Hi L H, although you saw this video 2 years ago I am asking you directly about it - if you kindly would like to answer me- since it is not a very active video and most probably otherwise I will not get a reply very soon. In the example Noam says about steel in Brazil isnt this proof that when you nationalise specific industries within a capitalistic market you make it more prone to being exploited by private corporations, while if you have everything private , individuals have to fight between them and cant exploit the taxpayers money? thanks
@@IT-hj2wb That depends on why you nationalize the industry, doesn't it? A government might do that to protect it from being stolen by a foreign government.
@@coreycox2345 Thanks for your reply.ok but nevertheless nationalising it doesnt it make more prone to exploitation by private corporations? If you nationalise public electricity or water and have a corrupted board of directors they can be bribed by ultrarich individuals to serve their goals ( ex. free energy for steel manufacturers that are private corporations ). Thus I guess it makes sense to nationalise only when you know that corruption in the country or from abroad isnt strong enough to exploit or that healthy forces from within are strong enough to resist, otherwise isnt it better to allow market forces to adjust the prices and regulate/protect only against the extremes? The power of consumerism and competition is a well proven tool to effectively keep prices low. If soemthing is too expensive people buy it from another company.. that way wealthy private corporations have to either supply something appealing to the public or they cant make profit, but by nationalising and monopolising electricity you end up with an authoritarian market that a true libertarian socialist should be against?! no?!
@@IT-hj2wbIt looks like part of your comment was cut off, unless you ended with three dots? I meant an uncorrupted government that served its people. There is always pressure and temptation for corruption, though. It might not work but could increase the odds. Sometimes governments are removed for getting in the way of foreign powers stealing their resources.
That was very interesting! Especially the beginning! That capitalism is very effective in mainly only gaining money but not having a certain justice or to make important infrastructers for humanity! Then he has analyzed how capitalism and privatization exploited other nations and also resources!
Marxism killed 120 MILLION last century Decades of forced labor, starvation and disease by Marxist economies of Mao Tse Tung and Joseph Stalin. Karl Marx the deadliest religion man ever invented for a by a holes like Noam fkng CHUMPsky history erase scum.bag Noam Chomsky DEMOCIDE MARXIST DEMOCIDE
Honestly each time that I see a part of my country productive sector being privatized, I saw a lot of people having lots of problems. Me included and also affected by it through my dad and the electric sector being privatized. The worst part of it is that we lose our social insurance systems to the hands of only profits companies that only sees you as numbers in their economic empowerment. That is a huge loss because next generations will suffer from this lack of stability and social programs paid by our taxes, at the end the state has avoided this responsibilities so badly in my country that is hard to tell where is going to end, and yes, all of this thanks of the US economic model of neoliberalism, corrupted national authorities and lack of education. . . the biggest issue to be solved over there. Saludos and just another sincere and useless point of view
It goes like this. Place in strategic positions your moles who can sabotage a public organisation from the inside either knowingly or just by being their usual incompetent selves, then deem the organisation ‘inefficient’, then dismantle it and sell pieces to private companies.
There needs to be a thorough contemporary study of how inefficient modern capitalism is. I suspect it is the most inefficient system humans have ever had.
i mean just take a look what happens when some big business take over a company (from state or just a regular guy). their way of efficiency basically means, kick out bunch of people and lower wages. thats the way to make things efficient.
@Rachel Erickson so you use a correlation in history to proof your point? see thats what bothers me with economics and its "science". its not aware of its own limitations. i mean obviously it cant be as accurate as math or physics but its far more certain about things than physics for example. thats mind boggeling. i mean take your correlation. how can we seriously compare this time with all its possibilities (technological, also the circumstances like democracy) to the past? its quite obvious that companies shift their locations to countries with cheap labour (ofc not the ones who need experts) so they can reduce the costs. or the automatic reflex of cutting wages etc when you get in trouble. sure, sometimes thats the right thing to do but the issue is its often times the first reflex. lets look at it: system isnt questioned. if someone actually does people refer to correlations from the past and now to defend it. why we dont try a more rational approach? externalisation is a real thing. so is the constant pressure to reduce wages.
@Rachel Erickson sure because walmart grows. but besides the fact that this is just one example we focus on here, you still need to see one thing. what would be if they didnt and we have a different environment? sure if you outsource like 50% of your people and grow 100% you have like still more employees than before with like 10% outsources. but is that good? and what did you basically do? you grow, other failed. what if those failed ones had better outsources quotes.
