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> Better lifestyle for whom? In 1989, Boris Yeltsin literally could not believe the variety and abundance of food at an average American grocery store. https:

> Better lifestyle for whom? In 1989, Boris Yeltsin literally could not believe the variety and abundance of food at an average American grocery store. https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...

khzw8yyy 3y ago
Turns out there is more to a good life than having a ton of food.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Yeah, but not starving to death by the millions in man-made famines is a pretty good start. Maslow's hierarchy and all that.
  - ebanez 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - candiodari 3y ago
      Ozempic is but one of the available insulin's. Now I get that Ozempic is the best and most comfortable, but when push comes to shove, truth is, even an insulin from 50 years ago will do. Some of those cost A LOT less and will definitely work. And yes, it sucks that the most comfortable one is more expensive. But ...
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - glp1guide 3y ago
        Ah small correction here: Ozempic isn't insulin -- it's a GLP1 Receptor Agonist[0]. While the companies that make these kinds of drugs do make Insulin (for example IIRC that's now Novo Nordisk got it's start), that's not what the drugs actually are. [0]: https://glp1.guide/content/what-are-glp1-agonists https://glp1.guide/content/what-are-glp1-agonists
pphysch 3y ago
[flagged]
- mopsi 3y ago
  It is very dishonest of you to dismis his impressions as if they were anything political. The shock and bewilderment of people from USSR when they first traveled abroad is well known; I know people who touched fruits as they walked through aisles at a supermarket thinking that "it can't be real, they must be plastic" when they visited Finland for the first time. The constant shortage of goods was such an established fact of everyday life in the USSR that a regular western supermarket looked like something out of a fairy tale, and not only to regular citizens, but also to party elite who had their own luxury stores, which were also much much crappier than any Walmart.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    There's nothing "very dishonest" about being skeptical of Yeltsin's anecdotes. The guy was a tool that was instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR. USA undoubtedly had better access to a wide variety of groceries due to its geography and agrarian economy. Russia doesn't have a California or Mexico (the best candidate, Turkey, was part of NATO). That doesn't mean USA also didn't have a vastly superior propaganda ecosystem, from Hollywood to the NYT.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      > The guy was a tool that was instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the people who tore apart the USSR did so because the USSR didn't work. That he went on to be instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR is not evidence that his shock and awe at the abundance in the US was staged. > USA undoubtedly had better access to a wide variety of groceries due to its geography and agrarian economy. Russia doesn't have a California or Mexico (the best candidate, Turkey, was part of NATO). Your parent commenter is talking about the reactions they got from people visiting Finland. > That doesn't mean USA also didn't have a vastly superior propaganda ecosystem, from Hollywood to the NYT. The USA had a better propaganda system if you include the facts they had at their disposal as part of that system. If we instead look at how well each country did with the facts that they had, you are living proof that the USSR's propaganda system was incredible. Faced with the fact that people in the USSR starved by the millions while people next door in Finland had abundance, you somehow manage to place the blame on geography instead of on the human systems that the Soviets put in place.

khzw8yyy 3y ago

Turns out there is more to a good life than having a ton of food.

lolinder 3y ago
Yeah, but not starving to death by the millions in man-made famines is a pretty good start. Maslow's hierarchy and all that.
- ebanez 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - candiodari 3y ago
    Ozempic is but one of the available insulin's. Now I get that Ozempic is the best and most comfortable, but when push comes to shove, truth is, even an insulin from 50 years ago will do. Some of those cost A LOT less and will definitely work. And yes, it sucks that the most comfortable one is more expensive. But ...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - glp1guide 3y ago
      Ah small correction here: Ozempic isn't insulin -- it's a GLP1 Receptor Agonist[0]. While the companies that make these kinds of drugs do make Insulin (for example IIRC that's now Novo Nordisk got it's start), that's not what the drugs actually are. [0]: https://glp1.guide/content/what-are-glp1-agonists https://glp1.guide/content/what-are-glp1-agonists

pphysch 3y ago

[flagged]

mopsi 3y ago
It is very dishonest of you to dismis his impressions as if they were anything political. The shock and bewilderment of people from USSR when they first traveled abroad is well known; I know people who touched fruits as they walked through aisles at a supermarket thinking that "it can't be real, they must be plastic" when they visited Finland for the first time. The constant shortage of goods was such an established fact of everyday life in the USSR that a regular western supermarket looked like something out of a fairy tale, and not only to regular citizens, but also to party elite who had their own luxury stores, which were also much much crappier than any Walmart.
- pphysch 3y ago
  There's nothing "very dishonest" about being skeptical of Yeltsin's anecdotes. The guy was a tool that was instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR. USA undoubtedly had better access to a wide variety of groceries due to its geography and agrarian economy. Russia doesn't have a California or Mexico (the best candidate, Turkey, was part of NATO). That doesn't mean USA also didn't have a vastly superior propaganda ecosystem, from Hollywood to the NYT.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    > The guy was a tool that was instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the people who tore apart the USSR did so because the USSR didn't work. That he went on to be instrumental in the ultimate dissolution of the USSR is not evidence that his shock and awe at the abundance in the US was staged. > USA undoubtedly had better access to a wide variety of groceries due to its geography and agrarian economy. Russia doesn't have a California or Mexico (the best candidate, Turkey, was part of NATO). Your parent commenter is talking about the reactions they got from people visiting Finland. > That doesn't mean USA also didn't have a vastly superior propaganda ecosystem, from Hollywood to the NYT. The USA had a better propaganda system if you include the facts they had at their disposal as part of that system. If we instead look at how well each country did with the facts that they had, you are living proof that the USSR's propaganda system was incredible. Faced with the fact that people in the USSR starved by the millions while people next door in Finland had abundance, you somehow manage to place the blame on geography instead of on the human systems that the Soviets put in place.