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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: 10 Ways Life in Russia Is Better Than in America 1. Everything’s So Cheap I don’t have the foggiest idea how Moscow ever acquired its reputation as one of the world’s most expensive cities. Probably idiots and Intellectuals. Yet Idiots dumb enough to buy the $5 bottled water at Sheremetyevo Airport before taking one of the shady, overpriced Caucasian gypsy cabs down to their five-star hotels in central Moscow. In reality, food, rent, utilities, property, hotels, travel, restaurants, museums, transport, healthcare, and education are all far cheaper than in major cities in the United States. 2. Better Food One possible cause of the massive rise in American obesity in the past generation is that the nutrients to calories ratio of American crops has plummeted due to commercialized agriculture and the infiltration of corn and soy into every conceivable category of foodstuff. Russia is only at the start of this process, so the food you can buy at the local markets here tends to be organic and grass fed by default – and without the associated markup that you get in the West. 3. Nicer Service Yes, you read that right. Shop assistants and waiters now tend to be at least as, if not more, courteous than their equivalents in the United States. Contra Matt Forney’s experience in Eastern Europe, I find that the stereotype of sullen sovok service is about as outdated as the hammer and sickle. Nor does this just apply to Moscow. Russia’s regional cities have also been rediscovering that the stale Soviet stolovaya had been preceded by service a la Russe in Tsarist times. 4. Public Transport Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, and all the cities with around one million people have well-developed metro systems. Contrast this with the US, where the concept of “public transport” – at least outside the north-eastern seaboard, the Bay Area, and Seattle – is pretty much non-existent. In fairness, the Moscow Metro closes at 1 am (Saint-Petersburg at 12 midnight), whereas the New York subway works 24 hours a day – if with frequent stoppages. However, Moscow’s reputation for having the most aesthetic metro system in the world is well-deserved, even though I have a soft spot for Chicago’s old-style wooden platforms and Washington D.C.’s bunker-like concrete grottoes. 5. Still Recognizably European Many Russians complain about the flood of Central Asian Gastarbeiters. However, even Moscow – which remains about 85% Slavic, even adjusting for unofficial residents – feels like a veritable Whitopia after spending time in Latino-majority California and Londonistan. Moreover, Uzbeks and Tajiks are far preferable to many minorities in the West, such as US blacks with their absurd crime rates, or the sea of black niqabs that you encounter in many areas of London. 6. Outdoors About 50% of Muscovites own a dacha outside the city, including people of modest means. This is much rarer in the United States and Western Europe, where only the upper-middle class has such opportunities. Personally, I don’t have much interest in this – the Internet is too slow, and there are too many biting insects – but people less autistic than myself will likely appreciate this. Typical Moscow sleeper suburb. 7. Freedoms This might surprise people who associate Russia with reams of red tape, but while there’s no shortage of that, there are also any number of domains with few or no regulations. Getting almost any drug is a simple matter of going down to the pharmacy and checking up if they have it in stock; if not, they can usually order it. While you need doctor’s prescriptions for some of the most elementary drugs in the United States, in Russia that is the exception, not the rule. They are also typically generic and cost much less than their equivalents in the United States, though there are far more counterfeits. Ergo for contact lenses – you just state your specifications and they order them; no eye tests required. Setting up a trading account is also much easier. Instead of filling out countless forms promising that yes, you do indeed have 5 years intimate experience with collateralized debt obligations, in Russia it’s pay to play. If you can bring money to the table, you’re good to go. In effect, with the notable exception of gun rights, there is much less of the “nanny state” and more of what American conservatives call “personal responsibility” in Russia. 8. Less Faggotry Did that trigger you, snowflake? Nobody in Russia cares, LOL. Even though I don’t particularly care for hardcore homophobia, I consider the right to call things and people you don’t like “gay” as one of the most important freedoms there are. Happened all the time at school, but since I graduated in 2006, liberal faggots have all but criminalized this. Russia remains free of this cultural totalitarianism; here, you can still call a spade a spade and a gender non-fluid helicopterkin a faggot (пидор) without any particular worries for your professional career and social status. I don’t think this will last so enjoy (or suffer) it while you still can. 9. Intellectual Ferment Most of Russia is one large West Virginia so far as this goes. However, Moscow and to a lesser extent SPB are glaring and indeed cardinal exceptions. There are many new startups, including in exciting new fields like machine learning, quantified self, personal genomics. The city is buzzing with entrepreneurial energy. Specific personal example: Back in the Bay Area, I liked involving myself in the futurist/transhumanist community. I can’t say that Moscow can compete with it, but it’s probably no worse than London in this respect, the foremost West European H+ cluster. There’s a LessWrong meetup group, a “techno-commercial” transhumanist group (Russia 2045), and an active community of radical life extension advocates, which overlaps into the cliodynamics community (the daughter of the guy who runs Kriorus, Russia’s Alcor, is also a cliodynamicist). 