, Prague, Krakow, and finally Budapest. I will eat some tasty goulash for you.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        To visit, mostly yes, to live, if you have foreign sourced income and don’t care about the country, then yes, for doing business it is horrible, you have to either be crazy or stupid or politically-backed to open something here.

        Yes, it’s my opinion as well that the regulations in Hungary seem to be more geared to the big companies, but in any case Hungary is overall heading in the right direction, while Croatia is not, nevermind becoming a rich country with the rule of law, Croatia won’t even be a country if something doesn’t change radically for the better soon, Croatia’s population was almost 4,8 million in 1991, now it around 3,9 million, by 2030 it will fall below 3 million, and the majority of those people will be retirees and government moochers, the majority of the productive people will have long since left the country.

        Nice, I also hope to visit Poland and the Czech Republic in September or thereabouts, I would like to hear your thoughts on them once you get back.

  7. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Looking at the map some more, there are some other things I have noticed, namely how badly Italy is run, I have been to (northern) Italy many times and it is full of world class production in more or less every field (cars, ships, clothes, musical instruments, food and beverages, firearms, petrochemicals, etc.) and since it has been the center of (Western) Civilization for the majority of the last 2000+ years, it probably has more to see for tourists than any country in the World, so I find it incredible when I see how badly their economy has performed over the last 3 decades or so.

    Another thing is that even though Slovakia’s numbers are really impressive, after reading their laws and following their news, I get the feeling that like in Hungary’s case the regulations are far more favorable to the big companies, like KIA, U.S. Steel and Audi.

    • fafc says:

      Yes, it is hard to understand Italy. But prosperity requires stability. That does not seem to be a part of the Italian psyche. As for Slovakia being anti-small business I think that is universal, and probably has always been so subject to some very rare historical exceptions. The question is whether or not the environment can be navigated? From what you describe Croatia is hopeless. I think Hungary is becoming better. Slovakia I know nothing. Opportunity mostly involves finding places and things with problems, and becoming part of the solution. Opportunity goes hand in hand with risk. Without risk there is no opportunity. But understanding the nature of the risk determines whether you can avoid it.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        I don’t know, I haven’t ever researched the issue in depth, so I wouldn’t be prepared to conclusively claim how small businesses were treated in the past, but my impression is that the West used to be more pro small-business, maybe not even consciuosly, but in practice because there were not nearly as many regulations as there are today, when you look at the big companies in Western Europe, almost all of them were founded a (very) long time ago as small businesses, and I doubt that is coincendental.

        Yes, Croatia is hopeless, I mean you do have people here who somehow manage to navigate through all the idiocy, but they are exceptions and their futures are far from certain (many quality companies here have been closed for totally idiotic reasons, like for example a company which produced parts for nuclear power plants was closed down a few years ago because the building it was housed in didn’t have some 21st century building certificate, which it couldn’t have, because it was built during Italy’s rule over that city in the early 20th century, so dozens of people lost their jobs, the money which came to Croatia from Russia and other countries which imported those parts no longer comes to Croatia and the owner moved to Finland and now works there), so no, the environment here is generally not navigatable, and even if you somehow managed to navigate it, it really isn’t worth it, you would work like a maniac, only to have the majority of your money go to a communist government, and even the common people generally wouldn’t appreciate you, so you would feel like a complete idiot.

        I have no problem with business risk, but that is not the issue here, the issue is that the government is anti-business in general and that it is deliberately destroying small businesses (for example a small family bakery recently had 13 “extra” dollars (because people here generally don’t want the small change back) in it’s cash registry, so it was fined over 9400 USD without warning, and countless small businesses have been destroyed in a similar way).

        P.S. Since you are going to the Czech Republic, a word of warning, even though in most countries in Europe ticks are only problems in forests and mountains, in the Czech Republic (and Slovakia as well) for some reason you have them even in city parks, so be careful if you plan on spending time in such places.

        • fafc says:

          I believe most regulations, usually sold to the public on the basis of public safety or protection of some kind, are usually just designed to create obstacles to entering the market that large business can more easily navigate than small business.

          In some countries, with some creative thinking and modern information technology, small businesses can compete. In some, as you pointed out, all business is targeted by an anti-business climate that will eventually leave everyone sitting in the dark wondering why nothing works.

          When I think of risks of this sort you have to include political risk. I and a few partners have invested a considerable amount of money into a middle sized farm in the east of Georgia. We have about 35 hectares in walnuts with state of the art irrigation and drip feeding, and about 80 hectares for other things. The government gave us some very generous benefits, and I know that a similar project in a more developed location would have cost us 5 to 10 times the amount to develop. However, in 5 years when it is commercially viable to harvest the walnuts we should get similar profits. However, one risk we have is the unknown. Will Georgia be as friendly and accommodating towards business as it is now? Or will it revert to its political/criminal shakedown extortion behavior of as little as 10 years ago? It is a risk that I worry a lot about. And I have no real way of hedging that risk.

          When I said that opportunity comes with risk, it is also possible that value traps come with what seems like opportunity. Things that are too cheap sometimes are cheap for a very good reason. The fact that local Georgians are unwilling to invest in their own country, even when highly subsidized by the government, could reflect a lack of knowledge and a poor attitude about business, or it could reflect a much deeper and more accurate understanding of the conditions present. I hope for the prior.

