Re:How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
by lucian1900 on Sunday May 23, 2021 @03:43AM
(#27253132)
The wall was mainly built to prevent brain drain. The richer West was bribing people to move there, after they were raised and trained with the resources of the poorer East. It was a last resort taken out of desperation over the West’s constant economic and covert military attacks and arguably still a mistake. For example, the USSR disagreed with the wall and recommended against building it.
A similar kind of brain drain is happening all over Eastern Europe, to disastrous consequences. Especially with COVID it’s a massive problem that most trained medics have emigrated.
The West didn't need to bribe people, it just had to not take people's rights and things.
> For example, the USSR disagreed with the wall and recommended against building it.
It's a laughable idea that the GDR did decide such things without Moscow. Closing and fortifying the German-German border effectively happened on Stalins orders, the Berlin Wall was built with Moscows permission.
Re:How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
by lucian1900 on Sunday May 23, 2021 @04:29AM
(#27253317)
The why do the Soviet archives contain detailed accounts of Stalin himself (and several other leaders) discussing the matter and sending a recommendation against the wall? Why do the same archives tell us about the proposal of a unified neutral Germany after the war?
Re:How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
by WalterBright on Sunday May 23, 2021 @11:58PM
(#27260966)
> recommendation
Recommending is not the same thing as ordering or proscribing.
> proposal
I'm sure a lot of proposals were floated and discussed.
Re:How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
by WalterBright on Sunday May 23, 2021 @03:14PM
(#27257682)
> after they were raised and trained with the resources of the poorer East
Yeah, I've heard that before. How the communists provided a free education, and so the citizens then owed a lifetime of servitude in return.
I've heard the claim before that the Wall was built to keep Westerners out. But, as I said, I've visited the Wall in 1969. It was very clearly designed to keep people in, not out. The defenses pointed East. It was a layered defense, with the weakest parts easternmost and the deadliest parts adjacent to the Wall itself. Exactly what would be built to defend from attack from the East. You'll see the same setup in fortifications from castles (layers pointing outwards) to prisons (layers pointing inwards).
For another example, West Berlin helped out people who wanted to invade East Berlin by building platforms so one could look over the Wall (as myself and lots of tourists did). Nobody hopped over, though, to invade the East. But many got shot trying to go the other way, there's a museum there documenting it.
BTW, it was the East that blockaded West Berlin, attempting to starve the city into submission, not the other way around.