@Rachel Erickson what do you mean by skill biased technological change? many people wont fit in the new technologies. thats a huge issue. are we less productive etc because of that technology? contrary. so if a economical system put those people in a very bad situation despite the real situation gets better i think the system is to blame.
His Brazilian Brazilian steel example is a perfect example of state inefficiency...state ( the tax payer) subsidizing private industry and making a loss.
I don't know anything about this, but my gut feeling is that privatization initially seems better and eventually the cost doesn't live up to the service. Maybe hybrid is the way to go?
Neoliberalism leading to the outsourcing of well paying jobs and the mass unemployment, indebtedness and gradual decline of the city? It happened to virtually every industrial center in the US.
@@massimilianoferrari7860 ofc it does. that idea of slavery not being efficient my sound original at first glance maybe but its very obvious on many examples that it lead to higher productivity etc.
@@massimilianoferrari7860 i) who cares what his future condition is. its show that the productivity of slaves is much higher on simple tasks (cognitive). ofc you need some people to control it but thats offset by the productivity gain. also you dont need to much. the psychological effects of slavery are quite interesting and often times they even accept their fate as slaves, especially when they arent treated too harsh. also the revenge fear isnt that significant because the risk isnt that big. again psychological literature is interesting here. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery is interesting overall. Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison also also supervision isnt something just needed for slavery. ii) partly. in some areas maybe but that doesnt prevent better conditions in others. i never claimed to have slaves in every field. in this case it obviously would be a problem but for certain parts of economy it doesnt seem too problematic. iii) thats exactly the point. if its on a world wide scale it indeed wastes ressources but if you keep in your system and import slaves from elsewhere its by no means inefficient. slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing. im not a fan of correlation cause mixing. we cant just take a country like brazil and say its failure is due to slaves. this is far too simplistic and far too many factors play a major part here. also the productivity gains in brazil slavery are well documented and it was a huge boost to its economy. to be clear. im not a fan of slavery and i dont think its any good nowadays or on a global scale, but i think its incorrect to think its not efficient per se.
I think Noam is oversimplifying the situation… IMHO efficiency of any enterprise = “practicality of its vision” + “mindset of its employees” - “corruption” This means that a public company can outcompete a private one if it has a better vision, better staff or less corruption, or vice-a-versa. FYI My conclusion comes from lengthy experiences in both private and public sectors, holding jobs which expected me to optimize org. wide processes.
@@victorvelez8469 So what you are saying is inlines of “if it can’t be measured it does not exist” which is a reason so many people conflate money with success. I personally think that it is a problem of our society envying the rich, most of whom are hardly “good” people, but money is the definition of success in our society. I personally think revenue is a side effect of making meaningful visions come to life.
Part of me wonders why the powers that be allow so many of these clips of Chomsky on RUclips. I wonder whether it's because Chomsky does such a great job of discrediting his own arguments lol. I mean, for example, I haven't heard Chomsky point out the obvious: that the entire socioeconomic system is based on force and everything is just based on who is strong enough to advance their own arguments or agenda within the confines of a system enforced with police and military power. The fact that the u.S. has "Freedom of Speech" doesn't really change the dynamics for poor people, in fact Free Speech actually makes it worse for poor people by allowing the powerful to have unfettered access to their bully pulpits which gives them a free pass to discredit socialism (a good thing) while entrenching their own socialist subsidies/corporate welfare (bad!). But Chomsky always talks as though our society is supposed to be egalitarian and just. But that's actually Not the case. It's all based on "Law" which is actually based on Force and whoever won "ownership" of the land and resources and state, in America that being the "uSA", the group of people who "won" the Revolution and wrote the "Constitution" which controls all this; just like each state and municipality has their own constitutions and police forces and if you don't follow their "law" they come and put you in a cage and take your money. This brute reality seems to completely escape Chomsky's consciousness, or he just doesn't want to admit the truth? The powerful Love it when Chomsky and his fellow poor-lovers whine about inequality and injustice while changing nothing, meanwhile the rich powerful work with the state to extract as much legal subsidy and plunder as efficiently possible. Chomsky has never mentioned that I can remember that this is just basic Human Nature, Greed, bolstered by an all-powerful statist system that rewards people who employ the most legal aggression and violence. And why doesn't Chomsky speak to this brutal reality? Probably the same reason most tenured university professors dont--they don't want to lose their tenure, colleague support, bank accounts, or get audited by the IRS. Instead of condemning the state directly, Chomsky suggests that we should "reform" the system, which is EXACTLY NOT the problem! Yes, maybe Chomsky mentions in passing libertarian socialism or anarcho syndicalism, but that is not his main thrust of argument; his main thrust of argument is a complaint that the powerful are unjust and unfair to the less successful and fortunate in society--But Chomsky Never explains that this is EXACTLY how the state functions and is set up--by the LAWYERS and the laws which always fall back on Force and Violence to enforce their agenda if basic reasoning is not powerful enough to win the day. The system is basically a lawyer's scam based on emphasizing the worst impulses of human beings based on the worst aspects of human nature. Chomsky never acknowledges these realities, thus 99% of his arguments have no teeth, and he does his audience a consistent disservice.
