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I was answering your post directly, but leave it to you do to the Winterfall Shuffle.
You've never shopped in the East Bloc, either.
Shopping in the East Bloc was not like shopping in the Free World, where you walk up and down aisles of goods browsing for what you want, and reading labels or examining the quality of merchandise.
Shopping in the East Bloc was like going to a bar, or pharmacy.
When you're at a bar, do you walk behind the bar and get what you want?
No, they'd throw your ass out in a heartbeat. You tell the bartender what you want, and the bartender gets it for you.
Just like a pharmacy. Do you walk behind the counter and get what you want?
No, unless you want to be arrested. You tell the pharmacist what you want, and the pharmacist gets it for you.
That's how you shopped in the East Bloc.
Every retail store was the same.
You get in line behind people standing behind a huge counter that you cannot cross. Perhaps there's two sales clerks, so there's two lines.
When it's your turn, exactly one each of the merchandise sold in the retail store is displayed on the wall behind the counter that you can't cross.
You point to the item, or tell the clerk what you want, and the clerk goes in the back, where you can't see, and hopefully returns with the item you want.
I can already tell this went way over your head.
The whole point of not being able to see the inventory, is to prevent panics, riots and demonstrations.
It's a waste of your time to go to another retail store, because if one out of something, then all stores in the city and sometimes the entire country are out of that item until the next month's shipment, assuming the next month's shipment isn't delayed for any number of reasons.
You had no choice. There's one and only one manufacturer of aspirin, not 5 or 6 like other countries had.
At Kroger's, I have a choice of Skyline chili, Goldstar chili, Cincinnati chili, Worthmore chili, Wolf's Head chili, Hormel chili (with or without beans) and a few other brands.
In the East Bloc, you have one and only brand of any food item, and if you don't like how it tastes, that's just too damn bad.
It wasn't exactly the shining Utopia you think it is.
Um, they haven't welcomed private capitalists. That's the problem.
You don't know what you're talking about.
You never visited an East Bloc country, never worked in one, never lived in one, never shopped in one, don't own property in any and don't speak any of the languages.
Neither you nor anyone else knows what they spent, because the Soviets never published budgets.
However, assuming what you say is true, it only proves the Soviet system to be a failure, because the US spent far less than 1/3rd of its GPD, fielded better equipment, and more of it, at a lower cost than the Soviets.
The only thing the Soviets had to trade was oil, wheat and military equipment.
The Soviets produced few consumer goods, and what they produced was of substandard quality compared to the quality of goods in the Free World.
The Soviets were producing substandard record players, while the Free World was producing cassette tapes and digital audio tapes (DAT) and then compact discs (CDs) which were introduced in the 1980s.
So, why would anyone buy record players?
What you have proven is that if the Soviets had permitted Capitalism, they would have had consumer goods of high quality to trade, the Standard of Living of Soviets would have been higher, and the government would have had more revenues from taxation.
The East Bloc States all had planned economies, which were grossly inefficient, which never met their goals and ultimately led to their demise.
Phenomenal job ignoring the rest of my post, you just proved me right in every way possible.
You ignore why the Soviets were so poor, and as to whether more wealth was necessary to make an efficient society. When given less pressure, the planned economy, much like our own, gave people more security. That is why the majority of Eastern bloc states want to go back, that is a discernible fact. But then you ignore the reasons why they were so poor which caused a lack of quality.
And moreso you could not begin to comprehend what I was saying. The only lense you can view the world is in that which offers more market choice. The Soviets, as you could do your own research, spent more to compete with the US, but raw wealth had to do with market space (communist countries had less trade than capitalist countries) https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/31/w...bombshell.html
And even then with lower wealth, the Soviet Union was always poorer than the west,and its ignorant to not understand that. It’s the same reason Eastern Europe is so poor today despite being post socialist. You can even ignore that the planned economy was the same thing every developed country uses, the difference was the Eastern bloc at least promoted job security. That is dangerous to your conception of maximizing production for more market choice (not a reasoned or moral argument). But then you wouldn’t know that I’m against the planned model all developed countries use to different affects and organization.
And they exist to "serve the workers"?? Where is such a center?
They produce wealth for the sake of the workers.
Let me ask you this, does a farm exist for consumers or the farmer? Well today it exists for the food companies and chemical industry, but naturally it is created and formulated by the farmers.
These concepts may be too foriegn for you to understand, but they are true.
We are still waiting for you to be right just one time. Wake me up when that occurs.