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            Yes, they usually exist to help big business, but in Croatia’s case they exist just to endlessly fine businesses, so that the giant population of public sector moochers get payed their undeserved salaries.

            Yes, the moochers here are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting on, and eventually it will break.

            I see no real reason to worry (at least not in the short-term, in the long-term it probably depends on whether Georgia will join the EU or not), the vast majority of votes go to pro-market parties, the economy is growing, Georgia is surrounded by failed socialist states, etc., so I realistically don’t see the Georgians just suddenly deciding that reverting to living in a corrupt socialist basket-case would be better than what they have now.

            Since I don’t know any Georgians, haven’t researched their mentality in depth, etc., I can’t offer an educated opinion on the matter, but my guess would be that it has a lot to do with the fact that from 1921 to 2003 Georgia was run by communists, and 82 years of communists brutally quashing entrepreneurial activity unfortunately has almost certainly left a mark on the Georgian psyche, kind of like the people in the former USSR finding it hard to smile after living under the Soviet boot for 70 or so years, the evil USSR might not be around anymore, but it’s effects on the people unfortunately remain to a large degree.

            Another problem I see in Georgia’s case is the lack of money, and I am not talking just about private start-up capital, I am also talking about the purchasing power of the average Georgian, the average net wage in Georgia is around 350 USD (for comparison in Croatia it is 1006 USD and in Slovenia it is 1389 USD), and once they have payed for rent, utility bills, basic foodstuffs, etc., how much disposable income does the average Georgian have left? Very little, if any, so not exactly an ideal market for starting a business, and if a Georgian can’t get his company off the ground domestically, it’s unrealistic to expect them to open a purely export-based company, especially since the market most likely to accept Georgian products, namely Russia, is prone to punishing it’s neighbors if they don’t tow Moscow’s line by banning imports, like what happened to Georgia’s wines after Georgia become pro-NATO and pro-EU.

          • fafc says:

            I hope you are right. That is the bet I have made with my own money. The fact that so few Georgians, even those with money, are willing to invest in Georgia is a bit discouraging, but again I hope it is a pessimism built upon decades of bad education and not a certain wisdom that I have missed.

  8. Croatian Capitalist says:

    I think that things will get better entrepreneurship wise in Georgia once the young people who don’t remember the communist Shevardnadze and his (mis)rule of Georgia start coming of age.

  9. Croatian Capitalist says:

    https://www.rt.com/news/430271-canada-cannabis-legalization-bill/

    The list of countries to avoid even as a tourist just keeps getting bigger.

  10. Croatian Capitalist says:

    I was just reading today how according to what the people themselves think of the judiciary in each EU country, the Croatian judiciary is the worst one in the entire EU, and I agree with that finding.

    • fafc says:

      No. they don’t.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        The sad thing is that if a Second Amendment type constitutional amendment was put to a vote in every Western country, the majority of voters in the vast majority of them would vote against it, with their “arguments” being “we don’t want to turn our country into the Wild West” and other such nonsense.

        • fafc says:

          Yes. There is a reason why companies pay billions of dollars every year in advertising. Propaganda works. Particularly when it is emotion based and factually empty. That seems to work the best. The UK has been stripped of even a survival instinct. I remember buying an old Russian Mossin Nagant rifle for some fun at the range, but because of the Obama program of buying up any ammo with the 7.62 calibre (the Mossin Nagant does not use “AK” ammo, but the number starts with 7.62 so…) there was no ammo for my rifle, even though it was not an evil assault rifle, but a bolt action single shot rifle. I finally found some rounds to go to the firing range, and I mentioned this at a party that was being hosted by a very nice woman from Scotland, and she had a fit. The fact that I used the words ‘bullets’, ‘rifle’, ‘firing’, etc. threw here into a psychotic episode. She spent 5 minutes blubbering about how evil I was and how no one uses such words in her house. I didn’t say a word. I just nodded and agreed with her, and never use those types of words in her house again. It took her about an hour to recover her composure. I was shocked by this but I have since discovered similar responses from Europeans. Strange. This is not normal behavior but trained. Rather like Pavlov’s dogs.

  11. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Sadly, I don’t think that the gun grabbers would need any propaganda to win the referendums in the majority of Western countries, the average Westerner today is so stupid and weak generally that they would vote against gun rights even if nobody told him/her to do so.

    But yes, sadly propaganda generally works, when you look at referendums, outside of Switzerland the side which plays on emotion mostly beats the side which plays on facts/common sense, look at the South Africa referendum in 1992 for example, the question was basically “Do you want to turn by far the most successful country in the modern history of Africa over to a racist, anti-White convicted communist terrorist and his followers?”, and almost 70% of Whites voted yes! Why? Because they were idiots who believed all of nonsense the media were feeding them about how they were going to live in “peace, brotherhood and prosperity” with the communist savages once Apartheid was ended, and we all know how that turned out, the Chilean referendum in 1988 is another example, before Pinochet Chile was in shambles in every way (economically, security-wise, corruption was rampant, etc.), Pinochet fixed the economy, turned Chile into the most economically free country in Latin America, made the streets safe, turned it into the only non-corrupt country in Latin America, etc., and when the referendum came about, he didn’t even bother with any serious propaganda, he trusted that the Chilean people would vote based on facts/common sense, he even let the leftists have air time on national TV for their propaganda, on the other hand the leftists played on emotion (like they did later in South Africa) and the stupid people (around 56% of voters) voted for ending Pinochet’s rule over Chile, and now it’s only a matter of time before the leftists there totally dismantle everything good that Pinochet did and turn Chile into a typical Latin American country (actually in some ways it’s going to be even worse, since they seem to have started importing the PC garbage from America and Western Europe).