Maybe it's because I don't pay enough attention, but it seems to me a lot of Chomsky's critiques focus on big oil and neoconservative politicians and less on Silicon Valley tech cartels and their *ostensibly* Left commitments. I wonder how his content would fare if he spent more time talking about the latter.
You really must read Chomsky with your eyes closed if you think he doesn't grasp or impart the fact that the economy and politics is just a naked power play. It permeates everything he says and writes.
I sympathize with your point of view, youre clearly a right wing libertarian, the only thing that you need to understand the most is that: state power is subjulgated to big corporate power. Read more chomsky, I know you probably only watched a couple videos of him from youtube. But, try and search an understanding of what he is talking about.
@@miguelbogado3145 No, I watched a lot of Chomsky videos. Chomsky is a fraud. He claims to be an anarchist, but he's against Gun Rights. He claims to want to share the wealth, but he has set up a capitalist trust fund for his granddaughter. He profits greatly from his work thanks to copyright laws. He calls Trump "worse than Hitler" the most ridiculous absurd statement in history.
@@nleobold hello Bro, gun rights in a bourgeoise state is not actually anarchist, like in traditional anarchism. Only If they are done by a popular horizontal revolutionary organization, and by revolutionary I mean aiming for the seizure of the means of production.
Efficiency doesn't always translate into economic domination. Also you have to consider what you mean by ''poor''. They were the first to send a man into space after all.
So poor? Well Russia was the most backward country of Europe at the time, when the USSR came, they industrialized and were later destroyed by the nazi hordes, only to have to build themselves again while the USA remained intact for 200 years with a considerable headstart. People weren't poor in the USSR, they had very decent living standards. When capitalism was reintroduced in Russia there was for the first time in decades people begging on the street and working 3 jobs.
Also, even if you accept it was poor, saying public enterprise CAN be efficient is not saying public enterprise is ALWAYS efficient. Just as some private enterprises are poorly run and some are well run, so too are public enterprises different based on the particularities of each institution.
Omar Omokhodion Bragging about sputnik when the wellbeing of the working class was the whole animus for the USSR's existence is a little odd, I must say.
Gustavo C I have heard this claim made by several sources, but does anyone have any corroboration about the average Russian's standard of living that didn't come from an arm of the soviet government, itself?
Socialize the loss, privatize the gain.
Externalize the damage, L H. The tragedy of the commons. To me, this seems the reason to have governments except that governments are corruptable.
Hi L H, although you saw this video 2 years ago I am asking you directly about it - if you kindly would like to answer me- since it is not a very active video and most probably otherwise I will not get a reply very soon. In the example Noam says about steel in Brazil isnt this proof that when you nationalise specific industries within a capitalistic market you make it more prone to being exploited by private corporations, while if you have everything private , individuals have to fight between them and cant exploit the taxpayers money? thanks
@@IT-hj2wb That depends on why you nationalize the industry, doesn't it? A government might do that to protect it from being stolen by a foreign government.
@@coreycox2345 Thanks for your reply.ok but nevertheless nationalising it doesnt it make more prone to exploitation by private corporations? If you nationalise public electricity or water and have a corrupted board of directors they can be bribed by ultrarich individuals to serve their goals ( ex. free energy for steel manufacturers that are private corporations ). Thus I guess it makes sense to nationalise only when you know that corruption in the country or from abroad isnt strong enough to exploit or that healthy forces from within are strong enough to resist, otherwise isnt it better to allow market forces to adjust the prices and regulate/protect only against the extremes? The power of consumerism and competition is a well proven tool to effectively keep prices low. If soemthing is too expensive people buy it from another company.. that way wealthy private corporations have to either supply something appealing to the public or they cant make profit, but by nationalising and monopolising electricity you end up with an authoritarian market that a true libertarian socialist should be against?! no?!
