kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@yogthos Sorry but this data is nonsense. In USSR and Poland at least the life expectancy was 10 less than in the West in 80's

@yogthos Nice try but failed :) You quote this paywalled article for the second time and quote excerpts with no numbers or factual details.

@yogthos Look how much it costs today to clean up and put safety cover on Chernobyl and who pays for it: Ukraine and... the West. Not USSR.

@yogthos The peaceful workers protesting in Novocherkassk were literally shot to death

@yogthos And if there's anybody responsible for "planned obsolescence" it's yourself - the consumer, who prefers to buy a smartphone for $100 when a long-life equivalent would cost 2-5x more. In USSR this problem was unknown because to get a phone you had to wait 10 years, pay a bribe and get an approval from local KGB :)

@yogthos In modern West (or Russia for that matter) expiring or surplus is routinely given to charities, who support homeless. At the same time man-made famines in USSR and China killed millions of people.

@yogthos Can you elaborate what is the use of an union if you have no right to strike and are shot to death if you go on the street to protest?

@yogthos Somehow it were capitalist economies that reduced emissions of ozone-depleting gases and saved Earth's ozone layer. USSR at the same time caused the largest nuclear disaster so far in 1986 and hundreds of smaller yet catastrophic environment pollution incidents.

@yogthos But how work in USSR could have been based on "cooperation rather than competition" if everyone was forced to compete to finish the Plan? You evidently have no idea how it worked in reality, do you? Per excellent 1986 article by Nikolai Shmelev "Advances and debts" (Аванси и долги) over 30% of supplies in USSR were held as reserves by factories just to ensure they can satisfy the Plan and directors are not jailed - enormous waste of resources!

@yogthos USSR achieved unprecedented *growth* and only *over some period* because it started from very low pre-revolutionary level. Later its economy stagnated and eventually bankrupted. At peak, GDP per capita in USSR was 1/3-1/2 of Western. Its economy was also extremely unbalanced, with absurd overgrowth of heavy industry over light industry and services. And for most of the time it depended on loans from the West, ending with $76 billion debt in 1991.

@yogthos In the first placd, millions of GULag prisoners were used for unpaid labour. But even regular workers had no right to strike, wages were insufficient to satisfy basic living needs and protests were suppressed without mercy (Novocherkassk massacre 1962).

@yogthos And the notion that outsourcing production to poor countries is "exploitation" is quite absurd. In 80's in Poland you could buy a pair of shoes for maybe month's salary. In France - for two hours salary. When joint ventures started to open in late 80's everyone dreamed of working there (eg IKEA) because this guaranteed not only high salary but also reasonable working hours and that the salary will be actually paid on time.

@yogthos Are there any countries not based on some form of exploitation? USSR? North Korea?

@yogthos "Economics of shortage" by the way is the title of a book (1980) by Hungarian Marxist economist Janos Kornai, who first described this phenomenon scientifically

@yogthos Marxian economy is by its very core principles economy of shortage (as opposed to surplus is capitalism). And is less effective due to constructs such as central planning and prices based on labour value theory.

@gretathunberg Unfortunately the same Greenpeace is fiercely blocking any attempts to build a modern nuclear power plants in Poland, thus forcing it to import more coal.

@nikolal Good question. I'm just looking for some screen sharing solution that would work on Windows and Linux.

@blacklight447 Well, I wonder how long people would like to support a version of language conceived 15 years ago (or more)?

@yogthos Because market economy generates wealth in general. Then it's only matter of redistribution. US does it poorly, Scandinavian countries - much better.

Marxian economy is economics of shortages, for everyone and arbitrary redistribution by the ruling party.