    • fafc says:

      The secret of good propaganda is that the person being manipulated thinks they are acting of their own free will.

  12. Croatian Capitalist says:

    The communist government here has yet another “brilliant” idea, namely they plan to mandate a high (for Croatian standards) wage (since the higher your wage is, the more taxes and contributions you have to pay to the government) for people starting companies or who are already directors of their own small companies, this law would/will cause tens of thousands of small businesses to be closed, the communists here seem intent on destroying private enterprise.

  13. Croatian Capitalist says:

    I remember that you wrote that you regret not moving to Latvia years ago, what is your opinion of Latvia in 2018?

    • fafc says:

      Full of regrets, except about the winters! I am really not a fan of very cold weather. Nor do I like very hot places. I like mountains in temperate regions.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        I hate cold weather too (and Latvia’s Winters are probably a lot worse than Croatia’s), but still, if a country with cold weather had everything else I was looking for, I would move there, because you can buy world class winter clothes, you can install a world class heating system (including floor heating) in your apartment or house, you can buy a world class SUV which has no problem dealing with the severe Winter weather, etc., so the cold weather is something which you as an individual can nullify, but if you live in a country where the majority of people are socialist idiots who don’t understand even basic biology, that is something which we as individuals have no control over (the only way you can “fix” such a situation is to move somewhere else).

        As for hot weather, it doesn’t bother me as such, what does bother me about such places (Dubai, Hong Kong, ever here in Croatia when it gets really hot during the Summer, etc.) is the air conditioning, it is 40-45 Celsius outside, and when people enter the buildings the air conditioning is set at something like 20 Celsius, and such sudden and extreme temperature constant change (as you enter and exit buildings) is bad for your body in itself. while the cold air from the air conditioning hitting the sweaty people coming into the buildings is even worse (especially if they stand still once they enter the building).

        I would probably prefer to live in a place with a climate like Alanya’s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanya#Climate

  14. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Another country to avoid is Slovenia: http://www.total-slovenia-news.com/business/1965-akrapovic-exhausts-to-move-profits-out-of-slovenia-to-avoid-proposed-tax-rises

    Not only is their tax system obviously bad (and about to get worse), but their version of the IRS also likes to baselessly target people, for example when the Slovenian right lost the parliamentary elections some years back, one Slovenian businessman who supported the right was baselessly accused by the Slovenian IRS of tax fraud and sentenced in absentia (he moved to Panama before they could arrest him), his lawyers in Slovenia eventually cleared his name, but he now lives and works in North America and has no intention whatsoever of ever returning to Slovenia.

    • fafc says:

      That is a pity. I have heard good things about Slovenia.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        Well, it is a nice place to visit, and probably the best place to live out of the South Slavic countries, but that isn’t saying much…

        • fafc says:

          I rather think that both the Balkans and the South Caucasus lost a profound advantage when the “baby” of economic unity and collaboration was thrown out with the totalitarian “bath water”.

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            Yes, but in the grand scheme of things that is irrelevant (and besides, with smart policies all of those markets could have been recovered by now), the main problem that prevents the proper development of the economy here (and by here I mean all of the countries which were a part of the communist Yugoslavia) is the socialist mentality of the people (and consequently of the politicians), to the average person here entrepreneur = crook/criminal, I mean look at the company (Akrapovič) mentioned in the article above, it makes world-class exhaust systems for world famous companies like Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki, etc., so it a type of company that any remotely sane country would be proud to have, but not Slovenia, because the communist mentality of jealousy/enviousness towards successful people is still obviously alive and well there.

            The only positive development I see here is that the entrepreneurs themselves are getting smarter, there was just yesterday an entrepreneurship conference in Zagreb where it was discussed how to move your company abroad and what the business conditions are in various countries (tax rates, the bureaucracy, where and how to pay taxes, etc.), so I hope that the communist beast here will eventually starve.

          • fafc says:

            Well, it is my opinion that the South Caucasus would have been better if they had kept their trade relations without the Soviet Union. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and all the little statelets being argue about would have all been better off if they had managed to keep the trading system in place.

  15. Croatian Capitalist says:

    I didn’t disagree with you, of course it would have been better if instead of fighting each other the Georgians, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Armenians, Azeris, etc. had kept their trade relations, but my comment was directed chiefly at the Balkans, since that is a region that I know, while the closest I have been to visiting the Caucasus is visiting the Armenian quarter (Bourj Hammoud) in Beirut. 😀

    • fafc says:

      Indeed I got that. And I think the Balkans would also have been better off not fighting but working through some sort of federal/confederation of states. War never helps anyone. No one won. No one is better off. In the case of the South Caucasus, I think there may still be hope of such an arrangement since it is really the only way of solving the current problems in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno Karabak, etc., since it will allow everyone to have what they want while saving face. In the alternative, if someone does not step forward and start working on this option, then Abkhazia and South Ossetia are just going to be absorbed into Russia (even though I don’t think the Russians really are eager to adopt these troublesome cousins – nor more so than the Georgians), and the Nagorno Karabak issue will continue to fester.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        Croatia and Slovenia wanted a confederal Yugoslavia and made such a proposal (https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacrt_Ugovora_o_Jugoslavenskoj_konfederaciji_iz_1990._godine) in 1990, the Serbs rejected the proposal and started the war(s).

