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The Soviet Union built some fairly complex machines too, for example buran the Russian space shuttle, nuclear power plants, large airplanes, submarines etc. I
by nn3 11y ago
The Soviet Union built some fairly complex machines too, for example buran the Russian space shuttle, nuclear power plants, large airplanes, submarines etc. I don't think these are significantly less complex than an iPhone. Likely more.
Now you could argue they did it less frequently or less efficient and not really benefitting the average consumer in many cases. And that would be true. But there is no denying that a top down economy did those things.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoSoviet Union routinely failed to sell its nuclear plants, airliners and less complex stuff. Soviet Union was able to produce something that worked, but it was all below price-quality curve. I.e. you could buy same quality product from Western corporations for less money; or you could buy better quality product for same money. Western corporations also had better selection. So only buyers were in communist bloc, and what USSR end up exporting is oil and gas. And that'll happen nine times out of ten, since socialist economies are not optimal.
- danharaj 11y agoI don't know why we're calling the USSR socialist; is it because they said they were socialist? There are plenty of dictatorial regimes that call themselves democratic republics, too. The USSR was structured like one massive corporation: Everything was owned by the government and the government bureaucracy functioned much like a corporate bureaucracy. Libertarian socialists sometimes call states like the USSR state capitalist, because economic activity is still dictated by a top-down hierarchy allocating capital and exploiting workers. Optimal is not the word you want to use, by the way. Not even free markets are optimal, that's why economists talk about 'market failures'.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoThe USSR was not structured like one massive corporation. Corporation tends to seek profit; while USSR sought survival. Was bad at it, too: built millions of tanks and other military hardware that rusted without any battle, lost the cold war and tanked.
- danharaj 11y agoYou're talking about purpose, not structure. I'll agree, the USSR's purpose was not profit, because profit does not make sense if you're trying to own everything. The USSR's goals were growth and, as a logical consequence of growth, not shrinking, i.e. survival. It failed, yes. The larger a hierarchy and its concentration of resources, leadership, and power at the pinnacle, the worse it performs. This occurs with corporations in a capitalist system as well, but since it is not a defining feature of such corporations that they must own everything, their existence is more flexible. They can merge, split, be acquired, get sold off, get refinanced, etc. In this way, the capitalists (viz. people who make their living off of property ownership) can preserve their ownership even if their power structures fail. So the key difference between the USSR and the Liberal states in opposition to it is the notion of property. Under the USSR, all property is state property and under the Liberal states, property is the bourgeois notion of property.
- asgard1024 11y agoI agree with you, though I used the Czech Republic as an example because that's how it is commonly (yet wrongly) understood by the other side. It can be seen as collectivist in some ways, but in some it is much less. And I think the detailed comparison actually shows that the problem lies elsewhere (as you correctly state - concentration of power).