No, this was true in USSR so like even 40 years ago, I grew up exposed to that a lot and believe me no one can say for sure which is which.
To keep things fun, USSR was not communist either for most of the time, it was sort of socialist I guess. There are a lot of jokes reflecting the confusion between socialism and communism and how we always go to communism but never reach it
Today there are examples of socialist but not communist countries in Europe. But if you compare them to Venezuela or Brazil you would be crazy.
> Everyone in China has to and will accept cash in practice
False. If you say this as advice to anyone you are putting them in danger. Cash is a no go for most vendors and you may struggle to buy food if you only have cash. I was personally rejected numerous times and told to scan QR or go home.
> if you're talking about Russia, people are switching back to cash en masse
Also false. I don't know a single person to switch to cash. Friend of a friend lost bank card and was basically on QR for months, no cash no plastic.
Here is what I know:
- There are limits on dollars basically since the beginning of war. (Normal people aren't affected because they don't use dollars)
- There was apparently a brief scare that banks cannot satisfy if you want to withdraw a lot of ruble and then the gov quickly claimed it to be false (of course). The amounts were too high for any normal person.
- a bit of cash is helpful to help because censorship infrastructure caused internet hiccups so electronic payments occasionally don't go through, but it seems rare now
- in western regions people tend to carry more cash simply because mobile internet is regularly unavailable. After all if you can't access your banking app to pay for coffee while civilians in Ukraine across the border are getting bombed, it's a bit embarrasing.
Otherwise everyone is as cashless as usual, people moving money out of banks en masse is probably made up.
PRC is way more capitalist than Norway or some other European countries. Approximately, one is capitalist dictatorship and the other socialist democracy.
Yes PRC government was originally propped by USSR but that's it. If you look at labor protection laws, social security, etc it's nowhere near.
Smells like "no true scotsman" fallacy because they are nearly synonyms. Nobody in USSR could tell the exact difference or at least there was no consensus, and you are expecting modern Americans to do better huh?
This basically sums it up:
> According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists' adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#Communism_and_social...)
(To make it more fun Marxism is also its own thing)
Where cash is stigmatized? I haven't seen such a place except PRC.
Most people want government to be able to seize assets of baddies. It is possible with cash, it is possible with banks, hardly possible with crypto.
The technology to scam people at scale with untraceable emoney is not everybody's cup of tea.
Speaking from a country that invaded its neighbor, for our government (as well as north korea) it is lovely to have a way around sanctions. Libertarian crypto bros of the west are a godsend.
They are also a godsend to current American president which loves a nice side of washed crypto along with all the other theft.
It is absolutely possible to like cash and dislike crypto
From my experience and what I heard in China you will get a super clean airport train and metro but if you go away from urban centers you encounter crazier and crazier stuff, the likes of which you would never see anywhere in UK or even US
I think it's kind of the opposite in non authocratic countries...
> the fact that is the first thing you learn humanises the username behind the keyboard
The username is macOS26. The name is "Agent!". As in "Agentic AI for your entire Mac Desktop". All commits are made by this entity.
Until someone here told me there is a real guy behind it I sincerely gotta say, it looks like there's no human behind the keyboard and actually there's no keyboard at all.
Combined with cancer message on top it made me think some LLM "agent" is trying different tricks because it was prompted to achieve maximum stars and forks. I feel shitty for saying this but how not to be cynical because literally that's what we degraded to thanks to "ai".
To keep things fun, USSR was not communist either for most of the time, it was sort of socialist I guess. There are a lot of jokes reflecting the confusion between socialism and communism and how we always go to communism but never reach it
Today there are examples of socialist but not communist countries in Europe. But if you compare them to Venezuela or Brazil you would be crazy.
Maybe we need better terminology