When Boris Yeltsin Went Grocery Shopping in Clear Lake
nhregister.com
nhregister.com
So it's a chilly Thursday morning in Brno, and everybody's in line to buy meat. They're waiting and waiting, and the line's not moving at all.
Eventually a Party official comes out and says "Due to the conspiracy of wreckers, there isn't enough meat. All the Jews need to get off the line".
So the Jews all get off the line and go home, but still everyone's waiting and there's no meat. Hours pass, and eventually the Party official comes back: "I'm sorry to report that there's still not enough meat. Everyone who's not a Party member needs to get off the line."
So all the non-party members get off the line and go home. But still all the Party members are waiting and waiting, no meat. After another two hours waiting in the cold the official comes back and says, "We're sorry but there's no meat today. Everybody get off the line."
As they're walking away from the line, one of the people who was waiting turns to the other and says: "You see? The Jews always have it the best!"
That's amusing, but at the same time it is horrifically anti-semitic. Especially given what the Jewish people went through in the years leading up the the Russian Revolution (One toddler was torn apart by a fascist mob, in another town a number of months later Jewish people were forced into a church and then the church and people burned alive).Today, the joke would be accompanied with the "congratulations, you played yourself" meme.
If you did, did you think that you understood it fully?
If you didn't, what compelled you to comment? The way the punch-line was written?
> Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other disputable government policies including a near-total freeze on any access to foreign currency at reasonable "official" exchange rates, have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela#1999–2013
When I hear people say “X shouldn’t be subject to the market” I want to bang my head on the desk. You can’t just decide that, e.g. food won’t be subject to market forces by, e.g., imposing price controls. If you push on the balloon on one side, it will expand on the other side.
Of course it comes with plenty of western/foreign capitalist sabotage conspiracies thrown in to justify why their grand economic experiment didn't work. Then it devolves into basically purposefully underfeeding your population because of a giant lingering sunk-cost fallacy and, most importantly, an ideology to defend - on which the current power structures were built on.
An economy cannot work without foreign trade, being blocked from that by a major player essentially does that.
If you look at communist countries that are small enough to be self-sufficient, it tells a different story. Take Cuba, it is blocked from trade with the US and a fair chunk of other countries, however, Cuba is self-sufficient enough that it has not only survived but it has flourished, with a ridiculously high literacy rate, and a universal public health system that puts much of the world to shame.
I have but two observations left to make.
1. If the communist system was inherently a fail-state, then the US would have to do nothing but sit back and wait until it collapses. Instead of that they try relentlessly to sabotage any form of it. They tried, for example, over 600 times to assasinate the leader of Cuba. It's a real shame because it forces the communist parties to be anti-free-press, and anti-free-speech because of the risk of foreign countries abusing that to seed a revolution (Indeed, it was admitted on record that the only reason the CIA hasn't done that in Cuba is because it lacks resources, and Cuba doesn't allow full internet access (as I understand it)).
2. It took over 800 years to establish a stable republic. That doesn't mean that it could not be done, or that the republic was an inherently broken system, but it took a number of 'failures' to make a success, and the right political and societal advancements to be made.
May 2019 "Cuba launches widespread rationing in face of crisis"
https://www.apnews.com/42b62f24be9b4e0d9f764f1a3fa9647a
This near starvation problem isn't anything new. The same thing happened when Cuba's last sponsor, the USSR, went under.
1994 "Millions of Cubans facing starvation: Hunger is fuelling an exodus of desperate refugees, writes Phil Davison from Havana"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/millions-of-cubans-...
From quotes like:
Cuba's history of colonization included deforestation and overuse of its agricultural
land. Before the crisis, Cuba used more pesticides than the U.S. Lack of fertiliser
and agricultural machinery caused a shift towards organic farming and urban farming.
Cuba still has food rationing for basic staples. Approximately 69% of these rationed
basic staples (wheat, vegetable oils, rice, etc.) are imported.[18] Overall,
however, approximately 16% of food is imported from abroad.[18]
Diaz said importing food from U.S. producers had become more complicated under
Trump, forcing Cuba to search for products that were more expensive and difficult to
import.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...
As of 2018, the embargo, which limits American
businesses from conducting trade with Cuban interests,
remains in effect and is the most enduring trade embargo
in modern history
The UN General Assembly has, since 1992, passed a
resolution every year condemning the ongoing impact of
the embargo and declaring it in violation of the Charter
of the United Nations and of international law. In 2014,
out of the 193-nation assembly, 188 countries voted for
the nonbinding resolution, the United States and Israel
voted against and the Pacific Island nations Palau,
Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. Human-rights
groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, and the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights have also been critical of the embargo.
Critics of the embargo say that the embargo laws are too
harsh, citing the fact that violations can result in up
to 10 years in prison.
In a 2005 interview, George P. Shultz, who served as
Secretary of State under Reagan, called the embargo
"insane". Daniel Griswold, director of the Cato
Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, criticized
the embargo in a June 2009 article:
The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has
not changed the course or nature of the Cuban
government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen.
In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a bit
more impoverished, without making them one bit more
free. At the same time, it has deprived Americans of
their freedom to travel and has cost US farmers and
other producers billions of dollars of potential exports.>it is pretty obvious that the US allowing Cuba to trade with the rest of the world would more or less 'solve' those problems.
As you pointed out the US embargo prevents Americans from trading with Cuba. It affects no one else. Virtually the entire world apart from the US is against the embargo. They are all free to trade with Cuba. At the margins, the US embargo hurts Cubans, but the bulk of their economic woes are self inflicted.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas...
That's a matter of opinion.
I don't support cuba or leninism, but I just don't see anything controversial with what the parent has said, whether you are left or right wing.
Also:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
So far, everyone has responded to my talking about Cuba, an example I picked off the top of my head as a simple demonstration (It's a shame that America cannot boast such scores in education and health, to be honest). The example was illustrative, something mentioned off-hand to solidify and strengthen a point. Nobody responded to the core of my argument, which was the more meatier part and harder to disagree with.
My central point, however "An economy cannot work without foreign trade, being blocked from that by a major player essentially does that" is supported by economists literally everywhere. In fact, it's one of the major reasons why a trade embargo is created in the first place, to suffocate a country and cause a regime change:
"By far, regime change is the most frequent foreign
policy objective of economic sanctions, accounting for
80 out of the 204 observations."
- Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (3 ed.) -- Hufbauer, Schott, Elliott, OeggHealth care and education are two areas where the public sector and public control does well.