@@IT-hj2wbIt looks like part of your comment was cut off, unless you ended with three dots?
I meant an uncorrupted government that served its people. There is always pressure and temptation for corruption, though. It might not work but could increase the odds. Sometimes governments are removed for getting in the way of foreign powers stealing their resources.
Love Noam. Just truth
He explains things more clearly than anyone
That was very interesting! Especially the beginning! That capitalism is very effective in mainly only gaining money but not having a certain justice or to make important infrastructers for humanity! Then he has analyzed how capitalism and privatization exploited other nations and also resources!
This is a good start in understanding how the death toll of capitalism is incalculable.
Marxism killed 120 MILLION last century
Decades of forced labor, starvation and disease by Marxist economies of Mao Tse Tung and Joseph Stalin.
Karl Marx the deadliest religion man ever invented for a by a holes like Noam fkng CHUMPsky history erase scum.bag Noam Chomsky
DEMOCIDE MARXIST DEMOCIDE
we love you Noam your work matters
Efficiency? We are back to "the greed and needs of the few, versus the greed and needs of the many."
Honestly each time that I see a part of my country productive sector being privatized, I saw a lot of people having lots of problems. Me included and also affected by it through my dad and the electric sector being privatized. The worst part of it is that we lose our social insurance systems to the hands of only profits companies that only sees you as numbers in their economic empowerment. That is a huge loss because next generations will suffer from this lack of stability and social programs paid by our taxes, at the end the state has avoided this responsibilities so badly in my country that is hard to tell where is going to end, and yes, all of this thanks of the US economic model of neoliberalism, corrupted national authorities and lack of education. . . the biggest issue to be solved over there. Saludos and just another sincere and useless point of view
Can you suggest the book in which all these things Chomsky talked about I can find
There are many Audiobooks
His point on the internet is true. Painfully true.
Probably the only thing left I haven't heard Chomsky intelligently discuss is String Theory!
im brasilian and i can confirm every single brazilian case hes quoting
Water in Flint was privatized.
We need more Noam Chomsky to have truth in this world.
It goes like this. Place in strategic positions your moles who can sabotage a public organisation from the inside either knowingly or just by being their usual incompetent selves, then deem the organisation ‘inefficient’, then dismantle it and sell pieces to private companies.
There needs to be a thorough contemporary study of how inefficient modern capitalism is. I suspect it is the most inefficient system humans have ever had.
i mean just take a look what happens when some big business take over a company (from state or just a regular guy). their way of efficiency basically means, kick out bunch of people and lower wages. thats the way to make things efficient.
@Rachel Erickson well and now other companies do the same and the result is the only ones left are those paying shit.
also often it doesnt work out
@Rachel Erickson so you use a correlation in history to proof your point? see thats what bothers me with economics and its "science". its not aware of its own limitations.
i mean obviously it cant be as accurate as math or physics but its far more certain about things than physics for example. thats mind boggeling.
i mean take your correlation. how can we seriously compare this time with all its possibilities (technological, also the circumstances like democracy) to the past?
its quite obvious that companies shift their locations to countries with cheap labour (ofc not the ones who need experts) so they can reduce the costs. or the automatic reflex of cutting wages etc when you get in trouble. sure, sometimes thats the right thing to do but the issue is its often times the first reflex.
lets look at it: system isnt questioned. if someone actually does people refer to correlations from the past and now to defend it. why we dont try a more rational approach? externalisation is a real thing. so is the constant pressure to reduce wages.
@Rachel Erickson well then whats that fuss about high paying jobs compared to past?
@Rachel Erickson sure because walmart grows. but besides the fact that this is just one example we focus on here, you still need to see one thing. what would be if they didnt and we have a different environment? sure if you outsource like 50% of your people and grow 100% you have like still more employees than before with like 10% outsources. but is that good? and what did you basically do? you grow, other failed. what if those failed ones had better outsources quotes.