        As much as the current situation in Croatia disgusts me, we are better off, but that isn’t due to any real systematic changes or whatever, but rather to do with the fact that we are now financing just our own parasites, while during Yugoslav times Croatia and Slovenia subsidized the rest of Yugoslavia, I don’t even want to imagine how much more repressive the tax system here would be if in addition to our own parasites we had to finance the Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Kosovarian and Macedonian parasites as well, look at this picture (the numbers are from 2013, the situation is even worse now) for example: http://oi63.tinypic.com/5ewupu.jpg

        On the left it says “taxpayers” and on the right it says “tax consumers” (while under the treasure chest it says “national budget”), now imagine if all of the millions of parasites (public sector “workers”, do nothing religious organizations, NGOs, etc.), from Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia were added to the “tax consumers”, Croatia would be worse off than Venezuela.

        • fafc says:

          Well the Serbs certainly did not benefit from that war. What are their thoughts about the past and the present? As I get older I am less and less inclined to listen to anyone who suggests that war is the answer to anything.

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            Judging by the politicians they elect, they would try again what they attempted to do in the 1990’s (to create the so-called “Greater Serbia”), if they were in a position to do so (which they are not), just a few days ago the Serbian president Vučić called Milošević (the same one who was responsible for the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and for the Serbs losing Kosovo) “a great leader”, thus it is quite obvious that despite losing the wars and getting bombed by NATO (and afterwards losing their “cradle” Kosovo to the Albanians (probably for good)), the Serbs haven’t learned their lesson, so their “thoughts” are something along the lines that they were wronged and that they are the victims of the “international community (for the Serbs mostly meaning the USA, Germany and the Vatican)” and of the “fascist Croats and Albanians”.

  16. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Anyway, I think that I already mentioned at least once on this website that the thing that disgusts me the most about Croatia is the legal uncertainty that law-abiding people here face, I just read the latest in a very long list of horror stories courtesy of the Croatian judiciary, namely in 2009 it arrested a Croatian businessman whose food company directly employed hundreds of people, was profitable, exported it’s products to over a dozen countries (including the USA), and eventually convicted him of defrauding his own company (which he of course didn’t do), now 9 years later it was proven in an appeals court that he didn’t defraud his own company and that the money he supposedly defrauded from his own company was actually used to establish a subsidiary of the company in Oman, now you may ask what happened in the 9 years between? The successful company doesn’t exist anymore (obviously neither does it’s subsidiary in Oman on which the supposedly defrauded money was actually spent on, nor are the company’s products sold in Oman anymore), so the hundreds of it’s employees lost their jobs, an innocent man spent 4 months in “investigative custody”, plus after he was convicted got a suspended sentence, ordered to return the money (which he didn’t defraud) to the company (whose sole owner was him), plus banned from leading a business for 5 years, all of the stress caused his wife to leave him, his already sick daughter to become even sicker (and since the criminal “judiciary” made him poor, he has no money to pay for the proper medical care of his daughter), and he now lives on welfare, as for the judge and state prosecutor who ruined an innocent man’s life, destroyed a successful business which directly employed hundreds of people, exported it’s products to over a dozen countries and payed millions in taxes, you can rest assured that those criminals won’t get as much as a reprimand and will continue to ruin the lives of innocent people for the foreseeable future.

    • fafc says:

      I am curious concerning the attitudes of the everyday people. For instance, you sit at a bar drinking a beer next to a guy who just lost his job. You would think he would be sad, but in fact he is celebrating. He was not fired, but he crashed one of the trucks, and someone in the company had forgot to pay the insurance, and now the liabilities of this single accident, caused by the man sitting next to you, have bankrupted the company and caused everyone to be laid off. And this guy is celebrating because he brought a rich guy down! Is that the attitude of everyday people in Croatia?

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        I couldn’t have explained it better myself, that is exactly how the average person here thinks! But I would say that such an attitude is more prevalent with the over 40 crowd than the under 40 crowd.

        Why? Don’t tell me the average Georgian is the same?

        • fafc says:

          I was actually discussing the average Texan. And Texans are perhaps the most free-market conservative sort of people on the planet. I think that is a part of the human soul… a deep dark evil part of the human soul — envy. A good system will discourage this kind of thinking in a very dramatic way while encouraging the more positive side of desire.

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            I would argue that the truly envious (meaning communists and their like) have no souls to begin with, I think that the real problem is the mix of the stupidity of the average person in the West with the class-baiting Western media.

            For example I remember reading a news story (I think in the New Zealand Herald) a few years ago discussing the change in living standards in New Zealand between I think 1990 and 2010, the title of the article and the (obviously) socialist writer’s opinion which spanned most the of the article were something along the lines of “The rich continue mercilessly trampling the poor in the ruthlessly neoliberal capitalist New Zealand”, but when you got past the writer’s drivel (about the need for wealth distribution and other typical socialist nonsense) and actually got to the part at the end of the article where actual statistics were shown, then you saw that everyone (including those categorized as “poor”) had a at least double digit real income increase, so basically all three (the rich, the middle class, and the “poor”) groups had a better standard of living than ever, but for the class-baiting media that is supposedly a problem because the wealth of the rich increased by a bigger percentage than the wealth of the “poor” (I use the quote marks because what is categorized as “poor” in first World countries generally has nothing in common with actual (Africa-like or India-like) poverty), so a completely logical fact (that rich people are better at making and managing money than “poor people”) gets touted as a problem that needs addressing by way of government wealth redistribution (which in the end makes everyone (except the criminals in government of course) poor(er), just look at Venezuela and similar places).