Groceries are one where it does poorly.
A few examples of state healthcare systems in Soviet Union / Russia, UK, Hong Kong or Thailand seem to show that state healthcare is a miserable failure and those who are able to get access to private healthcare will always prefer it.
Similar with schools, it appears that people strongly prefer private schools to government schools, even in places where private schools are quite ordinary, not just for the elites, and don't require expensive tuition - competing with government schools for the same kids.
The reason why the healthcare system in the UK is failing, is because of a multi-fold problem that is too numerous to describe here, but boils down to political sabotage. Two other main reasons come to my mind:
One, privatization and outsourcing has caused mismanagement that expanded healthcare delays to an untenable point. Two, to 'repair' the 'failing' NHS, a 'target' system was set up. Hospitals that fail to meet targets have money taken from them, which causes a vicious circle whereby underperforming hospitals do not have the resources to perform better.
See: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families... and https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1848.full
Also, as I understand it, the privatization of the USSR's state healthcare system made things _worse_.
The OECD reported[28] that unfortunately, none of this has worked out as planned and the
reforms have in many respects made the system worse. The population’s health has
deteriorated on virtually every measure. Though this is by no means all due to the
changes in health care structures, the reforms have proven to be woefully inadequate at
meeting the needs of the nation. Private health care delivery has not managed to make
many inroads and public provision of health care still predominates.
For example, healthcare isn’t composed of one market, but several between different operators operating under different market forces and regulatory rules. As it’s too complicated to go into each, I’ll go into one that’s most apparent; the market between patients and healthcare providers (not insurance companies!).
Assuming the most idealized of cases that exist without external constraints and regulations, this market would never be a free market. Because the buyer will never be in the position to make the decision to not buy the good. Even a rational free agent would not be in a position to disagree from making a purchase. The value each sentient lifeform places on their life is for all intents and purposes infinity in the healthcare context. No sane suicidal individual or hero would sign up for a purposeless, slow and painful death. This removes the essential mechanism that free markets have to regulate themselves; the freedom to not participate.
In most markets, if a good or service is too expensive then the business selling them will go bankrupt or remain small due to a lack of buyers. This creates an incentive for a cheaper mousetrap to exist. But healthcare isn’t like that. Your choice is severely limited. At best, you can choose between providers (though for serious, and sadly incredibly routine, issues the immediacy of needing treatment trumps this) and at worst you’re unconscious and unable to make any decisions yourself. So the element of choice isn’t present making it axiomatically not a free market.
Please note that I am not going into ancillary factors like the difficulties patients face in making informed decisions, the viral component that exists for certain classes of disease (you choosing not to do X in the case of a serious enough pathogen could lead to a sick household or an epidemic. See: the return of measles), the difficulty of rationing care (Americans spend more partly because they see their doctors less by design and are discouraged from accessing preventative care), and overall incentive misalignment between doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospital staff, insurers, HMOs etc that creates runaway effects.
We treat all markets in the same way, but they aren’t all the same. The market for healthcare is different from consumer electronics and the market for plastic surgery (a procedure where I must note there is an option to say no). Reductively put, you can choose not to buy a MacBook Pro. But you can’t choose not to treat sepsis. So why does our literature usually assume that both are the same?
A free market does not mean a market where a buyer has a choice of not buying something. It only means one where the market choices of agents are not constrained by coercive intervention of other agents.
We need to buy food, but the market for food is still quite free, and consequently, very efficient.
That's not how I was taught this concept. I know, Wikipedia is a bad source, but I would like to point out how widespread my specific interpetation is amongst the economics textbooks I've read;
In a free market, individuals and firms taking part in these transactions have the liberty to enter, leave and participate in the market as they so choose. Prices and quantities are allowed to adjust according to economic conditions in order to reach equilibrium and properly allocate resources.
Note, enter and leave. This means both as a producer and a consumer, without this we cannot have efficient allocation.
> We need to buy food, but the market for food is still quite free, and consequently, very efficient.
The food market is a really good counter-argument to mine, but when I was first making my observations, I found that food is a very different market that was originally constrained in similar ways but isn't. First is that it's a "market" that's nearing globalized post-scarcity (this doesn't preclude localized scarcity). We produce enough food that we can feed the global population twice over https://ourworldindata.org/food-per-person (3k+ per capita for developed nations and 2k+ for underdeveloped ones).
Humans have reached this state due to government-sponsored research and sponsored application of revolutionary new technologies.
Second, our ability to process food has also led to a surplus in stored calories. We can feed ourselves even during catastrophes (though distribution will remain a challenge).
And third, historically (as I am not certain about this particular point, but it is consistent with my reading of history), prior to the green revolution, the food market was never this free - it has always been state managed to a varying degrees. From feudal lords and chieftains to the Roman grain dole, food has been a carefully managed resources until our time.
Due to its oversupply and heterogeneity, the food market has a very different structure and dynamics that are inherent to it. But, taking my argument at face value, I would argue that it is indeed possible to exit the food market - we can grow our own food! Even a small-ish farm with good practices can feed a family for a year or more using wild seeds, natural compost and herbicides alone.
I decided a long time ago that if I was going to be an entrepreneur; I was going to figure out how the whole stack works. And that definitely includes economics.
I’m doing my best to learn how to see things clearly and insightfully. :)
>>In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
Note "are free from any intervention by a government or other authority" which conforms with my argument that it's a market where the market choices of agents are not constrained by the coercive intervention of other agents. Other agents being the "government or other authority" referred to, and the "authority" alluding to an agent which exercises coercive power over others.
>>Humans have reached this state due to government-sponsored research and sponsored application of revolutionary new technologies.
In the US, since the founding of the country, it has been a very market-based sector, with government's most fruitful contributions being in basic research, as opposed to market inhibiting interventions like regulations.
That would be like the government funding basic research in healthcare, and leaving everything else mostly to people's free choices in the market.
The first places in the world where famine was vanquished were ones with heavily private agricultural sectors with strong contract and private property rights, in Western Europe and North America.
>>I would argue that it is indeed possible to exit the food market - we can grow our own food! Even a small-ish farm with good practices can feed a family for a year or more using wild seeds, natural compost and herbicides alone.
Most people cannot grow enough food to feed themselves. Saying we can exit the food market because we can grow our own food is like saying we can exit the healthcare sector because we can provide our own medical products/services. We can technically, but practically the vast majority would have a much lower quality of care if they did so.