@Rachel Erickson what do you mean by skill biased technological change? many people wont fit in the new technologies. thats a huge issue. are we less productive etc because of that technology? contrary. so if a economical system put those people in a very bad situation despite the real situation gets better i think the system is to blame.
His Brazilian Brazilian steel example is a perfect example of state inefficiency...state ( the tax payer) subsidizing private industry and making a loss.
I don't know anything about this, but my gut feeling is that privatization initially seems better and eventually the cost doesn't live up to the service. Maybe hybrid is the way to go?
There can't be a society of mistrust
Which talk is this from?
+August Starberg "Free Markets?"
Thanks bruh
ruclips.net/video/WHj2GaPuEhY/видео.html
When was this recorded?
Noam "Take a look at X, for example" Chomsky
When you know stuff you know stuff
Isn't that what happened in Detroit?
Richard Sheehan what do you mean?
Neoliberalism leading to the outsourcing of well paying jobs and the mass unemployment, indebtedness and gradual decline of the city? It happened to virtually every industrial center in the US.
Noam Chomsky arguing for a fascist economy
Neoliberalism sure beat ... the people.
Problem is ... marxism, socialism no good either.
Google "countries by standard of living".
If we don't have good people and good laws, nothing is going to help anyway. How do we get and enforce that?
If people want efficiency then what about the most efficient economy... slavery 🤔
@@massimilianoferrari7860 depends on which scale you look at it
@@massimilianoferrari7860 ofc it does. that idea of slavery not being efficient my sound original at first glance maybe but its very obvious on many examples that it lead to higher productivity etc.
@@massimilianoferrari7860 i) who cares what his future condition is. its show that the productivity of slaves is much higher on simple tasks (cognitive). ofc you need some people to control it but thats offset by the productivity gain. also you dont need to much. the psychological effects of slavery are quite interesting and often times they even accept their fate as slaves, especially when they arent treated too harsh. also the revenge fear isnt that significant because the risk isnt that big. again psychological literature is interesting here.
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
is interesting overall.
Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison
also
also supervision isnt something just needed for slavery.
ii) partly. in some areas maybe but that doesnt prevent better conditions in others.
i never claimed to have slaves in every field. in this case it obviously would be a problem but for certain parts of economy it doesnt seem too problematic.
iii) thats exactly the point. if its on a world wide scale it indeed wastes ressources but if you keep in your system and import slaves from elsewhere its by no means inefficient. slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.
im not a fan of correlation cause mixing. we cant just take a country like brazil and say its failure is due to slaves. this is far too simplistic and far too many factors play a major part here. also the productivity gains in brazil slavery are well documented and it was a huge boost to its economy.
to be clear. im not a fan of slavery and i dont think its any good nowadays or on a global scale, but i think its incorrect to think its not efficient per se.
Ben Shapiro fans need to plug their ears.
Pretty sure Ben Shapiro fans eyes glazed over about two minutes in.
Still a Ben Shapiro fan but it’s evident that Chomsky is far more intelligent he just has different values.
He was so much better back when he made this.
nah. chomsky is like a fine wine. he improves with age
he talks about the same things over and over again; politicians have kept society stagnant
I think Noam is oversimplifying the situation…
IMHO efficiency of any enterprise = “practicality of its vision” + “mindset of its employees” - “corruption”
This means that a public company can outcompete a private one if it has a better vision, better staff or less corruption, or vice-a-versa.
FYI My conclusion comes from lengthy experiences in both private and public sectors, holding jobs which expected me to optimize org. wide processes.
Those are all highly subjective measurements which are horrible for actually trying to measure how economically productive companies are...
@@victorvelez8469 So what you are saying is inlines of “if it can’t be measured it does not exist” which is a reason so many people conflate money with success. I personally think that it is a problem of our society envying the rich, most of whom are hardly “good” people, but money is the definition of success in our society.
I personally think revenue is a side effect of making meaningful visions come to life.
