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Comment by arb99 | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays Poland seems like any other European country (for me, being a tourist it does anyway).

And this article is referencing a time only around 25-30 years ago...

I like to think of centrally planned economies (e.g. Warsaw Pact, pre-reform India or pre-reform China) as helium balloons held under water; all they need is to be released in order to fly up.

What I find extraordinarily sad is how many people still want to return to central planning. I think it's very attractive to the sort of Bright Young Thing who's never held a real job and dealt with real people, and who ends up living his life mooching off of those who have and do.

Your analogy is more accurate than you imagine; they are helium balloons, and can easily burst. Just look at what happened to Slovenia (first communist, then 15 years of GDP growth, and looting and stealing by the former communists who were now democratically elected, and now the population is paying off the debts).

Poland is what Russia should be and Putin's worst nightmare.

In some parts it looks like I imagine the USA. I live in Germany now and the malls in Poland still stun me. It's unbelivable how fast those malls and french hyper-markets came out of nothing.

I still don't understand how they survive. There've been 3 malls within few kilometers on the same road in Slupsk.

Slupsk has one dead mall in the South so apparently it is possible to have too many malls, some land developer got a bit greedy I think.

I wonder how the three (including the one in the city named after the security firm) in the west along the 6 survive. This is pure madness. Aren't they even connected by the same bus lines?

Edit: Oh it's called "Galeria Slupsk" now and they had to demolish the house down the road. It didn't look very safe before. Crazy how different parts of the town look. The 6 goes around the city finaly. So much change. So fast.

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