this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago (12 children)

Going back to the cold-war era where the USSR had to manufacture and provide mostly every single consumer good for its own citizens due to economic sanctions and isolation. You can't compare luxury goods made all over the entire world for a wealthy minority, designed by experts from all other industrialized countries, against soviet-made mass-produced items which were meant to be able to be produced in as many units as possible using the least amount of resources possible. It's just different manufacturing paradigms.

The USSR was what is called a "shortage economy" as opposed to western capitalism's "surplus economy". In capitalism, an abundance of competing companies in the same field leads to overproduction of most goods in a way that some products from some brands end up on the shelves of stores and storage houses collecting dust, and companies who manufacture a lot of these non-desired products, disappear. This leads to an inefficient waste of resources and labour, since it leads to unused goods and services.

The USSR, on the other hand, had a state-planned economy in which, using predictions of the planned output of raw materials, decided what to produce with these materials. Producing 10 more drills, meant that you had to produce 10 fewer units of something else. Hence, the economy was optimized so that only as many as strictly necessary of most goods would be manufactured. Additionally, the products were design to require the least amount of labour and resources necessary to be manufactured, taking into account mostly long-life and easy repairability to prevent inefficiencies. It was the only way that the USSR could, as a less industrialized state than for example Germany or the US or Britain (which had started industrialising around one century before the USSR did), could provide goods for everyone, and for the most part it did. The quality of products may not have been as high as high-quality consumer goods in the west, but that's simply a combination of design choice to be available to cover more goods with similar amounts of raw materials and labour, of fewer experts in design and manufacturing than worldwide due to the size of the soviet block and their economical embargos.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 0 points 5 months ago (9 children)

They couldn't have been that isolated when they were directly buying and copying western designs. The first version of Tetris was programmed on what is more or less the Soviet clone of the DEC PDP-11.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Being able to purchase some models of some products here and there doesn't mean you can sustain a segment of the industry through imports

[–] frezik@midwest.social 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They didn't just buy them (although there was some of that). They cloned them outright. They had the manufacturing capability to make them on their own, but lacked the knowledge of how to build it themselves.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm not denying they cloned them, I'm saying they were cloned due to the inability to access them widely and affordably in the international market. Cloning stuff is good btw, copyright is a scam

[–] frezik@midwest.social 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Cloning stuff is good. Not being capable of designing and building your own is bad. It means you can never improve on what already exists.

It wasn't for lack of engineers. The Buran rocket's first and only flight took off and landed on 100% automation. That's not easy. But didn't build things in ways that could benefit people in a more widespread way.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Again, you can't expect the USSR, a nation that started industrialising and educating people in 1920s, to be able to outcompete the entire rest of the world in every sector of the economy. It was a poorer nation than the US, Germany or England historically, it developed much later. The fact that it got as far as it did is impressive enough of a feat, especially since it didn't abuse colonialism and imperialism to do so, but instead used only the sheer work of its inhabitants and the natural resources found within its borders. The USSR falling behind in some extremely novel fields such as computing, is only to be expected.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

especially since it didn’t abuse colonialism and imperialism to do so

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deep breath

HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Tell me you don't understand colonialism and imperialism without telling me you don't understand colonialism and imperialism.

You haven't read a single thing about unequal exchange, or colonialism, or imperialism. The western countries (imperial core) RELY on cheap raw materials and cheap labour from third countries (colonial periphery) to be able to attain the levels of wealth and development that they enjoy. The USSR simply didn't participate in this, and you saying otherwise proves you know jackshit about this topics or about history.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

deep breath

HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

Edit: just for future reference (because people who argue this shit aren't worth giving the benefit of a serious debate), I don't doubt one bit that the US benefits greatly from barbaric imperialist polices around the world both then and now. I take great issue with the idea that the USSR somehow got to space without its own barbaric imperialist policies. Just ask Poland, Finland, or Ukraine. Or any of the numerous peoples who had been forced to live under the previous Czarist regime, and whom the Bolsheviks did fuck all to help. Or Hungry or Czech, which played host to the incidents that invented the term "Tankie". Marxist–Leninism is a shitty drug.

[–] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee -2 points 5 months ago

Feel free to stay an ignorant

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