This is completely inaccurate. The US healthcare market (much like finance, pharmaceuticals, construction, most of the largest farming industries, etc, right down to the expensive licensing required to be a hair stylist or interior designer) are some of the most heavily regulated markets in the world.
The US health insurance market has been the farthest thing from a free market for some time. Whether health insurance would benefit from total centralization is one thing (one of the few markets I personally believe in being gov controlled).
Agencies like the FAA and FDA are some of the largest and most thorough of all regulatory agencies in the world. One that other foreign governments with allegedly "big government" administrative agencies look up to as a model replicate or simply take their findings as policy instead of testing their own.
Pretending the US economy is some capitalist free-for-all is one of the biggest global misconceptions.
The rising cost of the US health care market vs the world [1] has little to do with lack of gov intervention but the result of a centuries worth of half-baked compromises between two different worldviews, often featuring the worst of both worlds.
> healthcare isn’t composed of one market, but several between different operators operating under different market forces and regulatory rules. As it’s too complicated to go into each, I’ll go into one that’s most apparent
The market that exists between Hospitals and Suppliers is different than Health Insurance and Consumers (and businesses) which is different from Insurance and Independent Providers... There isn’t one big “healthcare” market but several interacting with one another in removed ways.
My definition of a market is,
The term market refers to a situation where buyers (consumers) and sellers (producers) interact (directly or through intermediaries) to trade goods and services. It is a situation where forces of demand and supply interact to determine prices of goods and services being exchanged. Therefore, a market includes mechanism for: determining prices and quantities of the traded item, communicating information about prices, and for the distribution of the goods and services.
This can be argued to a certain degree for any modern commodity, but healthcare is a unique beast in how different forces for each market is and how interrelated they seem to be. However, I can be wrong about this part.
I have also said that I am proving my point in the context of an idealized free market. My goal is to show from first principles what pop literature seems to miss;
> Assuming the most idealized of cases that exist without external constraints and regulations, this market would never be a free market.
I have specified my definition of free markets elsewhere.
You can't choose not to eat food either.
> So why does our literature usually assume that both are the same?
What literature assumes they're the same?
So their thoughts that they were doing alright compared to Russia at that time was probably right.
Similar to other states that had some association with the west where in the end they could sell products and goods outside the planned economy and that helped keep things going.
I'm generally very conservative and against regulation, so no need to preach Adam smith to me (I actually read Wealth of Nations... not the synopsis). Though I will say, by ycombinator standards, I'm a centrist (way too left for the right, way too right for the left).
See e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092575359...
This is a pretty striking echo of Kipling's verse commentary:
In the Carboniferous Epoch, we were promised abundance for all
by robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul
But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy
and the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
(The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 1919)
It's awe-inspiring to imagine that not too long ago the societal order of multiple countries depended on their millions of residents being ignorant of such a simple fact. What really gets my mind going is the next thought: what are some simple facts that would cause revolutions nowadays if made widely known?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/06/13/if-uni...
>The most visible manifestation of Canada’s failing health care system are wait times for health care services. In 2013, Canadians, on average, faced a four and a half month wait for medically necessary treatment after referral by a general practitioner. This wait time is almost twice as long as it was in 1993 when national wait times were first measured.
I think it's the same in Canada. In some areas there are no waits and in other areas there are long waits. I think they need to look at percentiles to get a more accurate measure.
As with most western democracies, Canadian doctors are well compensated in comparison to the rest of society. But it is generally understood that they can make more money in the US if they qualify for immigration (and many can because of rules allowing people with specialist skills to get immigrant visas). This also contributes to reduced supply of specialists, and longer waiting times.
To get to see one of the available specialists in Canada, you have to have a referral from a primary care provider. Here in the US (in my experience) a referral is as simple as saying to your GP, "I want to see a cardiologist." Then your GP says "Oh, sure, this one's very good. I'll refer you." In Canada, your GP has to follow plan guidelines for referrals, and confirm that it is warranted. Then you get on the waiting list for the specialist. You'll wait for a consultation. At the consultation the specialist will determine whether or not you need treatment, and the urgency. Then you go on the waiting list for treatment.
Of course, Canadians with the financial resources are free to travel to other countries to obtain medical treatment more quickly. The provincial medical plans do not pay for treatments obtained outside of Canada. Medical "tourism" is not that unusual, including travel to the US and other countries.
This says that, Going by referral to consultation (not treatment, that takes another 10 weeks), the shortest waits for specialist consultations are 6.7 weeks in Ontario and longest are in New Brunswick (26.6 weeks)
Including treatment times, the variation is 15.4 weeks to 41.7 weeks.
Maybe that’s another reason folks in the different sides are basically talking past each other. If you’re not in a major urban area, seeing a doctor is very fast in the US. When I lived in DC it could take a month or more to get a routine pediatrician’s appointment (something like a physical for school enrollment). In exurban Maryland I can often get them the next day, rarely more than a few days.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08...
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-America-Global-Better-Cheaper...
And Canada isn’t the only alternative to the U.S. when it comes to health systems.
We've moved to SoCal. Under HMO, specialist wait time is about a month now.
My wife needed 3 months to schedule a sleep doctor appointment, 3 months to schedule a minimally-invasive surgery (That manages to bill her, and the insurer wrong), and every time she needs a re-fill of her prescriptions, it's a complete fucking crap-shoot of whether or not:
1. The manufacturer managed to produce enough pills to fill its orders.
2. The pharmacy bothers to call her, to notify that the prescriptions are in.
3. That the prescriptions are actually in, and that she didn't waste her time walking to the grocery store.
Meanwhile, on my side of things, I end up watching my insurance get billed $750 for 5 minutes of a doctor's (And 15 minutes of his assistant's) time. This is truly the most humanitarian, efficient, and accountable medical system on the face of the planet.
> Canadians, on average, faced a four and a half month wait for medically necessary treatment after referral by a general practitioner.
'Medically necessary' is an irrelevant qualifier. All treatment is medically necessary, if it weren't, the GP wouldn't prescribe it, and Canada wouldn't pay for it.
The term you're looking for is 'Non-life-threatening'.
But I have heard that the wait time for old people who need hip or knee replacements is quite excessive.
This is nowhere close to being true. Patients frequently demand treatment that the doctor, left to his own devices, wouldn't give.
My least favorite example of this comes from China, where people will go to the hospital to get intravenous saline solution for a common cold, but it's ubiquitous everywhere including the US.
Hence, medical care is either life threatening (which will get you seen ASAP), medically necessary (which may take some time to get to, depending on the procedure), or medically unnecessary (which is not covered by the healthcare system, and your wait time will be until the heat death of the universe.)