            What I wanted to say with the above example is that when stupid people read class-baiting article titles (I doubt that many of the them read past the title, so even if the class-baiting article mentions any actual facts, they aren’t likely to read them) all their lives, it is no surprise that they become envious.

          • fafc says:

            We are all flawed and weak creatures full of malignant intentions and evil. We are also full positive intentions and good. The USA was based on a model that rewarded people who acted correctly, and punished people who acted badly. Self-interest well understood. Other countries try to say they are encouraging positive behavior but in fact reward the bad. People are people, but if you reward the bad that is what you will see more of.

  17. Croatian Capitalist says:

    A memorial to the victims of communism opens in Estonia: http://estonianworld.com/life/memorial-to-the-victims-of-communism-opens-in-estonia/

    Good, the Estonian people should never forget that communism is evil (both in theory and in practice).

    • fafc says:

      Yes. Nice to see a “Western” country take a strong stand against Communism/Socialism.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        It is a great irony of history that the only “Western” countries that have any common sense left are those which were a part of the Eastern Bloc (even though it should be noted that the majority of them didn’t join that bloc willingly).

  18. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Anyway, a new day, a new “brilliant” tax “reform” proposal by the Croatian communists, namely they plan to give a fine of up to 40000 euros to anyone who has in their cash register less money than their data (all the cash registers in Croatia have to be connected to the internet and the receipts sent to the IRS immediately) shows, so for example you decide to move to Croatia and open a restaurant along the coast, a customer (likely to be a tax inspector himself) runs away without paying, and you get fined 40000 euros and go out of business, isn’t communism “great”?

  19. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Greece World Champion in Tax Hikes: https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/09/05/greece-world-champion-in-tax-hikes-in-2015-2016-oecd-report-says/

    Greece is definitely a country to avoid.

  20. Croatian Capitalist says:

    One of the countries mentioned in the above article among the “tax hikers” was Turkey, I had already posted before that Turkey is one of the countries that rich people are fleeing en masse (along with France, Brazil and a few others), and now the educated young people are following suit: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/09/turkey-brain-drain-young-generation-fleeing.html

    And when you add to all of this the horrible leadership Turkey has (and that the opposition is a joke too), it is obvious that Turkey is yet another country to avoid.

    • fafc says:

      The dream of Ataturk is dead. But it never really was realistic possibility. You cannot have a secular nation and at the same time have an Islamic nation any more than you could have a secular nation that is a Christian nation. Either people are free to do what they like or not.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        I agree that his dream is dead, and you are probably right that a secular state and a religious populace are incompatible in the long run, Pahlavi tried to secularize Iran, and we all know how that turned out…, Turkey if it continues down this path will be no better.

        • fafc says:

          The real problem with Ataturk is he promoted 2 diametrically opposed ideas: 1. A Unified Turkey that was 100% Islam, and 2. a Secular State that would not get involved in religion. Christian minorities, that probably made up the majority of Turks were forced into fake conversions, and then the government started operating like a Western secular government. It never really worked very well, but the system depended upon this fake conversion to Islam in order for the fake acceptance to work. The whole system was built on lies. Erdogan, for all his authoritarian faults, saw this and realized that there needs to be something more to hold the country together than a pastiche of lies. So he came up with the “moderate” Islam approach. Although its only virtue is that it is honest, it is now bringing out the inherent conflict among millions of “Turks” who never considered themselves real Muslims, and probably not real “Turks”. If you force them to become practicing Muslims, which seems to be where Turkey is going, there is going to be a backlash that may be worse than trying to force Kurds to be Turks.

  21. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Foreign residents now make up more than a quarter of the population in Switzerland: https://www.thelocal.ch/20180831/foreign-residents-now-make-up-more-than-a-quarter-of-the-population-in-switzerland

    Well, the good news is that unlike in the USA. France, UK, etc., the vast majority of immigrants in Switzerland are Europeans.

  22. Croatian Capitalist says:

    One thing I forgot to mention about Turkey is this: http://kurdistan24.blob.core.windows.net/filemanager/resources/files/2017/11/TRFertRate.png

    All of the high birth rates provinces in Turkey are Kurdish, while the low birth rate ones are Turkish, so this is yet another reason I don’t see a bright future ahead for Turkey, I think that a civil war between the Turks and the Kurds happening sometime in the next 50 years is a big possibility.

    • fafc says:

      Again, not just the Kurds. There are more Armenians and Georgians in Turkey than in Armenia and Georgia respectively. They were forced to become “Muslim-in-name-only” and so far they have been happy with that. But if they are ever forced to actually become practicing Muslims I think you would have serious problems. There are other ethnic minorities that pretend to be Muslims. The whole scheme of Ataturk’s was a stupid idea from the start. I am amazed it lasted this long.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        That is true, there are millions of ethnic Greeks, Armenians, Circassians, Georgians, etc. in Turkey, even Erdogan himself is an ethnic Georgian as far as I know, but even though it is obvious that Turkey is full of fake Turks and fake Muslims, there is really no way to know how many of them there are until push comes to shove for them.

