>Oh come on. Charles & I are miles apart. I don't think of the USSR as a
>utopia. But what imaginary alternative Russian economy are you comparing
>the planning years to? According to Maddison's stats, the Soviet era was
>the only period in which Russia & EE narrowed the income gap with the west.
>More recent stats from the World Bank suggest the gap is back to 1913
>levels.
I never said otherwise.
>
>
>It was fucked up for sure, but it's very difficult to keep up with First
>World standards.
I always said that the more apt comparisons were countries like India and Turkey. I never suggested that the USST be appraiased against the standards of the US or the EU.
>Planning had its moment.
I never said otherwise.
Would capitalism
>have industrialized and urbanized Russia?
That I cannot speculate on. I would have orefered Bukharin's market socailsim to Stalin's tyranny. Wouldn't you?
It's like you want to
>learn nothing from the experience except that planning is doomed, because
>Hayek sayeth so.
Give me a break. Planning is fine in its place. Horrible and cruel and stupid as Soviet planning was, it brought the Sovuet peoples a modicum of prosperity--although the engine had largely broken down by the mid=70s. You know damn well I don't derive my views a priori from Hayek. Rather I came to respect Hayek based on a long-time, up close acquiantance with the Soviet economy.
Different institutional structures with
>better computers could be a very different story.
>
That shows I have not expalined Hayek clwarly enough. Better computers won't do it. The problem wis with the incentives tro gather accurate information. The best computers will give you garbage if you give them garbage.
>> One thing that is reasonably certain is that in 1979-85, the Soviet
>>economy went into deep crisis, and this was geberally recognized. That's
>>why the appointed Gorby to be the GS and let him essentially dismantle the
>>economy and their old structures of power.
>
>Who's "the[y]"? The CP elite?
Who the hell else did it?
Yes, it was the elite's attempt to
>solidify its position as a ruling class through the appropriation of
>property, and to live on a standard with western elites. That's not the way
>most people who lived through the dismantling of the USSR think of it.
No, I don't that that's what Gorby had in mind, jsut what he unleashed. Nor
is it what the oeiole who appointed him had in mind. They thought he would
clean house, make everything nice again.
>
>Yeah of course the USSR needed radical reform. It was stodgy and repressive
>and produced shitty consumer products. But it would have been much better
>to work with what they had than to junk it for a mad leap into capitalism.
>
Are you under the impression that I think differently?
jks
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