There is no 'a doctor said that we should do this, but we think he's full of shit, so we are scheduling you X months in the future' tier of medical care in Canada. You either need it now, need it, or don't.
If the hospitals can't tell the difference between necessary and unnecessary care apart, then the study authors sure as shit can't. That's why the quantifier of 'necessary medical procedure' is a weasel word. If the procedure is covered, it is by definition, necessary.
Why? Are there more sick people? Are there fewer doctors and resourced? I've seen many articles covering the issue, but nothing that provides a concrete explanation for why a system used to work but doesn't anymore.
TANSTAAFL
Yes, mainly due to an ageing population and partly due to obesity. An increasingly old and obese population needs more healthcare and is more complicated and expensive to treat.
I moved to the US. When the doctor told me the wait would be a couple weeks and to call back if I was having issues, I laughed. I was amazed. And the MRI was absolutely necessary.
Having said that: (more) better doctors and (more) cheep MRI machines would really help.
Same for some kinds of surgeries. Friend was bounced around in TO for a year he needed some knee reconstruction. He could walk but nothing else but it was not a priority.. So drove over border, had consultation, drove week later and had it done. I am not sure what it cost, but he is not rich, typical sysadmin job
How do I know? I grew up exclusively utilizing free healthcare for the poor. I never had any other kind until I was an adult. I still know a lot of poor people from where I grew up that rely on programs like Medicaid. They have no problem expeditiously accessing normal things like MRIs and CTs.
I was like, wait, you lived there, experienced the opposite of what you're saying and STILL manage to make up lies to make it sound bad? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!
Here's a Canadian woman with cancer that went undiagnosed for 2 years because she couldn't access a family doctor: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/health-care-plea-...
Note that she also tried to get access to mental health services to cope, in January, and has to wait until the summer.
Health care access is one of the major issues in Canada right now.
I had a thrombosed hemroid, I called and got an apointment the next day with a specialist. He confirmed my diagnosis and I got surgery to drain and remove it the following day. Only cost me less than 200 dollars after insurance.
I had a bump on my testicle. I was concerned about cancer, so I see my regular doctor. $20 copay and he said it was just a blood something. I wanted to be sure, so he refered me and I got an ultrasound the same day at another facility. That only cost me a $100-something dollars after insurance. (It wasn't cancer.)
Thrombosed hemroid where 95% of people treat it by soaking it in water daily? Probably low-priority, 58 days. Waiting 58 days for an ultrasound to see if you have cancer?
Yeah, I'll keep the coverage/insurance that I have. I still understand the vast majority doesn't have it as good as I do and we still need to fix the system. I think we can bring people's standards up to what I experience, not down to what Canada experiences.
You must not live in a big city because it is difficult to get appointments in the bay area.
Houston
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/03/vete...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
I mean, even ignoring advanced reasons and thinking about this logically, do you really think healthcare for a country with 348 people per square kilometer scales to a country with 4 people per square mile?
I accept that Japan has the most MRI machines per capita in the entire world, but the question is why is that? It could be economy of scale, but that doesn’t explain why Japan is such an outlier globally
Canada spends about 2% more, or 100$ more per capita: https://img.datawrapper.de/IzkJn/full.png
You think spending 2% more will result in comparable healthcare to a country with 870% higher population density?
> I think total population density is misleading when Canada’s population is very concentrated in a few cities.
Ah yes of course, because you can just abandon those who don't live in the few cities.
-
It's almost like this is a complex issue you can't simplify by examining one dimension at a time, but even if for a second you smoke test this idea by singling out population density, it's absurd to expect similar outcomes.
Heck, it only took three operations to fix a botched root canal, and I considered myself lucky.
We do spend less than half as much on healthcare per capita than the US and we have better health outcomes by most measures, but it's very much a no-frills system.
Nurses are to the UK what Soldiers are to the US, any criticism of the NHS is effectively shot down as Capitalist propaganda. There are some serious questions to be asked about the NHS, which arguably cannot be answered (Even if the result is staying with the status quo) due to an extremely sceptical and anti-capitalist left wing.
The only measures we rank highly on are those weighting access as well as outcome
As an example, I am now waiting 2 months to see my family doctor (I just need prescriptions for simple anti histamines, since it's cheaper that way), and 3 years to see a dermatologist for a routine check.
On the other side, a member of my family unfortunately was diagnosed cancer about 3 weeks ago, and she had several medical appointments every week since then.
You trip over truths. You even crush some to death, there are too many of them.
(It's kind of useful when negotiating... "Public record valued your land at $200,000, and you paid $180,000 three years ago, but you want $750,000?")
You can also see a lot of this on Zillow and Redfin.
The fact that this is so down voted supports my premise that this makes people uncomfortable. I don't have an agenda, I just think this is something people try very hard to hide.
One example I would suggest is how incredibly simplified (very often to the point of being objectively not true) the various hot button topics of the world are described in the media (official and social), if they are reported on at all.
One of the main reasons "fake" news is so successful is that it's so easy to find untruths to exploit in the official or status quo descriptions of reality.
> The first word of the second book of Livy's History, which begins the story of Rome after the monarchy, is 'free'; and the words 'free' and 'freedom' are together repeated eight times in the first few lines alone. The idea that the Republic was founded on libertas rings loudly throughout Roman literature, and it has echoed through radical movements in later centuries, in Europe and America. It is no coincidence that the slogan of the French Revolution -- Liberté, égalité, fraternité -- puts 'liberty' in pride of place; nor that George Washington spoke of restoring 'the sacred fire of liberty' to the West; nor that the drafters of the United States Constitution defended it under the pseudonym of 'Publius', taken from the name of Publius Valerius Publicola, another of the earliest consuls of the Republic. But how was Roman liberty to be defined?
> That was a controversial question in Roman political culture for the next 800 years, through the Republic and into the one-man rule of the Roman Empire, when political debate often turned on how far libertas could ever be compatible with autocracy. Whose liberty was at stake? How was it most effectively defended? How could conflicting versions of the freedom of the Roman citizen be resolved? All, or most, Romans would have counted themselves as upholders of libertas, just as today most of us uphold 'democracy'. But there were repeated and intense conflicts over what that meant.
As a proof of this, you point out one of many ways that words can be used to muddy the waters. I would argue a "different state of affairs" (an improvement at least) could be achieved via a concerted effort by multiple influential people or organizations to point out that contrary to the simplistic perspectives and "facts" we're fed by the media, the world is actually extremely complex and we usually only have an approximate idea of what's really going on.