Here, you can read the entirety of my post right here. Read it, try to understand it, and wake up:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
You cannot see friend, you are blinded and instead choose to rant on subjects not pertaining to the original discussion.
Is eastern Europe rich now that it has welcomed private capitalist in? If no then you must wonder why eastern Europe is so poor.
In fact it has been for many centuries in comparison to the west, and after WW2 they faced the brunt of the destruction. When East and West was split, the Soviets were not comparable to the wealth of the US, and as such they formed a poorer trading bloc.
Include division between Asian communist states (which too were incredible poor at the time) and their is limited room to grow. Had more states been Marxist modeled, they would have more to trade.
And had the Soviets not needed to spend a third of their GDP on military research, they could have funded a decent society. Come the 80s which you claim knowledge on as Reagan heightened the competition to where the poorer Soviets struggled to compete, you saw the limited trade offered to the eastern bloc deprecate even more.
And then you ignore the fact that the more totalitarian states like Poland and Romania have different perspectives from the Yugoslav states, East Germany, etc. Today the majority of all those populations wish things were like they were back then. And that is regardless of market choice as security and the freedom that security offered was better than just greater consumer choice (in no way a model to measure human happiness).
But you still blind yourself, you ignore what I am saying, and you think you know what I support. You confuse totalitarian atrocities with economic models, and you forget that the famines you speak of in Ukraine were regular in European colonies at the time of their relative industrialization. Forced industrialization was a brutal method, especially at the speed the Soviets accomplished it.
Which brings me to my main point, this was never a system I supported. In fact planned economies are the most efficient, not something I rank in high regard. The US is a planned economy, and I'm not just talking about state intervention or R&D spending by the public sector and universities.
I'm talking about the private industry. And its interesting that you bring up the late 19th century in America, because that was when the changed happened. US industries competed with each-other for wage earners, and that competition killed profits. It was so disastrous US corporations and businesses said if it continued it would crash the economy. Instead they turned to cooperation and price planning. That is why every major business have price management, so they can set a profit goal, and plan for future investments by having an assured profit margin. This is economic planning, and companies learned long ago that if they submit to the rule of the markets all business would die:
But this is the most significant point of all, this system I am describing is something you should support, not me. There is a reason Chile with their nationalized Copper industry is the most successful capitalist nation in Latin America. Economic Planning is the basis of wealth creation, which you love profusely because of your own corrupted morals.
You reject spiritual and historic realities for Market choice as the greatness of humanity. Instead of creating a system that does not punish poverty, you promote institutions that reward greed and theft (a word that you will never understand the meaning to).
And state planning is the most efficient form of capitalism, it is by far the greatest tool the US has, greater than the planning of exxonmobile, Apple, etc. combined. You regard a political system (authoritarianism) like in Venezuela and Romania (eastern bloc) and ignore their differentiation to an economic system.
Your only fear is that if people had democratic control of that government planning, they may look to utilize wealth for their own security and leasiure rather than consumption. And without marketing propaganda that may be so, which is against your broken moral system.
And you are so blind to not see that these forms of wealth organization and planning are not what I support in totality, in fact that is why I am against the Soviet System and the Cuban system not for. But you don't want to see reality, you only want to dictate it from your own partial knowledge.
Let me ask you this, does a farm exist for consumers or the farmer? Well today it exists for the food companies and chemical industry, but naturally it is created and formulated by the farmers.
These concepts may be too foriegn for you to understand, but they are true.
Coming from a family of farmers, I assure you that you are woefully ill-informed.
Coming from a family of farmers, I assure you that you are woefully ill-informed.
What do you know about farming? Grazing, crops, what?
Anyways, do they (not you I presume) produce to meet their own needs, or for the sake of diversifying the market?
If the answer is number 2, that shows you just how distorted the market has become with the introduction of large food producers, chemical companies, and land owners.
Oh, but perhaps you like to make stuff up so you can use the eyeroll emoji. I expected no less from you CM.
What do you know about farming? Grazing, crops, what?
Wait, so you're asking for credentials here? The guy who doesn't invest, has never run or managed a company, has basic done nothing and experienced nothing yet lectures everyone else who has? Hilarious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
Here, you can read the entirety of my post right here. Read it, try to understand it, and wake up:
Well since we're just meta-posting, here is the entire thread so you can reread where you were repeatedly clobbered by folks who knew a lot more than you, lied about what others said, ignored things that you couldn't deal with, and kept painted yourself into logic corners to where you had no choice but to continuously modify what you're previous claimed:
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