- cross-posted to:
- leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
ID: WookieeMark @EvilGenXer posted:
"OK so look, Capitalism is right wing.
Period.
If you are pro-capitalism, you are Right Wing.
There is no pro-capitalist Left. That’s a polite fiction in the US that no one can afford any longer as the ecosystem is actually collapsing around us."
The Soviet Union also did pretty well overall. The Russian Empire went from a backwards feudal agrarian society and economy to a world superpower in a handful of decades. It wasn’t clear if the Soviet system might have superior outcomes until the 1970s. The Soviet Union ran into huge difficulties after the introduction of semiconductors and computers.
Happiness wise of course it’s mixed. The lack of political, artistic, and economic freedom made people‘s lives smaller and more grey. There was a huge desire among the population in the Soviet block to leave to a western country. The millions who died from hunger, forced labor, horrible conditions from the 1920s to 1940s certainly weren’t happy.
That sounds more like “pretty well initially” than “pretty well overall”; I guess it’s an effect of the authoritarianism that they get stuck after a while, as people can stay in power even if they’re not doing well
If there’s a ton of low hanging fruit to be picked and large developments possible just by sheer brute force, you can achieve quite remarkable effects. These brute force economic developments were effective, but not efficient.
A huge issue for the Soviets was the immense coverups of failures and underachievements. The plan demands a factory make 10,000 widgets per year. Failure is not an option, because you might get thrown into gulag as a saboteur. So they sacrifice quality or outright lie to meet the quota. If you get that all over the system, you end up with bad data and thus bad decisions.