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And average working people were so well off in the USSR that they never tried to leave, lamented its fall, etc... /sarcasm When you write comments like the ab

And average working people were so well off in the USSR that they never tried to leave, lamented its fall, etc... /sarcasm When you write comments like the above it reads like you are unfamiliar with history, with original sources. My view: all power distribution systems are more or less the same- the people who care about power fight for it, where the in-groups of the winners do quite well, and the people who don't don't and tend to suffer. This is true in the US, in Russia now, in China, you name it. There are many metrics by which average working people in the US suffer, the US jails dominated by black men who have done nothing wrong are abhorrent and shameful, etc etc etc, but like with many things this is an exercise in least bad. Many, many systems- including ANY explicitly centralized power structure- are going in the end to be more bad. The US is remarkably decentralized, and that is its blessing and saving grace, the suffering of those who are not in aside. In the end, central planning does not survive any good intentions of its originators. Power consolidation becomes the ends of any next generation. And then you think it is bad being alive as an out group in the US? At least they are alive.

droptablemain 5y ago
| "unfamiliar with history, with original sources." Tales of expats explicitly lean toward the negative, creating a sort of survivor's bias, amplifying the negative presentation despite the fact that there were many more people who had positive experiences. This happens with Cuban expats as well, despite the millions of people that are supportive of the Cuban government; the perspective of those who "escaped" gets amplified into the mainstream Western discourse. For further justification, see the high rates of Soviet nostalgia that currently exist in Russia, as well as the majority who lived under the Soviet system saying that life was better back then.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  > he majority who lived under the Soviet system saying that life was better back then. They were at least 30 years younger. Healthier, stronger and better looking. But if you have a chance, can you ask them if they remember how many hours per day they were spending in line to buy food?
- sershe 5y ago
  Why would tales of expats skew negative? Expats tend to be better educated and come from more privileged segments of the populations. When an expat is complaining about how an engineer in Soviet union lives with his family in a 700sqft 1-bedroom and cannot afford a car, do you seriously think you are missing the counter-evidence from a better engineer living in Moscow suburbs with two cars? No, what you are actually missing is the evidence of a chemical factory worker living in a small town 25 miles from Moscow in a wooden cottage with no running water and wood stove for heat (that is a real person I personally knew ;)). The latter guy is not going to show up as an expat. There's a great 80ies rock song by Nautilus (I can't find a translation good enough to post) that really captures the essence of living under late socialist central planning, both in economic and political sense... for the former, it's not that it's chaotic or particularly malicious, it's that it's so laughably, pointless-ly mismanaged and pitiful. My family comes from probably top 5% of Soviet population by QoL (from Moscow and with some very minor connections due to someone in the family being a high ranking and respected engineer at Moscow subway), not at all anti-Soviet, and yet I can totally attest to that both from family stories and personal experience (e.g. the flats inherited from socialist times, the indirect evidence like books that I used to read as a kid that my family "obtained" 5-10 years in advance because you couldn't just go and buy good books, or habits that my parents and grandparents still have like not ever throwing away anything, even if it's broken and useless "in case you need it for something" [implying you cannot just go and buy something], using the healthcare system inherited from the Soviet times, etc.). It's really kinda hard to convey... there was a blog post here about "how it feels to be poor" in the US, and the guy was complaining about his tiny 900sqft apartment... I literally laughed out loud. Don't know much about Cuba, but there's no reason to believe it's any better. My favorite story about Cuba is a Canadian guy telling me he really likes Cuba, it's a great country, he visits all the time and it's really nice how any girl would sleep with you for a pack of cigarettes or a dinner ;) The "support" for the regimes is mostly a combination of propaganda, not knowing any better, and lack of opportunity to actually change anything turning people towards so called "inner emigration" into cynical/self-serving indifference, going thru the motions to either ignore or even abuse the system.
bildung 5y ago
> And average working people were so well off in the USSR that they never tried to leave, lamented its fall, etc... Indeed most average people were quite happy with the regimes. The dissidents, people trying to flee etc. were usually academics. (I'm from Eastern Germany, so this is anecdata, but at least the first-hand kind). I suppose this is also true for China: The young people there have seen huge intergenerational prosperity advances for three or sometimes four generations. This mixes up topics, though: central planning is largely orthogonal to political freedom. As a mirror, there were a bunch of authoritarian free market situations, e.g. in South America, but also Italy, Spain and Germany during their dictatorships. > The US is remarkably decentralized, Are you sure about that? My impression is that large parts of the economy are actually controlled by (quasi-)monopolies or oligopolies. > In the end, central planning does not survive any good intentions of its originators. Most European countries have a federal budget to GDP ratio of over 50%, suggesting that central planning actually does deliver in many segments of the economy, notably those where working market dynamics are very hard to achieve (esp. education, healthcare, pensions, social services, often also energy and water infrastructure).