        • fafc says:

          If I was the leader of Turkey I would try to avoid answering that question.

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            Yes, but then again, maybe the Turkification (and thus Islamization) of the non-Kurdish minorities has been more successful than with the Kurds, it has been how long since the Turkification process was started by Ataturk? 95 years?

            Brainwashing for such a long time can do wonders in this regard, for example the Yugoslav communists managed through 46 years of brainwashing to turn the Croatian Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina into “Muslims by nationality (which was changed to “Bosniak” in 1993)” and ironically atheists (they remember that they are “Muslims” when they ask for money from Turkey or Saudi Arabia, otherwise hardly any of them live anything remotely resembling a Muslim lifestyle), plus they were brainwashed into hating their own nation, so when they started arriving as refugees in the USA, Canada, etc. in the 1990’s, you had the tragicomical situation of them calling the Croatian Muslims who had managed to avoid communist persecution by escaping to those countries “traitors”, “nazis”, “scum” and other such communist nonsense, so from there being 700000 Croatian Muslims in 1941, there are only about 10000 Muslims with a Croatian national identity in 2018, that is how damaging 46 years of communist brainwashing were, while the Greeks, Armenians, etc. have been brainwashed for over twice as long in Turkey, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority actually started to really see themselves as Turks.

          • fafc says:

            It is indeed hard to know. But the Turkish brainwashing was particularly misguided. They forced everyone to be a “Turk” and then defined being a Turk in a way so superficial that it was meaningless – fake conversion, clothing, mustache, names… If asked you had to say you were Muslim, but no one actually cared. Your name had to be “Turkish” but they all still have their original ethic names at home. Yes, it was a benign brainwashing, but those generally don’t work. I don’t see the Georgians rising up in rebellion, but if things start to fall apart I suspect self-interest would encourage them to become closer to Georgia, Armenia, Russia, etc. (particularly if they start coming under attack from Islamic radicals). As for the Armenians, they are a different matter from what I understand. They are still seething under the yoke, more quietly than the Kurds, but all the same angry. The Kurds are an odd case. For a considerable minority of Kurds, the Islamification under Erdogan has gone a long way to bring them in. They won’t acknowledge themselves as Turks, but they acknowledge themselves as Muslims living happily in a Muslim Turkish nation speaking Turkish and participating in every aspect of Turkish life. I suspect if the Islamification continues and becomes more violent you are going to see more pushback from those fake Turks who were Greeks, Bulgars, Galicians, Georgians, Armenians, etc. than from the Kurds.

    • fafc says:

      I only spent 3 days in Krakow this summer, but I was very impressed.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        Yes, Poland is the only country in Europe which hasn’t had a recession in even one quarter since 1992, so it’s obvious that the economy is being handled well.

        Krakow is a beautiful city, but as I mentioned before most major Polish cities (including Krakow and Warsaw) have serious problems with air pollution (during the Winter, when the dirty coal furnaces get started up), so if I end up moving to Poland, I will move to one of the cities along the Baltic coast, since as far as I can gather they don’t have such problems.

  23. Croatian Capitalist says:

    I don’t have a link in English, but the capital of Montenegro Podgorica plans to build a monument to the biggest criminal in the history of the Balkans, the communist dictator and mass murderer Tito, so Montenegro is definitely not a country free of communism.

    • fafc says:

      How???? I thought the Montenegrans were reloading the gun to shoot themselves in the foot a few more times in order to impress the EU?

  24. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Another country to add to the list of places to avoid is Switzerland: http://www.papermag.com/switzerland-transphobia-hate-speech-laws-2609791592.html

    “The ruling makes discrimination against LGBTQ people a parallel offense to racism, and introduces a prison sentence of up to three years for homophobic and transphobic crimes like hate speech.”

    • fafc says:

      No Bueno as they say in Switzerland. I think the secret to living a safe life in any part of Europe is to just keep your mouth shut, and hide under your bed.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        The whole of Western Europe is a joke, Switzerland wants to send people to jail for 3 years for calling someone like Bruce Jenner insane or degenerate or something along those lines, but a a third of convicted rapists in that same Switzerland don’t spend a day in jail.

        I think that I won’t visit Western Europe even as a tourist anymore, I don’t want to finance their degeneracy.

  25. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Why Poland Is Planning Europe’s Biggest Airport: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-03/why-poland-is-planning-europe-s-biggest-airport

    Because they are smart, successful countries need such infrastructure.

  26. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Some good news from Poland regarding the pollution issue: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-coal/poland-to-ban-bad-coal-to-fight-smog-but-delay-disappoints-environmentalists-idUSKCN1ME1VH

    “The Polish government said on Thursday that a new decree will banish the worst-quality coal from the market, improving air quality.”

    “The ban on the poorest quality coal will take effect from June 30, 2020.”

    “The Polish government announced a 100 billion zloty ($26.8 billion) “clean-air” program this year, which includes measures such as helping citizens to exchange old, polluting heaters for modern, cleaner ones.”

    • fafc says:

      Problems like these are usually fixed. It only takes will and money. Problems such as cultural decay and moral collapse are more difficult to solve.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        Yes, they usually get fixed eventually, but still it better to avoid cities with such problems until the problem is fixed.