All large organizations are subject to the "Thermocline of Truth."
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-t...
Look at the quotes. They are over the top. You don't think it's possible that a 1989 reporter could have taken some liberties and not been called on it?
Besides, they lived much better than the average Soviet citizen (degree of inequality was far greater than that between a ghetto dweller and Zuck), and that's what they wanted to preserve.
So the extent of Yeltsin being "amazed" is likely vastly exaggerated here. He was a charismatic hick from the boonies, and being treated as a semi-equal by his peers in the US went to his head quite quickly and hard. He was eager to please. But no one in the West was ever confused about what he was.
> Lucille: Don’t you judge me. You’re the selfish one. You’re the one who charged his own brother for a Bluth frozen banana. I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?
Gates' actual guesses were pretty reasonable: https://youtu.be/ad_higXixRA
My point is society has already gained all value that can be extracted from free knowledge and information. What we see today is the base level of human dumbness.
This doesn't really follow. Just because the information is available doesn't necessarily mean society will instantly absorb it or trust it.
Right now we're in the early stages of the information boom, where there's a lot of information floating around, but it's difficult to validate that information and determine whether or not it's accurate. Hopefully in the coming decades we as a society will figure out better means of such validation and start to actually address the problems around "fake news" and other sources of misinformation.
I don't know about revolution, but most Americans tend to be pretty shocked about the rapid development of China. Even those who have some understanding get surprised seeing it for themselves.
And as someone on YouTube pointed out, that was in Moscow, which had it much better than regions further away from the sources of power.
I think the question is, was money abolished along with capitalism?
Q: Under true communism, will there be money? A: Yes and no. Some will have money, others won't.
When Ivan was a boy, he asked a Party Man, "How will we know when true communism has been acheived?"
The Party Man thought for a little bit, and said, "The shops will be full of goods, and there will be no money."
Decades later, in the early 1990s, Ivan is now an old man. He looks through the windows of the department stores, and sticks his hands in pickets. He smiles to himself, and whispers, "At last, true communism!"
It had little in common with the socialist democracies of Europe, nothing in common with the communist proscriptions of Marx, and some in common with the much maligned state capitalism of today's China.
We'd be better off brainstorming a new, 21st century solution to the excess of capitalism, rather than relying on the industrial past.
That sounds like something a socialist would say:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/socialism-as-a-set-of...
The USSR, as a matter of fact, operated under mostly capitalist conditions, capitalism distinguished by:
* The predominance of wage labour in the economy
* The goal of economic activity as the accumulation of capital
* Private ownership of means of production (this is the "mostly" part - the USSR did not have much private ownership, which sets it apart from other capitalisms, but Marx was careful to point out that even under simple "public ownership", society becomes a "general capitalist")
In short: if there is wage labour, it is most definitely not "Communist". Money in its function as money in the circuit of capital, that is, C-M-C', remains money, not merely a symbolic "voucher". Socialists have proposed the idea of non-exchangable labour vouchers, but this is a far cry from real money which was what the USSR had. The ruble was just as much money as the dollar.
This is, in some ways different from economic activity for the purpose of making more money (Which, in addition to producing things like television, automobiles, bombs, and tanks, also ends up producing things like advertising.)
Also, that value was different for different people. I.e., if you were an average citizen, you could spend on bread, maybe meat, and vodka. Once a year you might get a "zakaz" (literally, it means an order, as in mail-order, but in practice a way of distributing some scarce goods to people deemed worthy; you'd still have to pay for it, of course) with maybe a piece of imported salami or a can of pineapple. If you were, say, a driver for Central Committee member, you could get into a different store, which at least had all the staples all the time. And if you were a Central Committee member, you would just shop in a store that had some pretty nice stuff, at a prices that werre set in 1930s and haven't changed since then. Obviously, your ruble would go much further in that case.
Yes. Different jobs paid different amounts, and people were paid for overtime. (With a bunch of malarkey about what exactly qualifies as overtime.) Some jobs had a harder time attracting workers, because of relatively poor conditions + poor pay, compared to others.
Most prices for essential goods (Basic food, housing) was set by the government to be very low. Many well-paid people had money, that they couldn't really spend in the official system.
> Was everyone given ration cards?
Yes. There were a large number of consumer goods (meat, vodka, butter) that were rationed. Other goods, of which there were no real shortages of (In the post-war period), were bought at regular stores. If you weren't a drinker, you would often trade your vodka ration to someone who was.
For yet other goods, of which there were shortages of (Fresh vegetables, for instance), the government encouraged private production of them. Some Russians had plots of personal land.
You could have a plot of personal land in one of two ways. You could either be a collectivized farmer, and, after you met your annual slave-like obligations to the collective, you could work on farming your small personal plots. Alternatively, you could be a well-off city resident, owning a datcha (A small summer home, often with a small plot of land.)
You could then grow produce on your personal plot of land, and sell it at farmer's markets. Due to shortages, and artificially low prices in the official system, food at farmer's markets cost many times what it would cost at a grocery.
> Was a party membership enough to get some basic food from one of these stores?
Official government prices for food were very cheap, and if you weren't picky, there was no shortage of cheap calories that you could buy. So, people weren't starving to death, but if you wanted more then your 500g of sausage, and 90g of butter/month, you needed to spend money in the private markets.
Party members in good standing had access to party-only stores, which sold more limited items.
> I think the question is, was money abolished along with capitalism?
No. You see, the Soviet Union never actually reached communism - for its entire history, it claimed to be in a transitional period, from capitalism to communism. Once communism would be reached, there would be plenty for all, and money would, obviously, be irrelevant! (Or not. The powers that be weren't super-clear as to how exactly that would work, and none of the citizens really gave a shit, because it was clear to everyone with a room-temperature-or-higher IQ that communism would not ever be reached in their lifetimes, and that it's better for your mental and physical health to not ask too many questions about it.)
But, in the meantime, as people were working their way towards communism, money was still necessary as an incentive for good work. State-ran businesses did financial accounting, they would purchase raw goods from other state-ran businesses, would sell their products through state-ran stores. For consumer goods, there would be multiple competing brands, with different quality, and pricing.
The difference between the USSR and the USA, in this sense, is where the profits would go, and how much of the accounting was 'real'. The government would often place economic orders that it wouldn't need to pay for (If the army needs to move a 50 soldiers from Moscow to Vladivostok, it doesn't pay the transportation department the price of 50 train tickets.) It would also do financial malarkey with the profits of state enterprises (To subsidize things like staple foods, housing, education, medical care, etc, which were provided to the citizenry at below-cost prices.)