droptablemain 5y ago

| "unfamiliar with history, with original sources." Tales of expats explicitly lean toward the negative, creating a sort of survivor's bias, amplifying the negative presentation despite the fact that there were many more people who had positive experiences. This happens with Cuban expats as well, despite the millions of people that are supportive of the Cuban government; the perspective of those who "escaped" gets amplified into the mainstream Western discourse. For further justification, see the high rates of Soviet nostalgia that currently exist in Russia, as well as the majority who lived under the Soviet system saying that life was better back then.

credit_guy 5y ago
> he majority who lived under the Soviet system saying that life was better back then. They were at least 30 years younger. Healthier, stronger and better looking. But if you have a chance, can you ask them if they remember how many hours per day they were spending in line to buy food?
sershe 5y ago
Why would tales of expats skew negative? Expats tend to be better educated and come from more privileged segments of the populations. When an expat is complaining about how an engineer in Soviet union lives with his family in a 700sqft 1-bedroom and cannot afford a car, do you seriously think you are missing the counter-evidence from a better engineer living in Moscow suburbs with two cars? No, what you are actually missing is the evidence of a chemical factory worker living in a small town 25 miles from Moscow in a wooden cottage with no running water and wood stove for heat (that is a real person I personally knew ;)). The latter guy is not going to show up as an expat. There's a great 80ies rock song by Nautilus (I can't find a translation good enough to post) that really captures the essence of living under late socialist central planning, both in economic and political sense... for the former, it's not that it's chaotic or particularly malicious, it's that it's so laughably, pointless-ly mismanaged and pitiful. My family comes from probably top 5% of Soviet population by QoL (from Moscow and with some very minor connections due to someone in the family being a high ranking and respected engineer at Moscow subway), not at all anti-Soviet, and yet I can totally attest to that both from family stories and personal experience (e.g. the flats inherited from socialist times, the indirect evidence like books that I used to read as a kid that my family "obtained" 5-10 years in advance because you couldn't just go and buy good books, or habits that my parents and grandparents still have like not ever throwing away anything, even if it's broken and useless "in case you need it for something" [implying you cannot just go and buy something], using the healthcare system inherited from the Soviet times, etc.). It's really kinda hard to convey... there was a blog post here about "how it feels to be poor" in the US, and the guy was complaining about his tiny 900sqft apartment... I literally laughed out loud. Don't know much about Cuba, but there's no reason to believe it's any better. My favorite story about Cuba is a Canadian guy telling me he really likes Cuba, it's a great country, he visits all the time and it's really nice how any girl would sleep with you for a pack of cigarettes or a dinner ;) The "support" for the regimes is mostly a combination of propaganda, not knowing any better, and lack of opportunity to actually change anything turning people towards so called "inner emigration" into cynical/self-serving indifference, going thru the motions to either ignore or even abuse the system.

bildung 5y ago

> And average working people were so well off in the USSR that they never tried to leave, lamented its fall, etc... Indeed most average people were quite happy with the regimes. The dissidents, people trying to flee etc. were usually academics. (I'm from Eastern Germany, so this is anecdata, but at least the first-hand kind). I suppose this is also true for China: The young people there have seen huge intergenerational prosperity advances for three or sometimes four generations. This mixes up topics, though: central planning is largely orthogonal to political freedom. As a mirror, there were a bunch of authoritarian free market situations, e.g. in South America, but also Italy, Spain and Germany during their dictatorships. > The US is remarkably decentralized, Are you sure about that? My impression is that large parts of the economy are actually controlled by (quasi-)monopolies or oligopolies. > In the end, central planning does not survive any good intentions of its originators. Most European countries have a federal budget to GDP ratio of over 50%, suggesting that central planning actually does deliver in many segments of the economy, notably those where working market dynamics are very hard to achieve (esp. education, healthcare, pensions, social services, often also energy and water infrastructure).