        As for cultural decay and moral collapse, sadly I think that the majority of the West has “crossed the Rubicon” in regards to those problems being fixed in a civilized manner, the way I see things now there are only two ways that the majority of Western countries are going to become moral again, either some major calamity (civil war, total economic collapse, etc.) will jolt Westerners out of their nihilism, or the West will be conquered by some outside force, which will then impose it’s own morality on the West.

        • fafc says:

          I actually disagree with than sentiment (about pollution and avoiding places…). You are essentially saying avoid places where people make things, and live normal lives. The same people that are irrationally obsessed with pollution are also the same people who are irrationally obsessed with gay rights, etc. When my father and I used to drive through the refinery area in Houston, I used to complain about the smell. He laughed and said, “That is the smell of money! What we live on, and what the entire city lives on! Never complain about it.” Since then the refineries have been cleaned up but the money keeps coming in. Whereas in California they wisely shut down all the refineries rather than choosing to live with them until they could be cleaned up. We now have most of the refineries in the USA. Thanks California!

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            1) There is nothing irrational about a person not wanting himself/herself and/or his/her child to needlessly get lung cancer, asthma or some other horrible disease, or even dying.

            2) Factories aren’t the problem in Poland, the problems are the ancient Soviet-occupation era heating systems which use dirty coal (and some people also use garbage instead of coal) and power plants which use dirty coal.

  27. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Turkey’s inflation rate surges to almost 25%: https://www.ft.com/content/22c4f276-c6db-11e8-ba8f-ee390057b8c9

    High inflation is a sure sign that a country is badly run.

  28. Croatian Capitalist says:

    https://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

    This might help some people when deciding where to move to, I have to admit that language difficulty (on the other hand, language difficulty helps keep “vibrant diversity” away) puts me off of moving to certain countries (of course language isn’t the only issue (if it was, I would just put in the needed effort and master the language in a year (or two at the most in the case of those languages which have writing systems with thousands of symbols)), but when there are several additional issues, it can be the deciding factor in deciding against the move), especially the ones with tonal languages, I mean I can barely understand the Croatian islanders when they speak in their own dialects, haha, so mastering a language like Vietnamese (which has six tones) for example would be quite the challenge (but at least the Vietnamese use the Latin alphabet, and not the Chinese writing system, which is probably the most difficult in the the World to master after the Japanese one) to say the least.

    As for the list above, I think it is generally accurate as for as far the the difficulty for native English speakers go, even though I have to write that I am surprised that Swahili and Malaysian are supposedly easier to learn for a native English speaker than Icelandic is.

    Since I am not a native English speaker, the list would obviously look different for me, probably something like this:

    Category 1 (Slavic languages which can be almost totally understood by someone who is fluent in Croatian): Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin

    Category 2 (other Slavic languages): Bulgarian, Macedonian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Slovenian

    Category 3: Italian (I learned enough of it to get a solid grade in school with almost no effort and with zero interest in the language, so if I was seriously interested in mastering it, I doubt that it would take me more than a few months to master it), Romanian, Spanish, Portugese, Turkish (there are hundreds of Turkish loanwords in the Croatian language (even though interestingly the Turks themselves don’t use many of them anymore thanks to the language reform Ataturk carried out in the 1930’s, haha), the word order is free, there is no grammatical gender, the pronunciation of words is logical, etc., the only thing that I would consider “problematic” in regards to Turkish is agglutination, once I mastered that I think that I would become fluent very quickly) and Persian

    Category 4: German (weird grammar), French (weird pronunciation of words) and Dutch

    Category 5: Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Danish

    Category 6: Hungarian, Finnish, Albanian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, Greek, Armenian and Georgian

    Category 7: Malaysian and Indonesian

    Category 8: Arabic, Hindi, Mongolian, Hebrew, Bengali, Urdu and Korean

    Category 9: Japanese because it has the hardest writing system in the World, I expect that spoken Japanese is much easier to master in comparison.

    Category 10: Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese and the other tonal Asian languages which don’t use the Chinese writing system.

    Category 11: The various Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) because they are tonal, use many idioms which mean nothing to people not well versed in Chinese history and culture, and because they use the second hardest writing system in the World.

    Category 12: The various Sub-Saharan African languages (Zulu, Xhosa, etc.), I would write that they all sound like monkey noises to me, but that would be racist and offensive, so I am not going to do it.

    Of course the above assumes equal interest for each language, which in practice is of course not the case, I for example have no interest in learning Thai, while I am at least theoretically interested in learning Mandarin Chinese, so if I “had to” learn both languages for some reason, I am pretty sure that I would learn Mandarin faster, even though it is a more difficult language to master than Thai.

    How is your learning of Georgian going?

    • fafc says:

      Interesting. I have given up on Georgian. See here:

      https://medium.com/@alexanderjhay/georgian-language-and-me-e9ea3c60f907

      Also, I was in Armenia a few weeks ago, who unlike Georgians have no expectation that a foreigner would even attempt to learn Armenian, all speak either Russian or English in that order. In fact, Russian is the unofficial national language.

      So I decided to learn Russian, and I have been working on that for the last two weeks. I have also decided to work on my Spanish at the same time just to brush up.