PS: Bonus point:
You may ask: Well, what did people who had extra money/vodka/etc do with it?
There were a few things you could spend it on - there were some non-essential consumer goods that had vastly inflated sticker prices. Luxury goods (Which you might buy second-hand from a party member, who bought theirs from an official, party-only store), and domestic appliances were one example. Cars, were another - they would cost multiple years of wages - and also came with a multi-year, sometimes decade-long waiting period.
Bribes were a third one - with a large bribe, you could often shave a few years off your waiting period for a car.
The black market was a fourth one - a lot of people in the Soviet Union stole from their workplaces. And I do mean a lot. There weren't department stores, you couldn't go into a Lowe's, and buy a bunch of new roof shingles for your datcha. Yet, everyone who cared about the roof of their datcha had new roof shingles. How was this possible?
The answer is, of course, elementary. What you would do, is get in touch with an alcoholic who works at the roof shingle factory, he will arrange for a pallet of shingles to fall off the back of the delivery truck, and you will arrange for him to get fifty rubles, and four bottles of vodka. He will be drunk for two days, the truck driver will buy a radio for his girlfriend, his workplace will do some accounting bullshit to try to avoid blame, the government construction site that expects these shingles will have to delay work for a week, and the Regional Minister of Construction Supplies will give a radio speech about how if we only worked really hard, to produce enough roof shingles, in a few decades, we will finally attain communism, and we might have department stores, where private citizens could go to, and purchase shingles for their datchas.
It's all insane, of course, but I've yet to live in a country which wasn't.
Between all of us, we had two cars, one datcha, one relative who was an agricultural auditor (and, therefore, recipient of food-related bribes), one black and white television, one vacuum cleaner, a few people with the status of 'victims of political repression' (awarded post-1991), one four-room apartment with a solarium (for six people), and one three-room apartment (for five people).
So, all-in all, we were quite well-to do. (Thanks to my grandparents, who were factory workers. My parents, who were physics professors, were not making very much.)
My earliest memories include standing in bread lines during the transition period in the early 90s, reading through textbooks with pro-communist pages crossed out, and listening to TV news announce a higher and higher dollar to ruble exchange rate on a day-over-day basis.
I’d like to see free food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and internet access made available to all people. I just wondered if the soviets tried any of that.
I'm not saying there aren't any reasons. But since the people nominally owned the Soviet economy, it's odd to assume by default that the people is charging itself.
Also, citation needed for the Holodomor (which I guess you are alluding to) being caused by free food.
So I had to wait more than 30 minutes for a single piece of hose.
I bet that’s not as bad as lines were sometimes in the Soviet system, but it’s not fantastic on its own. Imagine if Boris Yeltsin had to wait 30 plus minutes for a four foot length of hose that none of the employees standing around were able or willing to help him with...
I’ve been remembering to go to the small Ace Hardware store in town lately. They are much smaller but still seem to have stock of the right items, and I can get a person or two to help me immediately.
Capitalism as we know it played a big role in the abundance we’ve had here, but it has also left the US with the most expensive medical care and alienated individuals. Our system may be better than the Soviet system in many ways, but is it the best we can do?
Ace will just have a bin of loops and you pick the ones you want, done.
This pattern, over and over. Yes, you CAN get great stuff at Home Depot for a decent price, but good luck getting out of there with all your bits at a reasonable price. It just seems to me that they're losing sight of what makes a big box store useful.
Of course if I want a stack of PVC or conduit or pressure treated lumber I'm probably going to Home Depot (or a local lumber supplier.)
This guy was looking for cuts of hose. That's an Ace visit.
I sort of hate Menard's, but they do charge a lot less than the better builder stores.
Another small town I've lived in had a Home Depot and a higher end builder store right across the street.
he waited there for forty minutes. no gravel. his patience ran out and he decided to ask for a refund. they sent him to the refund desk, which, naturally, required him to return the gravel before they could give back his money.
Healthcare is one of the least capitalistic parts of the economy, in the US and the rest of the Western world, and consequently, suffering from increasing costs.
In contrast to the increasingly regulated and subsidized major medical fields, the most capitalistic fields of medicine, like cosmetic procedures, have actually seen prices increase at below the rate of inflation over the last several decades.
But if we pick any other particular area of medicine where prices are out of whack -- say drug companies that raise prices by exorbitant amounts, or hospitals charging hundreds of dollars for an aspirin -- isn't that still classic, unchecked capitalism in action? Aren't these just ordinary companies, working to optimize their profits by cornering a market on certain products or services and charging the maximal value they can extract from their customers?
Prior to consumer protection laws, you would take your car in to an auto mechanic, they'd "fix it", and then they'd charge you whatever they felt like. Now we have laws requiring written estimates in advance. How about we start with that?
Our supermarkets have lots of regulation ranging from what food may contain, how it is produced, to how it may be markedet.
Supermarkets and the food supply chain are far less regulated than hospitals and the healthcare supply chain. That's why they've seen far greater gains in efficiency.
Many countries make regulated healthcare markets work. Many countries make non-market healthcare work. The quality of a country's healthcare system is predicted by 1. how much it spends 2. if it's the USA.
In the US, the increase in healthcare costs is directly the inverse of the percentage of the population covered by insurance. Insurance removes the market force of consumer price consciousness and bargain-hunting. Government regulations encourage the provision of healthcare through insurance. The increase in insurance coverage is an artificial outcome of government intervention.
>>Many countries make regulated healthcare markets work. Many countries make non-market healthcare work
No, they don't. The healthcare systems of all developed countries I've seen have severe problems. Case in point, Canada:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/doctor-shortage-cancer-video-...
The problems with the US healthcare system originate in regulations. There was a 3,200 percent increase in the number of healthcare administrators between 1975 and 2010, compared to a 150 percent increase in physicians, due to an increasing number of regulations:
https://www.athenahealth.com/insight/expert-forum-rise-and-r...
Of course, that history played out that way is a different argument than claiming that we could only arrive at our current level of medical knowledge by that path.
Watch the 1990s era video linked in the original article (and mentioned elsewhere in the commentary here). Those 90s Muscovites were living in the most urban part of the Soviet Union. Just imagine trying to get a grade 8 bolt in the countryside.
(I do like Tags in Porter Square, but their selection is lacking. Great people though.)
