> And again, HN continues to connect all the ills of the society to that mythical 'capitalsim'. I am not in any way related to HN (I am just a regular user), b

> And again, HN continues to connect all the ills of the society to that mythical 'capitalsim'. I am not in any way related to HN (I am just a regular user), but it's a stab at the claim of some that there is "meritocracy", or that these things are somehow valued, when in fact, they are not. Can't speak for Soviet, but I can somewhat speak for communist Czechoslovakia. In many ways, the societies were less meritocratic, and in some ways more equal. I like to say that whatever was good about communist regime (you would find couple things) was mostly copied from the West in the 50s and 60s. For example, research institutions where there was a big freedom to spend time on research, without being constrained too much by grants and academic performance. (Actually the similar thing was true in the industry, because of the essentially lifetime employment.) Some used it to do good research, some used it to slack off, sure. But it certainly provided somewhat an option to spent a lifetime in one field only, if we return to the topic of the article.