Part of me wonders why the powers that be allow so many of these clips of Chomsky on RUclips. I wonder whether it's because Chomsky does such a great job of discrediting his own arguments lol. I mean, for example, I haven't heard Chomsky point out the obvious: that the entire socioeconomic system is based on force and everything is just based on who is strong enough to advance their own arguments or agenda within the confines of a system enforced with police and military power. The fact that the u.S. has "Freedom of Speech" doesn't really change the dynamics for poor people, in fact Free Speech actually makes it worse for poor people by allowing the powerful to have unfettered access to their bully pulpits which gives them a free pass to discredit socialism (a good thing) while entrenching their own socialist subsidies/corporate welfare (bad!). But Chomsky always talks as though our society is supposed to be egalitarian and just. But that's actually Not the case. It's all based on "Law" which is actually based on Force and whoever won "ownership" of the land and resources and state, in America that being the "uSA", the group of people who "won" the Revolution and wrote the "Constitution" which controls all this; just like each state and municipality has their own constitutions and police forces and if you don't follow their "law" they come and put you in a cage and take your money. This brute reality seems to completely escape Chomsky's consciousness, or he just doesn't want to admit the truth? The powerful Love it when Chomsky and his fellow poor-lovers whine about inequality and injustice while changing nothing, meanwhile the rich powerful work with the state to extract as much legal subsidy and plunder as efficiently possible. Chomsky has never mentioned that I can remember that this is just basic Human Nature, Greed, bolstered by an all-powerful statist system that rewards people who employ the most legal aggression and violence. And why doesn't Chomsky speak to this brutal reality? Probably the same reason most tenured university professors dont--they don't want to lose their tenure, colleague support, bank accounts, or get audited by the IRS. Instead of condemning the state directly, Chomsky suggests that we should "reform" the system, which is EXACTLY NOT the problem! Yes, maybe Chomsky mentions in passing libertarian socialism or anarcho syndicalism, but that is not his main thrust of argument; his main thrust of argument is a complaint that the powerful are unjust and unfair to the less successful and fortunate in society--But Chomsky Never explains that this is EXACTLY how the state functions and is set up--by the LAWYERS and the laws which always fall back on Force and Violence to enforce their agenda if basic reasoning is not powerful enough to win the day. The system is basically a lawyer's scam based on emphasizing the worst impulses of human beings based on the worst aspects of human nature. Chomsky never acknowledges these realities, thus 99% of his arguments have no teeth, and he does his audience a consistent disservice.
Maybe it's because I don't pay enough attention, but it seems to me a lot of Chomsky's critiques focus on big oil and neoconservative politicians and less on Silicon Valley tech cartels and their *ostensibly* Left commitments. I wonder how his content would fare if he spent more time talking about the latter.
You really must read Chomsky with your eyes closed if you think he doesn't grasp or impart the fact that the economy and politics is just a naked power play. It permeates everything he says and writes.
I sympathize with your point of view, youre clearly a right wing libertarian, the only thing that you need to understand the most is that: state power is subjulgated to big corporate power. Read more chomsky, I know you probably only watched a couple videos of him from youtube. But, try and search an understanding of what he is talking about.
@@miguelbogado3145 No, I watched a lot of Chomsky videos. Chomsky is a fraud. He claims to be an anarchist, but he's against Gun Rights. He claims to want to share the wealth, but he has set up a capitalist trust fund for his granddaughter. He profits greatly from his work thanks to copyright laws. He calls Trump "worse than Hitler" the most ridiculous absurd statement in history.
@@nleobold hello Bro, gun rights in a bourgeoise state is not actually anarchist, like in traditional anarchism. Only If they are done by a popular horizontal revolutionary organization, and by revolutionary I mean aiming for the seizure of the means of production.
I don't buy it. If public enterprises were reasonably efficient, then why was the Soviet Union so poor?
Efficiency doesn't always translate into economic domination.
Also you have to consider what you mean by ''poor''.
They were the first to send a man into space after all.
So poor? Well Russia was the most backward country of Europe at the time, when the USSR came, they industrialized and were later destroyed by the nazi hordes, only to have to build themselves again while the USA remained intact for 200 years with a considerable headstart. People weren't poor in the USSR, they had very decent living standards. When capitalism was reintroduced in Russia there was for the first time in decades people begging on the street and working 3 jobs.
Also, even if you accept it was poor, saying public enterprise CAN be efficient is not saying public enterprise is ALWAYS efficient. Just as some private enterprises are poorly run and some are well run, so too are public enterprises different based on the particularities of each institution.
Omar Omokhodion Bragging about sputnik when the wellbeing of the working class was the whole animus for the USSR's existence is a little odd, I must say.
Gustavo C I have heard this claim made by several sources, but does anyone have any corroboration about the average Russian's standard of living that didn't come from an arm of the soviet government, itself?
Isn't that what happened in Detroit?