In the outskirts of San Francisco (where I moved from), it's easy to find massive hardware and fixture stores that aren't Home Depot. The East Bay is full of them too. In LA and Sacramento there are literally giant industrial parks full of retail stores dedicated to specific home improvement niches. I once spent nearly a whole day walking door-to-door looking at flooring.
Of course, it might take you an hour to get across town if you time traffic badly...
There are a lot of smaller stores, don't get me wrong. But figuring out which has inventory, which can cut something so it fits in my car, etc. - functionally, Home Depot just wins. Which is a bummer, 'cause their service can be really bad. I try to know exactly what I need before I even go in, and try to minimize the need for stuff like cut-to-size services even though my hatchback isn't huge.
Meanwhile I live in a "blighted shithole" in MA and anything I could possibly want to buy is likely within a 20min drive. Like, I needed a CV shaft for a (not obscure but not common) 25yo car last week and four(!) different stores had it in stock, two stores had multiple different options. If I lived in the Boston area I would have been dragging my ass to the massive Autozone in Framingham
(They all spend half their lives at thay same Home Depot, too.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_1981_hunger_demonstrati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_austerity_policy_in_Roma...
I never made a conscious decision to avoid the big box stores, but living in downtown Boston forced that decision on me, so I got used to going to a small, local store for just about everything. I've since moved to a suburb, but still go to the small stores, even when it's less convenient.
My suspicion is that it has something to do with the jobs these companies offer being increasingly precarious, poorly trained and ill-paid. Corporate America has spent decades striving to get to a point where workers can be treated as interchangeable widgets, swapped around at will and just discarded when they wear out. Well, they got there, and now we discover that when you build an entire culture around treating people without respect they don't have a lot of respect for you or the job you're asking them to do either.
Workers in the old Soviet Union supposedly had a joke: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." It's not hard to imagine someone working first-line customer support at a big box store saying the same thing.
Whatever we might not like about the 'Big Box' nature of it ... 'Home Depot' is actually an excruciatingly example of that which is articulated in the article.
HD is this massive place where you can buy a gazillion different types of products (and services); there is an amazing degree of variety and specialization in every little aspect of it all.
Home Depot is in many ways a luxury store of the suburban middle class, a blatant example of the massive surpluses inherent in the modern economy. It's a testament to a lot of things. It's a kind of 'bourgeois for the masses'.
Consider for a moment that such a thing doesn't even exist in Europe! Now, most of this is cultural, in that, for a variety of historical reasons, they don't have that 'DOY' kind of culture; but make no mistake, it's also economic. People generally don't have the garage space (or a garage/shed) in which to store all of the semi useful bounty they collect from such a place. And neither the income to support it.
If HD were a place wherein it was impossible to get service, where staff 'knew nothing' and it was a desperately terrible business, then I think there'd be a point to be made but as it stands ... 'having to wait in line once for something' is almost crossing the line into entitlement.
And of course, the reason lines existed in the Soviet Union is something else entirely, and so the comparison is problematic to begin with.
Education and Health Services are 'problem areas' for capitalism, at least in the American sense, but I suggest with some meaningful reforms, it could work out. A handful of European nations have 'somewhat/mostly private' though still 'socialized' systems that work well.
"He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution.". This is really a historical statement. If we can move past issues of national pride and the 'we are better / I told you so' jingoisms, there's a lot to be learned from this. In fact, so few statements communicate so much.
I've never been in a Home Depot but they sound pretty similar. Are they just so much bigger?
Supermarkets here can range up to 100k for the very largest, although they're apparently moving away from absolutely huge stores to stores in the 30k - 50k size. So
You have rubber hose!?!?! What do you mean its not rationed? I can buy whole 4 feet at once? Are you sure I dont need my ration stamps? and someone will actually cut it for me? :o no signup lists? I only have to wait 30 minutes? so quick I dont even have to hire someone to stand for me!
https://culture.pl/en/article/10-mind-boggling-oddities-of-c...
I was at Home Depot to get some roller blinds, which they advertised they could cut to measurements. I got the blinds and went to the machine, which basically had a thing to spin the blinds around and cutting blade screw-clamped to a ruler-like fixture, which allowed adjustment to measurements. (The point being, that you could align the blade to any measurement shown on the ruler.)
A store clerk finally comes after a long time, and I give her the measurements. Her response: "The machine doesn't do fractions." This was clearly a lie. The machine did fractions. The clerk didn't.
NYT reported yesterday that we are well past full employment -- because employers are willing to hire anyone, including felons, and will overlook things that used to be firing offenses.
30m waiting time with the option of coming back or going somewhere else is a breeze.
In particular, with perishables, I look at the things that won't possibly sell before being removed for lack of freshness, and I've always considered it to be an absurd waste.
The other night, I walked by a Dunkin Donuts, and a garbage bag of donuts and bagels had spilled across the sidewalk. It was probably $100 worth of food getting dumped into a landfill because it was day-old baked goods. But the line out the door at eight in the morning meant that profits had more than cleared that margin of disposable food. How to reconcile that with the bums panhandling and playing doorman all day?
That stores display perishable products for the sake of advertising to foot traffic has always freaked me out on visceral level. To waste a quantity of human activity for purely ostentatious purposes doesn't sit well with one's primal conscience.
Meanwhile millions die each year, from starvation, disease and lack of access to clean drinking water. Because it is not profitable enough to help them.
100$ at their prices or 100$ of flour and sugar? I think what they mostly were throwing out was peoples work but that's exactly same thing as with any form of advertisement.
Recent Werner Herzog interview talking about interviewing Gorbachev. He discusses a little about the Yeltsin years following and puts Putin's popularity in context of how bad things were during Yeltsin's term. Worth a listen if you have 20 minutes.
My favorite pic of his, from the time of actual presidency, is rather different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clinton_Yeltsin_1995.jpg
This is hilarious and is making its way through private threads I have with former astronauts and Nasa Employees.
Love HN.
> Yeltsin, then 58, "roamed the aisles of Randall's nodding his head in amazement," wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution."
I remember going back to my hometown to visit my parents, who live in a somewhat rural part of a "Red State." By the Walmart out by the run-down local mall, there's this depressing discount food store, which, as far as I can tell, exists for the people who are too poor to shop at the Walmart. Most of it contained boxes and bins like the Soviet store. Most of it was dry and canned goods.
There is great wealth and opportunity in the US. There is still something left to do, however. The solution isn't to emulate Venezuela or the Soviet Union, obviously. Yet, there is disaffection here in the US as well, and there is a reason for it. The solution isn't to punish and blame the disaffected.
