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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (152784)	10/2/2002 7:19:36 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586549

Ted, When I say starved, I didn't mean literally. In the past ten years, the argument has been made that US pressure caused the Soviets to put all their money into defense and not concern itself with domestic production and the efficient running of the country. They did not pull their money into defense any more than they did in the past. And the collapse was not a consequence of increased economic hardship, because there was not an increased economic hardship. The problem was that they (Soviet empire) were on the march, winning, confident, until they were seriously challenged for the first time in the 80s. They stopped winning, and upon reflection, realized that the goal of world domination will never be achieved. This caused a total crisis of confidence. On the economic front, the east block countries achieved a certain level, they hit the ceiling of how far a centrally planned system can go. Losening the grip was out of the question, because any losening of total control causes all kinds of problems to "spring up", such as Prague Spring, Solidarity etc. That may have been a factor but in the post soviet era, we have learned of numerous financial abuses as the siphoning off wealth to Communist party leaders who maintianed expensive dashas and large bank accounts in Switzerland. The extend of this is so small it is irrelevant. In any system, the elite has a better standard of living, and Communist elite was no exception. But in grand scheme of things, it was peanuts. There would have to be discoveries of billions to trillions of dollars, but they did not happen. Million dollars here and there - basically irrelevant amounts. As a consequence, the workers were paid slave wages and factory equipment became old and inefficient. See the above. The low wages were a consequence of the fact that the productivity in the centrally planned system has a ceiling, and the ceiling was reached. If the productivity does not go up, the wages stagnate. The diversion of significant amount of dollars into state coffers and excessive defense spending were always a problem. Nothing changed in the 80s. Other abuses were the payment of kick backs all along the system. That unfortunately became the way of life. In a market system, you just take out your wallet and buy what you can afford. In a centrally planned system, you may have money, but there are shortages, because there is no flexible connection (price) between the 2. Unfortunately, the corruption (bribes etc) is so deeply rooted now that it still persists, even after the fall of Communism, or may be even stronger, in sectors where free market doesn't exist (yet). Mainly, when one side of the transaction you have a person representing government entity. Joe