Every time I read about the "lack of consumer goods" in the eastern block as proof of its justified demise I kringe. On the one hand, it sounds just mean to den

Every time I read about the "lack of consumer goods" in the eastern block as proof of its justified demise I kringe. On the one hand, it sounds just mean to denounce the efforts of complete nations (unfree or not) by such a mundane metric as whether you can choose between a plethora of car brands and models or just choose between "No-Car" and "Car". Having "Car" is still good. But the difference between output in the west and the east tells so much about how this diversion must have come about: much, much force. In so many aspects of daily life. Most easterners have them, their stories of this ridiculous economy. A friend of mine owns an ash-tray that is simultaneously a rubber duck (!). But my favourite story is still the one of once-staunch socialist Dr. Wolfgang Seiffert who was part of a COMECON conference somewhere in the southern GDR in the 1960s. There, top economists of the eastern bloc conferred about why there was an ongoing shortage of toothbrushes in Saxonia. After three weeks he broke with the idea of central planning (and the mindset that created it): 1) Not only did the system provide a shortage for such an inferior day-to-day product as toothbrushes 2) The system needed its elite economists to gather for three weeks to find a solution 3) which they didn't The eastern bloc's economic prospects were dire from the get-go and some in the elite knew very early on. It's not a coincidence that Putin comes from one part of that elite that knew all too well: the KGB.