Oh come on! Seriously?
It didn't led to the downfall of communism but it helped tremendously in Yeltsin's understanding what communism really was and is: just another form of human exploitation by a small group of elitists (or aristocrats).
Noteworthy is the following description of events which happened while travelling in the US:
""For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. 'What have they done to our poor people?' he [Yeltsin] said after a long silence." He added, "On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the 'pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments'." He wrote that Mr. Yeltsin added, "I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans." An aide, Lev Sukhanov was reported to have said that it was at that moment that "the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed" inside his boss."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin
In case anyone wants to know what actually led to the dissolution of the USSR check out this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio...
Cool article.
SOCIALISM... some people never learn
In our high-speed train. That's China.
we tell ourselves these stories to make ourselves feel good about our misshapen consumer-oriented economy. and it doesn't quite work as well now because they more or less have the same stuff in China. also, we're buying a lot of that stuff from China, so it makes even less sense.
So it's surely not your textbook Leninist system, but it has many aspects thereof; I suppose you might characterize it as a mixed-command economy. It isn't what we would describe in the vernacular as "socialist"--as that word today generally, outside of the fever swamps of the American right wing, refers to countries like the Nordic or other Western European countries that work within something of a mixed-market system; it's definitely more command-oriented than that, still. Leninist/Stalinist communism generally sports a number social factors that definitely still exist in China outside of the economic structure, such as strong informational control, a smorgasbord of human rights abuses, and a generally totalitarian mode of governance and operation.
So I guess the question becomes "well, what does 'communist' mean?" My own, inexpert answer would be "it's not 'communist', except insofar as 'communist' is defined to mean 'what China does'," and my own thinking is that today it maps more to an ethnonationalist--though this isn't a perfect description as many groups are accepted, but at the same time one can see see the routine oppression of Tibetans, Uighurs, etc.--totalitarian state with a largely centrally-controlled economy. That doesn't map to any historical definition of 'communist' that I know of, but reasonable minds can differ.
[0] - https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Wendy-L...
That's the one defining trait of communism according to any communist.
I think calling them capitalist doesn't involve much less "torturing labels" than calling them communist.
Since it's absolutely not communism, what makes it absolutely not a capitalist economy?
That's why I called it "mixed-command".
We've seen other centrally controlled ethno-nationalist governments in the past, particularly in the early to mid 20th century. The confusion we have in 2019 is that we label those historical examples as "right-wing." This is actually quite strange, since these historical examples had highly centrally controlled societies and economies. The government set prices, determined working conditions, and dictated who sold to whom. Centralized control extended to all aspects of society and culture. Those are hallmarks of far left and communist governments. As in present day China, human rights were nullified, and certain ethnic groups were vigorously oppressed. As in present day China, industry "worked closely with" the government, and while wealthy oligarchs were created, they were very much subject to the whims of the government. There was also very close control of the media and information access by the public.
The only real categorical differences I see amount to stated ideology, and thus lip service: Is ethnicity important, or is class important? I think that's 1) only relevant to how the ideology is propagandized and sold and 2) only orthogonal to the left-right axis. It might also have an affect on whether and how obviously rich oligarchs are allowed to exist. (Can't contradict the party narratives, too much.)
I think the "right wing" label being applied to such totalitarian governments with centrally controlled economies and many left-wing characteristics is itself a propaganda maneuver of convenience. It's really the degree of authoritarian control which is most important in 2019.
Most of the corporate empires and fortunes exisiting in Germany today owe their legacy to the nazi party, a fact which they are obviously keen to hide.
Just one example out of many: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nazi-bahlsen-idUS...
Calling the nazi party "left wing" or "socialist" is blatant revisionism, which has become extremely common in conservative and alt-right circles.
Similarly, the USSR was a totalitarian state capitalist dictatorship. The state (ie. the party) owned everything, there was absolutely no collective ownership. There was still wage labor and a very clear hierarchy, not to mention absolutely massive amounts of corruption and grift. In that sense, nazi Germany and the USSR were surprisingly similar; a strong leader with all power consolidated at the top, concentrating ownership and power with a small wealthy elite.
The actual far left is composed primarily of socialism, communism and anarchism. All are defined by the collective ownership of the means of production. Not state ownership or party ownership, but collective ownership. Their main difference is whether a state exists (socialism) or has withered away (communism) or if all forms of hierarchy have been abolished (anarchism).
This either exists only on small scales, or as a fiction. On the scale of national governments, it's always a fiction disguising state control. Whether it's a totalitarian state controlling corporations or a totalitarian state controlling "collectives," it all just amounts to a totalitarian state with some form of disguise.
The real revisionism is putting a fig leaf of one form or another on all forms of totalitarian governments with centrally controlled societies and economies, then saying they're vastly different because of these different fig leafs. It's more fundamental to observe how they behave historically with regards to human rights. The most important aspect is the authoritarianism.
Personally I agree with anarchism that all hierarchies must be abolished, including monarchy, wage labor and even the concept of the nation state itself.
Greed and territorialism have only ever brought grief and misery. The people in power have succeeded in dividing us into easily-manageable tribes and set us against each other, and while we squabble they reap the rewards of our work.
You really should look into anarchism (or anarcho-communism). Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin are good places to start. I would also recommend Max Stirner, for a good introduction to individualist anarchism.
No disagreement there.
Personally I agree with anarchism that all hierarchies must be abolished,
Such societies don't exist. Societies which are highly communal exist until they reach about 450 people. Even then, they develop hierarchies of personal power.
including monarchy, wage labor and even the concept of the nation state itself.
Arbitrary and corrupt hierarchies need to be reformed. It's an ongoing process. That's built into human nature. There are also good hierarchies which have done much good in human history.
You're right though. Economically China isn't communist. Especially in their "Special Administrative Regions" (Hong Kong, Macau).
Anatoly Dobrynin, the USSRs ambassador to the US from 1962 to 1986, wrote that when he arrived in New York, he was amazed to see traffic jams were real. In the USSR, they were claimed to be American propaganda.
The world has advanced a lot since then. The third world now has much worse traffic jams than the US.
(Dobrynin's autobiography describes how he became a diplomat. One day, Stalin was grumbling about the old diplomats around him, and said that the USSR needed New Soviet Men, like aircraft designers, as diplomats. The next day, Dobrynin, aircraft designer, was essentially arrested at his drafting table at work and sent to the Higher Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.)
Also a drunkard, a dictator and a darling of the West.