      By the way I really liked Armenia. It has a very modern feel to it. The people are very relaxed and calm compared the Georgians. Restaurants and bars are very modern and elegant, the food is delicious, and the prices are amazing. Traffic was manageable, and walking a pleasure. I think the banking has a lot of room for improvement. But perhaps the fact that Armenia is not really party to any of some of the Western financial crap it might actually have some advantages depending upon what you want to do. The only real negative thing I found in Armenia was the calmness; it is at times closer to death. I like that but if you are looking to Party Like its 1999 you will find Armenia boring.

      My next country of interest: Paraguay. Over the last few years they have really stepped up their game. It is one of the easiest of countries to obtain a permanent residence visa, it is then very easy to become a citizen, and once a citizen you have one of the most surprisingly effective visa waiver benefits out there. Add to this the rather amazing economic and civil progress that Paraguay has made since El Presidente El Generalismo Stroessner was in charge, Paraguay is looking much more interesting.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        I can sympathize, I mean I have never tried learning Georgian specifically or at least analyzing it in detail, so I am not sure whether I would have the same difficulties learning it as you do/did, but I do have trouble hearing/making out words in regards to certain other languages, Hungarian is such a language, for example I watched Orban give a speech recently (with English subtitles of course), and if somebody offered me a 1000 USD to correctly repeat 1 (one) word except magyarok (which means Hungarians) he said, I couldn’t do it, haha, though I am not sure what the issue is, is it the unfamiliarity/alienness of the words themselves? Do they use sounds not present in Croatian or English? Something else? I really am not sure, but considering the languages I have hearing issues with are mostly either Uralic (Hungarian, Finnish, etc.) or Asian (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) ones, I feel that there is some sort of connection.

        I prefer calmness too (both in regards to the place where I live and in regards to travel destinations), but if partying is somebody’s thing, I am sure that there are places in Yerevan that cater to such people.

        Country of interest for what? Investing? Or moving there? As I have written a few times, I would only consider moving to Latin America in case World War III happens, otherwise the way I look at things the negatives outweigh the positives.

        • fafc says:

          Armenia: Partying — just don’t go. The bars close at 12:00. Which I love!

          Paraguay: Always looking at alternatives. Nothing is safe and secure. Everything is fluid. It might be an option C, D, E or F. Who knows?

          • Croatian Capitalist says:

            Nice, I assume then that alcoholism isn’t a serious problem in Armenia, like it is in Russia?

            Having back-up plans is smart, I have nothing against it, I just can’t see any place in Latin America being my plan A.

            Yes, unfortunately things in countries can change for the worse very quickly, for example in 1975 Iran was a country going places, but by the end of 1979 it was sent back into the Dark Ages by Khomeini and in 2019 it is still stuck there, in 1975 Spain had the healthiest society in Europe, a few decades later it was already one of the most degenerate countries in Europe, etc., and the fact that these things can happen so quickly isn’t the only thing that I find troubling, but also the fact that there usually isn’t any real warning, I mean if I had lived in Iran in 1975 and somebody had told me that by the end of 1979 Iran would be controlled by Khomeini and his Shia socialist shamans (that is what I call them to trigger and troll the supporters of Iran’s regime (yes, unfortunately they exist even in the Balkans, but fortunately the vast majority of them seem to be Serbs and Bosniaks, and not Croats) on the Croatian forum I post at), I would have laughed at them and called them crazy (as would have probably well over 90% of Iran’s population at the time), but they would have ended up being right, even though there opinions would have been illogical (modern infrastructure was getting built, the people were getting to be more educated, the standard of living was rising, etc., based on the facts there was no reason to assume that the people would in a few years revolt against the Shah in favor of Khomeini).

          • fafc says:

            Trying to forecast the future of nations is a difficult thing.

  29. Croatian Capitalist says:

    Yes, it is, and even more so today with the “globalists” working so hard to destroy the social fabric of any country worth anything.

    By the way, I looked at the Georgian language a little, and you were right, it has strange sounds, plus the words for many numbers are strange (there is no word for forty, rather you have to say two-twenty (ormotsi in Georgian), the Georgian script is strange as well, etc., all in all not a language I would be enthusiastic about learning, especially if as you write the Georgians don’t have understanding for foreigners who have trouble pronouncing their tounge-twisting words.

  30. Croatian Capitalist says:

    I forgot to mention one added difficulty in predicting the future of countries, and that is that the majority of nations don’t really learn from mistakes (whether their own or someone else’s), Latin America is probably the best example of this, no matter how many times socialism destroys their countries, you can be almost sure that sooner or later they will again elect some leftist lunatic like Hugo Chavez.

    • fafc says:

      Yes, it does seem to be a recurring problem. Repeating the same mistakes ever generation or two.

      • Croatian Capitalist says:

        Yes, and it is one of the reasons Hungary is my “Plan A” currently, I see very little bad judgement from them historically speaking (communism was forced on them, but even so they stood up to the USSR and it’s vassals all by themselves (Eisenhower didn’t think the matter of an European country fighting for it’s freedom against the most evil entity in Human history was important enough to interrupt his golfing and do something to help them)), the Hungarians have never been cowards and mental serfs, so I don’t think that they will suddenly change their behavior after over a 1000 years of being like they are.

        • fafc says:

          What I find so interesting about the recent history of Hungary is how clever they were at working the Soviet & Warsaw Pact system. They were more or less freed from 90% of the restrictions imposed upon the other ‘allies’ in the early 1980s and thus got a jump on the rest of the Eastern Block in its development and integration into Europe.

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