10. More Technologically Advanced On coming to the Bay Area, the technological heart of the United States, tech writer Alina Tolmacheva struggled to hide her disappointment: “No flying hoverboards, food isn’t delivered by drones, and parking fees are paid with coins, whereas in Moscow everyone had long since switched to mobile apps.” This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but the general point stands. As she further points out, monopolies dominate transport, banking, telephones, and the Internet. The Caltrain from San Francisco Airport to Mountain View takes 1.5 hours. The highest building is 12 stories of concrete in the style of Le Corbusier. “Rent is paid with checks. It is necessary to take a piece of paper, fill in the details, and send it by mail. The owner then goes to a bank branch and cashes it out. Technology older than VHS and cassette players.” In Moscow, even aged grandmothers have been collecting rent money through mobile apps for years. Moscow is more developed as a “technopolis” than any other major city in the Anglosphere. Addendum If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy my comprehensive comparison of life in Russia, America and the United Kingdom that I wrote in 2011:http://akarlin.com/tag/national-comparisons/ . Source: The Unz Review Poster Comment: Maria Angelica Brunell Solar • How about the pride to live in a country that respects international law and treaties, that really wages war against international terrorism, that promotes peace between nations, that has grown from bankruptcy and irrelevancy in the 90s to solvency and to first place in the geopolitical balance of power, and which has a leadership that would be the envy of any other country in the world? Compare that to a country that has never respected any international regulations and treaties, that supports and expands terrorism around the world, that has provoked too many wars to count, which has grown from solvency to bankruptcy and from being an uncontested world power to growing irrelevancy, especially after the Eastern financial and economic alliances are operative, and who has had a long list of leaders belonging to the most corrupt satanist mafia the world has ever known! 3 • Tatarewicz/ Maria Angelica Brunell Solar • Not to mention it's a country that that doesn't allow a tiny minority of its population but members of an international Tribe to chose national policy makers who then act in the interests of a foreign country. wilmers13 • Dear Anatoly, Please allow me, a former German who was there, to point to an often made error; i.e. All foreigners in Germany are descendants of Gastarbeiter, so you write, "" All major political factions in 1960′s Germany also expected their Gastarbeiters to eventually go home – didn’t work out like that."" The issue of foreigners in Germany has two angles, and when you see a non-German there, he/she could be the child of a Gastarbeiter (guest worker) OR more likely of an asylum seeker. The Gastarbeiter were officially recruited by branches of the Labor Department in Belgrade, Turkey, Marocco etc. - but these were closed in about 1974/75, parallel with Japanese industry gaining bigger market share. From about 1977 there occurred unlimited immigration through the asylum seeker path, Shah opponents from Iran, Khomeini opponents after 1979, Bangla Desh, India, North Africa. As most countries have an authoritarian streak nearly everyone was eligible to come to Germany. The Gastarbeiter numbers have not been relevant for decades. IllyaK Leonard Johnson • Russia has won 11 of the last 15 world hacking/coding championships. Russia graduates 500,000 engineers a year; US graduates about 240,000 - about 8,000 LESS than Iran. Russia has less than HALF the population and Iran one quarter. You cannot get a degree in Underwater Basket-Weaving from Moscow State Lomonosov - but you CAN at UCLA or Washington State, Mia Williams IllyaK • We shouldn't neglect to note that roughly half the championships you write of is due to the brilliant accomplishments of one young man -- I'm fairly certain he minored in underwater basket weaving at the University of Moscow. Anyway, that brilliant young man now works for Google, an American tech company. Are you aware that Russia turns out more medical doctors than most nations but, yet, Russia is unable to meet the medical needs of its population of the 1950s? Are you further aware that one need not be a snarky ass to make a valid point? The world's top schools 1. MIT 2. Stanford 3. Harvard 4. Caltech 5. Cambridge 6. Oxford 7. UCLA 8. Imperial college 9. U of Chicago 10. ETH Zurich - - - 95. Lomonosov Moscow Avatar IllyaK Mia Williams • You are an uninformed imbecile believing that dogshit western ranking. Mia Williams IllyaK • A proud canine feces expert, are you? Feel free to share your own university rankings. Let us stick with the facts. While Lomonosov Moscow is one of Russia's finest, on the world stage the university is widely viewed as a mediocre establishment of higher education - there's no terrific line to attend. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
When I lived in Chicago, there was a fight at the corner tap one night and the windows got broken out. It was closed the next night. This guy wanted a beer, so he went across the street to the Blue Pub. It was a gay bar. Some guy grabbed his ass and he punched him out. The cops came and arrested him. I heard when he got in front of the Judge he said to him, "I'm tired of you tough guys beating up on the gays." and he gave him 30 days in the Cook County Jail. I knew about that place so I stayed away from it. ;) "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
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